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AOL Considers Ending Mozilla?
Wonko42 writes "Netscape is thinking twice about continuing to use Mozilla.org as the main tool to develop Communicator, and well they should. The project has received very little support from the open-source community, and the delays have been astronomical. While Netscape isn't sure that they could undo the open-source status of the browser, they're considering their options carefully. Also, according to the article, Communicator 5.0 is set to ship in December. "
That fact is, developing a valid and correct CSS browser is a very complicated feat that is not easily distributed amongst thousands of developers like Linux.
Expecting an army of OSS programmers to rescue Netscape was wishful thinking. Netscape was a poorly managed company and their development continues to be poorly managed. I mean, they *JUST* instituted milestones a few months ago. And they introduced and reintroduced several designs at the last minute (communicator, vs apprunner, vs XUL)
Slashdot users might have a hard time believing this but not all problems are horizontally scalable. (I say this because Beowulf rears its head way too much)
For instance, as mentioned, a team of chess players don't play better than a single one. A million OSS programmers are not neccessarily better than a team of 5 dedicated ones.
Linux can easily be decomposed into thousands of independent modules and utilities which can be maintained separately. But a rendering engine is a highly interdependent piece of code with a combinatorial explosion of use cases, where any change propagates throughout the entire system and requires reunderstanding how the flow works.
Thus, if an outside developer patches some code, understanding what the patch did may require a lot of work in and of itself. Just like understanding why a chess move was made by someone may be very difficult and affect your game plan well into the future.
Most Linux code isn't this complex and I would say that the most successful browser projects have been produced by highly cohesive small teams working together (ala Opera)
What does this mean? I believe the biggest contribution the OSS community can make to Mozilla is testing and feedback. I believe it is futile for them to get involved trying to develop the core display engine.
Oh, and before someone chimes and in and points to compilers like GCC as an example of complex software in the OSS community, keep in mind that compilers are taught as a standard course for CS students and there are well known textbooks on how to produce compilers (Dragon Book). On the other hand, rendering engines are not taught as part of any standard curriculum and there is little literature on the subject, so most people have to reinvent them.
When Mozilla does get released, I believe the OSS community will produce one thing more than anything else: Thousands of useless themes and graphic variations of the interface ala Desktop Themes, Winamp Skins, etc.
Conclusion: There are some problems that DON'T work very well with an army of people contributing to them, and in fact work better when a small closeknit team of competent people TUNE OUT everywhere, hole up in a garage, and pound it out. After its done, it can be released as OSS and let the legions of lemmings pound out bugs and contribute to featuritis.
The lack of huge well-produced office applications, games, and browsers from the OSS community, and the proliferation of small, simple, command line utilities and applets is a testament to the fact that OSS doesn't handle intrinsically complex (those architectures which cannot be decomposed) applications very well.
Shaver requested:
good, concrete suggestions on what would make you want to contribute are always welcome.
I'm not likely to even attempt to become a core Netscape/Mozilla/Gecko developer, since I've got too many other things on my plate. However, I (and I assume there are many many others like me) would be eager to contribute little things here and there, assuming certain things are the case.
First, it would need to be at the point where I can use the program regularly. As the milestones go by, this is becoming true for more and more people. This also explains why the number of contributors is increasing. So far, so good.
Second, the program would have to be imperfect in my eyes. Any contributions I (and people like me) are likely to make are the itch scratching type. Since perfection is essentially impossible in a large project, that one should be easy to cover.
Third, the code would have to be fairly easy to grok. If I have to spend a week narrowing down the location of the feature I want to tweak to be spread amongst twenty files of spaghetti code, I'm going to do something else instead. I have not looked closely at the Mozilla code, but if, as you say, a significant portion of bug reports come with patches, this is not likely to be a problem.
Lastly, there has to be an easy way for me to get contributions to the project. As long as bugzilla stays up and used, that's covered quite well.
So basically, it looks like the Mozilla project is doing all the right stuff from my viewpoint. It's just a matter of time, time to get it closer to feature complete, and time spent using Mozilla by busy but well-wishing programmers like me. I think you will see the number of auxilliary developers grow very quickly over the rest of the year, and even faster next year.
As for getting more core developers, someone else would have to answer that.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Beware, the story above is MAJOR FUD!
Anyone even remotely involved in the Mozilla project knows that what is claimed above is completly untrue.
Everyone is quick to dismiss Mozilla as a failure because of the lack of outside involvement and time it's taken, but that is so so untrue. The reasons for this are simple and have nothing to do with the viability of the project, in fact, they prove how viable of a project it is!
