Brendan Eich has written to a newsgroup outlining some of the plans being made to ensure that Mozilla technology remains useful and relevant in the future.Brendan sees Mozilla developing into an open cross-platform alternative to forthcoming Microsoft technologies such as XAML and is looking to collaborate with other open-source projects to make this happen. The GNOME project is mentioned explicity. Read the article at MozillaZine.
Mozilla Looking to Alliance with GNOME/FOSS to Combat Longhorn
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Not sure I got the full swing of the article, but is Mozilla suggesting that they get together with the Gnome crew to make a desktop that can compete with Windows Longhorn?
I can understand them wanting to branch out, they make worthy products. I just wish it would be available for the Windows platform as well since their products run better on it than in Linux. A windows port of gnome/mozilla maybe?
Please? 
(not cygwin tho, yick.)
The only gripe with this article is the strong anti-MS. I respect the Mozilla crew, but when it comes to wanting to wipe out software companies, I start to lose the respect.
I can understand them wanting to branch out, they make worthy products. I just wish it would be available for the Windows platform as well since their products run better on it than in Linux.
The whole point here is to compete with Microsoft. They can’t very well compete with Microsoft by porting Gnome to Windows.
The only gripe with this article is the strong anti-MS. I respect the Mozilla crew, but when it comes to wanting to wipe out software companies, I start to lose the respect.
It’s called competing. You don’t think that MS wants to wipe out FOSS projects?
I applaud this effort as an attempt to bring Linux to the point where it can compete with Longhorn.
As a X windows developer I moved to the open source platform about a year ago. Yes 93% or so of the market uses windows platforms. But if people start developing applications that will run on every type of architecture it will make it easier and easier to develop applications in the future. I write mostly in Java , PHP.MySQL. Every application that I release I release it to work on all 3 platforms. The reason for this is in stead of utilizing 95% of the market I utilize 100% of the market. I like that they are focusing more on this.
For example hopefully I will move my PHP/MySQL CD Inventory System to a java based consumer version. http://www.brianhursey.com/cdinventory.
The only gripe with this article is the strong anti-MS. I respect the Mozilla crew, but when it comes to wanting to wipe out software companies, I start to lose the respect.
Another thing: if you read the article, the alliance isn’t to destroy Microsoft, it’s to prevent Microsoft from dominating the web-based software world with XAML.
Yes exactly as I expressed in my previous post. This will help allow people to develop for 100% of the market instead of being forced to use Microsoft only.
I really don’t think enough developers and users understand the capability of Mozilla as a platform for applications in general. After reading “Rapid Application Development with Mozilla”, and starting a Mozilla-based project of my own, I am very impressed. Really, Mozilla is a complete GUI enviroment, and has some very interesting possibilities.
While I applaud any steps taken to further the reach of Mozilla, I’m not so sure I want Mozilla to become so closely tied to Gnome. I hope this wouldn’t mean that development for other platforms is left to lag behind. One of the reasons Mozilla holds real possibility to reduce proprietary domination IS the very fact that it is cross-platform. Apps developed in Mozilla present far less migration problems than apps developed in other environments. For example, it is conceivable to create an enterprise desktop application in Mozilla which runs virtually the same while company desktops are gradually migrated from Windows to Linux or FreeBSD. Or, even more interesting, it will make it possible for one company to use more than one operating system (for example, marketing uses Mac, sales uses Linux, bookkeeping dept uses Windows).
No matter what else happens, making migration less painful is a BIG incentive for companies to explore alternative operating systems and software.
and I’m interested. I always thought it was kind of dumb of the gnome crew to want to develop from scratch there own XAML deal when they could start with XUL. With Mozilla wanting to do this I really hope they do collaborate. Open Source needs more collaboration.
OK, I’ve got an idea. How about not competing with M$ at all? Why not get back to the original reason for FOSS? the art and love of programming. Let’s forget about Microsoft’s quest for global software domination and make the kind of software that would be made if they didn’t even exist. The FOSS community will never be able to beat M$ playing this copy cat game. The reason is obvious. It’s much harder to catch someone that it is to elude them. Everytime M$ comes out with a new technology, the adoption process has already begun by the time the FOSS community begins work on a clone.
