Going over the wire redux
This is bugging me, and its been bugging me for a while. In nearly three years, we haven’t built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think we’re in trouble. Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn’t do a lot of reviews. And I’m on the verge of just walking away indefinitely, since it feels like I’m the only person who cares enough to make it an issue. Things I’ve raised in relatively private contexts have gone unanswered, and I’m growing increasingly cynical about our ability to ship 1.1 early enough to make 1.5 remotely viable this year. At the glacial pace of development we’re currently running at, I don’t see how the ambitious plans for 2.0 are going to be at all viable before late 2006. Maybe I’m wrong, but no one’s bothered to take five minutes and tell me that.
People have brought up hiring, but that’s one of the suggestions that apparently didn’t merit a response, so I’m not going to hold my breath on MoFo staffing someone to work on Firefox and shoulder some of the load. I won’t pretend to understand MoFo’s staffing priorities, I don’t work there, I’m out of the loop in a lot of ways, so I’ll have to assume they have some sort of plan. I’m _hoping_ they have some sort of plan. But until they tell me how we’re going to ship a product with the same size buglist as we had last August, with maybe 1/4 of the core resources, I’m going to be cynical. And while I’m cynical, I’ll be on walkabout, because this isn’t fun anymore.
Update #2: More clarification can be found here.
Edit: Hello Slashdot! Without trying to whore myself, I must say that I’m quite happy with my hosting provider (Dreamhost) right about now, both the “staying alive without a blip” factor and the fact that I won’t come anywhere close to my monthly bandwidth limit even now.
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March 7th, 2005 at 12:07 pm[...] d motivation. Well I found that example I could not come up with in that other post. According to: http://www.steelgryphon.com/blog/index.php?p=37 The Firefox project is run by 6 people, where 4 are absent without leave, one lazy person, and one har [...]
March 8th, 2005 at 9:49 am[...] . De maat is vol voor Mike Connor. Zo veel is duidelijk bij lezing van zijn meest recente bijdrage op zijn weblog. “Dit houdt me bezig en dit houdt me al een behoorlijke tijd bezig. [...]
March 8th, 2005 at 9:50 am[...] to counter a lot of the FUD being thrown around from the last time. In the week since my now-infamous-and-slashdotted blog post, I’ve had a lot of discussions with a lot of people, [...]
March 11th, 2005 at 10:08 pmWhy was this post removed from the feedhouse.mozillazine.org site?
March 4th, 2005 at 6:12 pmhmmm, nevermind, looks like it’s back.
March 4th, 2005 at 6:12 pmI’m sorry it isn’t fun for you, and I’m sorry it’s gotten to this point… but as an outsider looking at what’s been done since 1.0, I’m actually quite impressed. Yes, there are big goals for web forms 2.0, xul 2.0, runtime/vm/gfx work .. which aren’t moving as quickly as I’d personnaly like them to.. but there are a lot of positive things that are moving forward very swiftly. XTF, SVG, XForms, E4X, the new preferences interface, xulrunner, and I’m sure I’ve missed some big ones.. not to mention the effort to get back on the trunk.
So how do we improve? Well, take a look at the story in the URL above and see if that doesn’t spark some discussions.. I’m not recommending one solution over another mind you.. but I think something along those lines (*cough* subversion *cough*) would help (from my own personal experience)
Keep up the excellent work…
March 4th, 2005 at 7:15 pm-woo
Andrew: switching source code management systems is not going to happen. At the very least, switching would mean we’d lose the use of Tinderbox, LXR, and Bonsai. I don’t know how closely you pay attention to or get involved in Mozilla development, but those tools are worth far, far more than the gains we would get from another system. (That said, I still have my hopes that eventually we’ll switch to subversion, but that change is many years away.)
The problem we have here really has nothing to do with source code management – the problem is that we haven’t cultivated new developers who are proficient at the same level as those who have traditionally hacked at Firefox. Sure, there are new people who’ve come who hack at various levels of expertise; however, none have the experience to hack at the same level as the core developers.
By the way, this post is less about core development and more about Firefox-specific development. Of the changes you mention, the remerge with trunk and the new options interface are the only changes that have happened since 1.0 — and that’s not really much work at all.
March 5th, 2005 at 2:42 amSorry things aren’t working out for you – I have been very impressed with Firefox and would hate to lose people from the project. I have an extremely minor level of coding knowledge, so I can’t directly review code, but maybe we do need to encourage more staff to be funded – maybe a fund drive from the Mozilla Foundation is the way to go?
March 5th, 2005 at 5:24 amThat sounds serious.
Since I’m not a developer in any way I’m afraid I can’t help. Actually, I’m not 100% sure of what being a reviewer entails. Do you ’simply’ check patches submitted by coders and make sure they look good?
March 5th, 2005 at 5:54 amAndrew: “XTF, SVG, XForms, E4X, the new preferences interface, xulrunner, and I’m sure I’ve missed some big ones.. not to mention the effort to get back on the trunk.”
Yes, but aside from the new prefs interface and merging back to the trunk, those are all back-end things. I think Mike’s talking about Firefox front-end stuff. I don’t think there is much aside from the new prefs and the merge to the trunk, and some bug fixing – merge to trunk and new prefs is currently targeted to take 7 months, and will probably slip. Firefox isn’t going to die or anything, but the number of people actively working on the front-end seems to be diminishing rather than growing, which is not good.
David: well that’s a bit of an over simplification, but that’s basically it. “Looking good” involves the patch not only working and looking correct, but doing things the right/best way, and doing the right thing generally, as part of the bigger picture.
March 5th, 2005 at 10:12 amMike, tha problem is hardly a new one as can be seen on http://www.babylonsounds.com/2003_06_01_sipaq_archive.html
March 5th, 2005 at 10:21 amBut nevetheless I just wrote a mail to drivers@m.o (I CC’ed you) complaining about the current situation and asking them to act. We’ll see what happens…
Mike, I hope MOFO will hear U, the project is at risk is the situtation U disribe is to continue, hold on …… and thanks for the good work!
March 5th, 2005 at 2:04 pmWhat really surprises me about watching moz development is the overwhelming complacency about the process of developing software. I don’t mean to be disrespectful or to sound upset.. but maybe it’ll take someone getting aggravated in order to improve the process.
1. the tools used for managing patches has a dramatic affect on the people who review patches. if we make the few people who do reviews more efficent, they can review more patches and/or people who don’t have time to do reviews may just find some time to do it. Part of the reason, I’m sure that you having reviewers missing in action is that it’s a frustrating and time consuming process.
2. One of the concerns was the amount of work being accomplished overall (not just the number of qualified reviewers). That means it should be easier to contribute, easier to get your “patch” submitted, and all of the work that is being done but isn’t being committed needs to be moved through as quickly as possible (without sacrificing quality).
3. The “ambitious goals for 2.0″ mentioned in the post, I assume relate just as much to “Mozilla 2.0″ as it does to Firefox.. Why? Besides the obvious fact that firefox is based on those core components, I don’t consider what’s currently on the list of “possible goals” in the roadmap for firefox 2.0 all that troublesome to implement by “late 2006″. But it’s entirely possible you know something I don’t.
