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Mozilla The Internet

Interview with Christopher Blizzard 93

Posted by emmett from the hey-chris-how-long-until-the-starcraft-port dept.
Ur@eus writes "We have just put up an interview with Christopher Blizzard of Red Hat Labs and Mozilla. The interview gives insights into many things regarding Mozilla, Linux and Blizzard's participation. The interview can be found at Linuxpower." Yes, yes... He's a Slashdot Author, too, but it's a pretty good interview. Check it out.
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Interview with Christopher Blizzard More

Interview with Christopher Blizzard

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  • Dear Mr. Blizzard.... (Score:4)

    by Denor ( 89982 ) <denor@yahoo.com> on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:10PM (#1219204) Homepage
    What emmett didn't tell you was that Slashdot was going to do its own interview with Mr. Blizzard, but they realized that it would look a lot like this:
    1. Mr. Blizzard, are you considering porting Diablo II to linux?
    2. While we appreciate all the testing that goes into your games, do you think that you may lose customers with the recent delays of Diablo II?
    3. Is there a similar 'collector's edition' planned for Warcraft III?
    4. The Mozilla project has, for its mascot, a large reptillian creature. Was this the inspiration for the Zerg?
      And finally:
    5. Do people ever think that you work for Blizzard, just because of your last name? Also, could you get me in on the Diablo II beta?

  • Ya'll killed the penguin! &nbsp Here's what I get:

    Warning: Too many connections in functions.php on line 58

    ERROR: db_connect - Unable to connect to SQL server

    If you think this is in error, please email bugs@linuxpower.org giving the above error and the what you did to cause it

    © Copyright of all documents belonging to this site by linuxpower.org and linuxpower.com © 1998-2000.
    For more information please look at our disclaimer page.


  • Only Developers as users? (Score:3)

    by MrEfficient ( 82395 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:24PM (#1219209)
    Do you think/hope many people will use the Mozilla browser instead of the Netscape branded browser?

    At Mozilla.org, we're really targeting developers more than end users. We're hoping that we can get a lot of developers using Mozilla, for sure. As for end users, I think that most of them would benefit most from sticking to a released branded version of Netscape or some other released browser version from another vendor.

    I was supprised to see his answer to this question. I thought Mozilla was meant to be an open source browser for everyone. I realize anyone who wants to can use it, but I didn't think it was targeted at developers. Personally, I plan on using it as my browser just as a matter of principle. I mean, I just like the idea of using Mozilla. Although, depending on how good it is, Netscape 6.0 may change my mind, I'll have to wait and see.

  • Re:another one? (Score:3)

    by mce ( 509 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:27PM (#1219210) Homepage Journal
    I must say that I agree with this. Too many interviews, and rarely with someone makes me go look at either the potential questions or the answers. The one with Stroustrup was an exception, as far as I'm concerned, but that's about it so far for (roughly) the whole of 2000.

    Another problem is that if I do look at the list of potential questions, I find that far more questions already got moderated up to 5 than any interviewee will ever have time to answer. So we get tens of questions at level 5, only about 7 or so make it through the final selection (based on what criterion actually?). All this again makes me wonder why I should bother spending my moderation points on helping to select questions.

    Seems like the /. interviewing process is a bit flawed, IMHO. At the very least it suffers from fixed the upper limit on moderation points per post that serves us rather well in the normal discussions.

    --

  • In the interview Chris talks about the increase of non-Netscape users since Mozilla is now usable day to day for a large number of people. I think this could have a snowball effect even bigger than they might think. IMHO most people are more intimate with their web browser than any other software they use, and people like to be involved in the developement of software with which they are intimate. More people are going to be more intimate with Mozilla than perhaps any other project we've seen.

    I think this project is going to pull a lot of people into its developement once people are using it a lot.
  • And incedentally, is LinuxPower using a Microsoft DB?

