Going over the wire redux
This is bugging me, and its been bugging me for a while. 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. Things I’ve raised in relatively private contexts have gone unanswered, and I’m growing increasingly cynical about our ability to ship 1.1 early enough to make 1.5 remotely viable this year. At the glacial pace of development we’re currently running at, I don’t see how the ambitious plans for 2.0 are going to be at all viable before late 2006. Maybe I’m wrong, but no one’s bothered to take five minutes and tell me that.
People have brought up hiring, but that’s one of the suggestions that apparently didn’t merit a response, so I’m not going to hold my breath on MoFo staffing someone to work on Firefox and shoulder some of the load. I won’t pretend to understand MoFo’s staffing priorities, I don’t work there, I’m out of the loop in a lot of ways, so I’ll have to assume they have some sort of plan. I’m _hoping_ they have some sort of plan. But until they tell me how we’re going to ship a product with the same size buglist as we had last August, with maybe 1/4 of the core resources, I’m going to be cynical. And while I’m cynical, I’ll be on walkabout, because this isn’t fun anymore.
Update #2: More clarification can be found here.
Edit: Hello Slashdot! Without trying to whore myself, I must say that I’m quite happy with my hosting provider (Dreamhost) right about now, both the “staying alive without a blip” factor and the fact that I won’t come anywhere close to my monthly bandwidth limit even now.
I’d just like to point out that it is pretty hard to find the firefox source code on the site. And the site doesn’t really promote a development community at all. All they show are extensions and firefox. Maybe if you had some more stuff on the front page like “Help Develop Firefox”…people would help
The biggest issue i have with firefox is compared to the mozilla suite the amount of control you have in the GUI is much much less than the mozilla suite.
Also I personally do not agree with the break the suite up into individual componenets idea. I am also not sure about the FF restrictive EULA either.
I’d like to retract my previous statement with the excuse of being tired. Have a nice day all.
Gentlemen,
May I make a suggestion that you reach out to the universities of the world for hacker support?
I have made suggestions about promoting Firefox at universities in your promotion forum (where I have witnessed massive support for Firefox) yet I did not receive a response.
I am a computer science professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and I know that if a conentrated effort was made to recruit coders you would get a response because that is where the passion is for this product and there are thousands of potential recruits out there who would give anything to be a part of Firefox and other Mozilla products but the Foundation has done nothing to recruit them.
If you want to play in the bbig leagues with Microsoft then you are going to have to recruit like they do.
I’d hate to see a great idea go down in flames. You have the world’s attention – you have center stage – you have your moment – don’t be idiots and lose the moment.
Mozilla needs to have paid developers to do a lot more of the “grunt work”. Free software: free-as-in-beer, free-as-in-speech, and free-as-in-unemployed. Mozilla needs to find the cash from somewhere and pay lots of smart people. Just compare with Google’s recruitment.
I’d come work for MoFo… but you’d need to move away from Gecko first.
While I’m not a FF fan, I do hate to see problems in the development process. I guess the news about Google hiring the MoFo devs, and AOLTW building NS8 based off of FF kinda overshadowed how things really were. :/
Take a step back… breath… look at what is there, and what it could be, and then decide if it is still something you want to be a part of.
Viva Chile y Firefox
Re progress (or lack thereof), I’ve been commenting on Asa Dotzler’s blog about the weird over-confidence and complacency that seems to be dominating the Fx scene since v1.
Example: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007653.html
I’ve written comments and sat back waiting to be flamed. I haven’t been flamed which makes me wonder if my impressions are correct. If can gather the impression that the Fx scene has ground almost to a halt, plans to release feature-poor updates at a vert slow rate and is over-reacting to a small win in the marketshare stakes… if I can gather this just from following blogs all the way down in Melbourne Australia, then what I’m seeing must be the smoke from a rapidly (not) growing fire (pardon the pun) fox.
Then the Gartner article was released, giving all but those with the most fanatical religion-like faith in Fx somewhat of a reality check.
Now these comments from inside the development team!
Congratulations for having the courage to stand up and say what you feel Mike. If there’s issues in the Fx scene then the rest of the community needs to know about it.
I really appreciate the HUGE amount of work that has gone into Firefox and Mozilla and Thunderbird and Sunbird by all parties involved–I use them all daily (except for sunbird since I can’t print yet.)