4. And Finally. LXR is a glorified text indexer.. what little integration it has with CVS is nothing that can’t be handled (and is handled all the time by other projects) with a couple of lines of shell scripts. Bonsai is an unmanageble piece of perl (quoted from the author). ViewCVS is a reimplementation of Bonsai in Python, uses the same database backend, and integrates with subversion just fine. Tinderbox doesn’t have a subversion backend built as far as I can tell, but 75% of Tinderbox is build system, not source code control related. In fact all of these tools could/would be BETTER with subversion, due to improvements in how checkins are tracked and how easy it is to tie into the svn hooks.
I don’t mean to get into a contest about who knows more about moz (yes, I follow closely, contribute to and am familiar with the tools you mentioned), or who knows more about source control. But I will say this, it’s my job to make the developers that work for me more efficient, keep them happy and keep them productive… I’m also responsible for making decisions about the tools to use to improve our development process. I’ve been doing it for a long time and I’m good at what I do. When I make a suggestion for how to improve the situation, I’m not just guessing. Thanks for taking the time to respond – the lack of discussion/communication is part of the problem… so I’m glad to get into a “constructive” debate anytime. I’m also available on IRC (nick: woo) if you want to discuss further.
-Andrew Douglas
Director of Application Development
Progressive Consulting Technologies, Inc.
Note: These comments are mine.. and mine alone.
March 5th, 2005 at 4:06 pmminor correction – I got long winded and sloppy
March 5th, 2005 at 4:29 pmviewcvs was a reimplementation of cvsweb (which was unmaintainable). Bonsai’s perl code is in about the same state of maintainability in my opinion.
better tools doesn’t produce people. So switching tools won’t do much good.
March 5th, 2005 at 5:01 pmmvl: I’d argue that better tools reduce the cost-of-entry for new people, making it more likely that talented people (who already have other obligations, and thus not all that much time to donate) will step up to help.
So better tools may produce people.
March 5th, 2005 at 6:44 pmAndrew: you have a point, and in a way it’s part of the same issue. I don’t know much about it, but switching to subversion (or changing anything with the tools) would require a significant time investment. With Mozilla, most of that kind of thing is done as a “spare time” activity by people who have other primary jobs.
If people can’t find half an hour to do a review, or a couple of hours to write a roadmap document, the chances of them finding a few days to reimplement tools is not high.
Their priority is working on the application code and getting releases out, not working on the development process, or the communications surrounding it.
March 6th, 2005 at 9:28 am“I’d argue that better tools reduce the cost-of-entry for new people”
Better tools may be able to facilitate that, but I don’t see how the tools alone can do it. How would a better tool help someone who has written a patch and is getting no response from the people who need to give them authorisation to get it committed?
March 6th, 2005 at 12:28 pmI think this in the first order not a mozilla.org problem but a issue for the project lead (Ben), who should organize an environment that allows successful work. If your project lead thinks that the current situation is OK, why should MoFO act?
March 6th, 2005 at 2:41 pmPersonally I think you could help attract a lot of people by using a more standardized build method (ie GNU Autotools). When compiling it is as hard as it is, there is no way I’m going to help out.
March 7th, 2005 at 2:50 amI think this in the first order not a mozilla.org problem but a issue for the project lead (Ben), who should organize an environment that allows successful work. If your project lead thinks that the current situation is OK, why should MoFO act?
I agree with you, bernd. Project lead, are you listening??
March 7th, 2005 at 2:54 amThe Mozilla Foundation and Wikimedia foundation seem to have no trouble at all raising money. Why not use that money to hire well qualified people? Open source is a global phenomenon. You could probably hire a farily large team of engineers in India with the support of one wise philanthropist. Maybe the government of Brazil could be convinced to fund a bigger team.
March 7th, 2005 at 2:59 amI haven’t ever had an issue with the review process. It seems to work fine for me. The only problem I’ve had is not being able to live up to the high standards that the review processes imposes. So, in my case I’ve had to spend many ours tweaking my patch to get it just right before I can get it commited. I pesonally, think this is how it should be. I’d be really worried if people were commiting my patches left and right. And, I think my pers tend to consider my programmer skills pretty highly, but that doesn’t matter having someone else review it and improving my code to their standards is a very hard thing to do. So, the problem isn’t with the reviewers it’s living up the reviewers high standards. No quick fixes!!
March 7th, 2005 at 3:04 amTimes change. As with so many other modules in Mozilla-land, owners and peers change. As someone who’s been reviewing Firefox front-end patches, perhaps you are in a position to nominate and promote new peers. Look around and see who’s active. They are the ones who will take this baby onward
March 7th, 2005 at 3:22 amWell, if there are not enough developers, then lower the barriers as an incentive to get more hackers developing on firefox. Also, make a clear task list with tasks of all different sizes. I don’t think that the OSS community will allow Firefox to die or the development issues you speak of to get too out of hand. However, if they do, then it is Open Source and the project can be taken in another direction.
I think though that:
1.) lowering the barrier for participation
2.) making clear, easy to find documentation of howto develop on firefox and tasks to be accomplished by clear deadlines that are publicly available…
should be the top priority if this project is getting off task.
March 7th, 2005 at 3:35 amThis may sound stupid, but you could be solving the problem right now. When you don’t get any satisfaction, take it to the people by starting a petition, or just getting the word out. I think we’re all hurting for new versions, but not at the expense of buggy releases. FF is bigtime now, and that means the same security firms that take pride in finding every hole in IE are all too eager to make a name for themselves doing the same with FF, no matter how trivial. (and some truely are) The more headlines people read like “Secunia has released 8 more security vulnerabilities in Firefox” the more they are willing to keep IE. Seeing as how FF is the browser with the sex appeal (and the download numbers to prove it) one would think that MoFo would put more effort into making it what it’s compeditors are not. Having you reviewing most of the time is not only doing a great disservice to you, but also a disservice to the end users. “more eyes, less mistakes”
You are right to walk. burning yourself out will only bring you displeasure, and under those circumstances you won’t be doing your best. Thank you for the work you have done, and hopefully with help, the work you will do.
March 7th, 2005 at 3:43 amI have never posted a single response to a plog or posting or the like, but allow me this one. Firefox is an exeptional piece of software. Moreover, the mozilla platform is a development environment with enormous potential. The mozilla foundation (developers, you, me?) however seem to have deglected this. While Firefox’s glory has been a flash, mozilla, or the embedding of, offers the most to opportunity to interest the community in the long term.
The mozilla code base offers a uniq set of APIs to develop cross platofrm, rich applicaitons very quickly. The problem is it is hard to use. As far as I can see (admitadly at a distance), the mozilla platform has taken second fiddle to the browser itself. While the browser is an invaluable tool, a well defined easy to use platform is what attracts developers. I for one (and likely many others) would like to use the mozilla platform to develop products. This in turn would lead to feedback into the mozilla base which would in turn benefit firefox and other applications.
* Freeze and promote the API.
* Clean up the code base.
* Ease the path for potential applications developers to adopt mozilla as a platform. I.e. don’t make them readon moz.org/embedded, xpcom, scriptable, etc, etc, etc. just to create hello.xul.
Until then developers will use other tools to get the job done, and mozilla will not benefit. Code reviews and code integrity come with eyes, not revision control systems. Freeze an API, give it a name, let us know where to find it, put it on the front page…and we will come.
March 7th, 2005 at 3:54 amdude, walk away, run if you can. I understand your frustration but bitching at the world will not fix it. It might patch it but not fix it.
Take a step back and decide why you are part of the project. Once you have a handle on that then decide were to go. If you stay use these posts to get help or plan a strategy to fix the problem. Leaders are born of need and it looks like it’s time for one to be born. Is it you? You decide!!
