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Mozilla: News from the front
Point_Blank
pointed us to an update on Mozilla.org regarding the
state of mozilla
written by Mike Shaver. Mainly it refutes some of the arguments that
the project isn't "Open" because @netscape.com developers outnumber
outside developers. I agree with him- the fact that there are /any/
outside developers is a great thing. Anyway, some interesting
stats regarding download numbers and bug submissions and stuff. A
nifty piece if you're following the project.
.. that Netscape/AOL/Sun have made it clear that Netscape Application Server won't be running for Linux, not now, not ever. Whoops.. I feel kinda betrayed now. Here we all are the reason Netscape took Mozilla to the open, they rode this "Open Source Rules" wave to get so much publicity that AOL picked them up.. then out we go.
:)
So I guess this is to all those bashers who thought that Netscape was doing something JUST for the code. Hahahahahaha. We got used as a publicity stunt for a company to sell to a bigger company.
Wonder how much the Netscape execs made off THAT deal
magnwa
Who should do their math right???
Think about it this way:
100 people are on the internet.
80 of them use Microsoft Internet Explorer.
20 of them use Netscape.
Ok so far? Now, we know that 30 people use America Online. AOL uses IE exclusively. All of those 30 people must, therefore, use IE. The other 50 IE users are using some other ISP. If all AOLers had to switch to Netscape (not counting people using older versions, etc.), then 30 people from the IE side go to the Netscape side. Making it a 50/50 split. Change the word 'people' to 'percent of people', and you've got 'the real world'.
hmmm...I guess the above explains why I'm not a math teacher...
-RN
Many high quality mail order companies have a 100% satisfaction policy. L.L. Bean and Land's End come to mind. They realize that consumers will be fiercely loyal to a company that treats them with respect and acts quickly to correct even perceived problems.
A friend of my mother was getting backpacks out of the closet for her son's start of school and found that the backpack she bought the previous year from L.L. Bean for her son was badly worn and had a broken zipper. She returned it to have the zipper fixed, explaining the situation. They sent a new backpack, no questions asked. She later found the backpack that she had in fact bought the previous year (the one she returned was 5 years old). Needless to say, she has been loyal to the company ever since.
People want to be honest, but they want respect and are willing to pay more to a company that they trust and that gives them the benefit of the doubt. While I hadn't thought of it in this context previously, much of the loyalty to Open Source comes from this kind of experience. Any user that has found a bug and gotten rapid response from developers will never want to go back to the dreaded tech support line to wait an hour to get to the person that knows enough to tell you that it is a known bug and _may_ be fixed in the next release. And the satisfied customer will likely tell his friend.
The flip side of this is that bad experiences are also spread by word of mouth. We must do our best to realize that we are all the company in the open source movement and the customer deserves 100% satisfaction.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
hmm... browser in the OS... where have i heard this before?
why put buggy code (mozilla) into a good OS (linux)? i mean it's ok for MS to put buggy code (ie) into a buggy OS (windows).
the GNU/Linux environment is pretty good except for gnome... still buggy, but it's going to get better. same with mozilla, except that the netscape developers are acknowledging that the mozilla milestone releases are just that... milestones on the road to a completed product. the silly gnome developers released 1.0 before it was ready. oh well. KDE is pretty good for now.
I manager a network of computers at work and made over 10 sales people
move over to Linux from Windows, because I hated having to figure out
their Windows problems. Everything has worked out great so far, except
for Netscape. That darn thing crashes or freezes every couple of hours
on someone's computer. I am so sick of it. I have tried all different
releases on most all distributions. But the darn thing is extremely
extremely unstable. I want my Mozilla now!
In *nix builds of Communicator, you can already
/home/kurt/3.xpm
change its colors and map an xpm imge to the
window by putting this in your ~/.Xdefaults file:
! Some Netscape hacks
*nsMotifFSBHacks: true
Netscape*background: grey20
Netscape*backgroundPixmap:
Netscape*foreground: grey80
! End Netscape hacks
...now I haven't been able to get the Pixmap
option to work but I've seen screenshots from
someone who has. No details on how they got
it to work.
I've been using Communicator in Linux for months
and the only problems I've had have been from
prolonged use with Java applets enabled. Now
I keep Java turned off and the browser only
crashes once a week or less.
