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Mozilla Picks Up Third Party IRC and RT Messaging
Floris writes "Mozilla picks up steam - it is actually starting to look like a real OSS project now ;) New third party contributions are IRC andReal Time Messaging clients. Funny to think that Mozilla might actually fulfill the promise the browser once was and integrate all internet protocols into one interface."
I agree. Netscape/mozilla is targeting a large group of people. Larger than us slashdotters. Normal users expect their browsers to offer any functionality they'll ever need because they are not skilled enough to select, download and install a custom application (they just install what their provider gives them).
Also Mozilla is extremely flexible. What I heard about this chat client is that it's all XUL and javascript (i.e. not a single line of c except for some networking code which is soon to be replaced).
Not only is it nice for mozilla to have a chat client, this also displays the powerful features mozilla has to offer. A full fledged chatclient implented with mozilla's scripting and XUL features.
If netscape/AOL have any understanding of the market they are operating in, they will make sure that a large number of plugins (flash, vrml, realaudio, java, quicktime, ftp, etc.) is available for netscape the day it is released. If they fail to do so the upgrade won't be compelling enough for most users to dump internet explorer.
Jilles
It's NOT one huge binary!
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
can you say MIME. That's what netscape and internet explorer use to implement what you're suggesting. You basically specify for each MIME type which plugin should take care of it.
The fact that you have to go through 'obscure procedures' to get them to use your applications only means that your applications are not smart enough that to figure out they should register themself for the mime type they handle.
BTW. I don't think this system is perfect. I think registering MIME types should be done on the OS level so that all applications can profit from it. A browser could of course still use its own list to override the default OS settings.
What most linux users who don't like this automatic launching of plugins seem to suggest to dump all registering all together and let the user figure out which pogram to use whenever a MIME type piece of data is encountered. I don't think that would be very satisfying for most users.
Jilles
Some people seem to be forgetting that the World Wide Web was designed to be a medium that transparently handled other protocols. Users could familiarize themselves with one interface -- the Web browser -- and exchange information via HTTP, FTP, Usenet and gopher.
I'd like to see more protocols adopted as part of a Web browser, but not in the "office suite" style that Netscape seems to have adopted. The e-mail and Usenet clients should look and act like Web pages if they are part of the browser, the same way that FTP directories do. You should be able to use them without feeling like you've left the Web. Posting to Usenet from a browser should look like posting to any other form. Reading and writing e-mail using your ISP's SMTP and POP3 servers should look like a free-mail site.
Spawning separate programs with their own unique interfaces is not an improvement. For instance, there's no compelling reason to go with Netscape's e-mail client instead of a third-party's program, because the learning curve is the same -- and both are much harder to learn than a free-mail site like Hotmail or Prontomail.
If Mozilla can assimilate IRC and other messaging standards as part of the Web interface -- rather than a separately spawned interface -- I think it's a great reason to start using the browser again. If it's just being used to bundle and deliver separate apps together a la Microsoft Office 2000, the benefit to users is negligible.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
Does this mean they'll have to rm -rf their entire existing code? Yes.
Uh, no. They've already done just that a long time ago -- that's where we got Gecko. The current Mozilla is pretty much just a bunch of shared library files, so you can add and remove the modules you want by adding and deleting files to the directory. It is HEAVILY componentized. XPCOM/CORBA and all that. No mucking with source at all to add and remove features. If you don't want the editor, delete the editor files. I'm certain when Mozilla reaches beta someone will make a "distribution" of it with everything but the browser stuff stripped out. If not, you can just delete the files yourself.
For a more complete explanation, see the indicated Anonymous Comment. (not by me)
Oh, and by the way... the current footprint is ~2.5MB with the editor and browser and everything; memory usage is also decreasing nicely now that they've started paying attention to optimisation.
Grrr... I'm tired of people spreading FUD about Mozilla when all of their information is plainly hearsay. Try reading the status page regularly. Or maybe you'd find MozillaZine more palatable.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
Third party contributions... I like that. It seems only a couple of months ago that naysayers were muttering about the death of Mozilla because no-one outside Netscape was contributing.
And real-time messaging that's fully open; does that mean they're giving up that silly fight with microsoft?