I hope you don’t get too discouraged, and if no one capable is willing to help—THEN TAKE YOUR TIME. Don’t get discouraged and quit as I personally greatly appreciate any work you’ve done to improve Firefox. If it takes until 2006 for webforms, so be it, I’d rather see glacial-paced improvement than none.
Perhaps you could ask the bigger, well funded linux distributions for a donation of worker’s time or a $$$ incentive.
The reason I’ve basically stopped contributing to Mozilla/Firefox is simply that it has gone from ‘Cross platform’ to ‘mac/windows/linux’. It still happens to build on my Solaris machines, but now we have ‘blessed’ and ‘irrelevant’ OS-es. Though I could understand this from a commercial organization but I am dissapointed in this change in attitude from Mozilla.
Honestly, I’m skeptical too of the whole 1.5 release. As good as the MoFo has done on the current release of Mozilla, Firefox is clinging by a thread. I got so fed up with the crashing bullshit that I reverted to Mozilla. I’d rather use an older, insecure version in place of a buggy, crash-every-5-minutes-for-no-fucking-reason version. Really, I don’t think you know how upset I get when I’m staring BugZilla in the face AND it too crashes! How do you document BugZilla crashing??? MoFo needs to rethink their approach to dominating the browser market, the road ahead is a bumpy one, people will be tossed and turned, but selling out is NOT the way.
I was PAID to work on Mozilla a few years back and would never do it again. Can’t see why a volunteer would either. What’s the fun of programming if you can never wade through the social heirarchy of unresponsive powers-that-be to get anything checked off?
I understand, of course. How many people outside of Mozilla have even HEARD of C++, let alone have a PhD in it? Can’t be more than twenty, right? Then, on top of that, it helps if you’d enjoy tweaking Microsoft. You’re only left with three people who are qualified to help you. (Those numbers are off, you say? Then there must be another reason you’re not attracting help…)
Twenty-two years of programming in the Valley and I have never seen such a glacial project.
You twelve-year bottlenecks can keep it all to yourselves. I’m busy getting stuff done, making things other than Mozilla work. And I’m enjoying myself.
Am I wrong to think that the ONLY problem is proper guidance ?
We need someone at the top telling/asking us individuals what to do and when to do it.
If you need the help of a proficient C++ coder, I maintain a 150,000 line cross-platform Peer-2-Peer GUI (xMule) for the last 2 years now.
Let’s see…GUI, cross-platform, net-centric, 12 years c++ experience…
You should probably consider it.
I sincerely hope the previous post was a joke. No more than twenty people having heard of C++? You must be kidding me. An extremely large part of software development the world over uses C++!
It is necessary to have a smaller group of people with patch approval powers otherwise the project would simply become unmanageable and would collapse because of a lack of decision-making ability. I admit that something needs to be done to improve the rate of progress but suddenly allowing everyone to do what they want with the codebase and make checkins willy nilly is a simply ridiculous and unworkable solution.
What can you expect when your entire process relies on the charity of others.
You should expect to be shorthanded, underfunded, feature-poor, badly documented, and late. There are too many open source/foss/gnu titles to gain traction anymore.
In fact, expecting more seems arrogant. The church promises eternal life, requires no skillset whatsoever, and has the widest possible audience. Most churches are underfunded and shorthanded. You cannot seriously expect to do better than a religion.
How many projects can FOSS sustain without a revenue model? A few hundred, maybe less. Probably around 50 projects will get the attention they deserve. The rest will be quasi-orphans and stragglers at best.
Sad thing is that if the “hero” of the anti-IE movement cannot find resources, what can?
Both Firefox and Thunderbird are excellent products. Charge for them. Offer a 30 day trial and after that deactivate the code except for a purchase option.
You’ve built a great product. Charge for it. Take the revenue and hire resources. Money talks, and there is nothing wrong with what it says.
There is an article about this blog entry:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21628
Of course I was joking, or, to be more accurate, facetious.
There are legions of qualified, enthusiastic, idle C++ programmers. And that’s just in the local junior high schools.
Re-think the organization such that resources can be utilized and work can get done.
Switching to Subversion would be possible, although there is some work to do to get the same level of tools and automation. LXR does not require CVS at all. Tinderbox can work without CVS. There is an SVN Bonsai being developed, most features done already.
“There are legions of qualified, enthusiastic, idle C++ programmers. And that’s just in the local junior high schools.”
