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Mozilla Foundation Meets The GNOME Foundation
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Apr 26, 2004 12:01 PM
from the working-together-for-bettering-us-all dept.
from the working-together-for-bettering-us-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The board of directors of the GNOME foundation recently met with a few representatives of the Mozilla foundation - discussing how they could collaborate a little closer in future. A number of interesting things were discussed, including XAML/Avalon and the future of Firefox in GNOME/Linux. Check out the minutes of the meeting on the Gnome mailing list."
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Mozilla meets Gnome. (Score:5, Funny)
Better question (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do not annoy the Stallman (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do not annoy the Stallman (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Do not annoy the Stallman (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Do not annoy the Stallman (Score:4, Funny)
Where would GNOME be without GNU tools?
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It'd be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of functionality and work is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of open source software. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for browsers instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones á Firefox, and one or two "fully featured" like Mozilla.
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they would stop wasting their time with Seamonkey and put their efforts in to closing the gap more quickly.
Anyway, I know what you're saying, but there's got to be a reason why KDE developers chose to write their own from scratch rather than integrate Gecko.
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While on the topic of wishes (Score:4, Interesting)
This being said, I too hope they slow down production on Seamonkey and shift gears, but they're close and they're getting closer every release. And Firebird's already over 90,000 lines different than Mozilla, not to mention fast as hell on both platforms I use daily (Linux + Windows).
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of thinking and criticism is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of democracy. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for political parties instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones as the libertarians, and one or two "fully featured" like the democrats and the republicans.
oh wait...
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Overlap in functionality != unproductive effort (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, choice is nice and all, but this duplication of functionality and work is probably extremely unproductive as a whole for the progress of open source software. It should be enough with 2-3 choices for browsers instead of 20: one or two lightweight ones á Firefox, and one or two "fully featured" like Mozilla.
Isn't the whole point of open source that there's as many choices as there a
Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
That's certaintly true for APPLE, as Safari is based on kparts as well. Because of that alone, it wouldn't seriously surprise me if KParts browsers have a higher marketshare than mozilla.
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice to have another browser around to keep Mozilla moving forward. Stagnation is, of course, bad, but Konq isn't a full-featured browser, and has years of development to go before it is. This is why Safari is so under-featured. That's unfortunate, but they made their choice. Apple users can, fortunately, still use Firefox or Mozilla if they wish.
Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Interesting)
And by standardization, that does not mean the elimination of all other browsers. It just means basing multiple browers on the same standard (i.e. user interface, rendering of pages, etc.)
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
For a start, being able to have a tab with an sftp session next to a samba session next to a webdavs session next to a https session is very useful when web developing, or even just integrating stuff between different servers.
Secondly, konqueror launches a damn sight faster.
Finally, it integrates a lot nicer into my kde desktop than firefox or it's other gtk-varients.
Now, if you could use the gecko engine as a kpart, that would rock quite nicely. That said, with safari feeding back their improvements into khtml, konqueror is moving ahead by leaps and bounds, and it's a rare page i have rendering problems with these days.
All power to the mozilla team - I deployed thunderbird onto the staff windows machines at work as the standard imap client - and I think integration of firebird further into the linux desktop is a very good thing for both parties.
Ultimately though, a bit of healthy competition is a good thing - otherwise, we'd all just be using IE!
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Re:It'd be nice (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC this is how it went...
NCSA wrote the original mosaic. Spyglass licenced the tech and trademark from NCSA, and wrote spyglass mosaic from the ground up.
(mosaic communications corporation) MCC was a spin off company of a bunch of the staff from NCSA, and after a trademark wrangle they renamed to Netscape.
Spyglass mosaic went down the embedded road, i.e. a rendering engine for other software, netscape went the standalone browser road.
Then came the formati
Preliminary list of agreements (Score:3, Funny)
It's genius (Score:5, Funny)
Vision like this could only come the linux community.
I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:4, Insightful)
I just find it hard to believe than anyone would pick Epiphany over Galeon, even considering simplicity, since Galeon mostly works like Mozilla. Galeon seems simpler to use to me - Epiphany doesn't look or feel like any other browser I've used.
Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:4, Insightful)
From the discussions, it's also evident. You have different distributions and you want and need some standards but then the more parties involved, the more difficult that can be. That's where Microsoft has an advantage.
Reading that, it was worrying more than anything else. GNU/Linux and FOSS can't always play catch-up to Microsoft. But you have all these different groups with their own agendas in GNU/Linux.
You know the saying, "United we stand, divided we fall." There has to be balance between unification and diversity and more importantly, there has to be initiative and goals from that unified group. I know some have tried and it's nice to see attempts at initiatives here. Hopefully, more progress is made.