    Warning: Too many connections in functions.php on line 58

    ERROR: db_connect - Unable to connect to SQL server
    If you think this is in error, please email bugs@linuxpower.org
    giving the above error and the what you did to cause it

    © Copyright of all documents belonging to this site by linuxpower.org and linuxpower.com © 1998-2000.
    For more legal information please look at our disclaimer page.

  • Re:The site is /.'d! (Score:3)

    by Unknwn ( 646 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:29PM (#1219213) Homepage
    Yikes! I've seen /.'ings before, but this is definitely the worse one I've seen on us yet. I'm working as much as I can to keep serving pages, but the box is seriously underpowered for this kind of load. I see hardware upgrades in the future... ;)

    Anyway, worse comes to worse, come back and try again in an hour or so and hopefully the effect will subside somewhat.


    --
    Jeremy Katz
  • No, they're using an SQL database server, most likely mySQL.

  • Coming Attractions (Score:5)

    by Green Monkey ( 152750 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @01:35PM (#1219218)
    "KARMA"
    In this controversial film (currently being protested by the Anti-Troll Defamation League), two trolls whose Slashdot accounts have been temporarily disabled discover a loophole that will enable them to return to the site -- but which will unmake the universe in the process. Can CmdrTaco patch the code before it's too late?

    "HOT GRITS CLUB"
    In the near future, angry young men turn to pouring hot grits down their pants to escape from their meaningless, materialistic lives. Remember, the first rule about Hot Grits Club is that you don't talk about Hot Grits Club.

    "/DEV/NULLINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY"
    When the DVDCCA sends cyborgs back in time to kill young Jon Johansen before he can create DeCSS, it's up to Arnold Schwarznegger to save Johansen, stop the DVDCCA, and coin as many cultural catchphrases as possible.

    "THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT NATALIE"
    A romantic comedy in which two guys chase after every Slashdot reader's dream girl. Features an exciting encounter between Natalie Portman and Medusa.

    "THE HOLLAND WITCH PROJECT"
    In October of 1994, three Slashdot editors disappeared into the library in Holland, Michigan, while writing a Slashdot exposé. A year later their story was found."

    "THE SIXTH POST"
    "I see trolls." Bruce Willis plays a psychologist working with a small boy who sees Slashdot posts no one else does. (Watch for the shocking plot twist, in which it is revealed that the boy is reading at -1.)

    "MOZILLA 2000"
    Feature bloat causes Mozilla to grow beyond its creators' control and escape to wreck havoc on Tokyo's computers. A special effects extravaganza ensues -- but will audiences return after 1998's flop "Geeko vs. Mecha-Go!Zilla"?

    "TRANSMETA CRUSOE"
    Linus Torvalds is shipwrecked on a distant isle and must survive with only a Rio, the Linux kernel, and an AIBO. An adaption of the classic novel.

    "THE X-WINDOWS-FILES: FIGHT THE FUTURE"
    Hemos and CmdrTaco investigate the conspiracies surrounding the development of X-Windows. Based on the hit TV series.

  • Just some random thing i noticed that has nothing to do with anything =) Interviews: Interview with... =)
  • You should have used Windows on the server.

    The Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system is the ideal platform for the next generation of business computing and addresses the full range of customers' computing needs, from laptops and desktops to high-end clustered servers. The operating system helps organizations Internet-enable their business with a reliable, manageable infrastructure that is optimized for existing and emerging hardware.

    Windows 2000 Professional is the operating system for desktops and notebooks for all sizes of business. Windows 2000 Server is an entry-level solution for running more reliable and manageable file, print, intranet, communications and infrastructure services. Windows 2000 Advanced Server includes additional functionality to enhance availability and scalability of e-commerce and line-of-business applications.

  • Yikes! I've seen /.'ings before, but this is definitely the worse one I've seen on us yet.

