I think there's the greater issue that AOL/Netscape doesn't really have any future vision or direction for the project (except using it as a bargaining chip for AOL client negotiations with Microsoft.)
The Netscape browser began as free advertising for the (now gone elsewhere) enterprise server products that was going to make Netscape Communications a big player.
Netscape 4 (shipped in 1996) was a 'kitchen sink' project -- intended to be the client-server platform of the future -- including every imaginable feature, and a complete rebuff to the W3C with all sorts of proprietary Netscape-only interfaces, all of it implemented in an enormously buggy fashion.
Mozilla seems to be mostly an attempt to rewrite NS 4 from scratch, except this time healing the wounds by making it standards compliant and non-buggy. And add the sidebar that didn't make it into NS4.
The end result of Mozilla 1.0 seems to achieve the goals of 1996, not of 2002. It's 6 years beyond the point when "standards compliant" and "non-buggy" would be enough to attract a significant number of users. When you get right down to it, Mozilla doesn't *do* anything all that all that interesting to the end user in this day and age.
I think that's why you get tabbed browsing and other features coming in -- it's sorta an "Oh shit!" moment over at Mozilla when they realize that their work might go for naught unless they are proactive about drawing end users in to their web.
If I were them, I'd start thinking outside of the little box that they've let the W3C define and start looking at what it will take to make people want to use their shit. Yes, this means embracing and extending a little, but I think they with their supergood compliance, they can afford it.
+ Throw in every value add feature that you can get stable -- mouse gestures, Jabber, etc etc.
+ Clone corny MS features that people like - styled scrollbars, etc.
+ Prove to us that Mozilla is really a platform and not hot air. Give me something that I can use to create an application on my intranet.
+ Stop pretending the W3C DOM is usable all by itself as an API and start looking ways to add value. One prime example is the style object that IE has (it provides runtime information about element style).
+ Make sure that the Javascript/DOM environment is solid enough that I can code a heavy DHTML interface with it. Just rendering cnn.com, etc isn't good enough.
+ Ship the Fucking Manual already -- w3c.org is not a programming guide by any means. Find the people that wrote the excellent 4.x documentation and put them back to work.
Unfortunately, the "UNIX Way" is just about the biggest sacred cows left (especially after they added a commandline to MacOS). If it makes the Linux folks feel better, people were complaining about the Unix UI back in the 1970s, and there hasn't been that many bright spots since then.
In short, I wouldn't expect any GUI revolutions from the Unix folks -- they've got too much emotional baggage. The best thing to hope for is a reasonably solid system that doesn't obscure the underpinnings too much.
Come on -- the most common 'early adoptor' reaction was "Wow!... Photoshop runs slow.. Cool!.. WHAT?! I have to reboot to watch DVDs! %*#!@%ing Apple!".
And it costs just as much to ship a CD with a DVD player on it as it does to ship the whole damn OS. Furthermore, I'd bet that 75% of the target market (higher-end, memory upgraded machines) has DVD-equipped Macs.
Another reason might be is that you have to boot off the CD to upgrade and CD burning didn't exist under 10.0.
Only that Lotus didn't put it in the box until years after MS Office was shipping, and then it took more time to integrate the look-n-feel between the apps. Having the thing change names 3 times couldn't have helped either.
I should also point out that Lotus didn't take the Macintosh market seriously at all, unlike Microsoft. In 1985 (the same year MS Excel shipped), they introduced a Mac-based Office Suite called "Jazz", only to drop it after a year.
At that point, they stopped GUI work until it was restarted for OS/2 some years later. Meanwhile, Microsoft was banging out features for MS Office over on the Mac side. When Lotus finally figured out that a suite was a good idea, they had to fumble around and find a word processor.
Ironically, the thing that saved the company was an OS/2 GUI program called Notes.
Mitch Kapor didn't pay any attention to Windows. He was more concerned with 1-2-3 for OS/2
Although the facts are accurate, you have to remember that, at the time, Microsoft was telling everyone to develop for OS/2 - Windows was supposed to be a mere "bridging" application
All true -- but Guess What? 1-2-3 for OS/2 SUCKED! Excel was far better. (And there was a beta release of GUI Excel for OS/2).
Similarly, even William Mossberg (of the WSJ) seems to think that it is onerous of Micros$oft to require home users to purchase a copy of the (M$) OS for each home PC that they wish to run that OS on. That has _always_ been required (with the specific exception of WordPerfect) for all PC software as long as I can remember.