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Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm finding that many Gnome developers are going with making things so ridiculously simple at times that it is almost getting stupid. I use Epiphany, but I prefer Galeon as well. Comparing Epiphany to more feature-rich browsers like Galeon/Konqueror/Firefox makes Epiphany seem almost like IE to some degree. I suppose that is the point. I can browse with Epiphany and still get a reasonably good experience, where if I am forced to use a Windows machine (and IE) I am greeted with a slow browser with no features, tons of pop-ups, lack of tabbed browsing, lack of middle click, etc. Sure, you can add these extensions, but that's not the point.
The Gnome project seems to be interested in keeping things as simple as possible without taking too many features away. There are some things about Galeon/Firefox that I never used. There are some things about Epiphany that I would love to have. Any choice is better than IE for most browsing. I guess that is the point.
What is really odd about Gnome's usability though, is that it is really inconsistent between apps. Even more annoying is that there are such major changes between different versions of Gnome, that really negate the "ease of use" concept that they seem to promote. For example, what in the hell is up with the new spatial Nautilus? Sure, it's fast. Sure, it works well in some respects. Sure, I'm getting used to it. Sure, I can enable "classic mode" and browse that way. But it seem to be *unfinished*. That's the big deal. Someone above mentioned that Gnome feels half-finished in many respects, and I tend to agree (in spite of it being my desktop of choice). Perhaps if they would stick to keeping major UI standards for major versions (between 2.x and 3.x, for instance), maybe someone could finish implementing a product or feature and make things consistent for once. Though I kinda like the new Nautilus spatial file manager, there are a lot of things that are missing that really make it difficult to use for certain things.
So, back to Epiphany... While I feel that it feels a lot like Galeon or Firefox in most respects, some design decisions are just weird! For example, the way that it manages tab organization, or the slim feature-set that give you the ability to customize it. I like the browser, but I feel that Marco is going way too far in some respects. I really appreciate his work; Don't get me wrong. It's just something that I'm seeing from many Gnome-centric projects as well.
It's just weird. You have an app like Evolution, which is kick-ass as far as mail apps are concerned, but other things seem to be broken or incomplete; Epiphany, Totem, (the new and improved) Nautilus in spatial mode, G-Streamer, etc. To the guy that posted that really long response of above; I feel your pain. I love Gnome, but I can't help but think that the head developers are a little lost at times. There really isn't a very good sense of group direction and planning... At least compared to KDE, in my opinion.
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Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:5, Informative)
What's really amazing is that KDE is the one with nothing even resembling central leadership, and GNOME is the one which is generally run by a group of core developers and decision makers. How did that happen?
By the way, you're completely right.
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Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:3, Interesting)
That "feature" alone lost me as a user(of Epiphany, not GNOME). Epiphany's bookmark system is slowly starting to resemble a "normal" bookmark system again(because most people hate it the way it is), while Galeon has been slowly adding incremental improvements to their bookmark system. Simply being able to have bookmark aliases in Galeon makes Epiphany's new bookmark system redundant
Re:I find it odd indeed... (slightly OT) (Score:5, Informative)
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Is OSS going the Microsoft route? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route? (Score:4, Insightful)
one company controlling the browser, the desktop, the OS, the applications, the server apps, and...whatever else...that is what is innappropriate. Not having a choice - that is what is wrong.
Don't want your browswer to be integrated? Use KDE, or the gnome fork that won't be integrated. Take the source and do it yourself, if you'd like. Not that you're making a serious question...
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Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is OSS going the Microsoft route? (Score:3, Insightful)
Progress, but someone needs to lead (Score:5, Insightful)
Such is the case here. The need to more closely integrate the web rendering model and the desktop model is clear, and Microsoft is probably on to something compelling with Avalon/XAML. ActiveX was a disastrous first brush with integration but its clear they see a need and there is a need. Safe local applications integrated with the network do make sense.
On the open source side someone will have to lead to get this done - and not be afraid to leave some groups out. Epiphany should be an early victim - a "default" app no one uses.
Oh christ. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh christ. (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, it already is... Mozilla has always required GTK, and (very few) GNOME libraries.
The fact that you don't realize this suggests that you've probably never compiled Mozilla, and just download the binaries. In which case, you won't be affected in the slightest, anyhow.
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Suggested innovation (Score:3, Informative)
Tie XForms together with email. The purpose is to allow forms to be sent with email, as alternative to HTTP POST. Integrate it with mail clients so that clicking a link opens the compose window, which will load the form, show it, ready to fill in. When clicking send, the form is evaluated and sent. This is much nicer than filling in an order form in a browser, since you get to keep a copy in the outbox. Actually, I am surprised I don't see this already. Of course, it needs to be standardized, but you have to start somewhere. Is there perhaps already an RFC in progress?
