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Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble
FireFox may be in danger of "rotting from the inside out" according to industry experts including one of the developers on the FireFox review team. Lack of attention by developers and money from supporters may end the meteoric rise of the browser where it is today.Forget about Microsoft coming out with IE 7 to challenge Firefox. If Firefox rots from the inside out; the way so many other programs, like the original Netscape browser, did; then it's not going anywhere much beyond where it is now. In an EWeek article, the author declares his support for FireFox but raises serious concerns with how the project is being managed. I think Firefox is the best browser on the planet, but it's not going to stay that way long unless the team behind it gets their act together sooner rather than later. Mike Connor, a core Firefox developer, writes in his blog, "In nearly three years, we haven't built up a community of hackers around Firefox, for a myriad of reasons, and now I think we're in trouble. Of the six people who can actually review in Firefox, four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on the verge of just walking away indefinitely, since it feels like I'm the only person who cares enough to make it an issue." Finally the author ends the article with this summary.If the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox friends like Google don't start spending money—right now—to hire more programmers, more project managers and more servers, it won't matter how many ads in the New York Times Firefox supporters take out, Firefox will have already reached its high tide of popularity and we can only wait for the ebb to begin. Read the entire EWeek article
You can also read Mike Connor's Blog Here.
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Message #161141
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Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble
If the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox friends like Google don't start spending money—right now
I read somewhere recently that Google was furiuosly developing their own browser to compete with IE. Maybe that's why they aren't spending money to support Firefox?
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Message #161150
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four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on t
I hope it's not bad form to reply to a thread I posted but I thought I would shed some insight on this that others might not have.
As a co-author of a free product myself I know the kind of burn-out issues these folks are going through. Most folks working on free products need real jobs to pay the bills. This means they work on these free products late into the evenings and on weekends if it's a product of any real worth.
At first the thrill of a new project and the recognition that goes with it carries you through those tiresome evenings. You are creating something new and there are no bean-counters around to mess everything up. However, as time goes on, as with most things, the thrill begins to wax and wane, and after months of getting no more than 4 hours of sleep per night it begins to affect your health. You get sick more often than you used to, and you're main goal quickly becomes to merely get through each day. And then there’s the guilt of spending too much time on it, when the basement needs painting, things need fixed around the house, and you’re not spending enough quality time with your kids (and when you do you’re the walking dead so it doesn’t count). Finally, and much to your surprise, the project doesn't really turn out to be the big career booster you thought it was going to be. In fact, perspective employers are hesitant to hire you when they find out you have a mistress on the side pulling at your time and resources.
In the end, it’s a matter of commitment. You’ve created something folks have come to rely on and they need you, you cannot walk away from it. You realize how foolish you were thinking that it was all going to be good times and not tough times (like at work) and then you hunker down for the long haul. There are ups and there are downs, in the end you a providing a free product and you have to pace yourself. There isn’t a day that goes by that I didn’t wish my free product was my real and only job, but it isn’t, and I knew that when we started it.
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Message #161171
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.NET-native browser alternative?
Is anyone even starting to work on a .NET or Mono native web browser?
I would love to for example run .NET "applets" in a manner that works with other browsers besides IE.
I don't see any .NET or Mono native Office suite, either, but at least you can run .NET add-ons in Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, unlike Mozilla/Firefox.
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Message #161202
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four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on t
This perfectly summarizes the challenge to making an open source model work in the long-term for anything mission or business critical. These are the real challenges that the adherents need to face and address. This isn't a condemnation of the model per se, because I don't want to say there's no merit in a different strategy than the standard capitalistic one of developing software, but this takes the argument from anecdotal to actual on a well-known project and I hope it gets some attention as a result.
Good post and insight.
Mike
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Message #161223
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four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on t
>>At first the thrill of a new project and the recognition that goes with it carries you through those tiresome evenings. You are creating something new and there are no bean-counters around to mess everything up. However, as time goes on, as with most things, the thrill begins to wax and wane,
So true.
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Message #161392
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This is why Apache works as it does...
Long term quality is a function of community, not codebase. This is why Apache cares more about the shape of the developer community than about the shape of the code at any given time. As Mr. Jobs said, DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS! Do whatever you need to in order to attract developers, be they top notch or otherwise (less skilled are easily helped along!).
There will be developer turnover, it needs to be planned for. A project with a truck number of two is in deep trouble.
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Message #161438
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four are AWOL, and one doesn't do a lot of reviews. And I'm on t
You are right as right can possibly be. This situation exists for any project that is taken "on the side". All too often a developer attempts to write a piece of software that could "be their ticket" and it ends up ruling their lives (just as in your comments) and a decision must be made mid-stream. Usually the decision is to not finish the project.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to take a few months every year to work on things that YOU want to work on? And of course still get paid by your employer! OK I'll wake up now.
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Message #161451
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Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble - or maybe not
Although this is an interesting insight into open source software it looks to me like someone was really just ranting on his blog.
After being slashdotted for the original blog entry the author has more to say - http://www.steelgryphon.com/blog/?p=39
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Message #161583
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Why you don't ask money for your product?
Several reasons (I didn't say good reasons though).
1) Making it free is a great way to get users to actually use it, and to help you create it (by contributing to the forums), and to write templates that they would be willing to share on our online template library.
2) Third party folks like the makers of Opf3 and others can commit to writing MyGeneration templates without forcing additional costs onto customers.
3) We wanted to make a generic tool that could be used to generate anything and everything in order to turn a whole new group of folks onto the advantages of code generation.
4) Customers using a free tool are grateful, customers using a pay product are demanding and we wanted this to be fun.
5) We thought our careers would go through the roof, they haven't :)
However, MyGeneration was a mad experiment that caught on and it has been very rewarding. We have helped quite a few folks and the positive comments have been rewarding.
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