Quoting: "The Jabber team has been designing and developing an architecture for real-time messaging that is fully open, utilizes an XML based protocol, will support the IETF/IMPP developments, and can bridge transparently to 3rd party messaging services such as IRC, ICQ, and AIM." I won't even say a word about waste of development time to implement yet another RT messaging client, when there are lods of them now. What I really question is who is going to be on full-time to patch bugs and changes in protocols intentionally done by Mirabilis and possible AOL (although they own Netscape). With all due respect to Mozilla's team, which makes a fairly good progress towards a _browser_, all such things (though developed in parallel by seems independent people) are (not nessesary) evil.
I love Netscape. But my major concern is that the more useful apps that they load into the product, the more put-out I'm going to be when the application (well, all the applications) crash at once. ARRrrgggghhh... I don't want to replace the headache of Microsoft's OS crash with a Netscape mega-app crash.
I was not aware that one of the goals of the mozilla project was to integrate all protocols under one interface... IMHO that is a BAD thing... A web browser should be a web browser... there's a good argument to be made for it to be a minimalist FTP client and it's even conceivable for it to be an email and news reader as well , although all three would work better as optional plugins, that way I could hand off the URLs to pine, tin, and ncftp if I want.
;)
EVERYTHING else should be an optional plugin. I already have 2 perfectly good instant messaging clients right now, and I don't want Mo usurping them...
What's next, will Mo play mp3s ? Why not, Winamp parses HTML... pheh...
Oh well, I didn't want NFS and HTTP to be parts of the kernel either. Nobody ever listens to me.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I think it's very important for Netscape (or is this really going to AOL ? If so i might as well give up now.) to have clear goals for mozilla. Adding to the already totally rewritten codebase, third party products of dubious quality or usability seems a littly pointless.
From the start as i understood it, the goals for mozilla was to have a very fast layout engine (NGLayout is brilliant) and a thin footprint. That is exactly what most serious users want out of this client. A stable and speedy browser, not bloatware.
Though i do understand that the target market includes many users who do not spend over 5 hours a day on the internet or hacking their 1980's tape kernel drivers for linux. Any such addons such as an instant messager should be a seperate entity that can be downloaded if required.
All the hard work has nearly been done, do not wreck it with bloatware or a by diluting the original worthy goals.
Many people trash Emacs for being 'bloated'. Emacs users reply that Emacs isn't bloated, it just has 50000 elisp modules that you can load.
Many people trash Mozilla for being 'bloated'. Mozilla developers reply that Mozilla isn't bloated, it just has 50000 loadable modules that you can add.
I like Emacs' "bloat". Despite the similarity, however, I am disturbed by Mozilla's bloat. Why? Let me explain...
In Emacs, virtually every module I've seen, except for w3 and a few cute things like the Tower of Hanoi, is somehow related to text editing and viewing. This makes sense since Emacs' primary function for most people is as a text editor. Even the news/mailreader falls into this category, since you have to edit text to read mail and news anyway. Even these 'leverage' the abilities of Emacs to perform their operations.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is a Web browser. Loadable modules that would make sense would be things like movie-playing plugins, Java VMs, interface touchups, and so on. What doesn't make sense is adding completely new functionality under the pretense of 'integration'. How is it more 'integrated' if my IRC client and Web browser are the same program? IRC clients don't need complex HTML layout; in fact, virtually the only piece of code that the two functions share is the code to transmit bytes over a network and maybe configuration infrastructure. Mail and news clients as well have *no reason* to be 'integrated' into a Web browser unless they are using HTML to send and receive messages -- and as anyone who has unexpectedly gotten one of these HTML messages can tell you, HTML email is Evil. (even with mutt, which parses mailcap and starts lynx..) FTP, on the other hand, makes some sense -- you're generally viewing structured information and retrieving files.
I suspect that most of these will end up being like Emacs' w3: "My Web browser can read mail! How cute!" However, the fact that several of these projects (the mail and news clients at least) appear to be part of Mozilla's "core" distribution makes me wonder about the goals and attitudes of the project.
When I heard that Mozilla was going to create a fast, clean implementation of the browser, I was ecstatic. Finally something that would just let me read Web pages! How wrong I was. I wish I had time to make my own browser, but I've already got plenty of other projects to work on. Hopefully one of the other groups working on a free browser will avoid the pitfall of overgeneralization..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
This is an exciting demonstration of the componentised Mozilla architecture. Write a core routines in some compilable language if need be, and then build a UI layer on top using JavaScript, XUL and CSS.
Not only is Mozilla a browser, its also a widget toolkit and development platform! We need more apps like this to show the power and extensibility of the tools being developed.
Right after M11 there is a feature freeze. They're working on M10 right now, but there won't be a M10 release. They're going straight into M11.