Don’t understimate the talent needed to work on something like fox. High school education alone doesn’t give you the sort of talent to progress at a rate faster than today, as Jeff says in comment 3..
I don’t know alot of programming and all the coders you need, but I want to say I don’t think I can live w/o firefox and thunderbird. Right now you have microsoft peeing their pants with these two products, there’s a million companies who wish they could do this. If you want to make people pay I would baeck you. A browser is used countless times each day. You can’t put a price on it.
I must say i have been very impressed with Firefox and would be very saddened to see it fade. It has proven to be a wonderfull replacement to IE of which I must still use for the Magic ticket tracking system. After reading… most of the comments there are 2 things that struck me.
1) You need an active leader to cordinate efforts to make devleopment more viable and allow you to keep your focus on development alone.
2) You should consider a fund drive to raise some money. With a good leader to cordinate efforts you could take advantage of programmers in locations like India which can be hired on for just a few thousand a year.
Either way i appreciate your efforts and hope you don’t lose momentum. You’ve built a terrific App that i hope to see turn IE inside out and leave MS crawling behind.
I hope things get sorted out. For the good of your happiness and well-being, and for the good of the worldwide Firefox community.
I truly felt sad when I read this. There is not words to describe how much weight Firefox put of my shoulders. Finally I did no longer have to sacrifice blood sweat and tears over an inadequate browser that provided me with nothing but spyware and spam. I sincerely hope that you will pull it together and continue to do a tiresome task. Bear in mind that millions thank you every day for the tremendous and amazing work you do. Keep on making the internet a comfertable and problemfree experience!
It seems that I forgot to tank the active part of the community… Anyway, thanks to all who contribute!
Well, I think the problem is you need more people telling other what to do. As it is at the moment, nobody knows what to do.
I tried building firefox 4 or 5 times, each time I had to struggle through tonnes of useless google results to find out how to build it, and even then I had to use my noggin to work out what’d gone wrong when the errors happened.
Better docs, and more bossy people; this is what you need.
When open source becomes big enough it is going to commercial. Open source is actual a free ads.
I think the problem stems from the lack of guidance and help with respect to getting started. There are many, many talented programmers out there who should be working themselves up the ranks.
I am not one of them, at least not yet, but I have submitted basic patches which get bitrotten and die over and over again. A no hand-holding policy is all well and good, but when you need extras, you should be extending that proverbial hand outwards.
As a final note, hang in there. You may feel like you’re the only one that cares, but it’s people like you who get things changed in the world.
> David Lynch:
> I’d argue that better tools reduce the cost-of-entry for new people, making it more likely that talented people (who already have other obligations, and thus not all that much time to donate) will step up to help.
Here is an example to backup what you are saying:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=282776
They call the project Open Source, but I don’t think it really is. I have stuff documented on my PC that I haven’t seen documented anywhere else, however it’s so hard to get into that little tight nit of developers that I’ll have to just keep it to myself. I have time to make the occasional additions to the Firefox project, however not enough to be wasting on getting to the stage where I would be aloud to do that.
I don’t even want to be able to edit pages or be given any credit at all. All I want is to be able to submit new, or edit of existing documentation etc., then somebody could either accept or reject it. Submitting a bug report isn’t a practical alternative. Not to mention the fact that I don’t want, or have time to, mother a bug report. If I were able to just submit the changes for approval, then somebody could just say weather the changes were good or bad and then we could all just move onto the next thing.
Mozilla is alienating potential developers with its behaviour.
The entry level to mozilla development is too high, and it doesn’t help that you need to sign papers and snail-mail them just to be able to commit a translation to firefox. Documentation on the site is obsolete, and it doesn’t help that things change in the last minute (like the sudden change to CVS based l10n in Firefox-1.0).
And there’s the problem that what Mozilla actually distributes is not free software (as in speech), and Mozilla seems to be totaly uninterested in the issue.
I’m going to say this as a man with little knowledge of how the Mozilla system functions, but with lots of knowledge about being the only one who cares about a project:
Don’t get discouraged!
It’s hard… man is it fucking hard. But consider this: if you got slashdotted, do you really think nobody cares? I’m sitting here behind my desk in a tiny city somewhere in the Netherlands, and I’m posting on your blog. Know what I mean?
And although I hate to admit it: I can totally understand it if you want to quit a team that just does not care (if that is what you are saying). But in your case I would think about the millions (!!) of people backing you up mentally.