Instead of constantly trying to produce working clones of existing software, why not try to produce new and innovative apps?
I like your thinking. But one problem M$ has us beat marketing wise we need to get the word out on different new open source technologies so that more people will start viewing their possibilities that they can follow.
OK, I’ve got an idea. How about not competing with M$ at all? Why not get back to the original reason for FOSS? the art and love of programming. Let’s forget about Microsoft’s quest for global software domination and make the kind of software that would be made if they didn’t even exist. The FOSS community will never be able to beat M$ playing this copy cat game. The reason is obvious. It’s much harder to catch someone that it is to elude them. Everytime M$ comes out with a new technology, the adoption process has already begun by the time the FOSS community begins work on a clone.
You’re misunderstanding the situation–MS is attacking the FOSS by trying to make commonplace standards and protocols which they can control, and thereby exclude competitors. Were it the case that MS did not threaten the future of FOSS itself, there wouldn’t be any need to “compete,” but as it stands, we as a community have to make sure we can enjoy the same freedoms we have now 10 years from now.
Your conclusion that since we are competing with MS, we are playing “catch up” is irrelevant–even if you make that argument with other FOSS projects, it certainly isn’t relevant in a Mozilla-Gnome alliance.
Instead of constantly trying to produce working clones of existing software, why not try to produce new and innovative apps?
Mozilla has innovated for more than IE. Gnome is vastly different from Windows, and slightly less different from OS X. This alliance would help produce a unified desktop and development environment entirely separate from Windows (both 2000/XP and Longhorn).
I think your problem isn’t with this article at all, but with FOSS in general. And I think that this proposed alliance is a healthy move away from “cloning” MS.
It would probably be a good idea for open source projects to stop developing for Windows if their goal is to get people away from Windows. As long as Mozilla, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gaim, Gimp, etc is all available for Windows, then there’s not much incentive for many of us to look at the competition (eg – Linux) when we’re already reaping the benefits of open source on Windows
Not too soon, since people would just revert
Gnome is a great example of software you can’t run on Windows that’s coming along just fine. I predict that in 1 year, when nautilus has better integrated gstreamer and worked out the multimedia framework, and the UI is more polished, Gnome will be considered on par with OS X, XP, BeOS, etc.
Granted, a DE compared to an OS is unfair, so I mean just the UI components of the OS’es mentioned.
As it stands now, Gnome feels like a really great beta of a really high quality desktop.
That won’t work. You see, open source is defined by its community. All else being equal, the bigger the community, the better. Now, if Microsoft has dominated the market to the point where people cannot even view webpages comfortably on an Open Source platform, what do you think that will do to the community?
They will remain neutral or I won’t be using Mozilla too much anymore.
No, I’m not misunderstanding the situation, I’m just stepping back and asking what is going on here in the grand scheme of things. There is not doubt that Mozilla is the most innovative browser ever. It has some really cool features that IE lacks. But that is proof of why developing with less of a focus on Microsoft is an added strength.
Were it the case that MS did not threaten the future of FOSS itself, there wouldn’t be any need to “compete,” but as it stands, we as a community have to make sure we can enjoy the same freedoms we have now 10 years from now.
What is Microsoft going to do? Send around the software police and make sure that we aren’t using/coding Free Software? I don’t get this thing about the future of FOSS being threatened by a company that was more dominant before FOSS came along. In case you haven’t noticed, Microsoft is more threatened by FOSS than the other way around. I am aware as to how they subvert open standards. But these are grand social technological problems that need to be handled politically. If society finds their behavior detrimental to the public good, then action can and will be taken. Hence the anti-trust suits filed against them. That is a much more practical approach than trying to bang out a few million lines of code just for the sake of keeping your head above water.
Linux was invented out of dissatisfaction with current Microsoft technology and a desire for something more enjoyable. What we got out of it was the GNU/Linux platform which is to a programmer much more fun and excitement than Windows. That’s why they made Cygwin, so that you can add something to Windows that it currently lacks. I’m just saying that we should stick with what works and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Forget about “Linux on the Desktop” and focus more on an awesome gui like no other that has been made.