If it’s not you, then run for the nearest exit and enjoy every minute after the door closes in back of you. Life is too short to be unhappy…
March 7th, 2005 at 4:01 amRe the “better revision control” thread — and I’m *not* claiming that it’ll solve the problems here — a changeset-oriented RCS (in which changesets, and not tree-states, are first-level objects) is most appropriate to this kind of project, and SVN, like CVS, isn’t one. There are several available — but BitKeeper is non-free and expensive, Arch’s win32 support and GUI availability sucks right now, Darcs is by design unsuitable for really big projects, etc. I have high hopes for Arch or some bastard child thereof (a few of which are in development currently) — but that’s a few years down the line for something to be 100% absolutely ready for a large-scale cross-platform project with developers who don’t want much of a learning curve.
So — switching to SVN can make sense as a stepping stone, but with the amount of toolage that the Mozilla organization would need to rebuild each time they change revision control systems, I’m (speaking only as an outsider) not convinced that it’s worth it for them right now, unless they decide that idiological purity can go to hell and BitMover donates them licenses.
All that said — a version of Tinderbox or Bonsai built around Arch or some friend thereof would be much, *much* simpler and more maintainable than the existing implementation. I’ve built my share of tools that tie in to revision control systems — and CVS has a vast number of headaches that Arch, by design, gets rid of.
March 7th, 2005 at 4:06 amIm impressed, you’vE matured very nice.
March 7th, 2005 at 5:00 amOne would think there’d be way more enthusiasm among the revewers around a product millions of people have flocked to.
March 7th, 2005 at 5:15 amrecently i’m assigned to a mozilla printer enhancement project in my company.right from the day one,i’m finding it difficult to work the code and development.GNOME and OO.o have a gr8 community of hackers around it and i can go for help to them.but wats the case of mozilla…/me cant find even a single dedicated hacker around to help me. may be its high time the mozilla people think and form a community of hackers to help further development.
March 7th, 2005 at 5:41 amI`d be willing to help out if someone could set up a dummy environment package on windows/linux to work with, or alternatively, a complete and thorough step by step tutorial on how to do it on platform XYZ. Preferrably it delivers a hello world sample to play with, that builds out of the box, and that has everything ready to continue with the real stuff.
I`m not scared about not being apt enough to help out in the coding/reviewing process, but I don`t want to lose my time going through all the hurdles before I can actually start contributing.
Otherwise, Firefox IS the dope! Keep it hot!
March 7th, 2005 at 5:49 amget google put some $$ on developers make then a special edition of firefox called: Gfoxy
google browser anyone?
March 7th, 2005 at 6:25 amI have worried about that for a while now until I wrote this: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=136438&cid=11394842
I really don’t think fancy new features should (can) be a top priority right now anymore but instead the core problem of getting new developers needs to be solved not just for now but also for the future. While I agree that changing things like the versioning system won’t change much I believe splitting up the codebase into more handy chunks and giving “outsiders” more power (eg regular contributers should need no code review) should be the goal. I think it’s this sharp devision between core (Foundation) and outside (everybody else) developers that is the main problem here.
March 7th, 2005 at 6:31 amI must say that I’m not surprised that Firefox is unable to build a development community around it. And I think the whole problem can be summed up to lack of communication.
I’ve felt this many times while doing the Firefox pt-PT localization. It seems that the Firefox process is still very much “netscapian”, with lots of rules that nobody cares to explain to people wanting to contribute, and processes that every new contributer has to find out for himself, every single time.
And related directly to the localization process, the documentation needed to get started is always outdated and insufficient, and after we get rolling some change pops up and we have to start all over. And we never get any voice on those changes, we’re just informed after the fact.
If Firefox wants to be a successful OSS project, it has to get rid of the “software house” mentality. Right now the core developers are _the_ developers and every other contributor is just an outsider. Sometimes we even feel like outsiders, some kind of nuisance that never stops shouting for attention and crying for help.
This has to change! Communication is _the_ crucial factor for an OSS project.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:04 amYOu fucking linux fanboy, suck my dick.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:12 am> I think something along those lines (*cough* subversion *cough*) would help…
To be honest it doesn’t need a change of source control because it sounds like (from the original post) what the project needs is proper people management.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:31 amHi, my name is fred and I like to suck dick!
March 7th, 2005 at 7:47 amI have no comment at this time.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:48 amI am just an end user of the Firefox product, a simple number added to the millions of downloads. I do not code. I think that the folks who have contributed and continue to contribute to this wonderful work of art are unselfish, highly intelligent, caring and giving souls. At some point we all shoulder a bit more than we should have to, it makes us upset as we try to work through it. From what I read, it is time for others to help out, talented coders with the project and laymen like myself with donations of money, airline miles, (anyone who can give up their timeshare for a week, for free, in a nice vacation spot), pretty much anything to show how much we appreciate the hard work. Things could always be worse… you could be this guy, http://www.akg.cwc.net/crazy.gif
Regards – Tom
March 7th, 2005 at 7:51 amM$ are going to love this blog…
March 7th, 2005 at 7:55 amThere is something getting in the way of the reviewers and developers.
Find out what is causing those “process” issues and then tackle them one by one. Speaking as a developer, I am happy to contribute. What I find very daunting is getting up and productive when there is so little to guide one. This kind of issue can be solved with a few dedicated people who don’t even necessarily have to be coders or reviewers. Find those process-oriented hackers and use them to write the guides.
Good luck!
March 7th, 2005 at 8:04 amMaybe people just have long memories. I tried a long time ago to do some work on Mozilla, but it took so much time and disk space to build I eventually gave up, and haven’t touched it since. I’ve never looked at the Firefox source, but from my Mozilla experience I expect it to be big and complex and hard to work with, so I don’t touch it. Whether my expectations are true or not I have no idea!
March 7th, 2005 at 8:10 amI think one of the main problems I’ve had with mozilla-based efforts is the steep learning curve and the amount of information that seems to change between releases. In writing a small plugin mainly based off the efforts of others, figuring out what needs to change to keep it up todate between releases was very difficult.
The amount of effort just trying to write a plugin installer and plugin wasn’t nearly nice enough on the effort/reward ratio for many developers.
March 7th, 2005 at 8:17 amI agree, it’s nearly impossible to get reviews that are touching toolkit or browser. And when you get that review it’s already been changed in CVS.
March 7th, 2005 at 8:24 amOne of the most ‘killing’ things for developers to contribute is the lack of response of reviewers on submitted patches. It can take months of begging before a module owner will actually start a review of a patch, even if they address serious memory leaks.
March 7th, 2005 at 8:25 amAlthough reviewing (and superreviewing) should be done very carefully, it should be fast enough to allow incremental development and more iterations of improvement of chunks of existing and new code.
Although you probably realize it, the Firefox user community appreciates you guys a lot. You’ve made the best browser around, while making it seem effortless.
As for the developer issue, I have noticed that when it comes to Moz development, there seems to be few devs who are willing to assist up and coming hackers. Perhaps a program such as KDE’s Junior Jobs, would help by increasing the developer base for Firefox. Granted the new-comers would not automatically be core quality, but you have to start somewhere.
