The Intellect document has a number of inaccuracies and mischaracterisations in it. I've spent that last two evenings preparing a line-by-line commentary, which can be found here.
The move to "Mozilla Browser" and "Mozilla Mail" was always in the plan, and was in the branding document published last month. This change is scheduled to happen at some point after we release the currently-in-development 1.4 application suite.
But, before the change happens, there are likely to be one or more releases of the Mozilla Firebird Browser as a standalone application. That was also always in the plan.
Our economy seems to be doing better than the rest of Europe at the moment...
But what really amazes me is this whole "when the economic conditions are right" rubbish. If our economic cycles match up at some point, that doesn't mean we will magically stay in sync for the rest of time.
Look at Ireland, for example. They are dealing with runaway inflation because the interest rates are set for the benefit of Germany and France, and not them. Having a single interest rate across such a wide range of countries is asking for someone to get stuffed - and it's always the little guy.
You can configure the timeout on IE by editing the registry - Google for ReceiveTimeout. It's almost certainly also possible by setting a Mozilla pref; or, if not that, then a recompile. Lastly, you could get your server to use HTTP 1.1 persistent connections, by not sending Connection: Close on a connection opened by the webserver. They'll stay up for hours.
I have a copy of "Computer Ethics" by Forester and Morrison, which I bought for light reading . ISBN 02-63-56073-9 (paperback.) It covers:
- Computer crime (mostly money transfer) - Software piracy - Hacking and viruses (black hat vs. white hat debate) - Unreliable computers (the ethics of writing bad code) - The invasion of privacy - AI and Expert Systems (and who's responsible if they make a mistake) - Computerising the workplace (and putting people out of business)
It also includes scenarios for classroom discussion. I'd recommend it as a read, even if it's not suitable as a class textbook.
Rather fittingly, it was filed by Chris Hofmann, head honcho of Netscape's embedding team and staunch Mozilla supporter, and is titled "joke of the day spam mail crash". (Note: please don't mess with the bug.)
Consulting my records, I see that the closest guess to the actual date and time was made by:
coch@myrealbox.com wins the I-have-a-Bugzilla-account-and-so-am-not-a-random-S lashdotter category.
Not every entry had an equal chance of winning the prize. Nine people submitted dates which were before the contest started (clue: this year is 2003, chaps, not 2002), and several people thought we were going to file 20,000 bugs in a matter of about a week. One person thought that he'd get away from the crowd by guessing a date in the 13th month of 2003 (what does he know that we don't?), and the furthest out two guesses had us still struggling towards the mark this time next year.
Paul Festa is a weasel, and his articles always misrepresent mozilla.org's position. Even so, if you read the article, you'll see that Mozilla developers called Apple's decision "understandable", and Mike Shaver said "I'm having trouble working up any indignation about it."
Well, I thought it was funny. It's an oblique reference to the old joke about a problem being a PEBKAC ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair") issue. And anyway, you are quoting it without the context.
it immediately gives the reader the idea you don't give a damn and you wish he would just go the f*** away.
I don't agree. If it said "We don't give a damn. Go away", then that might give the reader that impression.
realize some simple bugs are 3yrs old with half a thousand dupes, you kinda get pissed off and say such on your comment.
If they are so simple, dive in and fix them. Or perhaps you could give people a little credit, and realise that if a bug hasn't been fixed for three years, it's probably because it's either a) hard to fix, b) doesn't affect too many people, or c) the developers have got so sick of the bitching that they've gone to do something else.
In none of these cases does impoliteness help.
esp when a bunch of them are paid full-timers.
So you should get to say what they do rather than their managers?
Rather it sounds very arrogant, pretentious and spiteful.
I don't agree that the Etiquette document is any of those things. But, given the choice of losing a number of key contributors because they don't want to be insulted and harrassed on a daily basis, and losing a few bug reporters who can't learn how to be civil in bug reports, I know which I'd choose.
Oh, they do. It can be fixed by an unrelated checkin (or even a related checkin, with work going on in another bug.) From the user's perspective, the bug just disappear.
In saying "bugs don't just disappear", you are assuming that the Bugzilla bug duplicating process is perfect, and that all developers and QAs are equally aware of all bugs in a particular section of code. Neither is true.
What about ego? No one likes a bunch of bugs on their code; it doesn't look good.
Absolutely - so people love it when they get reported, because they can fix them. Then their code doesn't have a bunch of bugs.
In my experience, such a head-in-the-sand attitude is very rare; and anyone who exhibited it consistently shouldn't be in charge of any code.
But it wasn't humorous; it was increadibly rude to your users.
I refute that accusation. Having reread the document, there's nothing there that I would call rude. Blunt, perhaps - but those who were pointed at this document were those who had blundered in to the newsgroups or Bugzilla, without searching, reading the FAQs, or anything else, and demanded that we change our software to fit their wishes. In such circumstances, rudeness would be understandable - but the Spell Checker FAQ was an attempt to avoid it even then.