Re:Suggested innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that the ability to save forms and form responses would be a major advantage, however.
good idea that.... (Score:4, Insightful)
And my choice and I bet millions of others would be a "linux thing" that worked cohesively together, and that just won't happen very quickly with thousands of directions taken, many of them just parallel trails with each other.
I most certainly would *chose* an operating system/distribution that worked all well together. A choice of a chaotic mish mash of thousands of incompatable apps and a so-so functionality is not much of a choice if you want quality over quantity.
Not a compelling strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple was smart when they took an attitude of "we don't *CARE* what Microsoft is doing, we'll just carve our own markets and create compelling value". This strategy works, because Apple isn't constantly trying to catch up with Microsoft. Instead, they're working on the best possible solution for *their* customers, not Microsoft's. They have a very good understanding of who their customers are, and which customers they're likely to switch over. They've done research on this.
What Mozilla should have learned by now is that the browser just isn't that important anymore. "Our browser is better than yours" will hardly cause end users to switch in boatloads. Developers, however, are more open to switching and more keen on using these technologies in their own apps. Yet, despite this, they say that embedding and the GRE are not priorities until FireFox 1.0 is released. So their focus is on making a good browser, which MS already has. (Don't start about the benefits of Mozilla over IE, I know what they are and most users neither know nor care.)
Their real potential growth market is in embedding, where Windows/Linux/Mac apps can share a similar rendering engine, in tools like Quicken/TurboTax. XUL is an added bonus. But embedding is not a priority nor is it easy to do. So while they could be getting Mozilla/GRE dumped on all sorts of desktops via third-party apps, they've chosen to focus on converting end users, a majority of whom just don't care about which browser they use.
Another great growth area would be Composer, which is already a decent contender to FrontPage, but which most people don't even know exists. Again, a compelling selling point for Mozilla (and embeddable!) but it basically gets ignored. In fact, I think editor embedding is actually a killer app for Mozilla - how many apps work with HTML these days? And unlike with the browser, Mozilla has very little competition here. FrontPage and Dreamweaver are expensive, and they don't offer a real, compelling benefit over Composer.
Instead of pursuing these opportunities, now it sounds like they're going to dump bunches of resources integrating with GNOME and trying to beat Microsoft at its own game (good luck, you're not the first to try!). Also, sounds like they're going to try reinventing portions of wxWidgets/wxWindows internally to provide a "native" XUL, like OpenOffice is now in the process of doing with their own toolkit. Talk about collaboration! It's a wonder we haven't tore Microsoft a new one yet...
Re:Maybe you're right. (Score:4, Insightful)
But I was talking about GNOME and, more importantly, Mozilla. Are Mozilla and GNOME just targetting geeks? From what they've said in the past and in the meeting notes, I don't think this is the case. My issues were with how they intend to gain marketshare in the other markets, those who are using other OSes or other products.
The Linux community is now trying to expand their market to people like you, who don't see the elegance of how things are handled in a unix-ish OS.Then, no disrespect, but it is failing miserably, and statements like "who don't see the elegance.." are indeed elitist and makes it sound like this target market is too dumb for Linux anyways. I use Linux-based distros (Mandrake currently, though not as my primary desktop), I've learned quite a bit about UNIX/Linux, the command line, etc., and while I see its benefits, it was (actually is) a painful and steep learning curve. It's orders of magnitude harder than learning Mac and Windows for someone who didn't start off on UNIX. How can something so elegant be so painful? I just don't see it, right? Well, if I hadn't been stubborn enough to learn how Linux works (and actually it's thanks to Mac that I got more of a sense of the command line), I would have given up on it long ago.
Is my response elitist? A little bit, but it's true. I think you're original post was ignorant. I've been tossing the idea around in my head that maybe it would be better if Linux -wasn't- the most used OS. It'll end up like Windows.Actually, Linux is just a kernel. This is an important point. There are probably 100s of Linux-based OSes. So why can't you have your uber-geek distribution (Gentoo? Debian?) while I have my easy to use distribution? In fact, I think everyone talking like there is one "Linux" confuses the issue considerably.
Also, it doesn't *have* to end up like Windows, but if it does, it will be because the open source community made it that way. My concern is that this is actually where projects like Mozilla are trying to push things. Windows != easy to use. Windows = "one way to implement an easy to use desktop, although far from the best way to do it". Anyone who uses Windows as the gold standard for ease of use will never create a compelling reason to switch from Windows. In fact, as the saying goes, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". OSS software will thus be seen as the "cheap knock-off" of high-quality Windows software. And that's the last way I'd like OSS to be perceived.