Mozilla has taken so long because less than a year ago they basically decided to throw everything away and START OVER, yes, that's right, start pretty much from scratch. This means completly redesigning the entire architecture and reimplimenting it according to those new designs. The fact that they have a usable browser that is quickly approaching completion in less than a year is nearly HEROIC!
The reason for the dearth of outside involvement is fairly simple to explain... it's complex, it's a rapidly moving target, and everyone who can help others jump in are too busy to do so. Very very few people could just download the source for this beast and be able to start hacking it, and even if they could, it's likely to change in a week or two.
Mozilla is an amazing and incredibly successful project. The tools available at mozilla.org and the modularity of the design are simply generations above and beyond any other open project ever attempted. In time everyone will start to see this, go check it out now and start getting involved now before the wave!
Actually, when Netscape made a non-working product Open Source, they weren't surprised that nobody wanted to fix it. Netscape didn't want to fix it either, which is why they told their engineers to work on fresh code. (And if you think that was a mistake, you can always pull the MozillaClassic code and work on it. Surprisingly, few do!)
If you'd taken the time to actually read the article, Bruce, you'd see that neither Netscape nor AOL nor Mozilla have said anything about a change in development model. Seems a bit premature to be deconstructing our demise, doesn't it? You could at least wait until it happens. (Maybe you were fooled by the original headline of the article, which had ``AOL mulls'' rather than ``Sun mulls''. Still, you should read for content.)
Why do we have to go through this ``Mozilla is dead'' dance every two weeks when someone new wants their name in the press? Can't they pick on gmake or XFree86 for a change? =)
(Sorry if I seem a bit short; it's been a long enough week without this.)
Happily, Mozilla has taken that route. Java? It's a plugin (OJI). Image decoding? All formats are plugins (libnsjpg.so, libnspng.so, libnsgif.so, etc.). Network protocols? They're all plugins. Bookmarks? You guessed it! Mail and news support. C'mon -- everyone together now: pluggable! Un-pluggable! Re-cross-counter-hyper-pluggable! Editor? Character set converters? History? Cookie and pref editing? Find dialog? You see where I'm going here. (Mozilla puts the ``plug'' in ``pluggable'', or something like that.)
(I find it a little annoying when people make pronouncements about the architecture when they apparently haven't done research. Take a look...you'll like it!)
(This is the short version of my licensing rant, because I'm tired. Come to OLS and you can hear the whole thing.)
If you'd rather contribute your code under a BSD license, you're in luck. The MPL is basically a file-granularity BSD license, sans advertising clause. Because of that granularity, new code you write in new files can be MPL'd, though changes you make the NPL'd code will still be under the NPL. This means that you could add mynewcoolthing.c under the MPL, and NSCP/AOL would have no special rights to it. And we at Mozilla would happily take that new file into the CVS tree and cherish it greatly.
I understand that people don't like the NPL-takeback clause very much; I'm not a big fan either -- though I understand the reasons for them, and they are good reasons, covered at length in the mozilla.license newsgroup -- and I'm lobbying gently to have more new code be written that is MPL'd rather than NPL'd. We'll see how much progress I can make. (Probably not much before 5.0 ships, perhaps more after.)
As far as whether it's Free Software, both the NPL and MPL were deemed to meet the DFSG, which was then the canonical metric for such things. I'm sorry it's not free enough for you, and I do sympathize with your concerns, but there aren't a lot of other options, unfortunately.
(Note: IANAL, though I was involved in the NPL design discussions pretty much from the start. I'll see if I can get some legal type to follow up, but I'm not confident that I can.)
Posted by The Devout Capitalist:
There are over a hundred comments about open source. Very few talk about the business issues from Alan Baratz's perception. I've heard Alan speak several times, in public and in private, about Netscape and Java before the Sun-Netscape Alliance. The concern is simple:
Enterprises must be able to deploy current Java 2 applets.
Only Java applets written to support the ancient 1.0.2 version can be reliably deployed on the Internet; and this hurts the Java cause. So far, Sun's attempts to aid its screaming customers have included the HotJava Browser, the Java Plug In, the Personal Application Browser, the compliance lawsuit with Microsoft, collaboration attempts, and prayers. Now with the alliance, Alan sees a chance to make a world class browser that will power the next wave of the Java movement, and he is willing to pay for it. As Mozilla hasn't provided the browser, the field is open to new approaches. I expect Alan would pay $75 million to fix this problem this calendar year.
Please remember that this discussion is about money.