Gnome is vastly different from Windows, and slightly less different from OS X.
Last time I looked at Gnome, it sure looked like a Windows clone to me. Oh wait, it was “vastly different”. It had a paw on it’s menu button instead of the Microsoft logo and the word ‘start’. And it was about ten times harder to do basic stuff like change your desktop wallpaper and add new hardware or configure a printer. That’s why I stick with Blackbox. The don’t pretend to be a Windows clone. They just do their job and do it well. They offer something Windows doesn’t, elegant simplicity.
Sorry, help me out here..I can’t really find what exactly it is in the article that he thinks will combat XAML.
I don’t get this thing about the future of FOSS being threatened by a company that was more dominant before FOSS came along.
Think about it: Most desktop applications are written specifically for Windows. They’re tied to the proprietary APIs of MS and can’t easily be ported.
The situation for online services is different. They are based on APIs and standards that aren’t OS specific. MS wasn’t able to convince web developers to use proprietary APIs simply because they were a bit late to the game.
MS is now trying to change the situation. With .net and XAML they hope to combine the advantages of web based applications and desktop applications. If the plan succeeds, online services like f.e. ebay and online banking would make use of the more comfortable and powerful APIs of .net. And restrict the customers to using Windows.
Now Brendon wants to provide a solution as powerful as what MS hopes to pull off that is based on standards.
When I first heard about XAML, my initial post here at OSNEWS was, will XUL be DirectX accelerated too?
Now I ask again will it be accelerated for DirectX on Windows, could you imagine even XP could have an accelerated Mozilla app, and those slow redraws wouldn’t happen if you have something like an NVIDIA or ATI card on a slow system.
XUL could also be accelerated on Linux with OpenGL. Or use OpenGL on both OSes.
>Gnome is vastly different from Windows, and slightly less >different from OS X.
> Last time I looked at Gnome, it sure looked like a >Windows clone to me. Oh wait, it was “vastly different”. >It had a paw on it’s menu button instead of the Microsoft >logo and the word ‘start’. And it was about ten times >harder to do basic stuff like change your desktop >wallpaper and add new hardware or configure a printer. >That’s why I stick with Blackbox. The don’t pretend to be >a Windows clone. They just do their job and do it well. >They offer something Windows doesn’t, elegant simplicity.
yep, they only talk about gnome. There’s another DE wich is _really_ impressive and clearly simplier to use (not a kde/gnome flame here).
I loved gnome, I love kde now.
I can say this becaus I used both.
It’ll be really nice if foss devs from kde/gnome/mozilla and other try to work on the same basis, trying more to integrate things and soft, even when these softs use gtk / kde or what else.
We’ll keep the “choice advantage” we always got.
ThanatosNL
Gnome is a great example of software you can’t run on Windows that’s coming along just fine.
But Gnome is not an ‘application’ really … it’s more like part of the OS. It’s also part of what makes Linux appealing, though not at the application level.
Anonymous
No, I’m not misunderstanding the situation, I’m just stepping back and asking what is going on here in the grand scheme of things. There is not doubt that Mozilla is the most innovative browser ever. It has some really cool features that IE lacks.
Innovative as compared to what, Opera? Don’t get me wrong – I like Mozilla too, but I would hardly call it innovative.
In case you haven’t noticed, Microsoft is more threatened by FOSS than the other way around.
Agreed. Stop worrying about what MS is doing and just do your own thing. If they don’t want to play with you, then don’t play with them either.
jeti
Think about it: Most desktop applications are written specifically for Windows. They’re tied to the proprietary APIs of MS and can’t easily be ported.
Yeah, MS should just open up all their APIs so that companies can port their apps to other operating systems – that makes a lot of business sense.
MS is now trying to change the situation. With .net and XAML they hope to combine the advantages of web based applications and desktop applications. If the plan succeeds, online services like f.e. ebay and online banking would make use of the more comfortable and powerful APIs of .net. And restrict the customers to using Windows.
So, is the solution from MS a good one or is it not? If it is, then use it. If not, then have the OSS community build their own and compete with it. Doesn’t sound that compilcated to me.