Last time I checked, MS does have 75% market share and CAN dictate the future standards. I'm a professional web developer, and we recommend NOT developing for Netscape, because of the bugs you have to work around for Netscape, and the lack of being able to use cool things like client-side Active X. All of the stats I've read show Netscape CLEARLY on the way out. I have no idea how Mozilla will make it into the general populace without marketing. There's no natural reason to use it.
unpack the zip archive somewhere, maybe c:\temp...
this will create a subdirectory, bin, if i recall correctly...
in that subdirectory you will find tons and tons of subdirectories and dlls and exes.
i presume you've already done this, and the mess of files is the source of your complaint ---- NEVER FEAR!
simply execute apprunner.exe --- everything else just happens.
test
-
You will be able to do this with JavaScript connections to the XCOM modules, as mentioned in the most recent status report. It's called XPconnect.
The XCOM, in turn, handles the XPFE, which is essentially a combination of an XML implementation, PNG graphics, and JavaScript for event handling. Yes you can customize the buttons, the throbber, and even (if they support this part of CSS2) the cursor! Will the fun never cease? ~mindlace
~mindlace
Mozilla is the way it is- and has taken as long as it has- because it has been driven by the demands of those who use it. You could argue that the end users have not had that much imput, but the truth is that the real 'users' of any browser software are web page developers.
Mozilla's choice to go with Raptor (a good idea of their own), and to fully support DOM1/CSS1/HTML4.0/ECMAScript are a godsend to developers.
This came about because these decisions were made in the open. The initial idea was to do a release on the 4.x codebase, but with the community (and the WSG) clamoring for standards compatibility, the correct design decision was made to go for the next generation layout engine instead of the heavily patched 4.x codebase.
As TCaTB[1] mentions,
"Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow" (Fred Brooks, "the Mythical Man-Month".
~mindlace
As for number two, that is one of the approaches specifically indicated in The Mythical Man Month. I was extrapolating from the concepts of the book. I apologize if I made it sound differently.
Sigh. It seems it must be repeated over and over again:
The current Milestones of Mozilla
ARE DECLARED TO BE PRE-BETA.
If you don't know that it means exactly what you described, just don't touch it.
PS: Did not intent to be offensive, but please people, read the label before you open a package and wonder about the contents.
PPS: Why shouldn't it be made of thousand little files? It's a pre-beta! There are still many things that will change (though, I would not mind the number files it has now and know some reasons to keep it as it is...)
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
watch the newsgroup if you like:n s
:)
news://news.mozilla.org/netscape.public.dev.ski
there's not much there now, but it may get some more traffic as time goes on.
Skins are easy to make with Mozilla, since it uses a standard system to define appearance (CSS). All you need to know is CSS, and how to make graphics
about there being more Netscape/AOL internal developers, that doesn't matter. it's still open source because i can go to mozilla.org and get the source, customize it, or do whatever else i want (within the terms of the liscence, of course).
plus, if you have a problem with the ratio of netscape staff to outside developers, instead of complaining about it, why don't you help with the development and even out the ratio...
(didn't think of that, did you?)
or maybe you did and your programming skills aren't good enough yet to help with projects like mozilla, gnu, linux, etc. (like me)
in that case, still don't complain b/c complaining only helps when some change will result from it. learn to program instead of complaining and then there will be nothing to complain about.
...but I don't know what the hell you are trying to say because your writing style is something only a mother could love.
We have more users, so we're more popular. (At least that's what I'm able to parse)
You're certainly right; it is a bit verbose.
--
That's not what I meant. I meant that the development model for Mozilla is flawed. That was one of the points of this article.
It's not a flaw in Open Source, it's a flaw in how Netscape interpreted it. You can do any type of development with Open Source. How you manage it is the key.
I don't know that having per-URL JavaScript and Cookie preferences is that "unreasonable". IE already has a limited version of this in it's security zones feature. (Unfortunately, you can't create new zones, so you are stuck with 'Internet' and 'Trusted Sites'.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Don't forget that 30% of 'the Internet' is on AOL - and AOL only uses IE.
Subtract the AOL user base (I wish we could), and it's more like 50/50. Once AOL starts using Mozilla, Netscape will have the markt lead.
