RFE means "request for enhancement". There's been some debate about how to handle enhancements in Mozilla. Because there is a Severity level named "enhancement", there is no way to indicate that some enhancements are more severely needed than others... there are currently some RFEs that assigned Critical Severity! The [RFE] is used to indicate that the bug is really just an enhancement.

There's no obvious mapping of votes for a bug to effort expended getting that bug fixed. However, if someone comes here and says that a bug is absolutely critical to fix, and there are 3 or fewer votes for it, you can bet that it's really not a major problem for the vast majority of Mozilla users.

That's why I often post links to bugs and bug lists that people complain about -- so we can vote and see which ones really are the critical ones to fix. At the very least, clicking on the link is an introduction to Bugzilla that gets visitors here more involved than simply reading and posting to MozillaZine!

at http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

I don't understand why implementing PGP is not a a major priority. The PGP plugin for MailNews bug (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22687) has 223 votes, according to Bugzilla's query page. That makes it THE most voted for bug in Bugzilla, period. It has 117 more votes than the next most "popular" bug, bug #49141. The next highest MailNews bug (#28237) only has 61 votes. Do our votes not count for anything? Hopefully, they do. Everybody who wants this, take a few minutes to further increase the vote count. Mozilla ***needs*** PGP.

Knowing what the response will be, I'll answer some of your comments before the mob gets you. (It can be ugly.. I've been there..)

Some of the stuff (the IRC client is a great example) is coded by volunteers who are only doing this because they cared about that particular feature. It's not like a lack of IRC client would have meant more resources to work on the web browser part. On the other hand, added features ALWAYS mean added risk and more testing, so stuff like that DO have a resource cost and you are definitely right about the scope management. Keep in mind though that the IRC client isn't even in Netscape 6.x (at least I don't think it is...) so the cost of that hasn't been too tremendous.

As far as "being stuck with IE" goes.. I don't know.. I don't care about all the politics of "Microsoft sucks and should be destroyed" and all that crap. To me, there are a number of web browsers all with their positive and negative sides. Currently in my score card, IE has the #1 spot bug Mozilla is closing in fast. I don't feel that I'm "stuck" with IE. I kinda like it.. The UI is simple, the browser is VERY fast and extremely stable. I have always had the latest version of IE as soon as they got out, ever since 5.0 and I really have only had a handful of browser crashes on all three computers (all Win2K boxes) that I use on a daily basis at work and at home (plus Pocket IE on my Compaq iPAQ) over the time span of something like 2-3 years. And never have the crashes taken down the entire OS or even shell like so many people claim. I've seen that on Win98 though.. but that's a toy OS anyway.

Netscape's product has been a full Inernet browsing sweet for many major releases now. If they produced just a browser, they would not have fullfilled their commuitment to their customer base.

"because mozilla was scoped to provide all that extraneous stuff "

Mail/News and Composer are required to replace/duplicate Netscape 4 functionality, so even if outside Mozilla volunteers didn't want to work on them, Netscape would anyway. Skinning is a side effect of the extensible cross-platform UI. (And I award you one Clueless Point for not understanding that even after all this time.)

"they have been disasterously late"

You can't be late without a deadline, and AFAIK, Mozilla has never had one.

"lost the browser battle"

Yawn. That's two CPs. And while I'm at it, who made you judge and jury?

To lend some substance to my remarks, I've seen sites reporting that hits from Mozilla browsers have increased significantly since around Netscape 6.2 or so. That doesn't sound to me like a lost battle.

"if they had concentrated on building a high performance, standards-compliant, stable, small footprint *browser*"

They did.. well, except for the footprint, but that's the price of progress, isn't it? Have you tried using Mozilla to surf the web? Works pretty well. RAM is dirt cheap now; go buy yourself a gig and stop whining. (To those who argue that they shouldn't have to upgrade their hardware to use new software, I say, "fine, then keep using the old software", as well as "wtf are you on?".)

"we're stuck with IE."

I guess there's no escape from a prison that only exists in your mind.

I think that is easily understood. I think Asa just wants to argue.

I suppose it all depends on how you use your web browser and email client, but I find have the integration extremely useful.

Also, regardless of how OK you think it is to switch back and forth between IE and Outlook, what advantage do you find in having them as separate apps?

"also, usage of mozmail indicates that you do not work at a big company, do not use aol, do not use hotmail, ms exchange or lotus notes and thus, no offense, you do not matter."

Okay, this makes about as much sense as saying "eating marmalade on toast indicates you do not eat English muffins, do not use jam, do not use jelly, preserves, or peanut butter and thus, you do not matter" in a debate about whether marmalade is good or not. In a debate about whether Mozilla mailnews should exist (why are we even having this discussion? It's not going to magically get completely deleted from existence), it's ridiculous to on the one hand argue that nobody uses it and then when somebody says they do to say that they don't count precisely because they use it. I guess you can claim that "everybody uses something other than Mozilla Mailnews" as long as you define "everybody" as "everybody who doesn't use Mozilla Mailnews", but if that's your only argument then you're in trouble.

Furthermore, "usage of mozmail indicates that you do not work at a big company" is demonstrably false. I used Mozilla Mailnews back when I worked for the Hearst Corporation and nobody complained. Not every big company is as draconian in their computer use policies as yours apparently is.

Your criteria for what doesn't count as a person manages to completely ignore anybody who might actually get their email through their non-AOL ISP (what a concept!), including just about every college student whose college provides net access.

As one final point, what is it with people saying something deliberately insulting and then tacking on "no offense" as if suddenly that makes it not an insult? I see it happening more and more, and it drives me up a wall. Is it meant to add a litle extra stab by making the recipient of the insult feel bad for being offended?

short reply: Mozilla wouldn't exist if Mozilla mailnews didn't.