Why would I want to develop a spellchecker for Mozilla;
It is; it often denotes that the bug has been fixed between the time it was reported and the time the QA person got to look at it.
Through the last several software houses I've worked out, I've seen rampant miscategorization and misclassification of bugs by lazy developers.
But developers on an open source project have no incentive to misclassify bugs in this way, because they have no obligation to fix them. So, simply ignoring a bug is a reasonable thing to do.
So, if a bug gets marked INVALID, it almost always is.
In fact you can get the attitude from the Mozilla developers even before you make a comment see here
Interesting - the author of the Spell Checker FAQ that you reference, and the author of the Etiquette document under discussion are one and the same.:-)
The Spell Checker FAQ was the result of a frankly ridiculous amount of the behaviour decried in the Etiquette document. Rather than be rude to users, we attempted to use humour to make our point. So maybe you think it's not funny; but I think it's evidence of people attempting to be tolerant under difficult circumstances.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the IP donations - that is pretty much worthless anyway since it is a free, open-source project.
Not at all. The IP donations include the mozilla.org trademark and domain name, which are very far from worthless. They also include the MPL license.
Gerv
So, where can I donate PayPal money to this foundation?
:-)
We'll get a PayPal (or similar) link up there as soon as possible. Don't spend the money meantime
Thanks for offering to donate!
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
the old site still remains!
:-)
Indeed - give us some time, and we'll fix that
The conditions of the download clearly states
The text on here is in US law, I believe. It's more hassle than it's worth to change it, even if it looks a bit odd.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
The Intellect document has a number of inaccuracies and mischaracterisations in it. I've spent that last two evenings preparing a line-by-line commentary, which can be found here.
Comments welcome.
Gerv
The move to "Mozilla Browser" and "Mozilla Mail" was always in the plan, and was in the branding document published last month. This change is scheduled to happen at some point after we release the currently-in-development 1.4 application suite.
But, before the change happens, there are likely to be one or more releases of the Mozilla Firebird Browser as a standalone application. That was also always in the plan.
Move along, no change, nothing to see here.
Gerv
(gerv at mozilla.org)
Our economy seems to be doing better than the rest of Europe at the moment...
But what really amazes me is this whole "when the economic conditions are right" rubbish. If our economic cycles match up at some point, that doesn't mean we will magically stay in sync for the rest of time.
Look at Ireland, for example. They are dealing with runaway inflation because the interest rates are set for the benefit of Germany and France, and not them. Having a single interest rate across such a wide range of countries is asking for someone to get stuffed - and it's always the little guy.
Gerv
P.S. "xenophobic".
Rubbish :-) The UK is a member state of the EU. It's just not a member of the Single European Currency, the Euro (thankfully.)
Gerv
just try to write certain automated test programs with that sort of thing going on.
Are you doing automated testing of web apps? What tools are you using? I've been looking for something that does that...
Thanks,
Gerv
You can configure the timeout on IE by editing the registry - Google for ReceiveTimeout. It's almost certainly also possible by setting a Mozilla pref; or, if not that, then a recompile. Lastly, you could get your server to use HTTP 1.1 persistent connections, by not sending Connection: Close on a connection opened by the webserver. They'll stay up for hours.
Gerv
I have a copy of "Computer Ethics" by Forester and Morrison, which I bought for light reading . ISBN 02-63-56073-9 (paperback.) It covers:
- Computer crime (mostly money transfer)
- Software piracy
- Hacking and viruses (black hat vs. white hat debate)
- Unreliable computers (the ethics of writing bad code)
- The invasion of privacy
- AI and Expert Systems (and who's responsible if they make a mistake)
- Computerising the workplace (and putting people out of business)
It also includes scenarios for classroom discussion. I'd recommend it as a read, even if it's not suitable as a class textbook.
Gerv
If someone volunteers to maintain Mac OS 9 builds, they will happen. But no-one has. It's that simple.
Gerv
In that graph, that red line goes up.
:-)
And the yellow line goes down.
Could that be because Mozilla-based browsers are now numerous to have their own (albeit misnamed) category?
Gerv
Please keep the Mac Classic build going for another year.
Mac Classic would still be alive if someone came forward to maintain it. But no-one has.
Gerv
I'd trade it in a minute if the damn program didn't crash every couple days.
You are, of course, using a talkback build so the Mozilla team find out about your crashes?
Gerv
The date given was 15/13/2003. Any ways up, that's strange :-)
Gerv
The following message should be appearing in the Mozilla newsgroups any time now:
0 00
S lashdotter category.
:-)
A few minutes ago, at 13:11 PST on 2003-03-31, the 200,000th bug was filed in http://bugzilla.mozilla.org:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200
Rather fittingly, it was filed by Chris Hofmann, head honcho of Netscape's embedding team and staunch Mozilla supporter, and is titled "joke of the day spam mail crash". (Note: please don't mess with the bug.)