March 7th, 2005 at 9:04 amPutting the word out like you know have may actually help you in your cause…You needs other as passionate as you to run with the project…Its unfortunate but sometimes the ones who started the race with you will simply not make it…Time for fresh blood to assist you in making Firefox the product you envision…Where can people who are programmers send in an e-resume for you to check over? (and I ain’t one of them, double clicking is tough enough for me!;)
March 7th, 2005 at 9:39 amI’d just like to point out that it is pretty hard to find the firefox source code on the site. And the site doesn’t really promote a development community at all. All they show are extensions and firefox. Maybe if you had some more stuff on the front page like “Help Develop Firefox”…people would help
March 7th, 2005 at 10:15 amThe biggest issue i have with firefox is compared to the mozilla suite the amount of control you have in the GUI is much much less than the mozilla suite.
Also I personally do not agree with the break the suite up into individual componenets idea. I am also not sure about the FF restrictive EULA either.
March 7th, 2005 at 10:19 amI’d like to retract my previous statement with the excuse of being tired. Have a nice day all.
March 7th, 2005 at 10:21 amGentlemen,
May I make a suggestion that you reach out to the universities of the world for hacker support?
I have made suggestions about promoting Firefox at universities in your promotion forum (where I have witnessed massive support for Firefox) yet I did not receive a response.
I am a computer science professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and I know that if a conentrated effort was made to recruit coders you would get a response because that is where the passion is for this product and there are thousands of potential recruits out there who would give anything to be a part of Firefox and other Mozilla products but the Foundation has done nothing to recruit them.
If you want to play in the bbig leagues with Microsoft then you are going to have to recruit like they do.
I’d hate to see a great idea go down in flames. You have the world’s attention – you have center stage – you have your moment – don’t be idiots and lose the moment.
March 7th, 2005 at 10:28 amMozilla needs to have paid developers to do a lot more of the “grunt work”. Free software: free-as-in-beer, free-as-in-speech, and free-as-in-unemployed. Mozilla needs to find the cash from somewhere and pay lots of smart people. Just compare with Google’s recruitment.
March 7th, 2005 at 10:38 amI’d come work for MoFo… but you’d need to move away from Gecko first.
While I’m not a FF fan, I do hate to see problems in the development process. I guess the news about Google hiring the MoFo devs, and AOLTW building NS8 based off of FF kinda overshadowed how things really were. :/
Take a step back… breath… look at what is there, and what it could be, and then decide if it is still something you want to be a part of.
March 7th, 2005 at 10:58 amViva Chile y Firefox
March 7th, 2005 at 11:08 amRe progress (or lack thereof), I’ve been commenting on Asa Dotzler’s blog about the weird over-confidence and complacency that seems to be dominating the Fx scene since v1.
Example: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007653.html
I’ve written comments and sat back waiting to be flamed. I haven’t been flamed which makes me wonder if my impressions are correct. If can gather the impression that the Fx scene has ground almost to a halt, plans to release feature-poor updates at a vert slow rate and is over-reacting to a small win in the marketshare stakes… if I can gather this just from following blogs all the way down in Melbourne Australia, then what I’m seeing must be the smoke from a rapidly (not) growing fire (pardon the pun) fox.
Then the Gartner article was released, giving all but those with the most fanatical religion-like faith in Fx somewhat of a reality check.
Now these comments from inside the development team!
Congratulations for having the courage to stand up and say what you feel Mike. If there’s issues in the Fx scene then the rest of the community needs to know about it.
March 7th, 2005 at 11:21 amI really appreciate the HUGE amount of work that has gone into Firefox and Mozilla and Thunderbird and Sunbird by all parties involved–I use them all daily (except for sunbird since I can’t print yet.)
I hope you don’t get too discouraged, and if no one capable is willing to help—THEN TAKE YOUR TIME. Don’t get discouraged and quit as I personally greatly appreciate any work you’ve done to improve Firefox. If it takes until 2006 for webforms, so be it, I’d rather see glacial-paced improvement than none.
Perhaps you could ask the bigger, well funded linux distributions for a donation of worker’s time or a $$$ incentive.
March 7th, 2005 at 11:59 amThe reason I’ve basically stopped contributing to Mozilla/Firefox is simply that it has gone from ‘Cross platform’ to ‘mac/windows/linux’. It still happens to build on my Solaris machines, but now we have ‘blessed’ and ‘irrelevant’ OS-es. Though I could understand this from a commercial organization but I am dissapointed in this change in attitude from Mozilla.
March 7th, 2005 at 12:31 pmHonestly, I’m skeptical too of the whole 1.5 release. As good as the MoFo has done on the current release of Mozilla, Firefox is clinging by a thread. I got so fed up with the crashing bullshit that I reverted to Mozilla. I’d rather use an older, insecure version in place of a buggy, crash-every-5-minutes-for-no-fucking-reason version. Really, I don’t think you know how upset I get when I’m staring BugZilla in the face AND it too crashes! How do you document BugZilla crashing??? MoFo needs to rethink their approach to dominating the browser market, the road ahead is a bumpy one, people will be tossed and turned, but selling out is NOT the way.
March 7th, 2005 at 12:31 pmI was PAID to work on Mozilla a few years back and would never do it again. Can’t see why a volunteer would either. What’s the fun of programming if you can never wade through the social heirarchy of unresponsive powers-that-be to get anything checked off?
I understand, of course. How many people outside of Mozilla have even HEARD of C++, let alone have a PhD in it? Can’t be more than twenty, right? Then, on top of that, it helps if you’d enjoy tweaking Microsoft. You’re only left with three people who are qualified to help you. (Those numbers are off, you say? Then there must be another reason you’re not attracting help…)
Twenty-two years of programming in the Valley and I have never seen such a glacial project.
You twelve-year bottlenecks can keep it all to yourselves. I’m busy getting stuff done, making things other than Mozilla work. And I’m enjoying myself.
March 7th, 2005 at 12:52 pmAm I wrong to think that the ONLY problem is proper guidance ?
March 7th, 2005 at 1:13 pmWe need someone at the top telling/asking us individuals what to do and when to do it.
If you need the help of a proficient C++ coder, I maintain a 150,000 line cross-platform Peer-2-Peer GUI (xMule) for the last 2 years now.
Let’s see…GUI, cross-platform, net-centric, 12 years c++ experience…
You should probably consider it.
March 7th, 2005 at 1:15 pmI sincerely hope the previous post was a joke. No more than twenty people having heard of C++? You must be kidding me. An extremely large part of software development the world over uses C++!
It is necessary to have a smaller group of people with patch approval powers otherwise the project would simply become unmanageable and would collapse because of a lack of decision-making ability. I admit that something needs to be done to improve the rate of progress but suddenly allowing everyone to do what they want with the codebase and make checkins willy nilly is a simply ridiculous and unworkable solution.
March 7th, 2005 at 1:18 pmWhat can you expect when your entire process relies on the charity of others.
You should expect to be shorthanded, underfunded, feature-poor, badly documented, and late. There are too many open source/foss/gnu titles to gain traction anymore.
In fact, expecting more seems arrogant. The church promises eternal life, requires no skillset whatsoever, and has the widest possible audience. Most churches are underfunded and shorthanded. You cannot seriously expect to do better than a religion.
How many projects can FOSS sustain without a revenue model? A few hundred, maybe less. Probably around 50 projects will get the attention they deserve. The rest will be quasi-orphans and stragglers at best.
Sad thing is that if the “hero” of the anti-IE movement cannot find resources, what can?