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Re:Maybe you're right. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's quite simple. You are so adjusted to the Windows/Mac way of doing things, that doing things the Unix way is unthinkable. It's not that Unix is any harder, it's just that it's totally different.
I started with Windows (and some Mac expercience) and went through the same pangs you are. Now that I've gone through all that, and know Unix as well as anything else, I wouldn't switch back unless my life depended on it. The Unix way is more elegant, more flexible
Mozilla's greatest success is libification. (Score:3, Interesting)
One of Gnome's greatest strength is that developers can pick and choose which libraries to include to build their applications.
The Mozilla people need to extract from their code useable libraries that anyone can use. This alone will lead to integration with Gnome, as has been the case with the HTML rendering.
YES! We need to sort out the damn GUI bindings. (Score:4, Interesting)
2. XUL needs to be mapped to SWT bindings so it has faster native cross platform support. This would be the quickest way to get mozilla to run and look like a native app on most platforms.
With these two changes people can develop cross platform apps with native GUI's either directly in C, Java or using XUL for layout.
3. Once that is done you can clone XAML/Avalon.
If I have any spare time this weekend I will put togethor the neccessary patches
Matt.
I will believe it when I see it (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the same GNOME that starts a whole lot of really cool things but never finishes them.
- GNOME vfs - great idea, but none of the modules really work like they should. The ssh, smb, and ftp method are all sketchy at best.
- CORBA-like Object system - another great idea with some great code behind it but hardly implemented in any applications. I should be able to use a web browser object, a emailer object, etc.
The two issues above take the "OBJECT" and "NETWORK" right out of GNOME. I really like GNOME - libxml, atk, bonobo, and gtk are excellent.
I would believe that this is going somewhere if the KDE group announced it, but I have a feeling that this will be yet another great idea that will never really pan out.
Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla (Score:5, Funny)
I agree. No sooner have I downloaded and installed Mozilla browser that I have noticed by 17-year-old son looking at pornography and the images of filthy women on the Internet. Plus he started talking somce Communist manifesto stuff and once said he was going to install Lunix on our home machine.
I am not a violent man, but from good father's perspective I had to whip out my belt and show him that's the road to hell. That changed his perspective entirely, so right now he's quite happy using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows ME and paying for all the applications he uses except some cheap crap, that's so bad they have to give it away for other people to pick up.
I also own 100 shares of Microsoft stock in my portfolio, and so does my wife, so no Lunix talks are permitted in my house, since we are all planning for happy retirement.
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Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to feed the trolls but criminy...
The emphasis is in the original post and it's an utterly ridiculous claim. Trust me, these fantastic features are every bit as useful and functional for downloading and cataloging even low-key, family-friendly porn that has nothing to do with whips, chains, or farm animals in leather pants.
Besides which, your cheap attempt to inject a little extra hype carries a distinct tone of shrill hysteria, which detracts from any attempt at a more reasoned argument. Your attempt to use one narrow aspect of the whole broad, rich spectrum of glorious pornography is misleading enough that it probably has its own latin name.
I guess it also goes without saying that the uses for tabbed browsing are limited only by the imagination and intelligence of the person who browses.
Consequently, your options may be severely limited. Let me help you get started.
To sum up: tabbed browsing is your friend. Whether you are cruising www.hotasiansluts.com or www.jesus.com, tabbed browsing can make your internet experience faster, easier, and better.
The Dalai Llama
...tab for the children...
P.S. - I gather that your tirade against tabbed browsing is a recurring theme. Feel free to bookmark this post and refer to it as needed.
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Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What a beautiful strawman you've constructed! (Score:3, Insightful)
From you:
From the Magpie site [bengoodger.com]:
From me:
You can use Magpie to go to a page with nothing but sound clips from the movie "Clerks" [moviesoundscentral.com] and you can download all the quotes. No porn involved.
From you:
Re:Be careful how close you get to Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)
Um.. April 1 was a while back...
But I've since discovered that actual Mozilla supported extensions such as this one, "Magpie" or this one "Prev/Next image", which are actually given web space and bookmarked by default by the Mozilla developers themselves can only be useful in the context of searching for and downloading hardcore or violent pornography
Ma
Re:GNONE-ME (Score:5, Insightful)
What can you say... most of that isn't even coherent enough to be deemed english.
But KDE had exactly all these things 2 years ago already. There is a development difference of 4 years between both Desktop solutions.
And there's a development difference of 2-4 years in the other direction on other issues. What's surprising about one (very good) desktop system having different priorities than another (very good) desktop system?
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Re:avalon? (Score:4, Interesting)
However, there's no Microsoft stuff on the first ten hits.
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