    Consider it a badge of honor. &nbsp Many sites now brag about being /.ed. shortly after a story about them gets posted. &nbsp ;-)

  • I think the distinction that is important to remember is that if you are using Mozilla, you'll be getting developer-type support- either very technical or very "RTFM" style. If you choose to go with Netscape, you'll get more professional and more user-friendly support. Everything will be one nice, happy package, with a label that the average user can "trust." Mozilla will remain more cutting edge (I hope they continue doing nightlies) and (hopefully) continue to be the source and testbed for new development and new ideas, which is something that the "standard" Netscape will never become. Think of it as the stable and unstable versions, if you will.
    ~luge(posted from mozilla build 2000030709)
  • As someone who downloads a nightly every day, I have to agree, but maybe not in the way you think- even very good coders have had problems sinking their teeth into the huge Mozilla codebase. So, I'm not sure that it'll ever get a huge developer base in that sense. However, it will very quickly have the most active and useful bug-reporting and feature-requesting community of any product (sans, maybe, Linux). It'll also be useful for a huge number of other projects- look for people to follow in the footsteps of Zope and become "developers," not in the normal sense that a developer works with the original codebase, but rather as people who extend the project into new and different products without really touching the original code at all.
    my two cents-
    ~luge(posted with mozilla build 2000030709)

  • Mozilla as propaganda (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @02:05PM (#1219225)

    As an oft-cited piece of open source software, Mozilla gets considerable attention from the press, both technological and mainstream. Yet, in most pieces, the word "failure" appears, far more than in works on Linux or Apache.

    Is Mozilla then a good representative of the OSS world? The Mozilla team is primarily Netscape engineers rather than the Internet users, as was initially imagined. So do we want to be associated with it? No major OSS project takes such consistent thrashings, and I wonder how well it reflects on the other projects.

    -- the obvious AC
  • Yes, it's a troll, but this is still just about the damn funniest thing I've ever seen. How can you possibly moderate it down? For shame...
    ~luge
  • Mildly off topic, but Why does Netscape(any version) on Linux(any version) always crash?
    Mozilla doesent crash as much, but has no features. How is linux going to take over the world if browser is the future, and the browser sucks? No Java support?

    WTFIGO?
  • What shape are the various X-based Mozilla frontends in? I understand GTK+ is considered the primary Mozilla toolkit, but there are also Qt and Motif frontends as well. Are they obsolete with the XPFE? Additionally, what is the status of the Mozilla Xlib frontend? I understood this was to reduce the dependancies on toolkits by merging some of the basic functionality into a toolkit independant frontend.

  • Re:Mozilla as propaganda (Score:4)

    by JDax ( 148242 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @02:22PM (#1219229)
    Is Mozilla then a good representative of the OSS world? The Mozilla team is primarily Netscape engineers rather than the Internet users, as was initially imagined. So do we want to be associated with it? No major OSS project takes such consistent thrashings, and I wonder how well it reflects on the other projects.

    I think you just targeted part of the problem in your statement, ie., the fact that quite a few "insiders" were doing this rather than the OSS community in general.

    One of the biggest impetuses that brings much of the OS Software to its highest quality is, as ESR has eloquently put it (paraphrase) - it's the programmer's desire to "scratch an itch". &nbsp If you don't have that desire from inside yourself, then it's just a job but not your job.

    In all fairness to the Netscape people, they were designated as the "poster company" for Open Source and alot of us trying to push it in our jobs point to Netscape's decision. &nbsp In addition, the Mozilla group made a decison to start from scratch with the code, and they've basically built a "new" (in quotes) browser from the ground up.

    One might want to compare them with a Sun, who has taken over the maintenance of StarOffice, to maybe see a different perspective on how a major company handles the Open Source phenomena. &nbsp Maybe Sun is not a good example for the moment, but time will tell on how they deal with their new product.

  • I'm still laughing from the "clownpenis.fart" reference in yesterday's threads.
  • Since the site appears to be slashdotted... I wonder:

    What does it take for a server not to get slashdotted?