Mozilla's cross-platform story is one of the strongest parts of our charter, right up there with commitment to open source and a love of sugar. You'll have a hard time finding anyone to apologize for it. (And it does go beyond Unix, Windows and Mac: BeOS, OS/2 and QNX are well-represented.)
The vast majority of the Mozilla code is cross-platform, with per-platform differences abstracted under NSPR, widget and gfx code. What were you trying to work on that was in platform-specific code?
If you have a patch that you want to put in, and you don't have the ability to test it on other platforms, please send it along. File a bug describing what you're fixing, and attach the patch to the bug. Look in the owners list and send your patch to the owners of the affected module(s). If you do that and aren't happy with the results, please mail me.
Lots of people manage to work successfully without direct access to the other platforms; I don't have Windows installed here either, and I do just fine. We can find you ``platform buddies'' to help you check your code on other platforms, if need be.
What open source projects do you contribute to? Which ones have a small enough codebase and narrow enough platform focus to suit you?
I keep hearing in articles and here on slashdot that Mozilla doesn't have any external developers, and I'm starting to wonder where it comes from. There are 53 developers outside netscape.com with direct checkin privileges to the CVS tree as of last Tuesday. I sure hope they -- and people like Chris Nelson and L. David Baron and Jeremy Lea and Bert Drehuis[*] who don't have CVS access but do contribute in very real ways via patches and quality bug reports and advice -- don't take offense at this denigration of their efforts. (Even Mr. Baratz's own developers are working on Mozilla -- the Blackwood team are working on OJI and XPCOMJava connection technology.)
[*] And others whose names elude me, in my slightly adrenalized state. Apologies to the dozens I've forgotten, I really do love you all.
In addition to these major players, more than two thousand (2337 as of right now) bugs have been reported by people not at Netscape and subsequently resolved. (Many of those bug reports have patches attached by the reporter or other ``external'' contributors, but I can't pull those stats up right now.)
How many ``external developers'' is enough? If Netscape suddenly fired 2/3 of their Mozilla developers -- taking them down to about 35 -- would Mozilla all of the sudden be a greater success? (``But Ironhead, most of the developers work for Netscape!'') Literally every week, more developers apply for CVS access and get accounts to check into the tree -- we've more than doubled in the last few months. I can't speak for Netscape/AOL's HR policy, but if they start hiring at that rate I'll be really surprised.
What needs to happen to get more people involved? Answers like ``I feel like Netscape's pawn'' and ``the code is so big, it makes me afraid'' don't help me -- I'm not going to get rid of Netscape's developers, and I'm not going to throw out code -- but good, concrete suggestions on what would make you want to contribute are always welcome.
As a minor point of fact, nobody at Netscape, AOL or Mozilla has said anything about making Mozilla's development less open, and I can honestly tell you that this press release is the first thing I've heard about anything of that nature. It wouldn't surprise me a lot to discover that Mr. Baratz was talking out of an orifice that wasn't his mouth. (His left ear, of course.)
(You're making a lot of often-made objections, which is actually sort of handy: I can get my responses to all of them in one place.) That the plugins are part of the source tree is not a very damning observation, I don't think. Some build mechanics to permit you to build ONLY select portions of the code would be a nice addition, I agree, but it hasn't been a priority so far. We're taking patches, of course, and people have been discussing a SeaMonkeyBase CVS tag that would allow you to pull without the optional componentry. FWIW, the GIMP source tree also contains a fair number of plugins. (The Linux kernel is even more similar to Mozilla in this area, in that it contains various optional modular bits scattered all over the source tree.)
As far as using third-party components:
- Using GTK on non-Unix platforms was something that even the GTK authors counselled against. Making GTK work on the Mac would be a difficult and time consuming thing, and then you get to the best part: GTK widgets aren't suitable for our HTML-display purposes. You can't do all sorts of things that you need for HTML4, like partial opacity, and there isn't complete Unicode support (a major requirement, which is coming in GTK 1.3, too late for our 5.0 plans). So we really had no choice but to render our own widgets. Sorry, but there was lots of discussion about this in the newsgroups months ago, and that's how it turned out.
- Using libxml isn't really an option at this point, but we _do_ use an external XML parser: expat existed before Mozilla, and is being used by other projects.