The Microsoft license was very similar to the WordPerfect license (based on a single simultaneous user) until about 1997 or so. It was not all that uncommon.
Their newer systems didn't quite have the technical quality of Kodak's, and their product design was laughable.
The funny thing is that they are still shipping these "newer products" -- Their core lines of the 600 and the Spectra are EXACTLY the same as they were 20 years ago, down to their bogo-sonar autofocus thing. They've barely changed the plastic molds.
Go to any flea market and get a perfectly good Poloroid camera for about $5.
Poloroid has always had a weird string of failed ideas to try to break out of their little instant camera mold
-- Instant 8mm movie film (just as VHS cameras came onto the market.
-- Instant 35mm Slide film (with a really cool machine that 'develops' the slides), but the quality was pretty much horrible and you have to mount the slides manually.
-- Various aborted attempts at highend and lowend digital stuff
Anyway, you can tell the company is screwed up by their confusing website.
Cable and then fiber are the future. All but seriously marginal abodes will have fiber in 20 years.
Foo -- the entire cable industry is still burdened with shitloads of old debts from their capital expansion. And television is a lot more popular than internet.
The future is wireless. Why would you spend gazillions laying fiber or upgrading infrastructure when in 10 years somebody will just undercut you with over-the-air service.
Actually, dropping a $50 check into your letter couldn't hurt your cause. I think the staffer will pull the money out before the rep sees it, but might handwrite the amount on the letter or put you in some A List database.
Like everything else -- money talks, and bullshit walks. Especially if you are like me and your congressperson wins every election 90-10 and can afford to piss a few people off.
If you really are interested, buy into one of those $100/plate Fish Dinners that congress pople tend to have. You might get 30 seconds face-to-face to make your case. Local Reps come even cheaper.
As for the nutjobs -- it's true. As impassioned as people on Slashdot are about these issues, the organizaiton level in the tech community is piss-poor compared to just about any other issue. Well organized lobby groups can get thousands of (usually form) letters out on a particular cause. The congressional offices have to have a way to see through this junk and figure out who the real voters and influence people are.
Just a tip -- I've heard my congressperson on a few call-in radio shows over the years, and there's inevitably this exchange:
Caller: I want to know what your position is on HR 9999.
Congressfolk: (Oh Shit! A Bot!) I'm sorry, but you'll have let me know specifically what bill that is because the numbers change all the time and I don't keep track of them.
Caller: Uhhhhh.
The problem is that there's too many people being paid or otherwise convinced to lobby congress and write form letters on particular issues. Politicians have to have a fairly good sense on how to filter these out. The big tip-off is when the person doesn't let on any details of the legislation. (Recall the Slashdot story on MS running a paid "I love MS Innovation" letter campaign. The only thing uncommon about this is that it was driven by a computer company.)
Furthermore, the "send an e-mail" idea is worthless. Do you have any idea how many e-mail lobby campaigns that congresspeople get flooded with. It's usually one step above spam (chainmail or web forms), but it's not like your suggestion is any more sophisticated than something Joe AOL could dream up. Write a letter and make sure it looks like you wrote it.
Surely the differences between the two (which are subtle, but certainly there) will catch people up all the time.
Java and C# have a nearly identical syntax, except that C# has a bunch of added syntactical junk (out params, (gasp) pointers, and the like) that's there so that Microsofties can port their legacy code base over.
As somebody pointed out, not having checked exceptions really sucks too (reeks of VB on error goto handling).
Anyway, I was considering a private 'coding standard' that would toss much of C#'s advanced syntax in favor of something simplier and, umm, more like Java. Now, with J#, I might just consider coding in Java, although there's a bunch of open questions such as how COM would be handled and how events (and other structures that rely on delegates) would be handled.
I guess the biggest problem with J# is that Microsoft will probably forget about it next year and it will silently break with CLR 1.2 SP4a. Furthermore, there's probably going to be very little commercial demand -- and try explaining to a manager (expecially one in the MS Camp) that C# and Java are pretty much the same thing.
Re:You really need to stop smoking that cheap shit
on
J#
·
· Score: 1
.Net is WINDOWS ONLY
Actually, a Mac OS X version has been announced. Don't expect any devtools, tho...
Re:Initial reactions
on
J#
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· Score: 2, Informative
Overall, I agree completely with your point. However, trying to blame the lawsuit on either Sun or Microsoft is bogus -- it's pretty clear that they both entered the deal in bad faith with intent to sue each other.