(Despite this post, I think browser market share is one of the most stupid concepts of all time. Who cares about the market share of $0 products. The intention of both Netscape Nav and MSIE from the beginning was mearly free advertising and standards embrace+extend for Netscape's and MS's server products. Which is why the iPlanet brandname is so odd. Oh well...)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Now what would be really cool is if i could make my own skin that would automatically load onto your browser when you enterd my site. It could replace those stupid "WebMail" and "Contact" buttons in netscape 4.6
Do your math right. It's more like 30-70: .2/(1-.3) vs. (.8-.3)/(1-.3)=
29% vs 71% for IE
Ah yes, but you're most likely reading a translation that has already been predigested by somebody more endowed than yourself. Try tackling the german edition next.
If netscape/AOL paid 100 programmers to work on Mozilla, and the source were closed, nobody would call Mozilla a failure.
However, that is not the situation; the source is open, and an additonal twenty people, NOT paid by Netscape are contributing code. Furthermore, an untold number of people are regularly submitting bug reports/ideas for enhancement. For some reason beyond my understanding, the popular press deems this as a refutation of open source, simply because there are more people from Netscape contributing code than those unaffiliated with Netscape.
Netscape has not lost any brainpower by opening the code, and they are not paying their programmers any more or less. Rather, they have a 20% enhancement in contributers, and people say this is a failure. I DON't GET IT! Could some wise person please explain this logic to me? Please?
These all started from the very beginning as open software. Even X11 was always open software.
I think somebody just ran amok with his thesaurus. Hint: always double-check the elected verb by looking it up in a regular dictionary.
If you think client-side ActiveX-controls is cool you shouldn't be working as a web developer.
At least GNOME and GTK+ Are faster then KDE and EASIER to program then KDE *AND* to top it all off, you don't need no stickin QT library license crap :)
This is exactly the point that Alan Cox made in his keynote presentation at the Ottawa Linux Symposium last weekend. Alan did a comparison of how software engineering is done in big firms and by free software projects, and found them to be rather similar. It was most striking in regard to team size, where both styles of development work around an upper bound of 6 people per team. In companies, a heirarchical management structure breaks the developers up into small groups. Free software projects tend to fission as they attract developers, becoming a cluster of small related projects, all with small core teams of 6 or fewer developers. He pointed out the GNOME project as a good example of this, and after looking at the number of modules in GNOME CVS, I'm forced to agree.
This has some consequences for free software, that came up intermittantly in other sessions at the conference, so I found the keynote to be inadvertantly a good summation. For this fissioning to work, free software has to be much more modular than proprietary, and this leads to a strong role for developing interfaces in free software. Alan also pointed out that it also tends to lead to a lot of duplicated code. Both of the GNOME sessions, as well as the Mozilla one, strongly emphasized the need for component software, glued together with high-level languages for the user interface stuff.
Appropriately enough for this discussion, the Mozilla presentation by Mike Shaver (and a Netscape engineer whose name I've forgotten) was the session immediately preceding the keynote. As a result of it, I'm extremely confident about Mozilla's future (and I'm not just saying that because I got a Mozilla t-shirt there!).
ColinIt's very true that it dosen't matter if the developers are paided by Netscape or not, it's all work. In this article they make the distinction that no one should care about what developers get paid or not.
--
Scott Miga
"Along with the plodding glacier-like speed with which the project is proceeding, the final product is completely underwhelming."
The final product has not been released yet.
"What exactly are these alleged milestones that the
project seems to be reacing so quickly, with no apparent improvement once you download and run the damn thing?"
Nobody's forcing you to download it. If you don't like it, stick to IE and stop whining.
I've been using some of the snapshots of mozilla it looks like it's going to be really nice. I'm glad to be gone with with that ugly MOTIF interface and it seems to handle tables really quick.
Humbug! Its open because anyone can contribute. Just because a specific collective of developers outnumbers the independant ones, doesnt mean it isnt open. This is 'Open/Free software' politics getting daft again...
Now that mozilla is skinable/theme-able, is anyone doing much in the way of coming up with new skins for mozilla? I know there's stuff on mozillazine but is there any anywhere else?
It is my observation that on most open-source projects there are a very small number of core developers (often friends in real life), but alot of users who submit bug reports and pester about the next release. Often the process of delegation can be more time-consuming than just doing it yourself. They say that human brains can only really cope with working in groups of up to 7 people anyway. Having to work over the Internet makes this even more difficult.
