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Netscape The Internet

Interview with JWZ 15

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-read dept.
Emissary from LinuxPower wrote in to tell us about an interview with JWZ that you might be interested. Talks about lots of stuff relating to Mozilla, Open Source, Netscape, AOL and more. Good bit.
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Interview with JWZ More

Interview with JWZ

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  • Posted by nOMAAM:

    Mozilla is ported to the Amiga aswell ...
    I hope it will be any good :)
  • Yeah, it looked like opening up Mozilla didn't change the world like Mark Andreesen thought it would a year ago. They actually planned to have a beta release out in August 1998, believe it or not. 2/3rds of the CVS users being netscape employees isn't the picture Mark advertized in 1998 either, even with the hypothetical
    "patches" JWZ hints at. He just brushes aside any questions about the success of opening the code. If I lead a phenomenally successful open source project I would brag and brag about how much the model has improved my efficiency and at least give the number of emails from coders I get in a day, but JWZ treats the subject like a threat.

    Even then, as the leader of the Mozilla project, working for Netscape for years, he knows awfully little about the company. Like whether Netscape sees any benefit to opening up its other programs, how many patches are coming from volunteers, or how much the open source model has benifited Mozilla. Has he not been leading an open source project for a year? Is it that hard to count the number of emails you get in a day? Or what about the number of code contributions a development team recieves when you've been working with the people for 4 years? Does he at least know where the bathroom is at Netscape?

    Volunteering works for small projects when the coding is still fun. Mega projects like Mozilla aren't fun to volunteer for. After getting the same question asked twice and evading it, JWZ finally ends the interview with, "Please contribute! Mozilla is a very large project, and it takes some time to understand, but we could really use all the help we can get."

    So I guess it isn't exactly to the point of Linus writing a patch manager to handle an overload of patches, but JWZ wouldn't know if his team was using a patch manager anyways.

  • The Mozilla folks already have plans to package the layout engine as a XPCOM or CORBA object. This would allow it to be used as a widget without any of the linking / source combination issues you describe. Remember, the GPL doesn't apply to programs that are aggregated with GPL'd programs, only those that are linked or combined.

    Object interfaces like CORBA and XPCOM would also provide an easy way to plug any layout engine into any program, so getting tied to an obsolete or buggy layout engine wouldn't become a problem.

  • Proprietary platforms such as Win32 often have more bugs than open platforms. Since it's usually very difficult or impossible to get the operating system code fixed, workarounds or replacement code must be created. More bugs to fix means more code to write. More code to write requires more developers to write it.

  • It has to do with the number of developers. There are simply more developers for Windows and MacOS at the present time. That may change.

    Another thing: Most developers on Unix and MacOS are new to Open-Source. They tend to find it very exciting. I'm coordinating a project for an Open-Source MacOS ICQ clone, for example; my single announcement of it is buried in the ICQ messageboards (I don't want to really "go public" until I have at least basic functionality working), and I'm still getting e-mails from people wanting to help

  • "Linux sucks less..." Gotta love that one. Also loved the part about embedding into MSIE - can't wait to "fix" my NT system!


    ________________________
  • Heroine said,
    They actually planned to have a beta release out in August 1998, believe it or not.
    And so they did, if you'd been paying any attention. (It was either August or September, I don't remember which off the top of my head.) What do you think all those references to "MozClassic" at mozilla.org and mozillazine.org are about, anyway? There was a surprisingly cool beta, which (and you'd know this if you'd actually bothered to read the fscking interview instead of spouting off about it as soon as your typing finger got all twitchy) was mothballed because it was decided to drop the old rendering engine and to go with NGLayout instead. As a result, the developers had to start over again to a large extent in order to integrate NGLayout with the existing ("new") front end. It was obvious that this decision was going to set the project back by several months, but it was done anyway for the sake of HTML/CSS/DOM standards compliance. Or did you skip the part where Jamie talked about XPFE? Do you even know what XPFE is?

    I humbly and respectfully suggest you yank your head out of your posterior before you go posting any more FUD on the subject, okay?

    So far as Mark Andreesen goes, he's not writing the code, so how is he supposed to know exactly when things will be done? As for Jamie, he's a coder, and not a bureaucrat. Do you think the module owners are cc:ing him every single piece of email they get, or what?

    Sheesh. How ignorant. Get real.

    At any rate, there was a MozClassic beta, I used it, so did a number of my friends, and we all agreed that it rocked. It had a slick new UI and was incredibly fast, too. I'm pretty sure that the source is still available for that version, as well -- dunno if there are still any MozClassic binaries floating around out there, tho.

    Sign me,
    a Mozilla volunteer (even if I can't code C++ worth a crap) and damn proud to be one.

    Zontar

    (somewhere in tenn.)

  • It appears from what he was hinting at, that nearly all of the Mozilla develoers are simply former Netscape developers. Can anyone confirm this? Not that it shocks me - there are only so many willing programmers to go around, and a number of interesting projects were already occupying any willing participants by time Mozilla started up.
  • I believe this is good news. It shows there are still lots of developers that are ready to partisipate in Oper Source projects, but who are not using Linux (yet!).

    I am sure we all believe that many of these people will move to Linux in a near future, which means that not only Linux user community will continue its incredible growth, but also the Linux developer community will continue growing fast.

    That means we are going to have even better OS in a future!
  • - no Mozilla for me ;)
    Why? - my bank requires it for a "bill payer" - rather necessary application for me...

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