I liked Blogdigger as well. Adding the search URL for "mozilla" as an RSS feed in my aggregator (Feedreader) worked perfectly:

http://www.blogdigger.com/rss.jsp?queryString=mozilla&sortby=date&days=2

-shoOz-

As to a business plan that includes revenue:

"Here is the core argument: There are a thousand Open Source projects that get started out of need or fun, are maintained for awhile for fame, then get abandoned because there is no reason to go on. Eventually, the programmers come to understand that "users" are people who yell at you to fix stuff. So Open Source is inherently flawed. It only works because otherwise unknown programmers can get 15 minutes of fame using the Internet as low-barrier entry into introducing their skill to the world...But in time, most Open Source projects grind to a halt. The ones that survive are projects like Linux and Apache that have substantial involvement by PAID engineers. One could argue, in fact, that the idea of Open Source software being created by volunteers is a misnomer. Even Linus Torvalds is paid by Transmeta to be the God of Linux." Robert X. Cringely, PBS http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030424.html

If any project is to survive, a business plan that includes sufficient revenue to keep the project going must be included. Where and how that revenue gets there is open for discussion; nonetheless, revenue must be found.

Regards,

Dan

That userContent has been floating around MozillaZine for months. I've been ad-free since last year using my variations.

Dan, the linux kernel doesn't come with a built-in ad banner. Vendors of open source-based products like Red Hat, IBM or others may attach business models to open source technologies which generate revenue but the open source technologies themselves don't require built-in revenue generators like does the commercial Opera product.

You said "their business model will require the transfer of money from you to them at some point". I assumed "their" was referring to the Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla development team and "you" was referring to the Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla users. If that's the case then your assertion is wrong. The mozilla.org-released binaries will never be directly attached to a revenue stream - any more than the linux kernel is.

Mozilla technologies are just that, technologies. If you want or expect advertising in mozilla-distributed binaries you're going to be let down. For that, you can seek out commercial distributions of Mozilla-based products. To suggest that the mozilla.org-distributed binaries will at some point require users to pay is simply wrong. We make these binaries available, free of charge, free of advertising and free of any commercial encumberences in exchange for the extremely valuable testing and bug reporting that we get. That's their value to us and that's unlikely to change.

--Asa

Just a quick comment before I go to my graduate school class.

I agree that you probably won't see banner ads in the kernel anytime soon. But then, neither do you see any in Windows. The point I was trying to make, albeit perhaps not very well, is that there shall be a revenue stream somewhere. If not, this project, like the others before it, will end.

And as I've said before, I don't want that. Having choice is a Good Thing. But if the money doesn't come from somewhere, well, Firebird will simply crash and burn. IMHO. YMMV.

Regards,

Dan

Thanks for the positive feedback about BlogDigger. I am glad you like it. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Thanks!

Asa, you, too, are a beautiful, beautiful human being. :) Thanks for the tips. Having keywords for bookmarks is one of the many reasons why Mozilla is so incredibly cool. :)

Greg, one change that would make me very happy isn't so much a feature (so far I'm pleased as punch with the search results themselves and I've been using it *a lot*) as it is a usability adjustment.

Right now the site is hardcoded at 800px width. This may be fine for the 40-50% of web surfers running at that resolution (actually, I think a lot of them will get a horizontal scrollbar) but for the growing number of people using higher resolution displays (like me,) it makes the page much harder to use.

Here's why. I have 1600px of horizontal real estate in my maximized browser window. I zoom my fonts up about 300% so I can sit back a couple of feet from the hi-res and bright LCD screen and still be able to read. What I end up with is bigger text but not a wider column so the short descriptions take up three and four lines rather than one or two which severely limits the number of results I can see in one screen. If you could change that table from 800px to some reasonable % value or change it to some em value (so it scaled with font size) then everyone on higher and lower than 800x600 screens would have a more pleasant experience.

I see from your dev blog that it was only about 10 days ago that you all redesigned so if you're busy with other more pressing work I completely understand. I have a great little bookmarlet that Jesse http://squarefree.com/ cooked up for resizing those hardcoded values to better fit my large screen and that should tide me over for a while :)

It's a great tool and I'm very happy to have found it. Keep up the good work. Oh, and one more thing, a Mozilla/Firebird search plugin would be awesome. It's a pretty simple process to make one http://mycroft.mozdev.org/deepdocs.html and there are millions of users out there with mozilla-based browsers that can easily install the plugin.

--Asa

Ken, thanks :D

Hey - I thought blogs were for reading!
:-)

Asa, blog searching is coming via Google:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30621.html

Keep up the great work on Moz Firebird!

Marc

Hey, thanks for the mention, even if it is linkless :-)

Incidentally, I found this post by vanity searching on BlogDigger.