--
I too have been unimpressed with Mac Mozilla, mainly because the proxy support is broken
;)
and therefore won't work with my DSL line.
>Have they ever heard of a resource fork?!
I wouldn't complain about this too much, considering it's pre-Beta, or do you still have HFS disks?
Keeping the library files separate makes it easier to track bugs in the individual modules,
and is often how cross-platform Mac apps are assembled before finally being
rolled into one big app w/data and resource forks.
As for iCab, it's pretty damn good!
It just seems to crash more when I turn VM on.
Ah well, the filtering and quick rendering make it all worthwhile!
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Another thing is that the package is made up of thousands of little files. Whatever happened to the convention that an application is made up of one application and maybe a shared library or data file. I have never seen an application with so many separate data files. Have they ever heard of a resource fork?!
p.s. I would run linux but my mac is one of the few that has unsupported hardware. I do have a pc sitting next to me with the case open that will run linux as soon as I can get a cd drive for it and a bugger hd.
I understand that a total re-write was necessary,. However, the more successful open-source projects all started with working code, and only used open-source to extend it, or to replace bits at a time. All the abandoned projects are usually the ones that went open-source when all they had was the idea. Freeping Creaturism is also probably to blame, since there was no reality (code).
I think Mozilla 5 will succeed, but that for version 6, there'll be way more non-netscape people involved, as people add little bits here and there, optimize this and that, and generally mutate Mozilla into a more advanced life form than a Sea Monkey.
"There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
Unfortunately for us, there has been little-to-no support from people who have been blessed with CVS checkin authority to allow us to get the build patches in that we need to stay current with the latest changes on the tree. Without getting these patches in (regardless of whether we boxcar or not), our ability to address bugs is virtually nil.
What good is a bug fix metric when we can't even build the latest tree?
Before I rant for too long, it's important to note that support has changed very recently (Henry is working with someone to get the OS/2 build patches checked in), but it took WAY too long before that support materialized.
"But always she's the spectre of uncertainty I first endured, then faded, then embraced..."
I think that the Mozilla project is making great progress. I try out the builds daily, often on Linux and NT.
However, I feel that it would be useful if they woeked towards implementing extra functionality so that it could replace Netscape 4.6 for general webbrowsing. For example, there is still no right click on links and the Preferences dialog hasn't been hooked up yet. However, we already have features like Translate which are not used that regularly.
By adding a few basic features, I would use Mozilla as my main browser, I would find more bugs, and contribute more bug reports. If I had more time, I'd look at improving any features that annoyed me and so on.
I think that the number of outside developers contributing to Mozilla will snowball in a few milestones when more features are added. It is already shaping up to be a great product, and I miss its many of its features when I return to Netscape.
...tomorrow (the 30th) should be M9 day! I certainly know that Moz needs some more work, but it's also shaping into a good-looking browser.
Keep up the good work, guys!
One of the perhaps smaller, but of a certainty significant, aspects of the Mozilla project is apparent to those of us who browse the Bugzilla database. Ergo, it has lain unnoticed by the silent majority, the flamedot minority, and the ha-ha-Netscape-fools gawkers.
Users and programmers have traditionally been the poles of a divide (if I may carelessly mix my metaphors), kinda like boys and girls. (Which of the pairs is analogous to which I leave as an exercise to the reader >:+} ). While other companies or groups have been renowned for their attention to user interface or responsiveness to users, Mozilla, through Bugzilla, more so even than through the newsgroups, stewards a new user/coder frontier: The blessed enhancement request. Pssst - Rob - your code won't permit me to include the necessarily long CGI URL.
Here, in this well-mannered and efficient forum, users make unreasonable requests - and watch with astonishment as they are sometimes granted! The Netscape engineers are for the most part tolerant and polite - even enduring unwarranted abuse - and are open to luser suggestion. If indeed lusers they be. And most proposals are at the very least discussed, for the greater number.