Wellp, I just tried GZilla. It works, now, but only marginally. It certainly isn't at the point where you can use it to peruse Slashdot (in fact, it gets completely hosed). There's also no keyboard navigation controls (gotta use that damned "mouse" thing people keep talking about), and the interface is beyond spartan. It's definitely making progress, but that's about all I can say for it at this point.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Alright, it's time to clear up some misconceptions. First, Mozilla is actually a collection of really cool technologies. The first is Gecko, which is a small, very fast standards compliant renderer that can handle XML, HTML 4, the Document Object Model, and Cascading Style Sheets. Gecko is _not_ a browser, just a renderer. Next is XUL, which stands for Xross-platform User-interface Language. XUL allows one to build their entire program's user interface using a collection of XML tags, like this: >toolbar id="Command Toolbar"< >html:button/html:button< >/toolbar< This would create a toolbar. Now here's the cool part: Gecko _renders_ the XUL components. The XUL components are controlled and scripted by Javascript, while the look and feel of the XUL components are specified in Cascading Style Sheets. Now, HTML 4 can be intermixed into the XUL, as in the above example where I place an html:button into the XUL toolbar. Notice that I haven't yet even specified a browser yet! Gecko+XUL is NOT the browser. All Mozilla really is is a collection of XUL files that builds the browser chrome _around_ Gecko! So, one could use the Gecko core for entirely seperate applications, such as the IRC application, and just use it as a rendering engine. For example, someone is working on creating an editor that uses Gecko and XUL that has nothing to do with the Mozilla browser. It doesn't have to be integrated in! The collection of technologies within the Mozilla project is truly amazing, and they are really the basis for a web operating system. Other technologies make this possible. C++ components are written using a cross-platform implementation of COM called XPCOM. Groups are working on making it possible to write XPCOM components with both Java and JavaScript; they could even be Python if you so desired. Now, there is something called XPIDL while allows one to describe in a non-language specific way the methods and attributes of the XPCOM component. What this means is that other languages, like javascript, can call the XPCOM component. Mozilla has a collection of XPCOM components, such as one that handles RDF, another that handles the user's history, and another that handles the user's bookmarks. These XPCOM components can be called from javascript, so that you can use pre-defined XPCOM services from your Gecko chrome. So it should be possible to wrap some parts of the KDE services as XPCOM components, script them from JavaScript, and use XUL+Gecko to build a DOM-based rendering engine on top of KDE! Cool beano. Thanks, Brad Neuberg brad@basesystem.com
www.gzilla.com - it's a GPL'd browser. The current dynamically linked executable is about 500k. I need to check it out when I get home... has anyone else used it?
Having seen many posters express concern about Mozilla becoming bloated or
s /irc/js/lib/irc.js
trying to integrate too many things, such as IRC, into the browser, I
wanted to correct these wrong attitudes:
First off, the code for the client was written by rginda, who does not
work for netscape. So, it is totally "third party" and serves as a great
example of what can be done with Mozilla. The Mozilla team itself is
focused on delivering the browser that everyone is screaming for.
THE SIMPLE PICTURE of how Mozilla works: (At least how it appears to me!)
The Common Perception:
[ M O Z I L L A ] = One unit with everything inside it.
The Reality:
[ [[core][core][core][core]] [optional] [optional] [optional] ]
There is a set of core components which make a usable, basic, web browser
which supports the standards defined at http://www.w3.org.
Beyond that core, everything else is just an optional component, like a
plug-in. That's it. The IRC Client is in no way part of the core, (and if
you read below you'll realize its a javascript which utilizes the core
functionality)
Blah blah wait there's more if you want to be able to make an informed
criticism next time:
To summarize the technical documents linked below, Mozilla is built using
components which are for the most part self-contained. A certain number of
these components are necessary to form a working web browser capable of
rendering HTML, CSS, XML, XUL, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other common web
formats and standards. You can read about these core functionalities and
how they are built in a component-based way at:
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/overview.html
Beyond those core functionalities, other components may be created which
are also self-contained and do not in any way interfere with the core
browser components. The IRC client works like this. In fact, it only uses
a small component that is loaded when a Javascript file explicitly asks
for the component. The rest of the client uses Javascript and html and XUL
(XML Based User-interface Language: http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe). So,
basically the IRC client is a javascript! What makes it function like
other clients is that is that it _completely_ leverages and relies upon
the flexibility of those core components listed above. In short, it
introduces no bloat.
