The Mozilla 1.0 Definition 279
The Evil Beaver writes: "Here we go. Mozillazine is reporting that Brenden Eich, mozilla.org's Technical Bigshot, has released the criteria to what is to be the 1.0 milestone. The 'manifesto' also explains why 1.0 is so important to reach, and why it isn't just another milestone, either. The Mozillazine article is here and the definition document here.
Promesing (Score:3, Insightful)
I must say that I find this a very "mature" perspective and this is clearly showing that the people of mozilla know what they are doing and how they should do it!
Mozilla for world-domination (using mozilla since 0.6 BOY did THAT suck!!)
The fear of version 1.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad that they have been taking the time to get 1.0 to standard necessary, for some reason AOL saw fit to release netscape 6.0 when they did, which I think was a huge mistake. Lets be glad that the mozilla folks are not so keen to release a product before it is ready.
Open Source goes back into the Cathederal (Score:5, Insightful)
* Is there no alternative to fixing the bug that frees people to work on other 1.0 bugs?
* What goes wrong if we don't fix the bug, and just live with it for 1.0?
* What do we give up from 1.0 in exchange for fixing the bug?
* Can you stare down slashdot and C|net together and at the same time, and argue credibly that the bug is a 1.0 stop-ship problem? While we are not yet at the "about to ship, why should we take any more risk" stage, this question can help us prioritize and avoid unpleasant surprises later, when 1.0 is within our grasp.
Now that is proper requirements management, unusual in most open source projects. These are the 4 basic rules on requirements management.
Full on for them in doing this. They are running it like a proper project and trying to control requirements creep.
Open Source goes back into the Cathederal ?
Re:1.0 is artificial anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think 1.0 is artificial in this case. The Mozilla devel team has posted very much in advance a specific roadmap... it's not like everybody else... hmmm, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, oh what the hell let's call the next 2.0. (ahem cough cough KDE) Mozilla has proceeded in an extremely ordered and thorough manner with a specfic and detailed roadmap. I think this 1.0 will be what 1.0 are supposed to be, stable, mature, and a platform to build on if you are a developer without it changing out from under you because of a whim.
I give the Mozilla team muchos kudos for sticking to their guns and applying rigor in a age where rigor is sorely lacking.
1.0 is symbolic, not artifical (Score:5, Insightful)
* Feature/interface freeze. A time to stop adding features. Features are being added as we speak, like the tabbed interface in 0.9.5.
* Removal of all debugging code during the release.
* Symbolic 'ready for prime time' version.
I think that the first is the most important to developers. How many skins and plugins have been made that break on the latest milestone?
For the end users the most important thing is the feeling that they're not using alpha or beta quality software, but they're using a *stable*, completed application.
This is one of the reasons that Netscape pissed me off with 6.0. It's a totally unusable browser branched of a Mozilla release that wasn't too usable itself. Then it was crudded down with Netscape's own crap. I think that this turned a lot of people off, and Netscape will pay for it down the road.
Especially on Windows. The Windows world is not the *nix world. People don't wait for the
At least I hope it will.
(btw. 0.9.5 is *really* good, I'm using it right now and find myself using MSIE 5.5 SP2 much, much less often.)
best standards compliance among compeditors (Score:2, Insightful)
on a side note, it is good to see them put a loose timeframe on the release. their schedule has mozilla 1.0 in about 6 months, so we should expect it in about 9 realistically (sp). I can see their desire to want to lock down api's for a while on the 1.x version. We're seeing
all i want for christmas is a one point oh, a one point oh, a one point oh...
Re:Its not a game you know.. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not the "standards evolution" that happens here. It's about new functionality and methods of providing it being ratified, upgrades to existing standards such as CSS, not changing what CSS does, just expanding it's repertoire. Hence the Standard Model, to borrow from the world of Physics, keeps getting larger, so a browser needs to support more features to comply with *all* the standards.
Now they only want to be the most standards compliant browser out there, but what happens if a "feature" of another brower model suddenly gets ratified as the best way of doing things, and that "standard" gets updated to reflect this?