- Um, pal, we do use the system libgif and libpng, if they're of the appropriate version:
/usr/lib/libpng.so.2 (0x4000b000) - There are no cross-platform graphical mail/news readers that I know of, and besides -- you can implement the required interfaces (not many: just a mailto: handler and some logic to get yourself in the menus) and have it call out to mutt or Eudora(tm) or whatever turns you on. (As an aside, you could do that in later 4.0x/4.5 incarnations as well. There's sample code on developer.netscape.com that shows how.) Netscape decided that they wanted to spend resources on developing a cross-platform, standards-based, etc., etc., mail/news client, so they did that.
So, I'm glad we think alike: using suitable existing alternatives is a great thing. But where they're not suitable, we make our own. Not a lot of choice there.[shaver@loonie:components]$ ldd libnspng.so
libpng.so.2 =>
Again -- research! =) And the JPEG library in Mozilla is actually owned partially by Tom Lane of JPEG Group fame, so if you send patches to the canonical libjpeg people, even those without an appropriate version will be able to take advantage of them. (Similarly with libpng and libgif, I believe.)
Now, your objection to having a mail/news client at all is a bit troublesome: are you saying that it was a failure of Mozilla that Netscape wanted a mail/news client that was cross-platform and tightly integrated, etc.? Perhaps you'd have had them work on other things, but then perhaps Netscape would rather have had you hacking on Mozilla for the past year, rather than whatever it is you were doing instead.
As far as ``a Java-specific-interface'', I'll agree that OJI is designed to allow pluggable JVMs, yes. I'm not sure why that's bad; the network protocol API is designed to allow plugging network protocols in as well: that's how those things are designed. There are a lot of rather generic and flexible interfaces in the Mozilla client, though -- what would you like to plug in that you can't? We'll almost always take patches to add better modularity.
(Lots of people will say ``you should be doing this instead of that'', but then...they can't help do that because they don't have the time. Kinda frustrating. At the end of the day, the person writing the code makes the call, though Mozilla exerts influence where it can to make sure that the right thing for the code wins the day. If you've got strong opinions about things, come to the Mozilla newsgroups and share them. It's getting late in the game for major design shifts, but there's still time to make your voice heard in many areas. C'mon out!)
I think it shows that just making a project open source doesn't guarantee success. Linux is a success because it has attracted talented people, and it's rewarding enough to them that they stick around. I suspect that whatever Linus is working on at Transmeta will be a success as well, despite the fact that it's not open source.
No process or development method can replace real skill and talent.
TedC
The original delay is _not_ due to mozilla.org being run badly, but two other factors:
1) The original decission to base the free 5.0 release on the old code.
2) Netscape's decision to release a (non-free) 4.5 based on the old code.
Since they changed to the new code base the code has been progressing smoothly, with milestones being meet within a week.
Also, while one cannot expect significant outside contributions before one has working code to show, they have already received contributions such as ports to "minor" platforms and translations to tons of languages, as well as a continues stream og bug reports and fixes, especially for partability.
However, the major affect at this point of going open source, is on the quality of the design. Since they went Open Source they have made all the right technical decissions. Close adherence to standards, no more proprietary Netscape extensions, clear and documented API's between components, use of standard and open tools wherever possible. Netscape 4.x is something a good engineer would be ashamed of, 5.0 will be something he can be proud of. I'm not sure how much of this is due to outside input, and how much is simply due to the process being open for everybody to see.
It seems to me that the Sun/Java guy is only attacking Mozilla because it works so well compared to the failed attempt to sell their own Java development as being some bastardization of open. The dangerous thing is that the AOL suits may not be able to see that the Mozilla project is working very well _now_, and buy into his lies.
JWZ is a great hacker and has an intriguing personality, but he is not a good designer, nor a good project leader.
People worship him because of his personality and because of his programming skills, but everything he says shouldn't be taken as gospel.
Mozilla.org has, as far as I can see, been running better and more smoothly since he left, even if (or maybe because of) it no longer is personified by a strong and very visible personality.
These cries about Mozilla's failing are really only disgusting; the development model works. As others said too, their progress is perceived slowly, but only because it's not an evolutionary progress from the last Netscape code base, but instead the "redo everything correctly" way; opening up to the public might not be fully successful, but I think it improved the developer's communication enormously. Just think of the development tools they had published, tinderbox, bonsai, bugzilla are still mightily useful and they really help the developers work.
Now contrast this with the "Community" licensing, and development model for Jini/Java. Do they help communication? No, they just help making sure you know their rules. It's still basically a large cathedral, surrounded by small shops connected to the cathedral, and rarely communicating with eachother. Sounds perfect for the control freak, but it's the kind of development that's being shown to not scale with other commercial software. If you are not free to restructure the communication, and you can't take the code for your purposes (i.e. fairly, abiding to share it), it won't scale.