Some technical documentation on the subject:
http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/extension
Mozilla is doing nothing wrong. Keep in mind that commercial products you only see the final, optimised, cleaned up, perfected app. If you get to see a "beta", it has been "polished". The mozilla code is the development code. It's full of debugging information. It's not been optimised. It's "in progress".
So yes, as anyone who develops code knows, code doesn't just "happen". I don't start a project that is automatically feature-full, and production ready. It's a long process to get there.
That seems to be the drawback of a highly-visible open source project. People who don't understand software development download the latest milestone, find out it's not finished, and then proclaim that the project is a "failure".
It's not. Even Internet Explorer had a time when the browser was at the point Mozilla is now. Don't forget that. Even though you you can only see the "beta" or final product, don't think that it started out that way. It was a long project, just like Mozilla is.
The project is progressing, and as all projects do, soon reach that finish line. At that point it'll be time to see if it's "fast" enough. For now, it's not. For those wanting to help, find out what's being worked on right now, and what bugs are being looked for. Find bugs and missing features that already in the road map. It does no good to complain that feature "xyz" is not there, when the roadmap already shows that feature "xzy" is planned to be implemented in Milestone 12.
-Brent--
Actually both Windows and MacOS have this type of functionality. Windows registers MIME types in its registry database, but because OLE (ActiveX) was not designed with browser plug-in capability in mind, plug-in authors have to put their components directly into the Netscape/MSIE plug-ins folder anyway. MacOS has the most user-friendly method of registering applications and if you move an app to a different folder or different hard drive, the "shortcuts" continue to work. However, the OS knows nothing of MIME types.
IMHO all operating systems would benefit by having some form of a centralized registry. (On a side note, if anyone is sufferring from repeated "Windows Registry" errors, I have written a utility that can fix that problem in certain circumstances under Win95/98. Open source. Will release to public soon. E-mail me.)
Mozilla with a IRC/Chat program internal?
Hmm, wonder how M$ likes a taste of their own medicine.
But seriously, this is a GOOD THING. Do you know how many modules exist for EMACS? No, you don't, that's the whole point, OSS means never having to say, "Thats ALL I can do with this program", (and by extension, it means never being able to say "I understand it completely") but we want the damn bazar, because it works. Don't say it's bad because YOU dont want a particular feature, OSS software almost always allows to disable any thing you want, and the specs on how Mozilla folds modules in are beautiful. IE will never be able to compete with this, precisely because they limit it to what THEY think most people want.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
ALL of the Mozilla components are optional and replacable, dependencies aside.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
Hey, hold on a second. I don't want all my protocols stuck behind one interface! Is that what the browser is supposed to do? I don't even like the fact that browsers handle FTP and E-Mail links unless you go through an obscure procedure to direct them to other clients.
a m=value
/20323
I sugggest that it is time for universal Internet applications messaging standards (between a user's set of apps, not between computers). It should be simpler than browser Plug-In's. It should be universal unlike ActiveX, OLE, and even COBRA. I don't want to hear it about how you can compile COBRA components on any platform. My wristwatch just won't do COBRA any time soon. It should probably be TCP/IP only so that you can do distributed applications and cool stuff like that.
Here's an idea. Let's see a core component that processes URI's and coordinates Internet information between clients that know how to handle HTTP, FTP, SMTP, IRC, Real Time Messaging, Telnet, SSH, ad infinitum.
The URI is the most powerful identifier, and I am very dissapointed that more applications do not use it. I.e. the notion of
protocol://user:password@host:port/identifier?par
is the most powerful tool anybody has to locate information or services. It works for every applicaiton and every protocol. Imagine if the following links all worked:
http://www.slashdot.org/index.pl
ftp://ftp.freshmeat.net/pub/
irc://JoeSchmoe@irc.slashnet.org/#blah
pop3://JoeSchmoe@mail.myhost.com/Inbox
You get the idea....
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that Mozilla will ever become my IRC or messaging client of choice. Not that I have anything against these projects. I like to see them. I just think it would be more useful if someone did something like I have just described. If I could code, I would do it.