March 7th, 2005 at 1:20 pmBoth Firefox and Thunderbird are excellent products. Charge for them. Offer a 30 day trial and after that deactivate the code except for a purchase option.
You’ve built a great product. Charge for it. Take the revenue and hire resources. Money talks, and there is nothing wrong with what it says.
March 7th, 2005 at 1:49 pmThere is an article about this blog entry:
March 7th, 2005 at 2:03 pmhttp://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21628
Of course I was joking, or, to be more accurate, facetious.
There are legions of qualified, enthusiastic, idle C++ programmers. And that’s just in the local junior high schools.
Re-think the organization such that resources can be utilized and work can get done.
March 7th, 2005 at 2:29 pmSwitching to Subversion would be possible, although there is some work to do to get the same level of tools and automation. LXR does not require CVS at all. Tinderbox can work without CVS. There is an SVN Bonsai being developed, most features done already.
March 7th, 2005 at 2:33 pm“There are legions of qualified, enthusiastic, idle C++ programmers. And that’s just in the local junior high schools.”
Don’t understimate the talent needed to work on something like fox. High school education alone doesn’t give you the sort of talent to progress at a rate faster than today, as Jeff says in comment 3..
March 7th, 2005 at 2:50 pmI don’t know alot of programming and all the coders you need, but I want to say I don’t think I can live w/o firefox and thunderbird. Right now you have microsoft peeing their pants with these two products, there’s a million companies who wish they could do this. If you want to make people pay I would baeck you. A browser is used countless times each day. You can’t put a price on it.
March 7th, 2005 at 3:11 pmI must say i have been very impressed with Firefox and would be very saddened to see it fade. It has proven to be a wonderfull replacement to IE of which I must still use for the Magic ticket tracking system. After reading… most of the comments there are 2 things that struck me.
1) You need an active leader to cordinate efforts to make devleopment more viable and allow you to keep your focus on development alone.
2) You should consider a fund drive to raise some money. With a good leader to cordinate efforts you could take advantage of programmers in locations like India which can be hired on for just a few thousand a year.
Either way i appreciate your efforts and hope you don’t lose momentum. You’ve built a terrific App that i hope to see turn IE inside out and leave MS crawling behind.
March 7th, 2005 at 4:01 pmI hope things get sorted out. For the good of your happiness and well-being, and for the good of the worldwide Firefox community.
March 7th, 2005 at 5:55 pmI truly felt sad when I read this. There is not words to describe how much weight Firefox put of my shoulders. Finally I did no longer have to sacrifice blood sweat and tears over an inadequate browser that provided me with nothing but spyware and spam. I sincerely hope that you will pull it together and continue to do a tiresome task. Bear in mind that millions thank you every day for the tremendous and amazing work you do. Keep on making the internet a comfertable and problemfree experience!
March 7th, 2005 at 6:20 pmIt seems that I forgot to tank the active part of the community… Anyway, thanks to all who contribute!
March 7th, 2005 at 6:23 pmWell, I think the problem is you need more people telling other what to do. As it is at the moment, nobody knows what to do.
I tried building firefox 4 or 5 times, each time I had to struggle through tonnes of useless google results to find out how to build it, and even then I had to use my noggin to work out what’d gone wrong when the errors happened.
Better docs, and more bossy people; this is what you need.
March 7th, 2005 at 6:47 pmWhen open source becomes big enough it is going to commercial. Open source is actual a free ads.
March 7th, 2005 at 6:58 pmI think the problem stems from the lack of guidance and help with respect to getting started. There are many, many talented programmers out there who should be working themselves up the ranks.
I am not one of them, at least not yet, but I have submitted basic patches which get bitrotten and die over and over again. A no hand-holding policy is all well and good, but when you need extras, you should be extending that proverbial hand outwards.
As a final note, hang in there. You may feel like you’re the only one that cares, but it’s people like you who get things changed in the world.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:20 pm> David Lynch:
> I’d argue that better tools reduce the cost-of-entry for new people, making it more likely that talented people (who already have other obligations, and thus not all that much time to donate) will step up to help.
Here is an example to backup what you are saying:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=282776
They call the project Open Source, but I don’t think it really is. I have stuff documented on my PC that I haven’t seen documented anywhere else, however it’s so hard to get into that little tight nit of developers that I’ll have to just keep it to myself. I have time to make the occasional additions to the Firefox project, however not enough to be wasting on getting to the stage where I would be aloud to do that.
I don’t even want to be able to edit pages or be given any credit at all. All I want is to be able to submit new, or edit of existing documentation etc., then somebody could either accept or reject it. Submitting a bug report isn’t a practical alternative. Not to mention the fact that I don’t want, or have time to, mother a bug report. If I were able to just submit the changes for approval, then somebody could just say weather the changes were good or bad and then we could all just move onto the next thing.
March 7th, 2005 at 7:33 pmMozilla is alienating potential developers with its behaviour.
The entry level to mozilla development is too high, and it doesn’t help that you need to sign papers and snail-mail them just to be able to commit a translation to firefox. Documentation on the site is obsolete, and it doesn’t help that things change in the last minute (like the sudden change to CVS based l10n in Firefox-1.0).
And there’s the problem that what Mozilla actually distributes is not free software (as in speech), and Mozilla seems to be totaly uninterested in the issue.
March 8th, 2005 at 12:18 amI’m going to say this as a man with little knowledge of how the Mozilla system functions, but with lots of knowledge about being the only one who cares about a project:
Don’t get discouraged!
It’s hard… man is it fucking hard. But consider this: if you got slashdotted, do you really think nobody cares? I’m sitting here behind my desk in a tiny city somewhere in the Netherlands, and I’m posting on your blog. Know what I mean?
And although I hate to admit it: I can totally understand it if you want to quit a team that just does not care (if that is what you are saying). But in your case I would think about the millions (!!) of people backing you up mentally.
Firefox can’t die, it just can’t…
March 8th, 2005 at 4:15 amHello,
I have never been a great fan of MSIE, so in the “distant past” I started using Opera. Since a few years now I am using Mozilla, first the package, now Thunderbird and Firefox seperately.
As a mailprogram I used Netscape 4.79 till last year because no program could handle my 2 Gb mailarchive. But Thunderbird can handle it fine, thanx a milion for that alone
All I want to say realy, is that I am verry happy with Mozilla. In my eyes it is the only serious “other browser”. My company (I should say “I”, but that sounds too selfcentred
) have developed our own statistical system, and in the last half year alone the usage of Mozilla has more than doubled…
Don’t give up now, you guys (and girls?) are getting there, come on!
Eesger Toering
March 8th, 2005 at 4:28 amKnooppunt (The Netherlands)
I don’t understand … can someone explain me what’s going on in 3 years old’ English?
March 8th, 2005 at 5:36 amHi.
Have been using Firefox for Win for a long time, and I am very impressed with this browser. It would be a great shame and a big security risk to leave Firefox dead in the water as many corporations and institutions have adopted Firefox (however silently they may be about it). Why not seek funding also from the European Union too if it is possible. Many Europeans, including I, have adopted Firefox as a primary browser. Minimo did receive funds from Nokia, wouldn’t it be possible to find external funds and perhaps brainpower from companies with interests in seeing viable alternatives to that of Microsoft products.
Thank you, and plz keep Firefox alive and well
March 8th, 2005 at 7:29 am/xeza
Your browser is very steady. More steady and safer then IE. Let ta world know though! Try to get a deal for standard installation in a shop or for business so let’s talk to the big shot’s.