And yes, Mozilla is really needed as a real, hardcore, full-featured, top-notch browser, fully opened up to cope with the future. Thinking about a future where core technologies are controlled, and licensed (financially) from central organizations controlling the given stuff makes me vomit. And that's just because Baratz and a few thinks it will pay them better? The conspiracy theorist in me says when "they" get this done, a few months later they become managers/presidents at another Big Company to further work on their own wealth. There's nothing more bitter than news like that, rumours about closing a good, important, open project. Make it not happen, please.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
I suspect
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-)
:-) )
that Linux will not see another cool browser for years to come, while
windows IE will evolve many times over and over in the next two years.
W2K is an example of a brand new IE!
Erm, how many things can you add to a Web browser? Personally, I think that the ideal Web browser would be released as an embeddable HTML-rendering widget so silly people who think that you need a mailreader and a video player in your Web browser can attach those and the rest of us can have a Web browser that uses standard UNIX conventions (like using the local mail transport and the user's mail program)
Oh, and it would have to be free software and un-crufty, so IE doesn't count
But lynx is good enough for everything anyway, dunno why I need a 'better' browser
Anyway, I said one year ago that mozilla.org will not bring anything to
market in a reasonable time frame and I was right then and I?m still right
about that.
Are you going to give references or just claim precognitive abilities? This also depends on your definition of a 'reasonable time frame'. Linux and NT took around five years to get to a useful state, and at Microsoft you folks consider browsers to be operating systems so why not give Mozilla a little more time?
It took MS less than 6 months to develop IE and less than 3
months to bring out IE 5.0.
Oh, my. Can I have their time machine?
Seriously, IE was useless for the first few revisions. Mozilla is a lot farther along than IE was at the same point, I suspect.
So if Open Source development of web
browsers is better, then why is there not a fully functional web browser
that supports all the possible web content that IE supports?
"all the possible web content" can be a pretty slippery phrase. Of course, there aren't really any good free web browsers at the moment.
Hmmm maybe lack of manpower, no incentive ($$$)
Well, right now Mozilla is, as far as I know, pretty much a Netscape project funded by Netscape and manned by Netscape developers. Probably the reason is that the design is too monolithic and un-Unixy to attract outside developers. But so far all the programmers are being paid and I believe there are a lot of them.
Even were it like most free software projects, that doesn't necessarily mean it would automatically be 'better' than other browsers, but it would probably acheive parity. The only person I know of who's spouting that "Free Software is always technically better" nonsense is ESR. (and maybe his disciples, why is it that the disciples are always more annoying than the master..?)
I suspect that the real reason is that most free software programmers aren't particularly interested in web browsers, especially ones designed the way the Netscape browsers are. I wouldn't mind working on one, but I don't see it as being a particularly imperative issue. (maybe if I could be convinced that it WASN'T going to go the 500-zillion-extra-features-and-tie-ins route, that those would be left to third parties if they really had to be made. Scheme extensibility, like in the Gimp
But then, why am I wasting my time replying to such an obvious troll..?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
"Mozilla is an amazing and incredibly successful project."
If your soo sure, how do you explain this
I am all for open source, but when someone like AOL want's to exploite it for thier own profit or dump it, which would you really rather they did?
I'm glad to see someone from Netscape speaking up in this. There's a lot of bad words flying around in spite of the great job everyone involved is doing. Mozilla is a fantastic piece of software. The milestone releases are fairly stable, even if a lot of the features are disabled. Even daily CVS pulls tend to work, although anyone thinking they want to try should be warned that at least the Linux build has system requirements (that I never did track down) that aren't picked up by the configure script. I've had good luck with clean RedHat 5.2 installs with the most recent Gnome.
:)
Mozilla is an extremely complicated piece of software, but not unmanageably so. My guess is most of the people who say its too complicated to jump into haven't been trained in development on such a large scale. (Trained in that its really not something so easily picked up on the fly... good team programming skills tend to be taught IMHO)
But there is a LOT that people who can't jump in and contribute patches can do. Any bonehead can easily pull a tree and build it, at least under Unix. Follow the directions on the site, but in a nutshell this is all it takes, once you're logged into the cvs server:
cvs -z3 checkout mozilla/client.mk
cd mozilla
gmake -f client.mk
Not too hard huh? The new configure/client.mk stuff they've got in there handles keeping the tree in sync (most of the time), and handling the configure and build process.
