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Mitchell Baker, Chief Lizard Wrangler for Mozilla, has
denied that Mozilla's development model will change.
In related news, nullspace
wrote in about netomat, a new
"non-linear browser". "It bucks the trends of current browsers by mining random visuals and snippets of sentences from the Web and having it float endlessly across a black backdrop, accompanied by clips of sound, if the user desires.
Users can specify a topic, then retrieve text, images, and/or audio from the Internet on the subject. They navigate by typing keywords into the browser, not by pointing and clicking."
First, non-linear is rapidly becoming one of those psuedo-intellectual words I can't stand, joining the ranks of paradigm, post-modern, and psuedo-anything. Depending on scale and scope, nearly anything can be seen as either linear or non-linear. Euclid brought us non-linear geometry, Orson Welles brought us non-linear cinematography, now we have non-linear web browsing. Oh joy.
GPL is a Good Thing (tm).
But having a non-GPL license is most definately not why Mozilla has had a hard time recruiting developers. That is only true in a Linux-centric view. You neglect the tons and tons of Windows, Mac and non-GPL UNIX coders out there. Many of them believe in open source software, and many of them get sick at the mention of the GPL.
The reason Mozilla has had trouble recruiting is because of the choices Netscape made about just what they were going to release to the public. They released a huge mass of code that didnt even compile. That's not very attractive to developers. Developers like to either start something new from the ground up, or enhance something that works. They're not too keen on being handed a bowl of data-spaghetti and asked to clean it up and make it work. It's a daunting task.
I, for instance, probably know enough about programming that I could have contributed, in however small a way, to the effort. I did not contribute because I don't have the skills to understand what's already there. I'd get lost in the code trying to find the one piece I am good enough to work on.
GPL had nothing to do with it. The Linux community may have been put off by that, but the developer community as a whole couldn't give a rat's ass if it's GPL, Artisitic, BSD.. or MPL.
--- Tao
Arrgg!!!
Anyone who follows the development groups even supperficially, or simply see how one milestone after another are meet, knows that the Mozilla project is progressing _very_ well.
And this isn't some GPL vs. OSI contest. RMS want, just like everybody in the free software community with a clue, the Mozilla project to succede. To decision makers everywhere, Mozilla is _the_ test of whether the free software/open source (no, they don't care about the difference) works.
Mozilla was the one project
Sorry. That's just not true.
But here we go again. People with *no* direct knowledge of the project will launch into rambling speculations about 'why it has failed', inevitably leading to '... but jwz said so.'
A wide number of people will chime in with their varied (and often hollow) reasons for why they haven't participated. However, they will feel emminently qualified to discuss the project's "failure" with great authority.
And the people who have taken the time to look for themselves, make up their own minds, and, heavens, perhaps even have made an *effort*, will have to waste their time writing "no, that's not true; please look at the facts".
Of course, this pattern will repeat, until sometime late this fall, when Mozilla begins to enter beta.
At this time, I'm sure it will be the naysayers who will be first in line to congratulate themselves on "what a great job I did to make Mozilla a great piece of code."