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Netscape pulls Mozilla chat-client page
smu writes "Netscape, the contributor of the Instant Messaging API document, has
requested that mozilla.org remove the page pending further review by Netscape. "We at mozilla.org regret this inconvenience, but respect the wishes of our contributors. Netscape solicits feedback on this decision".
"I don't think I need to make any smartass comment.
Reality calling all whiners!
Ever heard of Internet Explorer 4?
Internet Explorere 5?
Quicktime 4?
They're all delivered using MODULAR pieces. Ring a bell? If you do not want a chat client in browser x.xx, do not request it for download.
If you have some notion that they are somehow embedding a chat client into the layout engine, go to Mozilla.org and read a bit.
If you have the notion that 150 engineers are dropping what they are doing to make IRCAIMAOLICQ on a salaried whim, get $0.35 and call Clue to chat for a while.
If you have a complaint about the UI or behavior in M3 or M4, go to the dictionary and look up PRE-ALPHA, or DEBUGGING, or EARLY BUILD, or else if that's too much work, meditate on concepts such as "reading what is and is not implemented yet in the readme" or "there have been no beta releases of mozilla as of yet".
If you are under the assumption that a Java machine can be pulled out of one's ass in a few days, think harder. The mechanics for interfacing Mozilla with the JVM of *YOUR CHOICE* are being implemented as we speak. NS5 will ship with someone's. Don't like it? Get a copy of Mozilla and plug in your own. Oh, and no-one is going to put up 10 megs of JVM per nightly debugging build just so one can save oneself the agony of not having scrolling newstickers.
If you are under the assumption that snarky comments about the de facto ownership of a development initiative actually contributes to the project, learn about how software gets written.
And finally, if you are under the assumption that a project as sophisticated and technically superior as Mozilla "sux" because it doesn't have a recursive name or themable XYZ, go ahead and write your own browser. Implement everything The 'Leet Way yourself, using Real Open Source by Hax0rs. Don't forget to write a new widget set!
Either Mozilla or Netscape 5 will end up being the modular multipuropose ultraextensible browser you'll be using for the next five years, so get used to getting world-class best-of-breed cross platform ultra efficient useful innovative open source software for free, or go back to the land of paperclips and wizards.
Fricking ingrates. Respect Mozilla.
For those of you who missed the page while it was up: the proposal came from Netscape and AOL people, presumably from the instant messaging client product groups.
The proposal did seem to be pretty narrow and a little wrongheaded in its approach, though, and for that deserved to be withdrawn. I suspect this will be coming back after some discussion on the relevant newsgroups. For one thing, there's no reason each IM client has to come bundled with its own UI shell. I might be mistaken, but my quick read of the spec called for each client to bring its own.
AIM and ICQ (and things that present a siumilar UI, like private messages on IRC) could employ a shared UI, and clients that need a modified or different UI could instead subclass it and make use of the relevant bits (like the buddy list or the multiperson chat windows).
Again, if this remains merely a removable module, and is created by people who aren't already working on core browser/editor/mail/news, it seems pleasant enough.
now might be a nice time to plug jabber, a currently in-development project to develop an ICQ/AIM-like protocol with a distributed server architecture and plugin-able compatibility with existing protocols like AIM/toc, ICQ, Yahoo Pager (?), the new IETF/Microsoft protocol being worked on, etc.
it's a pretty neat project, they've got a lot of ideas and not so much code (a sort-of functioning server, a windows client, a tcl client, and a gtk/gnome client are all in beta right now). especially interesting are the transport mechanisms to other protocols -- which will allow a user to use multiple services at the same time? check it out!
Stuart wrote:
>
> The reason I hated Netscape including AIM wasn't
> because of the bloat [was] because of the fact
> that it only spoke a single proprietary
> protocol. Having a generic client which speaks
> all protocols is IMO a great thing.
Agreed. I'm a user of IRC (check out the mozilla
channel), and it suffers from being split into
a number of networks, each of which has its own
set of servers, of varying reliability.
If making Mozilla the standard interface to
interchangable IRC modules would allow some
unity, this would significantly increase the
usability of the whole thing.
In particular, it would be of benefit to be
able to bookmark or email URLs for IRC such as:
irc://-dalnet/
irc://-effnet/#help
irc://-alternet/#gnudiscuss?nick=Aristotle
irc://irc.dal.net:7000/#foobar
IE the network "-dalnet" could be looked up to
find your preferred server. default nicks could
be stored in the browser (possibly in a way that
allow the nick to change with the irc network
and channel name - especially useful given that
the maximum nick length varies with network).