This is from Wired 8.11:
I asked Ballmer about an internal Microsoft document concerning Microsoft's licensing of Java, which had come to light in the DOJ's investigation. In it, PaulMaritz stated that the company's goal was to "get control of" and "neutralize" Java, whose cross-platform raison d'être was seen as posing a threat to Windows. Scott McNealy had told me he considered the document prima facie evidence that Microsoft had signed its contract in bad faith. I asked Ballmer if McNealy was right.
"Sun is just a very dumb company," Ballmer began.
"We always honored our license. We always intended to. We always have." His voice quickly rising, Ballmer continued, "Sun wasn't confused. We weren't coming in there saying, Hallelujah, brother! We love you, Sun! We said, We don't like you as a company - nice people; I like Scott - and you don't like us! We said, Hey Sun, you want to get on the back of us and ride, baby, ride You want on? OK, here's the terms!"
Ballmer's face was beet-red now, and he was screaming so loudly that, had there been any windowshades, they would have been rattling. Up on his feet, leaning across the table so that his face was no more than 6 inches from mine, pounding his meaty fists on the tabletop so hard that my tape recorder leapt and skittered, he roared, "Nobody was ever one little teeny tiny bit confused that we and Sun had this wonderful dovetailing of strategic interests! Those sub-50-IQ people who work at Sun who believe that are either uninformed, crazy, or sleeping!"
[These 'sub-50-IQ people' eventually out-lawyered Microsoft and beat them in court]
Not only is he looking to have things be automatic, but he wants to get away from the whole "device manager" idea, which is what pervades
It's a little confusing, but I'm pretty sure that he's not talking about the Windows Device Manager. (Recall that he doesn't really care what Windows does.) In fact he's probably talking about modprobe.
Besides, the Device Manager in Windows is just a userspace GUI* that allows you to look and see what the kernel is doing with your devices. It doesn't 'pervade' Windows any more than whatever userspace support that linux requires for autoconfiguration would.
* Admittedly it did more back with Win95, but modern versions of Windows seems to have dropped pretty much all non-PnP device support.
There's probably lots of people here too young to recall what a great orator Reagan was. He was routinely on primetime television, and people placed incredible value on what he said.
Afghanistan's freedom fighters -- the resistance or mujahidin -- represent an indigenous movement that swept through their mountainous land to challenge a foreign military power threatening their religion and their very way of life. With little in the way of arms or organization, the vast majority of the Afghan people have demonstrated that they will not be dominated and that they are prepared to give their lives for independence and freedom. The price they have so willingly paid is incalculable.
Let all of us who live in lands of freedom, along with those who dream of doing so, take inspiration from the spirit and courage of the Afghan patriots. Let us resolve that their quest for freedom will prevail, and that Afghanistan will become, once again, an independent member of the family of nations. -- Ronald Reagan
Anyway, since mozilla.org is in a feature adding move, and we've got the opportunity to pimp a little, go and vote for Alt mail support or Here -- this will allow Mozilla to play nice with the mailer/newsreader of your choice instead of assuming you want Messenger.
If you want to get technical about it, "Linux" is nothing more than a trademark for computer products that's held by Linus Torvalds. Linus has licenced this trademark to people who produce operating systems based on the kernel he wrote.
So, it's legally and technically correct to refer to the "RedHat Linux OS". Furthermore, anyone not named Linus Torvalds who tells you "Linux is only the Kernel!" is speaking without authority.
In fact, if he wanted to, Linus could licence his trademark to the "Corel Linux WordProcessor" or the "3Com Linux PCMCIA modem", and those things could properly be called Linux. Well, no sane corporation would dillute their brandname like this, but Linus already has (see VA Linux) and probably will continue to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there's the greater issue that AOL/Netscape doesn't really have any future vision or direction for the project (except using it as a bargaining chip for AOL client negotiations with Microsoft.)
The Netscape browser began as free advertising for the (now gone elsewhere) enterprise server products that was going to make Netscape Communications a big player.
Netscape 4 (shipped in 1996) was a 'kitchen sink' project -- intended to be the client-server platform of the future -- including every imaginable feature, and a complete rebuff to the W3C with all sorts of proprietary Netscape-only interfaces, all of it implemented in an enormously buggy fashion.
Mozilla seems to be mostly an attempt to rewrite NS 4 from scratch, except this time healing the wounds by making it standards compliant and non-buggy. And add the sidebar that didn't make it into NS4.
