More Seamonkey fun (comments from the peanut gallery)
Disclaimer: I do not presume to speak for the Mozilla Foundation, or the people who are finally starting to rally to the banner of saving the suite. This is a mostly-neutral post from the “I don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect me” point of view. This does mean “don’t Slashdot me again” although I’ve only used 1/60th of my monthly bandwidth thus far.
Something to keep in mind when talking about releasing a “Mozilla Suite 1.8″ that my skimming of the n.p.m.seamonkey postings hasn’t quite turned up:
Whether people like/want to admit this or not, if the Mozilla Foundation releases a 1.8 final, people will view it as an new stable version that they can migrate to. Which puts MoFo on the hook in users’ minds for any stability/security issues that may occur, so MoFo then has to certify their releases. This is in addition to the existing committment to the 1.7.x branch.
MoFo already has three major commitments in the QA/certification sphere:
1) Seamonkey 1.7.x
2) Firefox/Thunderbird 1.0.x
3) Firefox/Thunderbird 1.1 and onwards.
Given the current time between Gecko milestones, a 1.8 branch would require its own security updates and release QA. So if a security issue arises, that’s three releases to pull off at present, not two. Noting that Firefox 1.0.1 shipped recently, and they’re still struggling to get 1.7.6 out the door, I can’t imagine anyone is making a realistic argument that MoFo could certify a third security release in anything resembling a timely fashion. Once the 1.1 releases ship, the problem becomes even worse.
My solution? Rebrand the suite to distinguish between the “official” releases and the new community-driven/owned project. Mozilla Communicator 1.0, or something else that’s somewhat distinct, would let the app continue, and evolve, as a “new” product driven by the community. If there really is concrete and continued demand for the project to continue, the resources and the users will come. And MoFo won’t be on the hook for something they don’t feel is going to continue to be feasible.
This isn’t required. In the past, 1.0 and 1.4 were identified as “long-lived” stable branches for embedders and integrators to build upon, which would receive security updates for a long time.
See http://web.archive.org/web/20021026081932/http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html and http://web.archive.org/web/20030801081914/http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html
However, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6 were all released in the interim with no expectation by the community of long-term support.
The Seamonkey 1.8 advocates are just asking for a return to these intermediate releases.
As for QA/Certification, FFx/Tb 1.0.x and Seamonkey 1.7.x are largely similar, as MoFo is trying to keep the Gecko versions of these two in sync.
Of couse, having said all this, I wouldn’t object to a Mozilla Communicator 1.0 project if that’s what’s required for further Seamonkey releases.
March 9th, 2005 at 4:15 amWhat for a argumentation … Why must Mozilla 1.8 be a stable release? Mozilla 1.1,1.2, 1.3, 1.5, and 1.6 were final but not stable branch releases. Where is the problem to state that clearly? If someone has problems with 1.8, one could say him to upgrade to a current trunk release like 1.9a.
March 9th, 2005 at 5:12 amor they should deleay 1.8 until they need 1.8 for FF…
March 9th, 2005 at 5:46 amas an ex suite user, i really don’t understand the need for it … it took a while for ff/tb, but it finally catched on the suite, and is a better alternative IMHO … having the suite, divides the already little foundation’s resources even more
March 9th, 2005 at 8:48 amIf you want to support Seamonkey (Mozilla Suite), look at http://wiki.mozilla.org/wiki/SeaMonkey:Home_Page and see if you can help (see supporters). Thanks.
March 10th, 2005 at 3:58 am