Standards compliance is a worthy cause, but, ultimately, a lost one. They need to sit down, pick the standards they want to use as they stand *now* and make it comply with those.
Any newer standards can be included in version 1.1 or something.
Chris.
Re:1.0 is symbolic, not artifical (Score:2, Insightful)
time to 1.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Its not a game you know.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.
Actually that's mostly not true. The engineers from MS (predominantly but also the NS ones) were part of the forum which defined the standards (CSS1 in particular). They went back to their home companies and implemented something different.
Yes, standards evolve, just like software. But where a standard exists, it should be followed - when you're defining software behaviour, you should follow all ratified standards up until that point.
Adding stuff on top (with the intent of influencing standards) is OK, as long as the core is followed, and you recognise that your new stuff may be in conflict with future standards, and at that point, will have to be deprecated.
If there is a ratified standard for a feature, you should follow the standard or not implement the feature.
Re:Reversing the speed factor (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't you do a scientific test instead of going by perceptions. Download one of those early builds you are talking about, and time it loading pages. Then install the latest build, and time it again.
Bugzilla Slahdotted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Story on Slashdot:
GOOD: Keep people interested in the project, debate and possibly come up with good ideas.
BAD: They generally have a Bugzilla link, gets Slashdotted, and makes one of your primary developer tools slow to a crawl for a few hours.
Re:Open Source goes back into the Cathederal (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between the cathedral and the bazarre is not the presence or absence of project management. This is one of the most misguided readings of Raymond's paper, as he himself makes clear [lotus.com].
What "The Cathedral and the Bazarre" argues (and this is frankly no great insight on Raymond's part) is that good project management doesn't require formal rules, processes, and bureaucracy. Ideally, it is based on talented leadership, shared vision, and a spirit of collaboration. This strategy is not fool-proof, of course, and is perhaps riskier than traditional management. But when it works, it demonstrably produces amazing results.
Maybe this can't work for mozilla. It wouldn't be all that shocking, since mozilla is different from most free software projects: large, built on a traditionally proprietary codebase, run largely by a major corporation. But that's no reason to slam all the projects for which it does work.
The two methods are always combined to a degree, of course. But they are not entirely compatible, so you can't just say "let's do both". Bureaucracy diminishes the importance of a leader, subjugates vision to process, and dampens enthusiasm. So I'll take bazaar management any day.
Re:possibly a good start? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its not a game you know.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Say's who? The only flashy toys and gimmicks are those obnoxious "flash" ads... It's amazing how much more I enjoy surfing without Flash installed. *aaahhhhhh*
The only people who want that crap are the marketing drones who think it helps them get "clicks"...
Re:Expect Mozilla to beat IE (Score:5, Insightful)
You over-estimate your own importance, dude
When Mozilla is 100 percent compliant to all standards including IEs broken ones.
Oh well. Looks like we'll never beat IE, then. Because we'll implement its extensions when hell freezes over.
Gerv
Re:Manifesto (Score:2, Insightful)
It is well-known amongst the "Powers That Be" that this is your 700th post.
700 posts is a significant threshold by any standard short of Signal 11.
Even more remarkable is you have achieved this with a higher-than-400,000 user id.
By way of comparison, there are users at the 30,000 level who have only made approximately 600 posts. You have posted far more than users who have been here far longer. Indeed, you must be posting multiple times per story, per day in order to achieve this respectable sum.
And given this remarkably promiscuous posting pattern, one would think you might be contributing a great deal to the discussions.
Yet this does not seem to be the case.
Therefore we are collectively considering the possiblity that you might have a psychological disorder akin to obsessive/compulsive behavior. Do you fell uncontrollably compelled to post? Do you wash your hands after each post? Does posting give a feeling of relief similar to, say, a bowel movement?
If so, please consider seeking help. You cannot keep up this pace for long without it seriously impacting your career, studies, and social life.
If it is not an obsessive/compulsive disorder, then we are left with only one possible alternative to explain your behavior.
Specifically, you are something of a wanker.