~GoRK
There are *optional* features. Because of the fact that you have the source code for Mozilla, you can disable these features with little difficulty
Oh-oh. You mean I'll actually have to go into source and #undef stuff, then recompile? That's not good at all. My definiton of 'optional' does not include this way of disabling features. What I want is a config file (with or without a pretty GUI front end) where I can specify what modules to load and what to leave behind. Hot-loading or unloading will be nice as well. But if you really expect people to mess with header files in order to switch off features, that's not going to happen.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Repeat after me... Mozilla is not Netscape Mozilla is not Netscape etc. etc. BUT! Netscape is the major developer of Mozilla. Their goal is to create a browser which can compete with Internet Explorer. In order to do that, they need these features which can compete with Internet Explorer including all this 'feature bloat' as some of you call it. Netscape wants their primary target audience (in terms of numbers) to use Netscape's mail client, IM client, etc. So the first official release of Mozilla (which should be nearly identical to Netscape 5) will include this stuff. Yet the beauty of the Open Source model will allow a stripped down super-fast and small Mozilla browser to be available about the same time. So all I have to say is, PATIENCE! Wait until there is a finished product before you start complaining. Mozilla is coming!
Either there's a lot of flamebait going around or people don't understand Open Source / Mozilla, etc.
1) These add-ins have been written by people who have no connection to Netscape and are not part of the main Mozilla team.
Therefore this will not slow down development on the layout engine as the people who are working on that (mainly Netscape employees) are still working on it.
2) Anyone can contribute to Mozilla a nd if they do this is a good thing. It's good that these extensions exist but I don't think they'll make it into the official Netscape Communicator distribution. There has been NO word from Netscape saying that they would be included and there's not even a mention of these projects yet on Mozilla.org.
Netscape said they'd produce a small standards compliant browser and I think they'll stick to that as that's the best way to regain market share from IE. Just get it into your heads that just because someone writes it doesn't mean Netscape is going to include it.
I hope that Netscape will offer a selection of download options at least one where it's just browser only, then perhaps mail, news, then perhaps an editor and a pack with everything in it for those who want it. Also remember that most of these extensions are written in XUL/Javascript so that they don't contribute as much to the bloat as traditional addons.
...and if Netscape doesn't release a browser only version and neither does Mozilla.org you can bet that someone definitely will, that's the beauty of open source.
--
The entire thing is basically modular. There's a directory with all the .sos for the different components.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
The IRC client consists of a pile of XUL/JS for UI and protocol implementation and a thin library to provide raw socket access. (The library will be replaced by use of the necko raw-socket API in the nearish future as well, and then there'll be no ``native'' code involved at all.)
You can take pretty much anything you want out of Mozilla, either at compile- or run-time. Including, of course, the much maligned mailnews stuff: just delete the components you don't want and get on with your life. (Note: some components are required for the browser to work, if that's the Mozilla app you're interested in, and there are some bugs in the form of compile- and run-time entanglements, but if you care at all they'd not be hard to fix.)
There are still lots of things left to fix in Mozilla (performance isn't yet anywhere near its potential and there are lots of big and small memory leaks to kill before beta, for example), but nobody here is talking about the real issues. It's just kneejerk responses to ``new thing available'' and wildly ignorant assumptions about the architecture of the software. Do people complain about bloat when someone releases a new GNOME app on slashdot, too?
People can trash Mozilla for bloat or hostility to left-handers or an extreme bias towards windowing systems if they want; there's no way to stop them, and I'm not sure it's really worth the bother anymore anyway. People who care will discover the facts of the matter, and try to help fix what they don't like. And who has time for the posers?
I help work on the Jabber development and a lot of what is being said on here is either a) untrue, or b) misinterpreted. If you all would take the time to read the Jabber site you would see why it is such a great project. It's 100% open source and bridges the gap of all the other RT IM programs out there. It truly is an amazing project deserving of a little more respect then immediately getting FUD and other ideas about it thrown about. Join us in #jabber on the openprojects IRC network and we'll straigthen out any questions that you may have.
There's a directory with all the .sos for the various modules; just add and delete them at your leisure. I believe they're demand-loaded, too.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
One minute people are bitching about not enough non-Netscape contributors.... then when a couple start contributing code they bitch about how long it's taking. Sheesh! You guy's are the pits.
The IRC and instant messaging stuff is being written by external to Netscape contributors building on the basic Mozilla foundations. What they are doing does not impact the release schedule in the slightest.
Another thing to note is that I doubt whether you will see either of these things in a Netscape/AOL branded product (i.e. what Netscape make from Mozilla with added crypto, etc). They will want to add their own clients for obvious reasons.
I just wish that folk would get off Mozilla's back for a minute. As a Mozilla contributor myself(MathML) I get sick of seeing people taking side swipes at the project. Either help out or shut up, please!
