The advantage to separate Mozilla builds is that more releases can be made with cutting edge features before Netscape issues their releases with the feature updates.

Say, XSLT is brought into Mozilla in a couple of months. Mozilla builds would have that, but Netscape would not get it until the next major release.

Anyway, deadlines are always moving targets, so that would not be a good idea.

I think it will soon become apparent that many of us will be using the Mozilla instead of Netscape. Right now, there is not much difference, but there will be.

<sidenote>Also, I really hope XSLT comes along soon. At first, I was skeptical of the idea, as I thought it should all be done on the server-side, but now I understand why having it on the client-side has its benefits.

Anyway, doing these things on the client-side or server-side is going to be a mixed-bag for years to come.</sidenote>

In conclusion, I look to see Mozilla one or more steps ahead of the Netscape releases. It will keep us happy, and allow us to get our ducks in a row (as website developers) before the next big Netscape release does come out.

The open source environment has given me the oportunity to do a lot more than provide feedback. It has certainly done that but more important it has allowed me to track the results of my feedback, to follow its path, to rethink and restructure the feedback along the way. Before open source user feedback was like a message in a bottle. You put your thoughts into this container and tossed it out to sea hoping that someone on the other side would pick it up and act on it. That was it. If you were lucky in a year you might see some change and wonder if it was your bottle that got picked up or someone elses. But with open source you have the oportunity to participate in the debate that you touched off. You can rally support for your ideas, you can modify your arguement, adapt it or adopt a new one alltogether. The Mozilla project has the tools and the people that make this a very cool and empowering process.

The second part about external development, deadlines and responsibility....hmm. That's a difficult one. I look at it something like this. Netscape doesn't have any significant obligation to deadlines the implementors of MathML have placed on themselves. It's very cool that Netscape is interested in contributing to Mozilla in ways that are helpful to the MathML developers and their product. But the MathML developers can't expect Netscape be bound or responsible for their self-imposed product deadlines.

Well, I'm sure I'll revisit this discussion as it grows.

Asa

(You know it --posted with Mozilla 042808)

I love the amount of control Open Source gives end users.

For example, take bug16216 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16213 I created this as an RFE a while ago, not really expecting much to happen. Yet now there is quite a bit of activity around it. Whats more I have a chance to add some input to that activity.

The developers assigned to this particular bug wanted to take it in a differant directory, and we are now trying to find the best solution together.

All parties benefit - the end user gets better features, the developers get more end user feedback and interested end users can help shape the software.

There are no rigid deadlines for MathML.

Mozilla 1.0? Netscape 6? Netscape 7? AnyGeckoDerivedBrowser? Perhaps one or some of these, provided the implementation is ripe to consumption by the general public.

The point of the matter is that you need to look at something in order to get going and motivate people, while knowing that people understand this point and are not expecting miracles overnight. If there is no glimmering of a goal (such as rendering a part of the specification first), one may be side-tracked into trying to do many things, and end-up with nothing really useful to the large audience. If someone wants to ensure that a (i.e., his/her) target is met, then of course, they are most welcome to come along and help!

The persons responsible to Netscape for meeting Netscape's deadlines are the people Netscape is paying to be responsible. In other words, Netscape employees.

Independent developers don't have a responsibility to commercial entities, nor do they have a responsibility to end users. Many independent developers may *elect* to heed suggestions of other users, but that's at their discretion. The key word is "independent". And mozilla.org can choose to accept or reject the contributions of such developers at its discretion.

Remember that independent developers are simply empowered users. You can't tell your users what to do, and you can't tell independent developers what to do either.

If Netscape feels users' requests for SVG and MathML are important enough for their 6.0 browser, let *them* allocate *their* resources to accelerate development.

As owner of bug 18722 -- http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18722 -- I have a bit of something to say about this...

The contribution of TransforMiiX to Mozilla will be an incredible help to both the Moz project and the recognition of TransforMiiX as a successful implementation of XSLT. It's two sides of the same coin, in other words.

Keith is doing an incredible job at keeping the momentum of the TransforMiiX integration up, and this is obviously very much to his credit as he isn't a Netscape employee. The motivation there for him, I imagine, is both that Mozilla is a project he believes in and wants to contribute to, and that it will bring him personal success to have his code incorporated into software which will be used by millions.

The pressure is not to meet Netscape's deadlines; the pressure is to succeed.

A deadline cannot (should not) be placed on a volunteer. Open source frees the coder from tyranny - either by a company or by users.

However users benefit from knowing the stage of software development when the code is freed. The answer to the question "Is this program supported?" is to ask the developer(s) if the project is dead.

The most freeing element is that you can ask the developers. I have participated on #mozillazine on occasion to ask about bugs, status, etc. and I have always been helped. Bugs I noticed have even been fixed! I will almost always choose software that is freed over closed software because I have a voice in open software. My ideas may be bad or I may have the wrong ideas but I can ask (or look at code) and find out.

Does that give me more control? Only if I do something like submit patches or give good bug reports. The developer maintains more control over the project because in the end the developer makes the decisions, not a third party.

I don't care about deadlines anymore. As long as the project continues to improve I will continue to use it. I don't think the linux kernel has ever been declared "beta" or anything but it constantly gets better.