March 8th, 2005 at 7:57 amI hope you own some money with it so you can hire and keep some motivated people.
Best regards
March 8th, 2005 at 8:43 amThis kind of articles must be great for the closed source community, the big companies who make the claim that open source can not provide the support in the long run.
I have been worried about the development of open source communities for some time now. Any egomaniac can take the source and start his/her own project. I have seen too many orphaned projects at Sourceforge. So, instead of nurturing a limited number of developer communities on key applications we allow the uncontrolled growth of heaps upon heaps of projects, many of them doing the same or similar thing.
OK, Open Source is about choice. I wish I had more skills in coding so I could help. However, I don’t have to skills, thus I am limited to advocacy. But how can I suggest a company to transfer to Firefox when -apparently- the final person who works on it says he wants to quit?
Final words: more cooperation, less projects, more sense of direction.
March 8th, 2005 at 11:36 amHi Mike,
I sorry to hear that the development frustrates you. It seems quite strange to me that only half a dozen developers hold all the cards. (n.b. I have great respect for all of you) I would love to help you, but i really wouldn’t know how to do my part. I’m a themer myself (PimpZilla), but i don’t know enough of the xul kernel stuff.
I think the Mozilla/firefox developers should get some serious corporate sponsorship (ibm, sun: pay up please!), in order to maintain a dedicated team on this superior browser. Open source is cool, but some people have to guide the whole thing and they should get some doe.
Keep up the good work man & please don’t quit, lot’s of people have great respect for you and your work, i know i do.
grtz Marco
March 8th, 2005 at 12:45 pmI am not a programmer, not unless you’re considering doing Firefox in 680x assembly language. However, I do use Firefox on a daily basis, and I recommend it to anyone who will listen. What can us ordinary-user, non-developer types do to help? Write to Mozilla Foundation? Start a petition? Do a fund drive? Users are part of the community, too, and they/we have an obligation to contribute to the community however they can. Let us know, I’m sure people will be glad to help in any way that they can!
March 8th, 2005 at 1:55 pmFirefox is wat i use daily like millions do…it cant just fade away…it wont…
firefox has got the appeal to attract numerours developers, if the persons involved in active firefox development cud do some community building effort…
Come on guys…u guys r really kewl…if 6 persons in the core team can take firefox this long…think abt couple of 100 developers…hmmm…i guess gettin couple of hundred developers is not goin to be tough…if core developers cud sit & write nice tutorials & articles abt firefox development internals…
its u guys who know how to hack…teach everyone how to hack…provide enough info to let a developer start writin basic programs…with firefox devel tools…& also make him understand the architecture…
firefox platform is not widely used in open source projects devel like other stuff…so we shud understand & do somethin abt it…instead of lukin 4 seasoned developers to fit right into the core team…we can kindle interest of many a hundred developers with good firefox plaform internals advocacy…
May be not everyone wud start to contribute to firefox…they might get into someother project with xul…but some will stick around to do some minor firefox devel…& few might get into the core team after gettin their hands wet…i guess we can also ‘ve gud code reviewers frm that bunch…
although i admire the core developers…u guys shud ‘ve avoided this situation…a premiere open source project development in dire straits…a bad bad example…
guys…its not just the core developers…anyone who knows how to hack firefox r mozilla…plz contribute to the community by writing & providing info to developers…
Im a member of a LUG in India…i can ask my lug members to contribute code…im also a CTO in a linux based solutions company…our management ppl r really kewl…they wud allow our core team to work on firefox…
lets concentrate on preparin stuff which wud help developers to come rushin in for active firefox development…
WE can do it
March 8th, 2005 at 1:57 pmFirefox is wat i use daily like millions do…it cant just fade away…it wont…
firefox has got the appeal to attract numerours developers, if the persons involved in active firefox development cud do some community building effort…
Come on guys…u guys r really kewl…if 6 persons in the core team can take firefox this long…think abt couple of 100 developers…hmmm…i guess gettin couple of hundred developers is not goin to be tough…if core developers cud sit & write nice tutorials & articles abt firefox development internals…
its u guys who know how to hack…teach everyone how to hack…provide enough info to let a developer start writin basic programs…with firefox devel tools…& also make him understand the architecture…
firefox platform is not widely used in open source projects devel like other stuff…so we shud understand & do somethin abt it…instead of lukin 4 seasoned developers to fit right into the core team…we can kindle interest of many a hundred developers with good firefox plaform internals advocacy…
May be not everyone wud start to contribute to firefox…they might get into someother project with xul…but some will stick around to do some minor firefox devel…& few might get into the core team after gettin their hands wet…i guess we can also ‘ve gud code reviewers frm that bunch…
although i admire the core developers…u guys shud ‘ve avoided this situation…a premiere open source project development in dire straits…a bad bad example…
guys…its not just the core developers…anyone who knows how to hack firefox r mozilla…plz contribute to the community by writing & providing info to developers…
Im a member of a LUG in India…i can ask my lug members to contribute code…im also a CTO in a linux based solutions company…our management ppl r really kewl…they wud allow our core team to work on firefox…
lets concentrate on preparin stuff which wud help developers to come rushin in for active firefox development…
WE can do it
March 8th, 2005 at 1:57 pmMike, we need your work so dont quit but find new partners. You made a great browser and the best is yet to come
March 8th, 2005 at 3:19 pmHi,
March 8th, 2005 at 4:10 pmI am not soo competent a programmer myself(mainly for the Palm OS), but I love FireFox and thus am willing to help when it is possible.
Please email me with what I can do!
best regards and keep on going
Tam Hanna
Like a friend said to me m8 “Dont let the B***ards get you down”
in the meantime maybe you should tell your friends to all go out and spend some quality time bowling, watching a movie and a good meal that way you get to discuss what the problems are. Else the cynical side of me would say Microsoft may have paid your colleagues to go because of IE7 then i would dump Mozilla and produce another browser 
March 8th, 2005 at 4:30 pmAs your average Firefox user i’m very happy with the product and what you’ve all done. Please stay and make it even better. We’ve counting on you.
March 8th, 2005 at 4:48 pmFor those of you complaining that it’s hard to get into the “close knit family” of devellopers, or to get permission to edit things – the very fact that you’re sitting here on Mike’s blog debating this is proof that you are wrong. If you want in, all you have to do is step up. These guys don’t have the time to hand hold if they’re going to be reviewing. They ALL have full time jobs elsewhere. They’re not going to come up to you and say “hey, you’re just sitting there, I think you might have talent.” Get yourself out there and get noticable. Submit patches for review – but make sure you read the instructions on how to submit them properly. There’s one guy on the slashdot site complaining about a patch of his that is sitting there, Mike looked it up and it’s because the guy didn’t fill out the form properly, it’s not been sent to anyone to look AT. Get into irc and ask questions, there’s always someone around in there. Just don’t wait for permission. This isn’t a social club, it’s a business. They don’t invite anyone in because it’s not invitation only. Step up, show them what you can do, and they’ll let you do it.
March 8th, 2005 at 5:05 pmOMFG DONT STOP FIREFOX OR I’LL COMMIT SUICIDE(im fuckin serious)
March 9th, 2005 at 5:32 amAWOL!? WTF!!! Where are they? Did they leave a break-up note? At least a “I’ll be back later” note?! Check Seattle if they’re in a meeting with $$$ in their face! Check Netscape/AOL and see if they’re throwing $$$ at them too!