    I hope it doesn't require a 12 CPU server cluster with each machine having half a gig of RAM.

    Are there any folks out there that have survived being slashdotted with only slowdowns (and serve dynamic pages)?
  • this may be a troll, but it still made me laugh.

    thanks.
    -l
  • Heh heh heh. That must be how slashdot felt when it first got popular...

    I'm always amazed at the logs I get just when I post a link on slashdot. We're a bunch of trained monkeys!

    Oh well, your site goes down, but you get more corrupt on the Slashdot Purity Test. It all works out in the end...

    later,

    Peter


    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • This is not a 'slashdot' interview. Just a link to a link on linuxpower.com. At least Thats what I got from reading the blurb. You might be asking a retorical question, but it's not going to get sent to the guy or anything.

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • uhh. I think he wanted to apply for a job at RedHat, jackass.
  • This is not a shlashdot interview. You don't need to ask questions. This story is just a link to an interview at http://www.linuxpower.org/display.php?id =168 [linuxpower.org]. Unfortunetly, the server is being slashdoted right now :(

    [ c h a d o k e r e ] [dhs.org]
  • Sure...there's slashdot (1 web server, 4 sql servers, if I can remember correctly). ;-)
  • i believe it's related to a glibc2 bug and their decision to forego implementing a workaround.

    what helps me the most is: 1) turn off java and java script, 2) try not to open new windows and then close them again. just open however many you use on different desktops and don't close any. the less you close, the higher the probability that it will survive. 3) don't use a wrapper script. execute the netscape binary directly.

    -l

  • Suggestion - What to do with slashdotted sites... (Score:4)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2000 @03:12PM (#1219241) Homepage
    As Slashdot grows, the problem of Slashdotted sites becomes more important... I agree that we can't just copy the linked page on Slashdot, since this would (rightly) be copyright violation. However, many of the linked pages are not copyrighted (or have a liberal license) and most of the slashdoted sites are small (often OSS sites) which would allow their pages to be copied on Slashdot.

    So why not ask some OSS (and other small) sites whether they'd allow their pages to be copied on Slashdot. This would benefit both those sites and Slashdot readers. If something of the like is not done, it would mean that eventually slashdot could only link to major sites, which would restrict a lot (in terms of point of view) the information available to slashdot readers.
  • How do you do a +1 Offtopic?
  • sorry, this does not really relate to the topic, but I thought that I would merely stick this here since it might just get read. I have a prob. I am very amateur and am trying to learn programming. I know some QBasic. This summer, I am going to one of those summer computer camps for a little while. I want to learn C there, but they want u to have eperience in a 'structured' language. They suggest Pascal. Friends who are good at programing said no Pascal. Since I could find functionaly nothing on the language, I guess it must be sort of obsolete. One guy suggested Perl as a language to learn this term. Another said that that would be to tough and said learn a new language called Python. Which one? a.Perl b.Python c.other

  • Red Hat/Cygnus have a development office in Toronto?!?

    What's its mailing address?

    I'd love to work there if it wasn't too far from public transit.

    <FLAMEBAIT>Hey, come on--Toronto has only got one (1) underground line; go figure...</FLAMEBAIT>
  • Uh, dude, I hate to disappoint you, but this isn't one of those Slashdot interviews where you post your question and hope it gets moderated up and answered. It's a link to an interview with the guy, on Linuxpower, which already took place. If you want to ask him something, go look for his email address and send him a message.

    (Not a troll, not flamebait. Just pointing poor Andrew to the right direction.)

  • First off, congrats on a great project. I'm in charge of learning about mozilla for a set-top box and I've been digging in to it hardcore for a while now. For a project of it's size it is remarkably clean. I'm very impressed with the overall high quality of things.


    Any estimates on a minimal system to run mozilla?
    it looks like 32M is possible, 16M looks out of the question. So much of the function is coupled into javascript and XUL that it doesn't look very easy to take things out. (or worth while, since the function will generally need to come from somewhere...)