Consulting my records, I see that the closest guess to the actual date and time was made by:
1st: 2003-04-01 00:00:01 bradangelcyk@hotmail.com (10 hrs, 50 mins)
a mere 10 hours and 50 minutes out. Congratulations to him; he wins a Mozilla 1.0 CD if he sends me his address.
Runners-up:
2nd: 2003-04-02 10:15:36 coch@myrealbox.com (45 hrs, 05 mins)
3rd: 2003-04-02 16:12:44 crisscott@netzero.net (51 hrs, 02 mins)
coch@myrealbox.com wins the I-have-a-Bugzilla-account-and-so-am-not-a-random-
Not every entry had an equal chance of winning the prize. Nine people submitted dates which were before the contest started (clue: this year is 2003, chaps, not 2002), and several people thought we were going to file 20,000 bugs in a matter of about a week. One person thought that he'd get away from the crowd by guessing a date in the 13th month of 2003 (what does he know that we don't?), and the furthest out two guesses had us still struggling towards the mark this time next year.
Thanks to all who took part
Gerv
Paul Festa is a weasel, and his articles always misrepresent mozilla.org's position. Even so, if you read the article, you'll see that Mozilla developers called Apple's decision "understandable", and Mike Shaver said "I'm having trouble working up any indignation about it."
Hardly "Waah".
Gerv
Is there a spellchecker for Mozilla?
Yes, it's between the keyboard and the chair.
Well, I thought it was funny. It's an oblique reference to the old joke about a problem being a PEBKAC ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair") issue. And anyway, you are quoting it without the context.
it immediately gives the reader the idea you don't give a damn and you wish he would just go the f*** away.
I don't agree. If it said "We don't give a damn. Go away", then that might give the reader that impression.
Gerv
realize some simple bugs are 3yrs old with half a thousand dupes, you kinda get pissed off and say such on your comment.
If they are so simple, dive in and fix them. Or perhaps you could give people a little credit, and realise that if a bug hasn't been fixed for three years, it's probably because it's either a) hard to fix, b) doesn't affect too many people, or c) the developers have got so sick of the bitching that they've gone to do something else.
In none of these cases does impoliteness help.
esp when a bunch of them are paid full-timers.
So you should get to say what they do rather than their managers?
Gerv
Rather it sounds very arrogant, pretentious and spiteful.
I don't agree that the Etiquette document is any of those things. But, given the choice of losing a number of key contributors because they don't want to be insulted and harrassed on a daily basis, and losing a few bug reporters who can't learn how to be civil in bug reports, I know which I'd choose.
And that's the bottom line, really.
Gerv
and bugs don't just disappear
Oh, they do. It can be fixed by an unrelated checkin (or even a related checkin, with work going on in another bug.) From the user's perspective, the bug just disappear.
In saying "bugs don't just disappear", you are assuming that the Bugzilla bug duplicating process is perfect, and that all developers and QAs are equally aware of all bugs in a particular section of code. Neither is true.
What about ego? No one likes a bunch of bugs on their code; it doesn't look good.
Absolutely - so people love it when they get reported, because they can fix them. Then their code doesn't have a bunch of bugs.
In my experience, such a head-in-the-sand attitude is very rare; and anyone who exhibited it consistently shouldn't be in charge of any code.
Gerv
But it wasn't humorous; it was increadibly rude to your users.
:-)
I refute that accusation. Having reread the document, there's nothing there that I would call rude. Blunt, perhaps - but those who were pointed at this document were those who had blundered in to the newsgroups or Bugzilla, without searching, reading the FAQs, or anything else, and demanded that we change our software to fit their wishes. In such circumstances, rudeness would be understandable - but the Spell Checker FAQ was an attempt to avoid it even then.
Why would I want to develop a spellchecker for Mozilla;
Yes, why would you? One's already been developed
Gerv
"Works 4 ME!!" is not a problem resolution.
It is; it often denotes that the bug has been fixed between the time it was reported and the time the QA person got to look at it.
Through the last several software houses I've worked out, I've seen rampant miscategorization and misclassification of bugs by lazy developers.
But developers on an open source project have no incentive to misclassify bugs in this way, because they have no obligation to fix them. So, simply ignoring a bug is a reasonable thing to do.
So, if a bug gets marked INVALID, it almost always is.
Gerv
In fact you can get the attitude from the Mozilla developers even before you make a comment see here
:-)
Interesting - the author of the Spell Checker FAQ that you reference, and the author of the Etiquette document under discussion are one and the same.
The Spell Checker FAQ was the result of a frankly ridiculous amount of the behaviour decried in the Etiquette document. Rather than be rude to users, we attempted to use humour to make our point. So maybe you think it's not funny; but I think it's evidence of people attempting to be tolerant under difficult circumstances.
Gerv
(document author)
If you need people to write better bug reports, teach them how.
That would be what the Bug Writing Guidelines are for. This document serves a different purpose.
Gerv
(document author)