Do that. Run it. If it craps out, fire up gdb, so a stack dump and figure out where it crapped out. You might not be able to figure out exactly why, but a stack dump and a description of what you're doing goes a long way towards having other people know what happened. Bugzilla is a nice system -- its very easy to submit bugs and search for current ones. If you can't find the one you posted, then stick it there. E-mail a patch if you think you know what was wrong. No one is gonna yell at you if its not.
Personally, I've done a lot of builds, spent a lot of time tracking down wierd dependancies on the four Linux systems I've had bad luck building it on. I'd like to think some of that work has helped, I've noticed the issues slowly being fixed, so I think they have. Just testing it is a big help by anyone.
I've thought about jumping in and helping, but it IS complex. And with the necko code being switched in, and some of the other big branches that have been dumped into the tree lately, I can't figure out which end is up right now...
If you haven't seen Mozilla yet, its worth the download of one of the milestone builds. The page rendering is SO much better than any other browser I've seen. It just looks fantastic, and is FAST even with all the debugging code in there.
I hope AOL doesn't make a real mistake and end this when its making such progress!
Maybe it would be good when AOL stops Mozilla. Because that would certainly mean that a lot of Linux/Unix-based volunteers would start developing their own Mozilla, based on the current sources, and give up all the Windows and Mac stuff. Then I would seriously consider to contribute. But I will never ever work with the Win32 API. I tried it once, and it so unbelievable ugly... under no circumstances.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The source of this story isn't connected with AOL or Netscape at all. Like many others, I got taken in by this story, posted a knee-jerk reaction, and made a bit of an ass of myself as a result. Sorry Mozilla and Netscape.
Ignore the story, it's from someone at Sun who I'm told is more than a bit of a turkey, isn't connected with decision-making at AOL and Netscape, and spoke out of place. Hopefully someone at Sun will have a quiet talk with him.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Netscape can stop making contributions of Open Source code, but they can not take back what they've already contributed. Open Source developers will continue to use that, and will place their contributions under the MPL, preventing Netscape from reselling them under another license. The result will be an Open Source browser that competes with Netscape's own product.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
Uhh, what does the Internet have to do with OSS?
There are companies making money with Open Source and it hasn't killed Linux.
If you're gonna say something, then have some sort of backing behind it.
I'm sure microsoft PR is going to have a field-day with this. "See, See! proof that open source doesn't work", they'll all cry in unison.
It'll get finished. Planning what may very well be the most important piece of software most users will run on their system takes time.
In the meantime.. brace yourselves for the FUD-slinging.
--
I guess it depends on what you call "elegance". For me, "elegant" code is primarily code that is cleanly organized and cleanly written. This pays off in spades when you have to revise the code - maintaining bad code is Not Fun (I've had to do it).
Mozilla's core development isn't quite finished yet. Even so, the open source machinery has already started working. Prerelease versions of Mozilla have been converted to widgets in GTK and Java, parts of the code are being used as parts of other projects, etc.
By keeping Mozilla open, AOL/Netscape continues to be the standards setter when it comes to what browsers are expected to do. Making Mozilla proprietary now would accomplish little (would they try to make licensing revenues from it?), and lose a lot of opportunities for influencing the future of the web.
Looking from the outside and experimenting with the occasional beta release, Mozilla looks like it's on-track to me. Once a beta release is out, more outside, open-source contributions will start happening. I hope AOL has the courage to stay the course.
In his speech, Alan Baratz (of Sun) implies they're considering moving Mozilla to something like the Sun Community Process... To see what the Java community thinks of the SCP, check out this article on Javalobby.com.
The Sun Community Process has been very little use to anyone, even Sun, because Sun is mainly ignoring the Community. I certainly hope AOL isn't dumb enough to do this to Mozilla. As one poster on the Javalobby article points out, Mozilla is actually not doing that badly, outside of the press...
Shaver,
Just wanted to say that I (and I'm sure others) appreciate your taking the time to explain all this and all the work you've done. It's been very informative, and Mozilla is a very impressive project. The code's still a bit daunting, but I'm testing the waters of bug-reporting.
Thanks (didn't want it to seem like everyone's against you)
It would be interesting to find out just how much the open source community has contributed to Mozilla. A /. poll would be good, I think... ask "how involved are you in the Mozilla project?"
I, like so many others, downloaded via CVS the whole seamonkey tree and tried to find my way through it. It was just so massive! For a week I did a "cvs update" every day and I noticed so many files were in motion that I couldn't tell what wasn't being worked on.