The end result of Mozilla 1.0 seems to achieve the goals of 1996, not of 2002. It's 6 years beyond the point when "standards compliant" and "non-buggy" would be enough to attract a significant number of users. When you get right down to it, Mozilla doesn't *do* anything all that all that interesting to the end user in this day and age.
I think that's why you get tabbed browsing and other features coming in -- it's sorta an "Oh shit!" moment over at Mozilla when they realize that their work might go for naught unless they are proactive about drawing end users in to their web.
If I were them, I'd start thinking outside of the little box that they've let the W3C define and start looking at what it will take to make people want to use their shit. Yes, this means embracing and extending a little, but I think they with their supergood compliance, they can afford it.
+ Throw in every value add feature that you can get stable -- mouse gestures, Jabber, etc etc.
+ Clone corny MS features that people like - styled scrollbars, etc.
+ Prove to us that Mozilla is really a platform and not hot air. Give me something that I can use to create an application on my intranet.
+ Stop pretending the W3C DOM is usable all by itself as an API and start looking ways to add value. One prime example is the style object that IE has (it provides runtime information about element style).
+ Make sure that the Javascript/DOM environment is solid enough that I can code a heavy DHTML interface with it. Just rendering cnn.com, etc isn't good enough.
+ Ship the Fucking Manual already -- w3c.org is not a programming guide by any means. Find the people that wrote the excellent 4.x documentation and put them back to work.
Linux developers must have no sacred cows
Unfortunately, the "UNIX Way" is just about the biggest sacred cows left (especially after they added a commandline to MacOS). If it makes the Linux folks feel better, people were complaining about the Unix UI back in the 1970s, and there hasn't been that many bright spots since then.
In short, I wouldn't expect any GUI revolutions from the Unix folks -- they've got too much emotional baggage. The best thing to hope for is a reasonably solid system that doesn't obscure the underpinnings too much.
Come on -- the most common 'early adoptor' reaction was "Wow! ... Photoshop runs slow .. Cool! .. WHAT?! I have to reboot to watch DVDs! %*#!@%ing Apple!".
And it costs just as much to ship a CD with a DVD player on it as it does to ship the whole damn OS. Furthermore, I'd bet that 75% of the target market (higher-end, memory upgraded machines) has DVD-equipped Macs.
Another reason might be is that you have to boot off the CD to upgrade and CD burning didn't exist under 10.0.
Back in ye olden days, the Mac type was JFIF (which is technically the correct name for the common file format used for jpeg data).
Besides being ass-huge, one point that everyone misses is that 10.1 contains a DVD Player.
The DVD Forum license prohibits downloadable players. This issue generates flames on PC boards from time-to-time, so Apple isn't alone.
(and yes I realize that they could have packaged the DVD separately, but judging by the amount of flamage over the topic, it wouldn't have helped.)
Yeah, I wasn't meaning to bash Ami by any means.
Only that Lotus didn't put it in the box until years after MS Office was shipping, and then it took more time to integrate the look-n-feel between the apps. Having the thing change names 3 times couldn't have helped either.
I should also point out that Lotus didn't take the Macintosh market seriously at all, unlike Microsoft. In 1985 (the same year MS Excel shipped), they introduced a Mac-based Office Suite called "Jazz", only to drop it after a year.
At that point, they stopped GUI work until it was restarted for OS/2 some years later. Meanwhile, Microsoft was banging out features for MS Office over on the Mac side. When Lotus finally figured out that a suite was a good idea, they had to fumble around and find a word processor.
Ironically, the thing that saved the company was an OS/2 GUI program called Notes.
Mitch Kapor didn't pay any attention to Windows. He was more concerned with 1-2-3 for OS/2
Although the facts are accurate, you have to remember that, at the time, Microsoft was telling everyone to develop for OS/2 - Windows was supposed to be a mere "bridging" application
All true -- but Guess What? 1-2-3 for OS/2 SUCKED! Excel was far better. (And there was a beta release of GUI Excel for OS/2).
Actually, in those days there was no such thing as an "OS Upgrade" for a PC --- MS-DOS was an OEM-only product until v5.0.
Similarly, even William Mossberg (of the WSJ) seems to think that it is onerous of Micros$oft to require home users to purchase a copy of the (M$) OS for each home PC that they wish to run that OS on. That has _always_ been required (with the specific exception of WordPerfect) for all PC software as long as I can remember.