    Thanks for your work, and I'm very impressed with the product and it's evolution.

  • I think one of the things /. readers (and particularly posters) forget is that the tangible (as opposed to ideological) benefits of OSS are available primarily, perhaps solely, to developers, or whatever label you'd like to slap on the technically adept.


    This is not a criticism, by any means. As a /.er with a fairly mixed background (non-tech education, tech job), I notice as much as anyone the perhaps unconscious over-assumption of many of my fellow slashdotters that the real benefits of Free/Open Source Code are equally accessible by all.


    Mozilla is a case in point in that it is painfully obvious that the project could use more community assistance (I'll be the first to raise my hand as a hypocrite here). Despite its technical elegance and exemplary standards adherence, this is honestly a browser still tragically not ready for prime time.


    For this reason it is still a developer's app, no where near idiot-proof enough for general consumption. For the good of this community, it bears upon all of us not to forget that the vast majority of computer users:

    -- do not share our fascination with these machines, and

    -- lack even a fraction of the computer-manipulation skills that most /.ers take for granted.


    So, be humble, patient, and work to make all things Cliff Claven-friendly. =)

    jMC

  • hey: maybe it's here:

    href="http://lancebert.linuxpower.org/">http://lan cebert.linuxpower.org/

    It could be worse, everyone could be going to that site with all the "forward/delayed post" stuff. hey. password protect devel, or restrict DNS dumps... if you care
  • Hey, come on--Toronto has only got one (1) underground line; go figure...

    No, 2: Bloor-Danforth, and Yonge-University.
    The Scarborough RT ain't a subway, it's LRT like Calgary and Edmonton.

    Pope
  • you can care so much sometimes that you become destructive to that which just is.

    when people say they don't care, it eases the pressure of actually having to care.

    i myself, don't want to care in the egotistical way ("why IS it THAT important?").

    example: Hitler CARED enough about the Germans that he decided to handle their problem for them: to kill all Jews. now that's compassion--you care enough for your "brethren" that you alleviate their problems in life--by causing more "problems."

    maybe he shouldn't have cared so much.
  • I knew a girl whose ass was like the Universe--BIG. i dig what you typed :-)
  • I was supprised to see his answer to this question. I thought Mozilla was meant to be an open source browser for everyone.

    Netscape had stated from early on that Mozilla.org's product would be source code and it's customers would be hackers, including Netscape hackers. Unfortunately, most people seem to forget that, especially when milestone builds are released.

    Personally, I'll be surprised if Netscape Navigator is at all similar to the current Mozilla builds, but, of course, only Netscape knows for sure.

    I think the point is that other organizations, including Netscape/AOL, can use Mozilla.org to package their own Browser based on the Mozilla source code, as well as incorperate Mozilla into existing and future products.

  • Java is ALL pointers!

    There is just a garbage collector that takes care of you.

    EC
  • Ada is basically the highest level language that is out there. It is used by the goverment and military a lot.

    http://www.adapower.com/ gives you more information.

    It is what I have learned with, and is a good choice.

    EC
  • the post must have been previously at 2
    ___
  • Um, have you ever even been there?
    Only once (Little Gaute lives there), and only for a weekend. My hosts joked about the city being so small that there was only one underground line. Maybe it's been extended since, or maybe I'm just misremembering.

    Lovely place, though. Very nice, green feel to it; even close to the centre. I'd love to live there.

    Obviously you don't know what the hell you are talking about. I count at least four:

    1. Young

    2. University

    3. Bloor

    4. Scarborough RT (Okay, not an underground, but you get the idea.)

    Also note that these are some pretty long fscking lines, some of which are being extended. Oh yeah, don't forget commuter rail, that is only slightly substantial too. Damn, we can't forget rail cars, I can't even remember how many of lines of those there are. Then there are buses. . .