A lot of the posters here are missing the point. There are *optional* features. Because of the fact that you have the source code for Mozilla, you can disable these features with little difficulty - or add new ones, if you so desire.
This is what Open Source / Free(d) Software is all about. It's about choice. Nobody is forcing you to use these addons, but you have the option to use them.
A few months ago (maybe even a few weeks ago) many people were saying Mozilla is a failure. Try out the latest builds - it's getting better and faster all the time. I would use it as my main browser except for the fact that it uses more memory than I'd like (I only have 32MB because my motherboard has a bad SIMM slot). It looks better than netscape and very soon will be faster.
It think it's great that people are able to add things to Mozilla if they choose - don't you agree?
Hey all you /. folks! :)
/.! To make some corrections to the posts that I've seen floating around, allow me to submit the following comments:
I am actively helping in the Jabber project, and I am sad to see so many hastily posted comments here on
1) Jabber is not a rip-off of anything. Jabber is completely different than other IM systems. The first thing that sets it apart is that it is open source and GPLed. But what is more interesting than that is the fact that Jabber has the ability to speak to any type of communication protocol that ANYONE would care to develop a module for. The thing that makes this even cooler is that the modules just need to be installed on the Jabber servers. That way a Jabber client (like the one that is going to work WITH Mozilla) can instantly have access to other protocols as soon as the server has been updated - no updating of the clients is necessary.
2) I have to PARTIALLY agree with the posts about Mozilla getting bloated. But I say partially because I don't believe that most of the posters (especially the AC's) realize that what makes Mozilla bloated is the MODULES (not sure what the "official" term is for modules in Mozilla). The Mozilla Jabber client just works WITH Mozilla and may not necessarily be included in the binaries and so forth and I can't imagine it being required in source packages. DaKrushr already wrote a good post covering this.
3) Jabber has hardly anything to do with Mozilla. Yes, we will be developing a CLIENT to use with Mozilla, but that is just one client. We have clients for almost anything you can think of - Java, Windows, X Window using GTK+, a JavaScript one for browsers, MacOS, Linux command line and more! Please realize that the Jabber client that will be working with Mozilla is just a tiny part of what the Jabber project is all about.
Thank you for your time, and I hope that you will look more indepth into Jabber before writing it off in a heartbeat.
If you'd like to ask some questions, feel free (as temas already posted) to pop into #jabber on the Open Projects IRC Network (try carter.openprojects.net).
Eliot Landrum
Leader of Jabber Documentation Team
eliot@landrum.NOSPAM.cx
my guess is that Mozilla, although "Netscape," is not AOL. I've seen Jabber before -- it's supposed to be an implementation of EVERY IM protocol -- but they're not going from the official AOL docs. (assuming there are some somewhere) AOL might still end up locking it out and/or putting pressure on Mozilla to have it removed. personally, I think this technique would backfire (check me on this here -- I haven't read the NPL all that carefully) if someone is allowed to fork the source tree. of course, AOL could end up blocking it anyways (if they still have anything up their sleeve) but it's horrible public relations (although mostly with people not likely to use AOL) and I don't see them risking it. They might say "well, Microsoft is a company and so we have a problem with them, but this is a "community project" and so we're ok with it." kind of a cop-out, but there you are. then their only recourse to blocking Microsoft would be legal and not technological.
offtopic amusement: when I went to MozillaZine, there was a banner for MSN Instant Messager. Hmm...
Lea
I'm starting to wonder whether the future "war" between browsers on the Linux platform will be between Opera and Mozilla. that is, provided Mozilla becomes a bloated gargantuan download. then people will maybe have the same options they have on Win32 now. you can pay for Opera to get a browser that fits on a floppy, has tiny footprint, renders fast, but has no mail or news support to speak of. or you can choose the Swiss Army Knife of browsers, Mozilla, which gives you all you ever did (and did not) want.
since I've hated the size of IE5 since it came out, regardless of its quality, and will pay for software I find worthy of payment, my choice is clear. even though earlier milestones of Mozilla gave hope for the future.
Before you go out screaming bloody murder about Mozilla adding all these features and and wasting their time with "side projects" instead of focusing on making a good browser, allow me to interject. Now, unless my eyes decieve me, I seem to recall seeing these things noted as third-party developments. Would that not mean that someone other than the Mozilla team is wasting their time on these bloat-infesting side projects? Also, as afore mentioned, if ya don't like it, take some scissors to the source code.
That's my two pesos.
--Ricky
-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
-- Dr. Seuss