No, I’m not misunderstanding the situation, I’m just stepping back and asking what is going on here in the grand scheme of things. There is not doubt that Mozilla is the most innovative browser ever. It has some really cool features that IE lacks. But that is proof of why developing with less of a focus on Microsoft is an added strength.
I agree; if Mozilla set out to clone IE, it would not be as good as it is today. I simply don’t view the alliance between Gnome and Mozilla as an attempt to clone anything MS.
What is Microsoft going to do? Send around the software police and make sure that we aren’t using/coding Free Software? I don’t get this thing about the future of FOSS being threatened by a company that was more dominant before FOSS came along. In case you haven’t noticed, Microsoft is more threatened by FOSS than the other way around. I am aware as to how they subvert open standards. But these are grand social technological problems that need to be handled politically. If society finds their behavior detrimental to the public good, then action can and will be taken. Hence the anti-trust suits filed against them. That is a much more practical approach than trying to bang out a few million lines of code just for the sake of keeping your head above water.
I for one think that closed standards and vendor lock-in are best handled by competition, without the government.
You seem to think that effort spent making something to compete with Microsoft means both
1) Cloning the MS equivalent, and
2) Entirely separate from effort spent innovating
I don’t think that either of these are true. I think that is our biggest point of contension.
Last time I looked at Gnome, it sure looked like a Windows clone to me. Oh wait, it was “vastly different”. It had a paw on it’s menu button instead of the Microsoft logo and the word ‘start’.
You probably used a version of Gnome shipped by a distribution that made Gnome look more like Windows.
At any rate, spatial nautilus, different dialog layouts, HIG, default setup, panels, drawers, applets, configuration schemes, etc. all make Gnome vastly different from Windows.
…changing the wallpaper on GNOME is difficult, he is trying to start a flame war. Of all things that GNOME can be accused of, being hard to configure is not one of them. There is not usually much to configure, and that is the way it should be.
What I’m hoping to see is a new revision to XUL that helps promote it to a more general UI language. IIRC, the current version of XUL does not describe many common windowing UI elements, which was a design decision so that it could be finished for the web-platform functions in the Mozilla app suite.
However, today KDevelop and Glade describe UI elements using an XML language as an intermediary step to compiling the application. I understand libglade can even run and application using this intermediate step without compilation.
It appears to me that if XUL was revised to handle the forseeable needs of Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, and most common UI elements, it could be used as the universal intermediate UI language for most FOSS applications. With appropriate guidelines it could also be possible to write a XUL app which can then be compiled into a Qt or GTK/+/#/GNOME app. Or the app could be run by Mozilla without further compilation.
I think such a convergance would be highly significant in the FOSS world.
Er, I just don’t think this is being viewed the way it should be. The MS Windows desktop achieves it’s objectives usability-wise and what Gnome and KDE is trying to improve on is the desktop experience… NOT necessarily cloning MS.
Let me try an analogy here… anyone an F1 fan? It’s like Michelin and Bridgestone. They both make tires, so who’s cloning who?
What they are both trying to do is make better tires.
Right now IE has the web apps lead because you just can’t easily [or nobody knows how] do certian stuff in Mozilla yet… That needs to change. Personally I think they need to focus less on bonding with 1 web language and add better support for controlling the browser with any of the popular ones.
Mozilla is one of those “backdoor” apps. It is a great start to getting OSS in the door because as a brower it does much better than IE… as long as you don’t got vendors writing browser specific code. That’s the issue…to get that browser specific code written for Mozilla. Then you can run your Mozilla, thunderbird, OO.org on windows boxes and when the big windows bill shows up pull the windows out from under your apps without loosing anything. The biggest thing I see in businesses I work for are “drone” machines that have simple word processing and email…plus 1 or 2 custom apps. MS is making a killing selling $500 of software to button pushers…
Mozilla could wipe out a sizable portion of that pie! Tying Mozilla to Gnome would also help too. Now that they’ve been cut off from AOL there’s not a need to please Corperate masters anymore…many of the Gnome Widgets and such work on windows as well as linux…making the overhead of keeping their own GUI tools much less…and OO.org is also contemplating the change to Gnome widgets too… With PHP-GTK to add to the mix, you’d have an entire “VB like” application structure just like MS. It just needs a little “love”
It would probably be a good idea for open source projects to stop developing for Windows if their goal is to get people away from Windows.