    I'd go as far to say the TTC is one of the best public transit systems in the world. And I don't even live in Toronto.

    Next time please know what you are talking about.

    Oh, come on; ligthen up. At least I didn't claim to be an expert on urban structure the way some people on /. chat about OS kernels.
  • I was talking to one of their admins tonight, and the site should be getting a hardware upgrade soon.

  • Re:/.-ed, any mirrors? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MySQL.

    I'm told the box should be getting a hardware upgrade shortly from one of the admins. Unfortunately, the site is still feeling the /. effect. I'm told that a static html version is in the works.

  • I was searching on google the other day... and one of the handier features that I noticed when I was trying to extract some information from a dead site was the fact that they store a cache for most of the sites that they list, and they make that available to the searchers.

    Now I noticed that they said that they remove cached pages for people who request, but I get the general feeling that they didn't (and probably couldn't have) asked for permission before posting on their webpage from the cache. So if they can do that without violating copyright laws (which for all I know, they may very well be) why can't slashdot? I don't really see the distinction.

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Doh! I'm a loser....
  • However, my "marry a Russian amputee mail-order bride" site also tends to take a massive hit

    That's the "Dr. Adder" (KW Jeter) crowd.

    Cool book, btw.
  • Well, my experience was atypical. My server was more than powerful enough, being a dual Celeron 400 with 256M, but the pipe in was a measly 128k upload DSL. This caused major problems. Even when I turned off the httpd, the bandwidth of denying incoming requests (at 1.5Mbps) was enough to saturate my uplink. The Linux network implementation isn't happy about this kind of asymmetry. I had to /etc/rc.d/init.d network restart twice.

    Oh yes, and the page being served was dynamically generated from an XML database. Even so, at the peak of the slashdotting, load never went over 1. That is what happens when the web server is in C rather than some hoggish scripting language.
  • A comment may receive more moderator points than it takes to get to 5. This probably happens because it is intended (for such a situation as this, or also because it is possible for a moderator to use "redundant" etc. flags to lessen the score after the fact), rather than a bug (where multiple moderators are moderating on a page - while they are doing this a comment they will moderate up is set to 5, so they add superfluous points).
  • Get the libc5 version of netscape. It doesn't crash. Ever. I mean it. I think it was a malloc bug in glibc that caused bus errors in netscape.
  • What will be the benefits of branded releases? Will people really want a "CNN browser" etc.? What's the incentive to use the Netscape version? Another poster right around here points out the issue of support, but in my experience, no one needs support (besides help files) for a web browser (Uhh, what's this Back button for?).
  • It makes quite a bit of sense actually. Consider the large contributions that the mozilla team have developed:

    bugzilla

    gecko

    xul
    also considering that the above elements of mozilla are just a few of their major developements and that they are all highly modular, in addition to being open sourced, it becomes apparent why the target is aimed at developers. a side-effect of the above elements is an incredibly robust, consistent, and all-around very cool web browser for the end-user.

  • This statement caught my attention:

    • Mozilla has chosen to use a well defined component system, Microsoft COM. They've actually created a cross platform implementation of COM called XPCOM.

    This interests me, not because I give a shit about micros~1, but because D?COM is one of things standing in the way of full compatibility between IIS and the like and real webservers. If there was COM on other platforms, then all those IIS applications could be picked up and moved, whole hog, to other systems. This is interesting to me. Plus, I feel that a cross-platform version of almost anything is preferable to a single-platform stranglehold, even if I personally will never use it.


    Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
  • Get the libc5 version of netscape. It doesn't crash. Ever. I mean it.

    That is absolutely not true. I'm running the glibc2 version of 4.72 on 2.2.12, and it crashes almost daily. Granted, most of the crashes are due to java problems, but there is a web page that simply by resizing the window, I can make ns crash every single time, and no, it doesn't have any java parts.
  • Ah crap! Ignore my previous post. Looks like I need new glasses.........

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