The Microsoft license was very similar to the WordPerfect license (based on a single simultaneous user) until about 1997 or so. It was not all that uncommon.
Outlook-type Application --> Netscape Communicator and the forthcoming corporate version of Netscape 6.
Exchange-type Application --> Sun iPlanet server products (formerly Netscape).
(Think Nutscrape isn't close to Outlook? You're probably right, but it beats starting from scratch.)
Their newer systems didn't quite have the technical quality of Kodak's, and their product design was laughable.
The funny thing is that they are still shipping these "newer products" -- Their core lines of the 600 and the Spectra are EXACTLY the same as they were 20 years ago, down to their bogo-sonar autofocus thing. They've barely changed the plastic molds.
Go to any flea market and get a perfectly good Poloroid camera for about $5.
Poloroid has always had a weird string of failed ideas to try to break out of their little instant camera mold
-- Instant 8mm movie film (just as VHS cameras came onto the market.
-- Instant 35mm Slide film (with a really cool machine that 'develops' the slides), but the quality was pretty much horrible and you have to mount the slides manually.
-- Various aborted attempts at highend and lowend digital stuff
Anyway, you can tell the company is screwed up by their confusing website.
Cable and then fiber are the future. All but seriously marginal abodes will have fiber in 20 years.
Foo -- the entire cable industry is still burdened with shitloads of old debts from their capital expansion. And television is a lot more popular than internet.
The future is wireless. Why would you spend gazillions laying fiber or upgrading infrastructure when in 10 years somebody will just undercut you with over-the-air service.
Actually, dropping a $50 check into your letter couldn't hurt your cause. I think the staffer will pull the money out before the rep sees it, but might handwrite the amount on the letter or put you in some A List database.
Like everything else -- money talks, and bullshit walks. Especially if you are like me and your congressperson wins every election 90-10 and can afford to piss a few people off.
If you really are interested, buy into one of those $100/plate Fish Dinners that congress pople tend to have. You might get 30 seconds face-to-face to make your case. Local Reps come even cheaper.
As for the nutjobs -- it's true. As impassioned as people on Slashdot are about these issues, the organizaiton level in the tech community is piss-poor compared to just about any other issue. Well organized lobby groups can get thousands of (usually form) letters out on a particular cause. The congressional offices have to have a way to see through this junk and figure out who the real voters and influence people are.
Just a tip -- I've heard my congressperson on a few call-in radio shows over the years, and there's inevitably this exchange:
Caller: I want to know what your position is on HR 9999.
Congressfolk: (Oh Shit! A Bot!) I'm sorry, but you'll have let me know specifically what bill that is because the numbers change all the time and I don't keep track of them.
Caller: Uhhhhh.
The problem is that there's too many people being paid or otherwise convinced to lobby congress and write form letters on particular issues. Politicians have to have a fairly good sense on how to filter these out. The big tip-off is when the person doesn't let on any details of the legislation. (Recall the Slashdot story on MS running a paid "I love MS Innovation" letter campaign. The only thing uncommon about this is that it was driven by a computer company.)
Furthermore, the "send an e-mail" idea is worthless. Do you have any idea how many e-mail lobby campaigns that congresspeople get flooded with. It's usually one step above spam (chainmail or web forms), but it's not like your suggestion is any more sophisticated than something Joe AOL could dream up. Write a letter and make sure it looks like you wrote it.
I'd be interested to hear if you could just grab the Java 2 and J2EE java/class files and recompile them with the converter tool (jbimp).
One the face of it, this would seem like it could work for everything that's pure-java based (doesn't use JNI), so long as they support RMI, that is.
Surely the differences between the two (which are subtle, but certainly there) will catch people up all the time.
Java and C# have a nearly identical syntax, except that C# has a bunch of added syntactical junk (out params, (gasp) pointers, and the like) that's there so that Microsofties can port their legacy code base over.
As somebody pointed out, not having checked exceptions really sucks too (reeks of VB on error goto handling).
Anyway, I was considering a private 'coding standard' that would toss much of C#'s advanced syntax in favor of something simplier and, umm, more like Java. Now, with J#, I might just consider coding in Java, although there's a bunch of open questions such as how COM would be handled and how events (and other structures that rely on delegates) would be handled.
I guess the biggest problem with J# is that Microsoft will probably forget about it next year and it will silently break with CLR 1.2 SP4a. Furthermore, there's probably going to be very little commercial demand -- and try explaining to a manager (expecially one in the MS Camp) that C# and Java are pretty much the same thing.