This may sound naive, but I think the primary reason Mozilla hasn't received much attention from open source developers is because there isn't a simple, graphical "map" that shows the progress of each section of code. I hope you can understand what I have in mind--it would look very similar to a real map but would be colored according to how much work needs to be done in each area. The areas would be zoomable to the point where if a developer wants to fix a specific bug, he just zooms in to the specific function.
I'm a developer who has precious little time yet has a lot of interest in seeing Mozilla completed under the current licensing model. Would you folks think this idea is worth the effort?
This should be a learning experience though. I don't think it is an opensource flaw so much as a netscape or mozilla flaw.
- It's been mentioned before, but it wouldn't compile at first. That is and was frustrating. Something that impresses me with most OSS/Free software is the remarkable clean build process. Mozilla didn't have that for a long time. I was very amped to start making tweaks but I didn't have the time to figure it all out, I just wanted "configure;make" like most other projects have. Maybe that was a poor expectation on my part, but I don't think so.
- Mozilla quickly splintered into countless groups and projects. The ports were easy enough to sort out but some of the other projects really confused me at the time. Again, maybe I had poor expectations but I've got a full time job and at best mozilla was going to be a spare time activity for me, I wasn't really motivated to figure out what was what and since I couldn't readily compile a lot of code...
- There were radical design shifts, I'm not sure where this came from. I agree with it and I think most of the community likes the idea of a mozilla component being available and componentizing the product but this is radically different from what they put out. Clear leadership is needed for that. I still don't know who's baby it is. I still don't know which baby it is that I want to jump in with, or are they not splintered any more? I've got things I would still like to do, I'd love to see GNOME and KDE components made out of it.. I kind of think Netscape had hoped to open it up and the world would just sort of know what to do and in 3 months there would be this radically different product. The code didn't compile and we were heading off into the night on a runaway train.
- Netscape really cut it loose after a short time, am I the only one who thinks Communcator 5 is going to be very different from mozilla? After it got off to a slow start, reading the newsgroups and listening to the "leaders" made it sound like the project was just floundering. I never felt like netscape was in on the project. I felt like they didn't see what they wanted in a few weeks and then bailed.
- Then the PR fizzled. Mozilla now is looking impressive. It's looking like a product, it's still rough and there is a lot of work to be done but there are areas to work on and things to improve and ideas to incorporate. I think a lot of us have dismissed it by now though. Some how the PR machine needs to generate that excitement again. We need some goals and some plans and wishlists, what are we aiming at, what needs aren't we filling? How can it be better? Someone will have to fork the code when mozilla get's to m8 or m9 and start working on a "new project" it will start to take off more then.
- The need isn't there. NS has been working very nicely for me. If I was browserless I'd be more inclined to perform miracles to make mozilla happen. At this point it's just a war of virtue. NS gave their code away and won my heart over, I had no problem using communicator because netscape "did the good thing"
I hope ESR makes some addendums to C&B, I also hope that the mozilla projects continues on. I think it is finally on a good track, it just needs to pick up some passengers and gain some speed.This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
It has seemed kind of obvious that this hammer was going to come down, it was just a matter of when.
Netscape has posted a very good example of how not to run an open source project though, which should prevent others from making their mistakes in the future, which is a good thing. i.e. don't just throw a bunch of stuff out there and expect people to run with it, having some goals before the project was 6 months old may have been nice too.
In retrospect it is obvious that opening up Navagator was a last ditch hail-mary desparation shot of Netscapes to regain some of the momentum that it lost to MS...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Sheesh... if ie5 wasn't a superior browser at this point I would really doubt the ability of the MS coders ( which I don't ). MS has a distinct advantage over the folks at Netscape. THEY HAVE THE CODE TO THE OS THEY ARE DEVELOPING ON! They know all there is to know about Wxx and Win NT. If you don't think that's an advantage then you have never done any real-world coding.
Let me give you an example: One of the windows developers for the company I work for spent a couple days trying to find out why his code was doing something bizzare.(He has access to all the recent NT resource stuff, all current documentation) He finally kludged it and got it to work. He posted a lengthy message to several newsgroups asking if anyone had the same experience or could offer any advice. A few days after posting he got a reply from a microsoft employeee ( A fairly high level, long time engineer) who told him that what he found was indeed a bug in the software. However the bug had remained since Win 2.0 for *backwards compatibilty* In other words if they fixed the bug it would break a lot of pre-existing software.
While it was nice of this person to be honost and up front about it, it didn't replace the wasted time of one of our best coders.