The seeding of this hitherto untapped and rather mangy range of the noosphere (to use your beloved but limited vernacular), the (*scoffing*) user base, is an advanced, or rather advancing, inclusion that makes our trumpeted Open Source method more of a societal, a popular?, phenomenon than before. (*Leaving further such analysis to the grandiose*)
Needless to say, these words apply only to those members of society who are sufficiently interested to linger circa such domains. So should it be. We (or, perhaps, I) mad bastards who think to shape the next Netscape browser toward our ends and in reflection of our method-minds rather like the lack of company >:+)
And there is another aspect of appeal in the Bugzilla milieu. (Milieu being a browsable web database, an ongoing discussion with engineers, a devoted newsgroup set, a sense of comradeship against hostile outside, media, forces, &c) The satisfaction of submitting a bug and awaiting it's speedy repair soon becomes a quite forthright expectation, something akin almost to a human instinct, undiscovered alas until this late march of the Industrial age. It is the desire and expectation that, finding a bug, one reports it, and will soon be using a fresh copy of the software that is bereft of the very flaw. If such a cycle were established in all public domains, many corporations would be afflicted, and many consumers would rejoice. And lo!, the yobbers would owe we "computer hackers". It nearly calls to mind the fabled customer service and quality of vendors such as the Eaton's of the 1960s (to those non-Canadians who do not recognize the reference, *nyyahh* to ye).
Or perhaps I'm foaming verbose again - there was the Great Overboard some time ago, as I recall - but we'll see when it ships, won't we, kiddies?
*+]Strange moods are the validation of the universe.[+*
1) The size of the source: If you want to contribute you have to get into the source - this means read/read/read some some source to just try to get how the whole thing is working this takes times. Many Netscape dev are doeing this full time, they have the time to learn and can ask directly to the coder what he inteded to do when he wrote the code. While your learning everything is changing fast - Ok not so fast but fast enough so that it takes time to catch up. Ok but you might argue that the linux kernel is also Big and that it changes also constantly - right but the basic behind a kernel are thautght in any decent Computer school - it helps a lot, plenty of books are available on the subjects - so it you'll learn faster what the code does and how it does it
2) Time : this factor is only applicable to non US, nor Canada resident. In many Other Countries you have to pay for local communications so dialing your ISP and staying online cost some Phone-money , dowloading 25 or so MB really isn'yt cheap and really is painfull with a 33.6 even with a 56 k modem ...
none Yet.
I never said that.
"Statisfaction guaranteed or your money cheerfully refunded," or something like that was their slogan.
Think about it: what defines "satisfaction"? The consumer, 100%. That's quite a tall promise to make.
But, in those days (the 60s) people were honest - they wouldn't order a bunch of new furniture, fora party, and request that they be refunded three days later because they weren't satisfied.
In Liberty, Rene
The practical upshot is that the larger the team, the more productivity is lost to the overhead of dealing with other people. Therefore, the best software is typically written by very, very small teams (or often, single people).
It's not hopeless, however, to have large teams working effectively. If the project is modular and parallel enough, the team is broken in several smaller teams (and further subdivided, as necessary), each responsible for a subset of the system. The sub-team leads are responsible for coordinating with the other sub-team leads to keep the project coherent. This requires the sub-team leads to be a manager as well as a developer.
AOL will never use mozilla. Mozilla is not what the finished product will be called. What Mozilla is is the test product for future versions of Netscape Communicator. Therefore, when AOL uses COMMUNICATOR, we'll see what happens.. All Mozilla is there to do is develop technologies and techniques for communicator.
Magnwa
I don't know where that 80% number came from, but I highly doubt its accuracy. I have access to the stats of a relatively large site (with completely non-geek content and no particular reason to bias its users towards any browser), and the cut is along the lines of 52% IE 45% Netscape 3% other.
Every day my system pulls the tree and builds it for me. I've seen Mozilla progress so much in the last six months, and particularly in the last month.
Used it for several hours today for general browsing, without any crashes. I haven't had that happen in several months, and this was after the Necko code landing (the new fancy-pants networking code... noticably faster, IMHO).
There are still significant bugs, and its important if you're going to pull the CVS tree you know what to expect, because what works and doesn't work depends on the time of day. If it builds and the tests run, then tinderbox will be green even if some glaring feature is missing. (Like menus in the mailreader under Linux on the tree I pulled at 2pm EST today...)