But it isn’t. The goal is to make you use Open Source software and open standards, so nobody is forced to use anything. If you are using Firefox, etc, then you are already supporting the OSS community almost as much as it’s possible without being a developer. It doesn’t really matter which kernel and desktop shell you are running them in.
Also it is one of the prime aspects of Free Software that you can’t stop it from being ported everywhere. That’s a good thing.
money != more marketing power != more costumers
it depends entirely on how you spend the money, and what kind of marketing you do. The open-source community as large as it is could do a great job when it comes to marketing. There are a lot of public channels in the society that are free, and they would welcome you even more if you’re not trying to market a commersial product for free.
It’s just about making a lot of noise. And if you speak the truth, even better. MS fails to do the latter, but they do make a lot of noise.
I think GNOME is doing well without Mozilla although the two utilising the same open standards makes sence. I cant believe Gnomes Epiphany Browser requires all of Mozilla to run. I installed it just to see how it runs and it”s dependency was Mozilla where as Firefox didn’t.
Personally I prefere Opera and I find Opera on Linux is very quick and stable unlike it’s Windows counterpart. If only I could get it to theme with my Gnome Desktop (using the contrast theme which I like). Epiphany just feels clunky in comparison and I don’t understand why I need all of Mozilla to run it. I think Gnome needs to look at Firefox and what they’ve done with the Mozilla base to get Epiphany up to scratch. As for innovation, Opera has it the rest play catchup and IExplorer just stays buggy and stagnant.
It is palpably clear that MS need to take over the internet just to maintain their obscene profitability.
They destroyed OS/2 and rival versions of DOS. They destoyed every competing office suite. They destroyed Netscape. Their next target is to extend theit control to the internet application space (from the side of users) and to control the server application space (from the side of the corporation). When someone can produce a macro in Word that can interact with a web service, then they will own the internet. It is also clear that they wish to control the entertainment arena – TV, music, DRM…
Mozilla and XUL already foreshadow how the future of Rich Internet Applications will work – XAML, Flex, Dream Factory, and any number of other lesser-known technologies are converging into this territory.
I’m sorry to see that the achievements of Mozilla and XUL are going mostly unnoticed (yes, I have got all three books on the subject.) The article on Mozillazine barely makes any sense it is so incoherent. I’ve been observing this area for the last couple of years, and I can’t make much sense of it.
Too many companies (such as IBM) have just adapted the Mozilla browser as some kind of token of their independence from MS. What they should have done is committed to XUL as the basis for cross-platform applications (instead e.g. of just whittling down the platforms that Notes runs on so that it only runs on Win32 – hitherto it ran on OS/2, Solaris, Mac, etc). IBM could have given Mozilla and OSS the prominence they need to combat MS. Linux and OSS are just pawns in IBM’s game-plan – IBM are in this for the long-term (by which point we will all be dead).
When your server, your PC, your laptop, your PDA, your phone, your TV, your music centre, your car all use MS software, those of you who are not shareholders in MSFT will suffer. The hardware will be cheaper to the point of insignificance, but MS will still be making 80%+ profit, because you will have no alternative. You won’t even think you are paying anything to MS.
It behoves everyone who does not want to see this future to promote XUL as a cross-platform application development environment. My company is in the process of developing a global system based on Mozilla/XUL, and we will be using Knoppix as the delivery mechanism. This is not only the best technical solution for us, it is also the most economical.
But I also have shares in MSFT. I want to back this race both ways, because I have little confidence that the majority of businesses can really see how this is going to pan out. Either way, I will benefit.
>> But I also have shares in MSFT.
Congrats, you have completely missed the echo bubble of 2003/04
I think there’s a couple issues here.
First, FOSS means different things to different people. Some people want it to lower their costs of doing business. These people want something yesterday, not some theoretical project that is going to take years of debating, design, and development. Some people want something cheap(as in beer) and so use FOSS. Some people like to tinker and like to have a lot of control over their systems. Some people want something that is perceived to be more stable than XP. Other people like being part of a “community” and others like to be able to get involved with programming projects that are open source…
If it was just people that liked to tinker, liked to try new things, didn’t have any business or time concerns, didn’t care about compatibility with windows, then your idea might have a chance.