When Netscape opened the Mozilla source, they expected to get a full replacement to Netscape Communicator out of it. If suddenly a major component that used to be in Communicator was scrapped, you'd better believe they would have pulled their people off of the project.

"usage of mozmail indicates that you do not work at a big company,"

AOL Time Warner is pretty big company and I think it is safe to say that they have employees using the Netscape email client.

I also know of several people employed by big companies who are using Mozilla or Netscape for email, but I think the above examples is more than sufficient proof that your statement was undeniably wrong.

> short response: millions more would be using

> mozilla if it didn't include mail/news and

> came out a year or more ago.

Bull. Maybe if it came out a year or more ago; but most (not all) Netscape users use Netscape mail, too, and had mail/news been lacking, it would have been one more reason to turn to IE (because whether they're really separate or not, Outlook Express is downloaded with IE, so it is perceived as being a part of IE.

it's just unbelievable that people cannot see the nearly-fatal result of trying to build so much more than just the browser. imagine how excellent it would have been if moz had released a killer, high performance, very stable, standards-compliant, small footprint *browser* a year ago. instead, we're 6 months away from a huge piece of bloatware that's sure to remain inferior to IE.

I think it's pretty much mandatory for Netscape people to use Mozilla Mail & Newsgroups (well, a Netscape 6 build of it) for their daily work.

Alex

Johann_p, the only way this argument will prove anything

> When I look at the bugs that describe all these

> quirks I see no activity, though some of them date

> back to 2000. Instead, again, people hack on new

> features like "labels".

is if you can demonstrate that people who were assigned bugs with no activity since 2000 were working on new features in the interim. One issue with a volunteer project is that sometimes people get assigned work and never do it - stake a claim, but never fulfill their promise; but often on such projects reassignment has a lower priority than new assignment. I don't know how Mozilla handles this problem (on the project I work on, we run through the DB every 6 months or so and remove any assignments that are stale; but we only have a fixed number (35,000) of non-programming tasks to assign), but it's possible that this might be a contributing factor to stale bugs.

Following his logic, probably he thinks that Linux contributors are just unpaid suckers working for RedHat and Suse.

I wouldn't call someone's arguments moronic. But he doesn't deserve your answer anymore because he's completely out of context. I suppose you have more important tasks to do for Mozilla.

"I think most of the people who insist on this illusion of separation are sincerely deluded rather than simply trying to trick people into volunteering to help AOL Time Warner's strategic interests for no pay"

"That's such a moronic argument."

Look, you're at it again..

Strauss just gave good reasons in several posts in the comment threads in this article and you just flat out ignore them as if you hadn't even read them. Or maybe you didn't comprehend them.

Mozilla can't be equated with cheese or a person. It's an organization, which at least in Europe is usually is a legal entity with rights and obligations, very much like a company. In order for Mozilla to do things like sign contracts or obligate others to follow contracts by the Mozilla organization, it has to be a legal entity. Unlike cheese.

Instead of calling people or their arguments morons, you might want to actually look past your own extremely narrow viewpoint and examine the arguments other people are making. There's a reason why there are two opposing views here and it's most likely not because people are stupid or out to annoy you. Have an open mind.

> That's such a moronic argument. I wish they made philosophy, or at least logic, compulsory in all school. <

Thanks, I'm quite well read in philosophy. one thing one learns in epistemology is that when people resort to emtoional arguments and ad hominem attacks, it often indicates a lack of evidence and reasoning supporting their viewpoint. You don't gave a scrap of evidence for a separate Mozilla organization (since, after all, there isn't one), so you decided instead to post three paragraphs of personal attacks on me. Forgive me if I'm not impressed.

> Mitchell Baker was fired by AOL but she still runs mozilla.org --- which would be strange if AOL called all the shots. <

Her leadership is titular only, and part of the fiction of independence. Remember Gerv complaining last week that the Mozilla leadership were being called on the carpet every week to justify to netscape management why they should keep the project open source? that tells you what the actual reporting structure is.

> Drivers sometimes reject or postpone requests to land changes desired by Netscape management. <

I'd need to see examples and documentation.

> New Netscape employees don't get CVS access until they've persuaded at least one non-Netscape person that they deserve it. <

That's a weird claim. Basis?

"IE is now at version 6.0 (for Windows only) after 7 (or is it 6?) years of development."

I think it's 6. Microsoft claim they started developing IE in 1994 but I don't believe them - 1995 sounds about right (that's when they licensed the NCSA Mosaic technology from Spyglass.

"BTW, if I remember right the codebase for IE never even had a 1.0 release."

Yeah, they did. It came with the Plus! pack for Windows 95. It was rubbish though so version 2.0 was quickly brought out later that year. That was still no good, so they released 3.0 in late 1996 (about a week before Netscape Navigator 3.0), 4.0 in late 1997, I think (a month or so after Netscape Communicator 4.0), 5.0 in early 1999 and 6.0 in August 2001.

Alex

dude, you're living in a reality distrotion field!

fact: 2/23/98 "open for business!" http://mozilla.org/news.html

opinion: "I would think that you would have to start with the rewrite"

4 years is an excruciatingly long time to develop a browser. it's even more painful when you recognize that the product requirements were virtually completed prior to 2/23/98!! they had a perfectly functioning prototype of exactly what they were building!! and a complete code-base! if anything, suggesting that it all only got started on 2/23/23 is being very, very generous.

and again, you make my case for me: the sole reason it is taking so long is because they are building a "suite" and not simply a browser. and it is clear that a suite is wholly unnecessary to everyone except those still living in the mid-90's.