Actually, a Mac OS X version has been announced. Don't expect any devtools, tho...
Overall, I agree completely with your point. However, trying to blame the lawsuit on either Sun or Microsoft is bogus -- it's pretty clear that they both entered the deal in bad faith with intent to sue each other.
This is from Wired 8.11:
I asked Ballmer about an internal Microsoft document concerning Microsoft's licensing of Java, which had come to light in the DOJ's investigation. In it, PaulMaritz stated that the company's goal was to "get control of" and "neutralize" Java, whose cross-platform raison d'être was seen as posing a threat to Windows. Scott McNealy had told me he considered the document prima facie evidence that Microsoft had signed its contract in bad faith. I asked Ballmer if McNealy was right.
"Sun is just a very dumb company," Ballmer began.
"We always honored our license. We always intended to. We always have." His voice quickly rising, Ballmer continued, "Sun wasn't confused. We weren't coming in there saying, Hallelujah, brother! We love you, Sun! We said, We don't like you as a company - nice people; I like Scott - and you don't like us! We said, Hey Sun, you want to get on the back of us and ride, baby, ride You want on? OK, here's the terms!"
Ballmer's face was beet-red now, and he was screaming so loudly that, had there been any windowshades, they would have been rattling. Up on his feet, leaning across the table so that his face was no more than 6 inches from mine, pounding his meaty fists on the tabletop so hard that my tape recorder leapt and skittered, he roared, "Nobody was ever one little teeny tiny bit confused that we and Sun had this wonderful dovetailing of strategic interests! Those sub-50-IQ people who work at Sun who believe that are either uninformed, crazy, or sleeping!"
[These 'sub-50-IQ people' eventually out-lawyered Microsoft and beat them in court]
I took this as a Yes.
Not only is he looking to have things be automatic, but he wants to get away from the whole "device manager" idea, which is what pervades
It's a little confusing, but I'm pretty sure that he's not talking about the Windows Device Manager. (Recall that he doesn't really care what Windows does.) In fact he's probably talking about modprobe.
Besides, the Device Manager in Windows is just a userspace GUI* that allows you to look and see what the kernel is doing with your devices. It doesn't 'pervade' Windows any more than whatever userspace support that linux requires for autoconfiguration would.
* Admittedly it did more back with Win95, but modern versions of Windows seems to have dropped pretty much all non-PnP device support.
If it's not obvious, I should note that I was no great supporter of Reagan.
There's probably lots of people here too young to recall what a great orator Reagan was. He was routinely on primetime television, and people placed incredible value on what he said.
A topical and interesting example Statement on the Fourth Anniversary of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan I had vauge memories of this speech, so I looked it up. Somehow I doubt I'll recall anything GW Bush said 20 years after the fact.
Afghanistan's freedom fighters -- the resistance or mujahidin -- represent an indigenous movement that swept through their mountainous land to challenge a foreign military power threatening their religion and their very way of life. With little in the way of arms or organization, the vast majority of the Afghan people have demonstrated that they will not be dominated and that they are prepared to give their lives for independence and freedom. The price they have so willingly paid is incalculable.
Let all of us who live in lands of freedom, along with those who dream of doing so, take inspiration from the spirit and courage of the Afghan patriots. Let us resolve that their quest for freedom will prevail, and that Afghanistan will become, once again, an independent member of the family of nations. -- Ronald Reagan
Ooops -- that's "feature adding MOOD", referring to the recent introduction of Tabbed browsing and the Links bar. Need more coffee...
Wouldn't that be "Slashdot to blame"? :)
Anyway, since mozilla.org is in a feature adding move, and we've got the opportunity to pimp a little, go and vote for Alt mail support or Here -- this will allow Mozilla to play nice with the mailer/newsreader of your choice instead of assuming you want Messenger.
If you want to get technical about it, "Linux" is nothing more than a trademark for computer products that's held by Linus Torvalds. Linus has licenced this trademark to people who produce operating systems based on the kernel he wrote.
So, it's legally and technically correct to refer to the "RedHat Linux OS". Furthermore, anyone not named Linus Torvalds who tells you "Linux is only the Kernel!" is speaking without authority.
In fact, if he wanted to, Linus could licence his trademark to the "Corel Linux WordProcessor" or the "3Com Linux PCMCIA modem", and those things could properly be called Linux. Well, no sane corporation would dillute their brandname like this, but Linus already has (see VA Linux) and probably will continue to do so.