The problem is that those type of people are not the majority anymore. Most people want something like windows or OS X on the desktop yesterday, not in 7-10 years after all the debate, design, and implementation has finally got stable.
Open source software tends to be good at copying things, but let’s be honest there’s not much innovation going on. Linux is a clone of Unix, Gnome and KDE are basically your standard desktops that have been around forever. I’m not saying that copying/cloning is a bad thing. Coming up with that “revolutionary” idea is hard and most things are incremental improvements.
I think there is another fallacy that floats around and that is that FOSS development is faster than proprietary development. I think that’s completely false and actually the other way around. Look at how fast Apple was able to put together a Mach microkernel/BSD userspace, a new gui framework and associated apis. Just think if Apple had started development of Linux as its core in 1996 or so. Linux would have an incredible desktop. The fact is that the vast majority of FOSS developers are doing this stuff in their spare time and development tends to be slower than proprietary development. The Linux kernel itself seems to be the exception, and maybe some other big projects.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taken the .NET ecma 335 and 336 specs and as long as their legally clean using that to leverage future development – forget about ASP.NET, ADO.NET, windows forms. Take the core and run with it. If you look at something like Parrot, how long do you think before it will live up to its promises of a totally unencumbered, stable runtime environment that has compilers for multiple languages that target its bytecodes. The way things are going now, it’ll most likely be years if ever for production use. In the meantime, Microsoft is not sitting still and going ahead with Longhorn which will make it out eventually and will probably be a decent os.
The thing is, you have to choose your technologies wisely because FOSS does not exist in a vacuum. There are other considerations and if other platforms move ahead then that means that many more developers that aren’t developing for your platform. Time doesn’t wait for anybody and market share does matter.
I cant believe Gnomes Epiphany Browser requires all of Mozilla to run.
Read the article in mozillaZine
http://mozillazine.org/articles/article4584.html
4) Create an embeddable rendering engine to enable creation of web browsers.
Epiphany needs an embeddable rendering engine to don’t need all Mozilla to run. Then epiphany will load only that rendering engine.
If this was proposed earlier, like say, when MS started announcing .NET and Longhorn plans, I’d say “Great, Good Luck”. There’s been plenty of time, but now it’s probably too late (people being too busy arguing KDE vs GNOME or whatnot — just a joke, but I’ve got a point).
Funny that the guy wants to discount Apple, because that kind of difference is the best Linux can only hope for in 3 years…pertaining to desktop applications at least.
After all is said and done, I’ll be more inclined to blame IBM/Novell *if* nothing comes out of the woodwork..Not Mozilla or the OSS community.
It would probably be a good idea for open source projects to stop developing for Windows if their goal is to get people away from Windows. As long as Mozilla, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gaim, Gimp, etc is all available for Windows, then there’s not much incentive for many of us to look at the competition (eg – Linux) when we’re already reaping the benefits of open source on Windows
It seems to me, migration is much easier when taken in small steps. Switch everyone to Firefox on Windows today. Switch everyone to OpenOffice.org tomorrow. Switch everyone to Debian next week.
After the release of Firefox 0.8, everyone I know seems to have switched, myself included after being an Opera user for 2 years. After OO.o 1.1 was released many people I know began using it, and 1.1.1 made a few more interested. At this point it would be much less of a jump for some of us to switch to Linux as a primary desktop.
Open source software tends to be good at copying things, but let’s be honest there’s not much innovation going on.
There pretty much no innovation going on anywhere except for research institutions and some progressive companies like Apple and the (old, not the current) HP. Certainly, nothing coming out of Microsoft is at *all* innovative. Its all copies of stuff that were done decades ago, and better, and cleaner at that.
Look at how fast Apple was able to put together a Mach microkernel/BSD userspace, a new gui framework and associated apis.