The ability for end-users to help out with their ideas brings amazing power to the software, and the world. For example:

Back around M8 I got involved a little bit with Mozilla. Having never undertaken any large sofware programming, I was eager to see what all of this hype would be about. I posted some stuff in the newsgroups as RFE's and lo and behold, one of the most important ones gets picked up. Aphrodite has mentioned lately that they are working on a crash recovery bit. This bug #19454 http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19454 was something that I brought up. I have not seen any results, as of yet, but am eagerly anticipating the first release. Had it not been for Open Source, we might never have seen this very useful and powerful enhancement.

I would have loved to get an internship with Netscape to work on Mozilla this summer.

-Jon

...or specific to THIS project?

I think with many other, more established, OS projects, deadlines are not realy valid. Releases are pretty much just a point where some core group draws a line in the sand and says "package it!" How-ever, seeing as this particular project has soo much scrutiny being placed on it, and such a high calibre of comercial backers (NS/AOL, IBM, Nokia, Real...) I think there should be a certain expectation to "keep up, or get out of the way". Thankfully, the lizard has been created in a modular sence, so that the removal of partially completed elelments prior to the first major release isn't a huge headache (at least I don't *think* so...).

Developers in this case are only responsible to Mozilla, and only then not to break anything they can't fix. They certainly don't have any responsibility to Netscape 6, which won't put any money in their pockets. If Netscape needs it that bad they should hire more full-time engineers.

In "terms of feedback", I think "open source" if a more efficient form than traditional "beta testing". I do not believe it provides more power to interact with developers. I do not believe it gives people more control over the developers with the exception of other developers, who can alter the "source code" and force other developers to alter "code" as well. I do not believe "open source" causes an end user to take a more active role in the development of software.

If the "third party developers" are not being paid then they have no responsibility to meet the deadlines of commercial entities. The "end users" mean nothing if they are not paying the developers, unless the developer holds some type of moral or personal obligation to the "end users". The "end users" should make comments and suggestions to improve the software.

If the "third party coders" promised to make the "code" ready in time to meet a deadline then they should do that. If not then nobody should expect anything and there is no obligation.

Concerning Mozilla, I have found the effort of the Bugzilla people to be mostly good. I was disappointed by the "WORKSFORME" setting but I believe they still do well.

Firstly, let me start by saying that feature freezes are the norm in freed software projects.

I'm sure we're going to hear people complaining Netscape's agenda is keeping their code out of Mozilla. The complaints have started already and it hasn't even happened yet.

I hope that mozilla.org continues to do what it has done - code, stabilise, branch, stabilise. Mozilla is new, so we need that first stabilisation to be for a while, and that will inconvenience some people. Don't cry.

Secondly, the issue of deadlines.

Mozilla.org is the coordinator for this project, and what the coordinator says, goes. You can certainly argue about it, but we can't have people arguing forever.

That being said, there is of course inverse power, namely, that Netscape, being the main developer, can essentially set the development schedules. That will change as their ratio of development decreases and mozilla.org asserts itself as an independent entity, which it needs to do here and has not.

Some people have said here that freed software projects should not have deadlines. Untrue in my opinion. It is definitely true to say the credo for release should be "release when ready" and not "it compiles, ship it". However, this is something mozilla.org, Netscape and Joe Bloggs's Mozilla distribution can easily differ on.

This discussion is about the feature freeze date though. We can set feature freezes based on a date, a set of features, or a combination of the two.

Where you have a project where there is no real consensus on a set of features, date-based cutoffs are a necessity. I have seen enough evidence to suggest Mozilla is one of these. I'm pretty sure Linus sets cutoffs dates for Linux too.

As for responsibility, of course non-Netscape developers have no responsibility to conform to the Netscape 6 schedule. But they have to conform to the system set in place by mozilla.org.

Mozilla.org should stand up and say that the feature freeze date of Netscape is the feature freeze for everyone, and say that no development shall occur until mozilla.org decides it is time to branch into stable and development trees.

At the moment we have Netscape developers doing this sort of thing. This is very bad.

I'll be the odd one out here, but I don't think Open Source benefits consumers at all. I'm talking the average Joe Blow off the street who wants to buy 'one of dem computer thingys to go on the fishing net'.

Is Joe Blow going to report bugs? No. Is Joe Blow going to get out that C++ compiler and add his own features? HAHAHA!

I'm sorry, but I haven't seen an open source project delivering superior quality to a closed source one. Maybe Mozilla will be the exception to that.

With Open Source, there are too many things to go wrong. What if somebody takes the code, chucks the license and flogs their version of the software without giving credit nor source? You cannot prove he didn't write it himself.

As for Open Source projects encouraging and accepting more feedback, well I'll dispute that right now. A while ago in this forum, I posted something about Autocomplete and Tooltips. Somebody from Netscape literally laughed at me. I think it was Tanyel who said Mozilla wasn't that great on a 32 meg machine, and was laughed at and labelled a troll. I have heard of many cases like this, with too many Netscape engineers' heads too far up their a**es.

Don't get me wrong: I like Mozilla. I think it will make a great browser. I just don't like the attitudes of a lot of people associated with it (the 'You use MS, you're scum' set of people) and I think maybe a few people have too much faith on open-source.