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Why Mozilla is Alive and Well
primetyme writes "There's been a lot of press recently stating that the Mozilla project is a failure, a waste of time, and a failed open source endeavour.
I recently had the chance to talk with Chris Hoffman, one of the lead engineers from Netscape working on the Mozilla project, about why Mozilla is in fact a monumental success for the open source community, Web developers, and end users in general. "
Why does this matter? Because Mozilla is going to fully standards compliant. To wit:
What that means to us is that the days of having to code for 16 different browsers, while not over, are numbered. And the ability for one browser to try to lock out other browsers with little "Netscape Now" icons will be sharply limited. Yes, there will probably be proprietary add-ons, but developers have already been burned by these in the 4.x browsers: I don't think they will use them again.So we come to Mozilla. Yes its buggy. But speaking as a professional developer, that's OK at this stage of development. What's more important is that it is well-crafted.
Instead of a hodge-podge of shoddy code (like the old Netscape source base) it is well crafted, well designed code that is going to be extremely maintainable.
This is kind of like early versions of the Linux kernel (I ran 0.95, FTR): they weren't feature complete, weren't anywhere /near/ bug-free. But they were designed well and had a dedicated team of competent coders working on them. It didn't take long at all for Linux to become something to be reckoned with.
What we need to do is the same thing that early Linux adopters did: focus on the technology and give it time to mature. Marketing is /nothing/, technology is /everything/. Oh yeah: have a little loyalty, because its going to be a cold day in hell when Microsoft ports IE to Linux.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Because nobody, and I mean nobody wants that. Why? You ask? Easy enough. Ever hear that Microsoft requires a compile at the end of the day, no matter how they get it? We have a similar policy where I work, and it really pisses me off. Here we're encouraged to do a slapdash job to meet deadlines.
Here are the disadvantages to such an approach:
I could probably come up with more, but I think you get the idea. It's like either building a pinto or a lamborghini. Sure a pinto is easier to fix (just duct tape and bailing wire, right?) but nobody wants to own one. Why does the software industry continuously ignore the fact that nobody wants a pinto - so why force people to buy them? I'm frankly glad that Mozilla has gotten it into their heads to do it right the first time. God knows we could use more of it.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
"...talk with Chris Hoffman, one of the lead engineers from Netscape working on the Mozilla project, about why Mozilla is in fact a monumental success for the open source community, web developers, and end users in general."
Now, don't get me wrong. I love Mozilla AND I don't think it is dead (yet). BUT, isn't this a little like asking Bill Gates if Windows 2000 is dead? For crying out loud, what ELSE is the lead developer going to say? "Yeah, it's dead. I'm just playing Solitaire and reading Slashdot all day."
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Have you looked at the mozilla source? Your argument would some weight if you could cite specific problems with the source--but then, people would only say "Good job, you've found some problems; you're obviously smart enough, so go fix them." If you can't code, then use the nightly builds and report any bugs you find. There are all kinds of ways to help with the development effort. In the Open Source culture, there are complainers and there are contributors (a constructive criticism can be considered a contribution, by the way). Contributors are people who would rather make something happen than just sit back and carp about the state of the project.
Why do you think the mozpeople were so keen on re-designing from the ground up? Ease of maintenance. This means, making it less difficult for developers to dive in and work on the project, among other things like easier cross-platform implementation, i18n, etc. Unless the mozilla team have gone braindead, reasonably skilled developers should be able to break off small, digestible chunks of the code and work on them without having to grok the whole enchilada.
slashdot broke my sig
This is typical 3-year-old talk. By proper upbringing, a child learns that it can't always have what it wants. We are all living in the same world, and we're sharing the same problems. Be reassured that whatever pains you feel, there are millions who share it with you.
Mozilla is an Open Source project, and was created from the start to be one. Which means the main part of the fun, is actually participating in the team. In some extreme cases, the final product is just a biproduct of the efforts. This means that people uses more time to design, code, redesign, recode and test. Just because they feel like making the best they can - to top their own and others' records. Just like in sports.
To read hundreds of comments about Mozilla being too unstable and we-need-a-workable-system-NOW!-mentality, STRONGLY reminds me of childishness. Good qualities in humans that relates to other human beings:
1) be respectful, patient, understanding and forgiving
2) don't take anything for granted
3) don't be disappointed
4) be thankful for what you get, both the good and the bad lessons
Of course you can rant and shout out your rage and frustration. But please don't do it at people actually working towards a solution.
It's very much like shooting yourself in the foot.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Mozilla milestone M11 is coming out any minute. Here's the open bug list. Obviously, the team is on the green and just about to sink the putt.
This is the one, guys. This is the first mozilla named "mozilla" instead of "apprunner". This is a fully functional browser, with all the trimmings (plus more), and it just could be good enough to browse with. If not, we can make it that way. The source code is only 20~ something meg - it's a reasonable sized project. It's ours. This is the time to jump in and help.
Guys, this is our last chance to claw back the client side of the net from Microsoft.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
CmdrTaco, please note. Netscape aren't the only people who could benefit from more eyes. Almost certainly everyone on Slashdot would be -more- than happy to help clean tarballs, debug code, and tweak capabilities in the Slash code, but we really can't, unless you put even a rough-cut tarball up. I am very grateful for the code that -is- there, and I wish there was some way of repaying you for your efforts in creating and maintaining the Slashdot code and site. Donating bug-fixes, speed-ups or possible refinements might be one way to do exactly that. All I need, to do so, is fresh code.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I use IE5 because it is a really really good browser ... available now at the same price as Mozilla.
You mean you pay the same amount of money for both products.
Price? What price is giving a single company (any single company) control of the future of the information age? A lot more then money, I would say.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
What other open source project would you expect Netscape Communications Corp (or AOL) to be involved with?
The fact that it has taken a whopping long time for the (marginally usable) M10 release to arrive is not a clear example of failure; the project has had to labour under several significant constraints:
This left gaping holes in the source code tree, things that had to be reimplemented.
What with the above gaping holes, and other things that had grown into being ill-designed, it made huge sense to rebuild a whole lot of the functionality from scratch.
If a version that is of "production quality" is released in the next 4 months, which is not inconceivable, that essentially means that Mozilla has been recreated in two years, which is certainly not a monumental failure.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
http://browsers.evolt.org/mozilla.html
The box that got
Thanks for all the comments so far. Hopefully this gets moderated up so some people can actually read it
.djc.