Um, do you *know* how long Apple’s next-gen OS project was in the works? Apple had nearly a decade of failed experiments under their belt by the time OS X came out in 2001. All of that design experience surely had a hand in getting OS X out as quick as they did. What also helped as the fact that OS X was a complete OS before Apple ever started developing it.
The kernel, userspace, and toolkit already existed. Apple did a lot of work on it, to be sure. The kernel was upgraded from Mach 2.x to Mach 3.x, the BSD system server was moved to kernel mode, networking and filesystem code in 4.4BSD-Lite2 was replaced with code from NetBSD/OpenBSD, the userland was replaced with FreeBSD’s, etc. However, not only is the OS X core a direct descendent of NeXTStep, but much of the updated code was preexisting. Aside from Zeroconf and the I/O Kit, the major pieces of truely-new code is in Aqua and the OS X GUI apps.
To provide a point of comparison: KDE 2.x, which was a complete rewrite of the codebase, was completed in a little over a year. That was accomplished by a much smaller team of coders than Apple has at their disposal.
You are up to something! Maybe this is what the article was all about.
It appears to me that if XUL was revised to handle the forseeable needs of Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, and most common UI elements, it could be used as the universal intermediate UI language for most FOSS applications. With appropriate guidelines it could also be possible to write a XUL app which can then be compiled into a Qt or GTK/+/#/GNOME app. Or the app could be run by Mozilla without further compilation.
There pretty much no innovation going on anywhere except for research institutions and some progressive companies like Apple and the (old, not the current) HP. Certainly, nothing coming out of Microsoft is at *all* innovative. Its all copies of stuff that were done decades ago, and better, and cleaner at that.
As I said, everything is almost always incremental improvements. You might not think that Microsoft doesn’t do anything innovative. I think having Longhorn being almost all managed code is somewhat innovative. I don’t see Apple doing anything special besides putting a lot of polish onto the desktop.
Um, do you *know* how long Apple’s next-gen OS project was in the works? Apple had nearly a decade of failed experiments under their belt by the time OS X came out in 2001. All of that design experience surely had a hand in getting OS X out as quick as they did. What also helped as the fact that OS X was a complete OS before Apple ever started developing it.
I’m fully aware of Apple’s decade of numerous failed projects. I guess when you’re approaching the 21st century and your still stuck with something that is less stable than windows95 you need to get focused in a hurry. I don’t know where you get this notion that OS X was a complete os before they started just because Mach, BSD, and NextStep was there.
To provide a point of comparison: KDE 2.x, which was a complete rewrite of the codebase, was completed in a little over a year. That was accomplished by a much smaller team of coders than Apple has at their disposal.
KDE was started in what, 1996? and already had a decent toolkit to start off with. Like Apple, they learned from their mistakes. Kdevelop was started in 1998 and only this year with 3.0 could pass for something commercial. Look at something like slickedit of what can be done with a small team of full-tiime, dedicated developers.
I’m not sure what exactly your trying to argue here, but things like Project Utopia that combines kernel, udev, D-bus, HAL, and desktop needs to get done before open source starts thinking about inventing it’s own stuff to surpass windows or osx. The fact still stands that having a bunch of developers with offices right next to each other, working fulltime, with set goals, deadlines and such is a helluva lot more productive than almost anything on open source desktop. There’s still a lot of loose ends such as project utopia that need to be cleared up before you’ll see the big shift. Hopefully, some company like Novell can help out in this regard.
“You might not think that Microsoft doesn’t do anything innovative. I think having Longhorn being almost all managed code is somewhat innovative.”
I keep reading conflicting statements about this. Does anyone have a link to a page where a Microsoft engineer explains how much code of Longhorn will be managed?
What makes OS X more suitable for the desktop is quartz and aqua. Microsoft is developing something similar for Longhorn. There are a couple of projects that want to provide a next generation X-Server like fresco (www.fresco.org) and Y-Windows (http://www.y-windows.org) but they seem to suffer from a lack of developers. Also Fresco implements its own server-side GUI toolkit and does not run legacy X11 apps as far as I know. I think some of the GNUStep people used to work on something like DisplayPostScript but the project is stalled or suffers from a lack of developers. There is also Keith Packards new XServer, but I don’t have the feeling it is really innovative. In my opinion it is another iteration of the old XFree86 code, adding some more functionality that is not present yet, but the design is the same and I think, kdrive is not even modular, it is the same one server for every card architecture we had with XFree86 3.x. I really like to see a new lightwight X-Server coded from scratch that offers things like OpenGL acceleration and DisplayPDF. Only then it is reasonable to work on something like XAML which will for sure need things the current X-Servers do not offer or offer only in a very limited way like true transparancy vector graphics.