Firefox can’t die, it just can’t…
Hello,
I have never been a great fan of MSIE, so in the “distant past” I started using Opera. Since a few years now I am using Mozilla, first the package, now Thunderbird and Firefox seperately.
As a mailprogram I used Netscape 4.79 till last year because no program could handle my 2 Gb mailarchive. But Thunderbird can handle it fine, thanx a milion for that alone
All I want to say realy, is that I am verry happy with Mozilla. In my eyes it is the only serious “other browser”. My company (I should say “I”, but that sounds too selfcentred
) have developed our own statistical system, and in the last half year alone the usage of Mozilla has more than doubled…
Don’t give up now, you guys (and girls?) are getting there, come on!
Eesger Toering
Knooppunt (The Netherlands)
I don’t understand … can someone explain me what’s going on in 3 years old’ English?
Hi.
Have been using Firefox for Win for a long time, and I am very impressed with this browser. It would be a great shame and a big security risk to leave Firefox dead in the water as many corporations and institutions have adopted Firefox (however silently they may be about it). Why not seek funding also from the European Union too if it is possible. Many Europeans, including I, have adopted Firefox as a primary browser. Minimo did receive funds from Nokia, wouldn’t it be possible to find external funds and perhaps brainpower from companies with interests in seeing viable alternatives to that of Microsoft products.
Thank you, and plz keep Firefox alive and well
/xeza
Your browser is very steady. More steady and safer then IE. Let ta world know though! Try to get a deal for standard installation in a shop or for business so let’s talk to the big shot’s.
I hope you own some money with it so you can hire and keep some motivated people.
Best regards
This kind of articles must be great for the closed source community, the big companies who make the claim that open source can not provide the support in the long run.
I have been worried about the development of open source communities for some time now. Any egomaniac can take the source and start his/her own project. I have seen too many orphaned projects at Sourceforge. So, instead of nurturing a limited number of developer communities on key applications we allow the uncontrolled growth of heaps upon heaps of projects, many of them doing the same or similar thing.
OK, Open Source is about choice. I wish I had more skills in coding so I could help. However, I don’t have to skills, thus I am limited to advocacy. But how can I suggest a company to transfer to Firefox when -apparently- the final person who works on it says he wants to quit?
Final words: more cooperation, less projects, more sense of direction.
Hi Mike,
I sorry to hear that the development frustrates you. It seems quite strange to me that only half a dozen developers hold all the cards. (n.b. I have great respect for all of you) I would love to help you, but i really wouldn’t know how to do my part. I’m a themer myself (PimpZilla), but i don’t know enough of the xul kernel stuff.
I think the Mozilla/firefox developers should get some serious corporate sponsorship (ibm, sun: pay up please!), in order to maintain a dedicated team on this superior browser. Open source is cool, but some people have to guide the whole thing and they should get some doe.
Keep up the good work man & please don’t quit, lot’s of people have great respect for you and your work, i know i do.
grtz Marco
I am not a programmer, not unless you’re considering doing Firefox in 680x assembly language. However, I do use Firefox on a daily basis, and I recommend it to anyone who will listen. What can us ordinary-user, non-developer types do to help? Write to Mozilla Foundation? Start a petition? Do a fund drive? Users are part of the community, too, and they/we have an obligation to contribute to the community however they can. Let us know, I’m sure people will be glad to help in any way that they can!
