|
 |
Newsgroups: mozilla.dev.platform
From: Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.org>
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:02:56 -0700
Local: Thurs, Apr 5 2007 4:02 pm
Subject: Re: Thunderbird's future role
Simon Paquet wrote: I'll reply here. > bren...@mozilla.org wrote on 02. Apr 2007: > [Brendan, I also sent you a (slightly different) mail about this.] > Please try to see it from my side. You are announcing a major I think you are misstating the Mozilla 2 plan. We do not propose to > reorganization/rewrite/whatever of the mozilla backend platform and are > also announcing, that this will be done only on Firefox and XULRunner. rewrite all front ends for a new back end. We don't propose to change every, or even necessarily most, APIs (but we may change all C++-only APIs -- we need that freedom). Other than Firefox, which has special status along with XULRunner, Hosting Camino (let's use it instead of Thunderbird) in the Mozilla 2 I keep repeating that we must focus on the Mozilla 2 goals (JS2 via I also keep saying that we will fail if we require ourselves to keep all This point is important. I don't think you've responded to it head-on. > You are also announcing that you are changing the tree rules to a Yes, but this is for the new tree, based on the premise I keep repeating > significant extent. -- we are not deciding *next year's* tree rules, but we are strongly suggesting that new VCSes and better embedding APIs make way for other hosting arrangements, no matter the tree rules. So we are trying to get started without having to solve the tree rule > Does it really surprise you, that some people outside of the MoCo What MoCo inner circle? > inner circle The Mozilla 2 work has been doing via blogs and wiki.mozilla.org. I think you are out of line using such inflammatory language. But apart > seem to see bad implications coming from this. Robert Robert seems to be doing fine in his posts, and you have a reply from > voiced some concerns in the discussion and I know from discussions > with Calendar developers, that I'm not the only one having doubts. Karsten that doubts some of your assertions. Let's stop trying to rally others and name-drop as if we are in a political campaign, please. This is m.d.platform, and I'm very concerned about practicalities of Mozilla 2 development concurrent with 1.9. That's the problem to solve. Turning this into a "I doubt MoCo 'cares' for other XUL apps than 1. irresponsible -- sayrer's right, we have to favor Firefox, "we" being 2. categorically confused -- emotional when the topic here is technical: > The comments from the Calendar devs that I spoke with generally went Stop looking for "care" and consider the point sayrer made. > into the direction of "MoCo did not, does not and never will care > about us, it cares and will always care only about Firefox". Free lunches are a bad idea in general. As I wrote, with a good plan for > I know that this is again a feelings-based statement, but I think you Feelings are inarguable, so all I can do is try to appeal to your > should be aware of the feelings of the community outside of the Firefox > ecosystem. What you make of this, is of course your choice. reason, your technical judgment. > Please also consider, that in blog posts like You are mixing up VCS hosting of XUL apps currently hosted on cvs.m.o > http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/03/22/the-future-of-applications/ or > http://blog.mozbox.org/post/2007/03/21/ApolloDecolle (translation at > http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/04/01/apollo-takes-off/) other people > voiced their concerns, which, although not identical with mine, seem to > go in a similar direction IMO. with tree rules, and with XUL as a platform (which does not necessarily depend on either hosting or tree rules). Again this seems like vague connect-the-dots political campaigning. All I can say is that XUL as a platform cannot be the focus ahead of And I'll add (again) that the best hope for XUL as a platform, apart >> Firefox >> Thunderbird. This isn't a "MoCo" thing, it's a fact that's Not in the Mozilla 2 repo we set up this year. Not now. >> obvious based on active user counts, buzz, effect on the competition, >> effect on the web, etc. etc. >> This does *not* mean that only Firefox matters, or that other XUL apps > I fully understand. But please also understand, that from my point of If Thunderbird ports to XULRunner and gets going on Mozilla 2 in due > So why I absolutely support your assertion that the Thunderbird Then we disagree (we've been over this already). MoCo won't be spending > community must grow beyond MoCo. I think that without an up-front > effort from MoCo or its paid developers to grow the mail-related > community, this will be very hard to do. more on closed-source-like dev/build/qa than it already has. The Mozilla Foundation is actively investigating a better plan. > You actually did that with Firefox in a very successful way, by Firefox was already a rocket unlike any other XUL app well before MoFo > creating spreadfirefox.com, hiring people to improve the ease of > extension development, etc. (there was no MoCo then) had more than ten full time employees. Please don't revise history. > In addition Firefox people have shown significant effort to communicate Yes, Firefox >> Thunderbird. I don't know how else to put this. If you > with the community in a very open and direct way. The huge number of > blogs dedicated to the various parts of Firefox development from MoCo > exployees is a good indicator for that. are arguing for subsidized blogs, they won't help; that's not the good plan Thunderbird needs. > I don't see this from mailnews people at all. I know that mscott was They are the only paid Thunderbird developers. Adding more inside MoCo > posting in the mozillazine forums (I don't know if that's still the > case) and he and bienvenu are both on IRC I believe, but that's > basically it. is a terrible idea and I've said why several times. > I don't know the reason of this. Are mscott and bienvenu not interested Why don't you ask them? > in communicationg with the community (I can't imagine that)? Is their > workload so high? > Are they required to serve other master (e.g. No, there's no paying commercial customer pulling Thunderbird developer > commercial customers of MoCo with customized Thunderbird builds) as well? focus. We've passed up relatively-small-money-at-high-cost opportunities here. > I can only say, judging from my experience in the Calendar camp and in I agree, of course. > dealing with folks from Seamonkey, that active communication is *the* > major key in growing and keeping in touch with the community and that > both Calendar and Seamonkey seem to do a pretty good job with it > (judging from the feedback we're getting). >> You might argue that "MoCo" should throw *more* money at Thunderbird. Not from MoCo, not at the expense of Firefox and Mozilla 2. > As I said above, I think that to actually grow the mail-related Management 101: an organization does at most one thing well. The Mozilla > You They're not constrained from community involvement now. It's wrong to > could do that by either employing more people or by freeing mscott > and bienvenu from others duties, so they can more actively approach > the community. insinuate otherwise. >> That would inevitably mean less focus and fewer people working on No, necessarily. No free lunch. You can't add people to make things >> Firefox and the core Gecko/XULRunner code. > Not necessarily, as I mentioned above. happen without consequence. See Fred Brooks. Money is not the issue. Hiring is one issue. Management bandwidth is >> Yet it would also make Thunderbird even less of an open source This is the challenge for the Mozilla Foundation, I agree. >> project with significant patch inflow from various committers, > This can be a possible outcome, if it's done in the wrong fashion. If What this has to do with the initial import into hg for Mozilla 2, I >> Don't take this to mean that money is the issue. As a board member of I'm focusing on Mozilla 2. That's necessary and overriding. Thunderbird >> Mozilla Foundation, I'm happy to spend on Thunderbird *if* there's a >> plan and signs of a community that will develop it to the degree that >> it needs to be developed, and in different-in-kind ways, all while >> keeping its build system from diverging. Money alone won't provide >> these things, and money spent badly would actually harm Thunderbird. > I fully agree. How can this be solved? Who can/should develop a plan will have to fly free. If it does not reach a promised land, even with a good plan and some investment, I will be sad. But I will not jeopardize Firefox and the platform, which depend on Mozilla 2, by spending more time on it than my MF board duties require. So again, apart from my board duties you won't hear from me on this /be You must Sign in before you can post messages.
To post a message you must first join this group.
Please update your nickname on the subscription settings page before posting.
You do not have the permission required to post.
| |||||||||||||