March 9th, 2005 at 1:10 pmI don’t want people to think I’m starting a rumor, but hearing they’re AWOL is not cool – I would like to know if I got dumped!
P.S.> Good luck, we love you… er, we love Firefox!
March 9th, 2005 at 1:10 pmThe problem with firefox/mozilla now is the same one with XFree86. Th problem is ‘CORE developers’. If you think you are so much a better developers who are different from all the other developers, then your project is in trouble of attracting new hackers.
There should not be a selected core developers. The developing process should be open and transparent to all the community. The ‘core developers’ should not hide behind a closed door and do their magic inside.
The solution? Look at what Keith have done to the XFree86? He understand he cannot change the mind of those elitism. So he started the X.org effort and X.org is moving fast with more and more contributions from all over the community.
People want to contribute, even for huge and messy projects like X11, but the core developer system just closed the door!
Debian’s 1000+ developers and still growing model is better. Else, you have to find a patching maniac like Linus as the project leader.
Subversion cannot solve the problem. This is a typical mis-managed organization. The structure itself was rotten.
March 9th, 2005 at 10:59 pmWe are not wrong. Look at the history (flame war) of the spliting of XFree86. The core team try to keep their elitism status by opening up its developing maillist. After a couple of years, nothing changed. Because they don’t understand or admit that it’s the core team system which is THE problem. mailing list or blog are just tools. Tools cannot fix a wrong system though a good system can use a better tools.
Anyway, any who are inteseted in finding out what’s wrong with firefox, please read past log of XFree86’s devel mailing list.
March 9th, 2005 at 11:10 pmWell then, how do you explain Mike’s presence and credibility here? He went to work, did what he could, and respected the way the team wanted things done. Maybe that’s really the part that’s hard? You think things should be done a different way, and you want to be able to do things that way no matter what? It’s not your project. In the end, someone’s got to run it, and they’ve got to run it the best way they know how. In terms of the product, Ben’s way is working.
As for the issue of manpower, is that Ben’s fault or MoFo’s? Or is it the fault of the people that want free reign because it’s opensource? At least some of the guys that have requested checkin access have come right out and said they’d use that access to push more stuff through with a less careful review process, then when someone has tried to explain to them “look, we need to do things this way, keep working on bugs and we’ll think about it” they’ve thrown bloody fits. They’re like my parents – they come in saying they want to “help” but by the time they’re done the pots are in the plate cupboard, the kids’ clothes are in my drawers and to this day we can’t find things that were on the coffee table when they got here. By the time we took everything apart and put it back where it belonged we’d done more work than if we’d just done it ourselves in the first place.
There is something about the words “help” and “free” that give people such a sense of entitlement, especially when used together. Firefox doesn’t need a revolution, firefox IS the revolution and while it needs help, it needs its pots in the pot cupboard and it needs people that can understand that.
March 10th, 2005 at 3:29 amThis is project burnout – its a management issue. MoFo, get it together NOW.
Congrats on a product that is shaking the world.
March 10th, 2005 at 1:15 pmLots of us want to encourage Firefox development.
Consider putting out a tip jar? I’m serious, how else can outsiders recognize and encourage developers?
You’re counting on the pleasure of doing it to reward people? Sure, but — you’re ignoring the HUGE number of us benefiting who have no way to reward/reinforce/thank/support you.
Employers have quietly started allowing people like me to use Firefox since 1.0 came out, because they’re aware that slight competence using a computer, plus Firefox, is — competence.
As compared to no competence using a computer plus IE, which requires their spending several staff salaries just cleaning up what Explorer, despite the company firewall and email filters and networked antivirus lets onto the company’s PC network, every single day.
If people are AWOL, either they’ve been burned out (which allowing a tip jar might help with), or bought off (maybe ditto), or kidnapped (got a ransom note? We’ll help pay) …
I’d been watching the official FF forums where nothing was very clear except developing confusion. This helps explain why.
Other than that, if the problem is that Mozilla is more fun to develop, and Firefox is overwhelmed with users but not fun to develop, try rewarding people for moving to Mozilla!
—> I’d switch to Mozilla, if I knew AdBlock worked in it.<—
March 10th, 2005 at 2:42 pm“Without trying to whore myself”
You’re true, few whores get 97$ per work!
March 10th, 2005 at 4:41 pmHank – there is a donate button on the Mozilla site and in the Mozilla store. As for directing praise to a specific developer, you can always email them, or send of an email to the Mozilla Foundation. It’s not huge, but it’s something.
March 10th, 2005 at 5:27 pmI’m a part-time hacker of Firefox and I have to admit I am getting disillusioned as well. Having a minor (one liner) patch that takes over a week to get reviewed is very disheartening and I get the sense that no one cares. Some patches have been sitting there for months – bit-rotted and hacker gone.
I think more reviewers/sr are needed, and developers trained up to roles – not just ‘figure it out for yourself and you might get invited’. If people are encouraged, they’re more willing to put in extra time and effort.
March 10th, 2005 at 8:01 pmI’ll be blogging soon on the plans to make this better. We do need to invest in talent, and not just hope it comes along ready-made. But that involves a serious investment of resources, and a plan. More on this soon.
March 11th, 2005 at 3:35 amMike, I’m sure not a hacker, but I want to tell you many people help and are around the firefox project. Those people are not known by people like you, because they are not hackers, not famous, they just do a day-to-day job in forums to help newbies with firefox, thunderbird, etc.
To take the french exemple of Geckozone, it works really well, and it’s not an easy job, even if there is less pressure and if it doesn’t requiere as much (technical) skill as you have.
This message doesn’t mean “keep enduring the problems“, it just means “please try to solve them, because there are many people involved around the world“. Bye!
March 11th, 2005 at 7:34 amTime to elicit some corporate $’s & take the bull by the horns!
March 12th, 2005 at 5:22 pmI’m pissed off at what I read concerning Mozilla/Firefox continuing development. I JUST download Firefox a few days ago. It’s the BEST web browser I ever used! I just LOVE IT! It’s clean, simple, easy to use and faster than IE. I tested the speed against even Opera and it’s faster than Opera! The webpages takes seconds compare to minutes to load. Man, I hope I did not make a mistake and download the BEST browser around only to have it trashed like garbage! Do you realize how many fans there are of Mozilla???? It’s like you are forcing people to switch back to that slow, pity-ful, forever unsecured IE. What are you people thinking about?? What is your MAJOR mal-adjustment???? Mozilla can BEAT IE completely and ANY other browser!!!! You have a faithful following. I REALLY believe you people should seriously re-think this and fully develop the next release of Mozilla suite. Let’s make this the most secured, reliable browser built. Keep giving IE HEADACHES!
March 12th, 2005 at 10:16 pm[...] 12 Marzo 2005
Segun menciona uno de los desarrolladores de Firefox en su blog, el navegador esta avanzando muy lento en su desarrollo comparado con su crecimiento, ya que a pes [...]
March 13th, 2005 at 1:06 am[...] 3/11/2005 – 6:07 pmMozilla Myths and Clarifications In the week since my now-infamous-and-slashdotted blog post, I’ve had a lot of discussions with a lot of people, [...]