Firefox is wat i use daily like millions do…it cant just fade away…it wont…
firefox has got the appeal to attract numerours developers, if the persons involved in active firefox development cud do some community building effort…
Come on guys…u guys r really kewl…if 6 persons in the core team can take firefox this long…think abt couple of 100 developers…hmmm…i guess gettin couple of hundred developers is not goin to be tough…if core developers cud sit & write nice tutorials & articles abt firefox development internals…
its u guys who know how to hack…teach everyone how to hack…provide enough info to let a developer start writin basic programs…with firefox devel tools…& also make him understand the architecture…
firefox platform is not widely used in open source projects devel like other stuff…so we shud understand & do somethin abt it…instead of lukin 4 seasoned developers to fit right into the core team…we can kindle interest of many a hundred developers with good firefox plaform internals advocacy…
May be not everyone wud start to contribute to firefox…they might get into someother project with xul…but some will stick around to do some minor firefox devel…& few might get into the core team after gettin their hands wet…i guess we can also ‘ve gud code reviewers frm that bunch…
although i admire the core developers…u guys shud ‘ve avoided this situation…a premiere open source project development in dire straits…a bad bad example…
guys…its not just the core developers…anyone who knows how to hack firefox r mozilla…plz contribute to the community by writing & providing info to developers…
Im a member of a LUG in India…i can ask my lug members to contribute code…im also a CTO in a linux based solutions company…our management ppl r really kewl…they wud allow our core team to work on firefox…
lets concentrate on preparin stuff which wud help developers to come rushin in for active firefox development…
WE can do it
Firefox is wat i use daily like millions do…it cant just fade away…it wont…
firefox has got the appeal to attract numerours developers, if the persons involved in active firefox development cud do some community building effort…
Come on guys…u guys r really kewl…if 6 persons in the core team can take firefox this long…think abt couple of 100 developers…hmmm…i guess gettin couple of hundred developers is not goin to be tough…if core developers cud sit & write nice tutorials & articles abt firefox development internals…
its u guys who know how to hack…teach everyone how to hack…provide enough info to let a developer start writin basic programs…with firefox devel tools…& also make him understand the architecture…
firefox platform is not widely used in open source projects devel like other stuff…so we shud understand & do somethin abt it…instead of lukin 4 seasoned developers to fit right into the core team…we can kindle interest of many a hundred developers with good firefox plaform internals advocacy…
May be not everyone wud start to contribute to firefox…they might get into someother project with xul…but some will stick around to do some minor firefox devel…& few might get into the core team after gettin their hands wet…i guess we can also ‘ve gud code reviewers frm that bunch…
although i admire the core developers…u guys shud ‘ve avoided this situation…a premiere open source project development in dire straits…a bad bad example…
guys…its not just the core developers…anyone who knows how to hack firefox r mozilla…plz contribute to the community by writing & providing info to developers…
Im a member of a LUG in India…i can ask my lug members to contribute code…im also a CTO in a linux based solutions company…our management ppl r really kewl…they wud allow our core team to work on firefox…
lets concentrate on preparin stuff which wud help developers to come rushin in for active firefox development…
WE can do it
Mike, we need your work so dont quit but find new partners. You made a great browser and the best is yet to come
Hi,
I am not soo competent a programmer myself(mainly for the Palm OS), but I love FireFox and thus am willing to help when it is possible.
Please email me with what I can do!
best regards and keep on going
Tam Hanna
Like a friend said to me m8 “Dont let the B***ards get you down”
in the meantime maybe you should tell your friends to all go out and spend some quality time bowling, watching a movie and a good meal that way you get to discuss what the problems are. Else the cynical side of me would say Microsoft may have paid your colleagues to go because of IE7 then i would dump Mozilla and produce another browser 
As your average Firefox user i’m very happy with the product and what you’ve all done. Please stay and make it even better. We’ve counting on you.
For those of you complaining that it’s hard to get into the “close knit family” of devellopers, or to get permission to edit things – the very fact that you’re sitting here on Mike’s blog debating this is proof that you are wrong. If you want in, all you have to do is step up. These guys don’t have the time to hand hold if they’re going to be reviewing. They ALL have full time jobs elsewhere. They’re not going to come up to you and say “hey, you’re just sitting there, I think you might have talent.” Get yourself out there and get noticable. Submit patches for review – but make sure you read the instructions on how to submit them properly. There’s one guy on the slashdot site complaining about a patch of his that is sitting there, Mike looked it up and it’s because the guy didn’t fill out the form properly, it’s not been sent to anyone to look AT. Get into irc and ask questions, there’s always someone around in there. Just don’t wait for permission. This isn’t a social club, it’s a business. They don’t invite anyone in because it’s not invitation only. Step up, show them what you can do, and they’ll let you do it.
OMFG DONT STOP FIREFOX OR I’LL COMMIT SUICIDE(im fuckin serious)
AWOL!? WTF!!! Where are they? Did they leave a break-up note? At least a “I’ll be back later” note?! Check Seattle if they’re in a meeting with $$$ in their face! Check Netscape/AOL and see if they’re throwing $$$ at them too!
I don’t want people to think I’m starting a rumor, but hearing they’re AWOL is not cool – I would like to know if I got dumped!
P.S.> Good luck, we love you… er, we love Firefox!