If you don't think MS engineers have an advantage over non MS engineers you are not grounded in reality.
Sorry, I've already posted way too many times today so I'll try to quiet down tomorrow.
So who's fault is this? Why does the "Open Source model" (TM) get blamed for this? Open Source developers did not develop the original crufty code that was discarded.
Furthermore, no one seems to take into account the cross-platform nature of Mozilla. This is basically several projects -- Mac/Windows/Linux. If they only concentrated on a single platform, would progress come faster?
Also, the "lack of response from the Open Source community" line is growing tiresome. Let's add up the number of man-hours contributed by Open Source developers to Mozilla. How much would it cost to hire programmers for the same amount of time? As great as an Open Source browser is for the community, perhaps many developers see AOL as the chief beneficiary. Can Open Source developers be blamed for not wanting to further AOL's plans for world domination?
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
As far as I understand the license, yes, you can. From the Netscape Public Licence:
This means, or should mean, that if AOL wants to pull the plug, they can do so by keeping for themselves all the code they develop from now on. But the code already released can always be used in the terms of NPL 1.0.
I believe that, if mozilla.org shuts down, the development of the browser can continue elsewhere. Sure, won't be the same code used by "Netscape Communicator 7.532", but I don't think anyone cares about that.
Oh, and IANAL etc.
We don't care who you are. Even if it's an untraceable handle it's more respected so that people know who they're speaking to even if they can never identify them in real space. It shows that you intend to carry on a conversation that is more coherent by being able to identify you. If we can recognize the handle then we know that we don't have to repeat statements already posted.
And for the AC-kneejerkers:
The cyberpunk:cyberpunk thing with NYTimes' login is to prevent marketroids from filling our inboxes with crap and all the rest of the tracking shit going on.
This does not work:
AC - says blah
Registered - says blah my ass
AC - says blah (could be completely different)
This is ridiculous:
AC - says blah
AC - says uber blah
AC - says blah to all o' yas
This works:
X - says blah
Y - says nope mister
Z - says i agree and...
Y - bull
Z - that's not what I meant
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Netscape thought that they could go open source and suddenly get all the benefits of the Open Source Society. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
:)
For people to support something that is Open Source, and do it for free, they must enjoy the work. If you don't make it enjoyable, then the people won't do it. There are lots of other Open Source projects that I want to work on and Mozilla is near the bottom of that list. I rather work on the Linux kernel or XFree86 or GTK+ or another project. Others may feel differently about this but only if they like to work on Mozilla.
I didn't join the Mozilla development so I don't know how enjoyable it was/is. Also, it takes time. Before you can help out, you need to know the system. Once you get a standard set of people who know the system, then improvements/bug fixes/ enhancements will come quickly. But you can't just release something Open Source and see the effect immediately.
Also, slightly off topic, but I worry that Open Source development will slow down drastically if there is a lot of Open Source projects. This will spread out the resources (people) and then the development slows down. The advantage of Open Source is that it is easier to work with something that is not a total black box. This is only true if you are a programmer and can understand the code. But that takes time as stated above.
I think that Netscape/AOL should give Mozilla more time, or at least keep it going. This way you can get a good set of developers. Also give some sort of compensation for those who submit a large amount of enhancments. Keep this going for the sake of Open Source, and you will benefit. Keep it going just to benefit, and you won't. I can't prove this, but the atmosphere is there. (what ever that means
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
One of the reasons why it wouldn't compile, at least in part, is that if you look at the development environment for any major enterprise-level software project, it typically demands a very particular setup and environment to compile (i.e. you must be running the following apps with the following directory structure with teh following path and the following environmental variables just to get compilation, much less linking or debugging). Abstracting that away to a more general case of "I'm going to download the source and compile it because I'm bored" is a very very difficult proposition.
Most of the truly successful cases of open source projects have followed the "Release Early, Release Often" mantra. Perhaps if this is something that is that important to the community (which I think it is), it is worth starting from scratch. The problem is that starting truly from scratch would result in Mosaic, and it would take just as long to get something working. But in all likelihood the process and major contributors would be set by the time it got to have something useful in it, which would increase speed dramatically.
Kirk
I think that Mozillas biggest shortfall from my perspective is that when the initial source release came out, the code would not compile into a useful product.
While I was interested in attempting to revamp the bookmark code, it made no sense to me as I couldn't even get it to compile.
When Mozilla actually builds the foundation for an open source browser that is useable and that others can build upon, I might be interested in contributing.
Perhaps then it can meet the most basic Cathedral and the Bazaar requirements by my standards.