There are people talking on here about how its not beta quality, hardly works, etc. The fact of the matter is ITS NOT beta softare. No one claimed it was. The milestones seem to work relatively well, although I thouht M6 and M7 weren't too good under Linux -- half the systems I tried on wouldn't build them. M8 was great. M9 (real soon now, I think they were mostly waiting on the Necko code becoming the default and stabilizing the problems from that...) should be even better. its definately a useable browser right now for most things, even if some stuff is flaky. (I can't log in on Slashdot for example)
I've said this a few times before on here, but its really worth saying over and over. Mozilla is really coming along. Its running suprisingly well, rendered pages with proper HTML look great on it. It certainly separates the good HTML coders from the bad in that regard. Its *fast*. I noticed that today's build is much faster -- both networking and rendering -- than the last one I actually tried which was on Monday or so.
The better rendering engine, and GTK widgets/menus make it MUCH nicer to look at than Communicator.
I'd suggest the complainers stop complaining and start submitting bug reports if they're having such problems, but people like that aren't likely to give useful bug reports anyway.
Most of the development I do outputs large HTML
tables and Mozilla definitely does a better job
with this.
It also doesn't grow to 120 megabytes after a day
of viewing these tables... I'm glad that Netscape
exists but it has had some annoying bugs since
day 1.
The atmosphere around here is getting to be "Linux or worthless." Here is a simple article about Mozilla (not even linux) and this nice poster feels like he must apologize and give excuses (in the ps) for mentioning Mozilla for the mac.
Anyone feel just a little bad about creating environment where people are ashamed to do their own thing?
sorry for the offtopic post, but I couldn't help commenting on the sorry state of things
Sorry this is well off topic, but so fun I couldn't resist...
Has everybody seen the Easter Egg ?!
In Netscape 4.x or Mozilla, try typing "about:mozilla" in the url prompt, and read the funny comment, then watch the Netscape logo in the top RH corner the next time you change location...
-Liam
There are some pages that crash the latest communicator constantly. Then I open them in mozilla and they work fine.
The only issue is speed... Someone "forgot" to turn off the debug code, probably. Debug code can be painfully slow...
Well, considering that IE does not run on Linux, of course we still need Netscape, Mozilla, and other projects. Mozilla is not perfect. In fact, it's quite flawed. But, it is a step in the right direction.
As the Open Source community, we need to promote and applaud such efforts. Every bit helps. Especially one that has gotton such coverage. We have to be careful about predicting the failure of Mozilla. It will be seen as a blow to Open Source whether anyone really cares or not.
The builds contain extra files because they're not optimized for your convenience, the Translate feature just links to an external server (you could create the feature in 10 minutes for Mozilla), and things like context menus are on hold while the essential underpinnings are completed for them. They're still being worked on, only behind-the-scenes.
Also, the initial startup of Mozilla takes longer because some initialization that will eventually take place in the installation process instead takes place when you start up the browser that first time.
It's all about herding eyeballs, that's why Yahoo is a jillion dollar company [ in market capitalization at least ]. If you get first change to herd the eyeballs everyday, then you're worth something. Netscape's value, after letting their browser go for free, was in their netscenter being the default portal for Netscape users.
Market share for browsers is very important in other respects; If Microsoft had 75% plus share of the browser market, they could dictate the internet standards of the future. They could keep changing the specifications for protocols, just like they do for the APIs in their Operating Systems. They could force "lusers" to just "go ahead and use the freebie Microsoft product". Then, when people are addicted, they could charge for the upgrade.
The browser is "the operating system". The network is "the computer".
Along with the plodding glacier-like speed with which the project is proceeding, the final product is completely underwhelming. What exactly are these alleged milestones that the project seems to be reacing so quickly, with no apparent improvement once you download and run the damn thing?
Next week on Slashdot:
Mozilla has reached milestone 58978728! New Features: Preferences Dialog works (still a few hundred bugs, however). Implemented tag.
You go, girl!
Perhaps the Mozilla project feels that they must have some sort of morale-boosting event once in a while to keep project members from abandoning the Mozilla Project like rats from a sinking ship.
Perhaps this project, above all others illustrates the obvious failure of the open source system. The source code to a huge and monumentally important piece of software was released, a project that was professionally worked on by paid developers.
Where are the flocks of eager developers waiting to sink their hands into this project? Why, there aren't any. And if it weren't for Alan Cox, the Linux kernel would be in the same situation.
I believe that it started out flawed: Here have ALL THIS REALLY UGLY code and go wild!
However, since then, the processes has really shaped up, and almost all of Mozilla is new code, especially the layout engine.
