Mozilla to Provide Many of LindowsOS 4.0's AdvantagesWednesday May 21st, 2003Albert and Adam Hauner wrote in to tell us that the forthcoming LindowsOS 4.0 will ship with a customised version of Mozilla. In fact, many of the advantages that Lindows.com is touting over Windows XP — including spam filtering, tabbed Web browsing and popup blocking — are actually Mozilla features. Previously, LindowsOS shipped with a customised version of Netscape 7.0 (Lindows.com's initial announcement of that decision got their over-excited PR department in trouble with AOL) but they announced a switch a few weeks ago. Look at who is running that company. Judging by what I saw happen with mp3.com and now what is happening to Lindows, it seems like he loves to twist any facts and set impossibily high expectations. I hope that Mozilla.org can knock some sense into him for not properly crediting Mozilla. You would think that he wouldn't want to tangle with AOL lawyers again, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out who's lawyers will be helping mozilla.org if this continues to be a problem. I don't really see any problem here. Sure it would be nice to see Mozilla get some credit but this is a company putting some serious effort into getting Mozilla into the hands of mainstream users. This is Mozilla shipping on PCs in WalMart <http://www.walmart.com/ca…96356&sb=61&bti=0> !! How can that possibly be a bad thing? In the end, I suppose, who really cares whether millions of people all across America buying a $199 PC (or a $50 OS) think of these as LindowsOS features or independent apps as long as they're using Mozilla, right? --Asa I could be wrong, but doesn't anyone who rebrand's Mozilla or uses Mozilla code have to credit Mozilla somewhere? Would seem to be a good clause to put in the MPL if it isn't already there. All Lindows had to do was say "LindowsOS Browser, based on Mozilla." I am glad someone, even Lindows, is using Mozilla, but I think the least they could due was to credit Mozilla in fine print. Even Microsoft credited NCSA Mosaic for whatever code it used and still does to this day in the About dialog. Those screenshots show "Mozilla" in the title bar of the Mozilla windows. I don't think most consumers know about Mozilla, (all my high school friends do, but that's a function of who I hang out with.) The forums do have discussions with Lindows.com's Kevin (can't remember his last name) he is the president and does some coding I believe. In any case, they are adding *more* features to Mozilla, and designing their own browser not just "ripping" it off. Their click and run library features a great ad for Mozilla-- search for "Mozilla". And the president acknowledges it and talks about it freely on the board.. there's no cover-up. Where however did they get the IM client? They couldn't have developed it in house. (If they did, kudos..) Is it Kopete? (that's my guess) Not a product I've heard of. I'm sure, even if obvious references to Mozilla are hidden, that it will still contain Gecko in the UA string and mention Mozilla in the about dialog. IMO that is all they are morally (and more than they are legally) required to do. Like Asa said, if it gets Mozilla more users, great. I'm running both the Mozilla (SeaMonkey) and Firebird browsers (Firebird, Firebird, Firebird. Feel free to try to sue me.) on Windows 2000 SP3 with font-smoothing turned on and the text looks like ass when rendering those pages. To be more specific, the italicized text looks like ass. The normal and bold are mostly OK. Internet Explorer does the same job rendering the pages as the Mozilla-based broksers on my system. It does look like they have turned ClearType or any other form of font-smoothing off in the Lindows example as my rendering of the pages looks slightly better than the IE example in their GIF image does. Slightly. The "XP" page is here: <http://info.lindows.com/xp.html> The "Lindows " page is here: <http://info.lindows.com/lindows.html> I double-checked both pages to make certain that they weren't playing games with font properties. They don't appear to be. This is pretty clearly an example of Windows having crappy default TrueType fonts and at least for Windows 2000 the built-in smoothing doesn't help much. Anyone want to grab a screenshot of one of those pages in WinXP with ClearType turned on and post a link to it? I need new fonts... <img src="<http://info.lindows.com/m…chaelsminute/compare2.gif>"> WTF they just terned clear type off <http://info.lindows.com/m…chaelsminute/compare2.gif> theres a working link and surely any Linux site should be using png :D <http://eds.org/~joschi/r/ugly_win_fonts.png> notice how crap they look at the smaller sizes. With ClearType on in XP, it looks better than the example you posted. Personally, I use a 1024x768 laptop display most of the time, so the anti-aliased fonts look pretty awful to me. In this shot, obviously, I am using Mozilla, and I have it set (as always) to use a gray background, as in my Windows colors: <http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/cleartype-xp.png> I bet no one even sees that I posted this, given that it is hidden in the old news archive even now... Frank I don't think the MPL requires that you credit mozilla if you take the code, just as long as you make your changes to the code (if any) available for all. Copyright notices probably need to stay there, but you could rename the program if you so desire, right? It's amazing how much Times New Roman looks like Helvetica on Lindows, too! ... that the font claimed as "Times New Roman" in the Mozilla pic is not Times New Roman? Yep, noticed. And funny thing too is that the pages they compare are not identical either. When I load this <http://info.lindows.com/lindows.html> and this <http://info.lindows.com/xp.html> and then toggle between them, the text moves around a little bit. Oh, and by the way, the source code is hillarious too... [meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"] [meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"] [meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"] Apparently they read mozillaZine :) The picture has since been fixed to actually use Times New Roman in the Lindows shot. (same link as in parent post) I found it interesting that they include Orbz in the distribution. For those of you who have never heard of it, you can check it out here <http://www.garagegames.com/> It's done using the Torque engine (designed for Tribes2 by sierra) by some independents and is available for the 3 major os's. "LindowsOS is the first operating system to ship with the default instant messenger program that connects to them all! Plus we add tabbed IM windows, integrated chat, IM logging, name aliases, and in-line spell checking." Read that carefully. The "instant messenger program" they speak of is GAIM. Doesn't it sound like they are claiming credit for creating GAIM? And they are far from the first distro to ship with GAIM. As usual, Lindows distributes only lies. I read that to mean that they ship with an IM client and that they contributed code to that client to do various things. Look in general discussion under the forum. I am not sure what source code they contributed. But they did contribute source code. Sam |
|