March 13th, 2005 at 1:16 amAs an OSS developer of a small project I can understand that symptoms of burnout appear after the first adrenalin boost of the initial release. Most OSS projects die after the initial version as the main developer looses interest in the now solved problem. You made your vision materialize and … that’s it, let’s move on to the next cool new technology.
Maintaining a project and keeping it alive is still much more difficult than starting a new one. Most of the great developers I know don’t like to maintain source code.
It’s really frustrating that an OSS project like Firefox that got so much media buzz now seems to suffer from these symptoms, too. Come on guys, you have some gold in your hands which took the world by storm. Stand up and face the thread of IE7.
IBM, Sun or Google: open up your vaults and give some money to Firefox. They can really tickle Big Bill
March 13th, 2005 at 7:16 am>IBM, Sun or Google: open up your vaults and give some money to Firefox.
What would IBM, Sun and Google gain by supporting FF?
March 13th, 2005 at 11:34 am>re-think this and fully develop the next release of Mozilla suite.
If you are running FireFox, you aren’t running the Mozilla suite. They are retiring the Mozilla Suite, which is a single bloated application which contains the Mozilla Web Browser, the Mozilla Web Composer, Mozilla e-Mail and Chatzilla (I might be missing a component or two, it’s bloated and it’s hard to remember everything).
There are far better and far more popular web design tools, and in this XML, ASP and ASP.NET age, Composer needs a lot of work to be viable. On the other side of the coin, applications like OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office save into XHTML or HTML format efficiently, and users seeking just basic web pages are typically far better off using one of those products.
I use FireFox, and have for a while, as my primary web browser. I was using The Bat, and am now using Thunderbird primarily for e-mail. I haven’t started the Mozilla Suite, although I have 1.7 installed, in over a year.
>>IBM, Sun or Google: open up your vaults and give some money to Firefox.
>What would IBM, Sun and Google gain by supporting FF?
IBM has contributed heavily to the development of Mozilla in the past. Go into BugZilla, search for IBM, and you will find many hits. They maintain commercial ports via Software Choice for OS/2 and for AIX.
Sun contributes sometimes, and in terms of Java, contributes a ton to the browser. Java is an important feature to many businesses, and is the only secure alternative to ActiveX/XPCOM based plugins Mozilla currently supports.
And Google, of course, pays the salaries of several key FireFox members, and has generally been very supportive of Mozilla.
The issue here isn’t money, or paid employees.
The issue, so people understand it, is that every code change that goes into a secure application like a Web Browser, an ATM machine, the telephone system, etc. has to undergo a review before it is comitted.
This is to look for blatant security breaches (if (stricmp(password,”letmein”)) goto success) and for less blatant problems (nsprintf(1024, buffer, “%10s”, string)). Problems like this last one are notorious, aren’t adressed well in college, and (most importantly) are easily overlooked even in a code review.
It’s also to look for blatant bugs, or things that “aren’t right.” Usually you review the prepatch code in parallel with the patched code, using a visual differencing tool, because seeing the changes out of context virtually guarauntees missing something important.
It’s probably lost here, but expecting one or two people who are programmers themselves to do this task, over months and months and months, is irresponsible of any organization or community.
Now people are going to chime in “why not let the community do it,” but the community has not proven itself effective at catching these sorts of problems in Linux. In Linux, there is a core of around twelve people catching these problems in the kernel. Individual packages security is rarely audited by anyone external to the package, and even distros such as Redhat Enterprise don’t necessarily audit a significant percentage of the code for security errors.
On the Microsoft side of things, the situation isn’t much different. You have a handful of people at Microsoft reviewing for security problems, and thousands of people contributing code to their operating system distributions. Just like Linux, they are divided into teams who predominantly work on their chosen package, and just like Linux, the quality of code from the various teams seems to vary considerably.
The issue is ultimately, you cannot train hundreds of thousands of programmers how to find and correct these errors overnight. And the single voice in the crowd calling out is difficult to find, and difficult to listen to, especially when they are stating things that are unpopular to hear.
XPCOM and Active-X, for example, work virtually identically. Everything from how components are installed to the level of access they have to the machine are identical. The amount of potential damage is identical. Someone familiar with Security understands that, and puts in controls to try to prevent malicious sites from installing XPCOM components, etc. The common contributor to Mozilla, however, has their head in the sand or puts their hands on their ears and chants lalalalala when people tell them it’s a security risk.
Simply hiring people blindly doesn’t help Mozilla, and simply adding more reviewers doesn’t help. The reviewers need to be familiar with large portions of the Mozilla code base, a truely formidable task, and the reviewers, likewise, have to be familiar with common security and stability problems, and on top of all this, have to be skilled programmers.
If you ask any skilled programmer if they would rather spend their days making sure everyone else is doing things right, reading other people’s code, and watching their own hard work get criticized again and again; or if they would rather be writing new code and cotnributing it and have the issue of review be someone else’s problem, I can promise you that the most typical response wouldn’t be wanting to review code for errors, security problems, etc.
March 15th, 2005 at 7:18 pm>What would IBM, Sun and Google gain by supporting FF?
Well it would any Bill – reason enough?
March 18th, 2005 at 3:11 pm“1.) lowering the barrier for participation
2.) making clear, easy to find documentation of howto develop on firefox and tasks to be accomplished by clear deadlines that are publicly available…
should be the top priority if this project is getting off task.”
I agree with this position. Hopefully, the project will employ an alternative management strategy in terms of delegating duties to others who may not have the greatest technical skills.
For example, someone like me with 1 year of C, C++ programming experience isn’t ready to contribute productive code, yet. However, I am able to write much of the technical documentation if this information is given to me. I was a Quality Manager for three years for a company of 150 employees and was responsible for all technical documentation (production & quality processes), sales analysis & projections. I would be more than happy to contribute my time. I could produce whatever user/developer/technical documentation you need while simultaneously learning more about the project. As I learn more about Firefox and enhance my programming skills, I could eventually start to contribute. Then, I would have to pass whatever skills assessment/test the Firefox folks want to give me in order to provide my first programming contributions to the project. Someone like me has a vital interest in this project because I sell pre-installed linux desktops. Firefox is one of the reasons people purchase a system from me. I would be willing to help however I can.
Chris
March 23rd, 2005 at 4:19 pm[...] te Blogeintrag von Mike Connor sich auch so sehr in den Medien wiederspiegeln wird wie ein vorheriger, der -wie es scheint- nur allzu gierig von bestimmten Magazinen übernommen wurde. W [...]
March 28th, 2005 at 10:12 amGegenoffensive Microsoft
Nach den Erfolgen des Firefox-Browsers (HNA berichtete) rüstet Microsoft nun zur Gegenoffensive, berichtet Spiegel Online. Während die Redmonder unplanmäßig ihren Internet Explorer in der Version 7 jetzt…
March 29th, 2005 at 5:37 amHi
With all the design concepts and other dross floating around in my head, I’ve become completely paralyzed on what to do next.
On one hand, I want to do something and I want to do it right. On the other hand, I don’t know what this “right” is.
I want to use controllers, but I don’t really know what they are. Right now, I have a bunch of cobbled together pages. I *could* move them into classes, which would probably help factoring them into more controller oriented things, but I want to get it right the first time. And I know I can’t.
In this mentality, I think I have bitten off more than I can chew. Every small step means more steps when the final design comes into place, but without small steps I cannot get anywhere.
I need help.
Imran Hashmi
November 4th, 2005 at 5:31 amhttp://www.visionstudio.co.uk