Whee!
jf
"Mozilla is not perfect. In fact, it's quite falwed."
What the hell?! It's UNDER DEVELOPMENT! It's not finished! Geez!! That's like going to a car factory and look at one of the cars on the production line and go: "terrible handling and I don't like the color".
I'm rather sure that I have read that that was your stated opinion in multiple places. It seems that either I misremember, or those sources were incorrect. Sincere apologies: I am sorry to misquote you.
... I wonder if he happened to read my post? Atleast I pulled that one out of his book...
Obviously I need to be more careful about my quoting. It seems that *everyone* reads Slashdot these days. Hmmm, I used a Stroustrop quote a few days ago
BTW- JWZ: I love xscreensaver.
--Lenny
as does iCab. The browser that is built into AOL is trash: I've always used Netscape, and more recently iCab, rather than the bundled browser.
how do I get a browser out of this mess?
any help would be appreciated....
don't spam me just because this is a windows machine, this is my first post after lurking here for 9 months
i just want mozilla
any help would be appreciated
Basically, he's saying that this not-yet-used section of ESR's metaphorical "noosphere" (the bugfix database) is something that makes Open Source more popular than before.
As for the post's diction, I find it rather refreshing that a few people still know how to use words which are greater than two syllables.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
| Why are people still stuck in Mozilla? IE has
:)
| 80% of the browser market now
Mozilla will run on my Alpha under Linux. Internet Explorer won't.
Kinda gives me little incentive to download IE, doesn't it?
Next question.
-- Rick
| Perhaps this project, above all others
:)
| illustrates the obvious failure of the open
| source system. The source code to a huge and
| monumentally important piece of software was
| released, a project that was professionally | worked on by paid developers.
Oh geesz - not *this* tired argument again. Your first point is false. The source code to a huge and monumentally important piece of software was not released. What was released was huge, but not monumentally important. Why? Because THE RELEASE WAS NONFUNCTIONAL. Had they released the code to an actualy working product, the open source community could have more quickly run with it. As it was, they released a huge, largely unintelligible, broken mess.
Now that Mozilla actually seems to be getting somewhere, here come the bashers.
As for the Linux kernel - well, it works. So people are motivated to work on it, because they can actually use the thing.
-- Rick
I think people are finding that collaborative development across large groups of people on the net is basically a pipe dream.
ESR asserts that open source reverse Brooke's Law. Not from what I've seen. Linux being a case in point - lets face it, we all know which 10 or fifteen developers do most of the core work, and X is handled by an entirely different group. Brooke's Law is alive and well.
The seeding of this hitherto untapped and rather mangy range of the noosphere (to use your beloved but limited vernacular),the (*scoffing*) user base, is an advanced, or rather advancing, inclusion that makes our trumpeted Open Source method more of a societal, a popular?, phenomenon than before. (*Leaving further such analysis to the grandiose*)
As a writer, I can say authoritatively that this entire paragraph is gibberish.
I can decipher Wittgenstein and Godel, but I have no idea sir, what you are saying or trying to relate to us. Try using English.
I will make one point. When Netscape released the browser source, it was unusable and uncompilable. There were large sections of code that were licensed from other companies and had to be ripped out before the source could be released. Mozilla started with a massive, hairy code base that was far from working order. That initial release was an overwhelming chunk of broken code, and it turned away many potential developers. JWZ has stated that it would have been better just to have started over from scratch. People wouldn't have had as much to learn before they became useful.
What I am saying is that Mozilla had problems acquiring developers because Netscape botched that initial release. In the Open Source world, you should always have a working chunk of code before announcing your project and looking to sign up developers.
A web browser is a large project, but is it fundamentally more difficult than a kernel, or a compiler? I do not believe it is. The initial reaction was problematic, but perhaps as the milestones roll on, more developers will get their hands dirty in the project. As for "flocks of developers", I don't think Netscape or the community realistically expected that. What *is* expected is a community willing to fill out bug reports.
You can by cynical about the project if you like, but I'm not sure why you are smearing it around Slashdot. Does it offend you that some are optimistic about the project? If you don't think its going anywhere, just ignore it -- you can filter out Netscape stories from your Slashdot account. I, for one, really *want* it to succeed, because once we have it, I can eliminate Netscape which is the last proprietary chunk of code on my box.
--Lenny, who is going to download the latest build right now.