Check out Edd Dumbill’s blog, it has specific discussion over this topic:
http://usefulinc.com/edd/blog/contents/2004/03/03-gnomeui/read
Quote: ” But we need to recognise a key economic constraint for would-be adopters. This constraint is developer time.”
That is spot-on, especially considering that most open source developers are part-time developers.
“The problem is that those type of people are not the majority anymore. Most people want something like windows or OS X on the desktop yesterday, not in 7-10 years after all the debate, design, and implementation has finally got stable. ”
Yes it does seem like the talkers outnumber the doers. Of course the “majority” doing the work, aren’t on web forums telling everyone how “minimal” they are.
Spare me the “it’s open source, go fix it yourself” routine. It’s so slashdork. I’d rather just pay microsoft my $150 than spend hours working on some desktop plumbing for free. Linux is just a tool and if it can’t cut it then there are other options. Or maybe you would like to pay me to work on Gnome fulltime. I’m waiting for an offer.
Maybe you’re just bitter that parrot is vaporware and most likely always will be, while something like Mono is ready for its 1.0 release in 2 months. But yeah, I’m sure your attitude is any piece of cobbled together code as long as its not Microsoft tech.
“The problem is that those type of people are not the majority anymore. ”
Free clue to you. The above isn’t supportable and you know it isn’t (go ahead, show us your proof. I’m waiting). At least my “attitude” is accurate. The people who do the actual coding aren’t on web forums telling everyone “Oh look how ‘marginal’ I am”. Second it really doesn’t matter how many “talkers” there are out there. When it comes to results, the doers are the important element. Third I wouldn’t be putting too much “faith” (Can we have a hallaluah?) in Mono, no matter how much code they come up with. Fourth nice strawman, oh yeah bitter about parrot. I couldn’t give two hoots about parrot.
“I’d rather just pay microsoft my $150 than spend hours working on some desktop plumbing for free. ”
Then OSS isn’t for you, any OSS.
Longhorn’s managed code is *innovative*? That’s a good one! Lisp machines were “managed code” decades ago. The OS and apps, written in Lisp, were ran in the same address space and protected by a “safe” native-code compiler that inserted things like typechecks and array-bounds checks.
As for OS X, I didn’t say that it was complete before Apple bought it, I said it was a complete OS — NeXTStep. Thus, you cannot point to OS X as an example of fast commercial development, because it wasn’t — they didn’t write an OS from scratch in 3-4 years. Rather, they integrated a lot of preexisting code and added Aqua on top.
Let’s see. There were about 5 whole Lisp machines produced that cost a $100k a piece. They were a miserable failure.
If Lisp is/was so great as you like to point out in many of your posts then it would have taken off in the marketplace. Maybe it’s because Lisp had been dirt-slow for almost 40 years. I mean they had to produce hardware that actually undestood Lisp to get acceptable performance back in the 80s.
Then OSS isn’t for you, any OSS.
You just don’t get it do you. Once again, your prescription is to “dive into the code and fix it”. The vast majority of people would rather just pay a few hours of their salary and just have something that works.
I guess you would rather just have linux relegated to the server and the hobbyist desktop. Fine, but others have different opinions.
Another problem is that Mozilla developer documentation is hard to find.
Speaking of which, Nigel McFarlane’s book: Rapid Application Development with Mozilla, is now available as PDF download from Bruce Peren’s Open Source Series at InformIT’s host homepage:
http://phptr.com/Perens
Hopefully more docs like his will be available so we can attract more XUL developers. Btw, please support the author and buy the book if you find it to be useful.
What the heck are you talking about. This Mozilla/Gnome alliance is something cooked up straigh from hell. You guys need to get your head screwed back on. Go figure.