Sr Systems Engineer - Solaris - AIX (TX) Next Step Systems US-TX-Houston Post A Job | Post A Resume

[ The opinions expressed by authors on Linux Today are their own. They speak only for themselves and not for Linux Today. -lt ed ]
By Mike Cornall

This is in response to Monty Manley's column, "What went wrong with Mozilla?"

Mr. Manley seems to have collected together, into a single column, every misconception currently being spread about Mozilla. That helps me, because it makes it easy to respond to, and refute those misconceptions.

So, without further delay, I will review Mr. Manley's essay, point by point . . .

> "Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I've always liked that quote, and it's important for any artist or systems developer to keep it in mind.

But, as to Mr. Manley's claim that the Mozilla team has wasted time adding unnecessary frills, his arguments are unconvincing, and he fails to back it up with evidence. Examples cited by Mr. Manley, such as e-mail and XUL, are not frills.

> If at some point in the future a seminar is ever given on how *not* to conduct a large-scale Open Source software project, Mozilla would make a dandy example.

Nonsense. The Mozilla team has built a huge (in terms of function and scope) product in a very short time.

The initial team knew what they had to do. They started with a clean-up of the code. They put an organization, procedures, and tools, in place, to allow a large number of developers to work in parallel. They started with corporate funding, but kept the project open, so that there are now more Mozilla developers outside of AOL, than inside. And they weren't afraid to take radical steps, when necessary.

I wouldn't be surprised if a future seminar points to Mozilla as a good example of how to run an Open Source project.

> A long series of lamentable mistakes, most of them avoidable, have caused the Mozilla project to languish unfinished for more than a year beyond its projected release date.

There has been only one major error, which was the initial decision to try to preserve the original Netscape code. That attempt cost the better part of a year, and ended in failure. But, to the credit of AOL and the Mozilla team, they didn't quit. Instead, they took the bold step of starting over with fresh code, in effect, committing to a rewrite of Netscape from scratch.

Thus, the problem was recognized and resolved, and a lesson was learned (or learned again, i.e. that upgrading old code often takes longer than a rewrite). That was a costly miscalculation, but it was hardly a "series of lamentable mistakes", and it may not have been as easy to avoid as hindsight might suggest.

Thus, Mozilla started over, approximately a year and one-half ago, with new targets. If we were to accept Mr. Manley's contention that Mozilla is now "more than a year beyond its projected release date", then we would have to believe that they planned to rewrite Netscape in just six months, which is ridiculous.

> Had Mozilla simply tasked itself with writing the best, standards-compliant browser on the market, all would have been well.

I wouldn't be surprised if a future seminar points to Mozilla as a good example of how to run an Open Source project.

Only if your definition of "well" is extremely short-sighted. It's true that the Mozilla team could have finished sooner by producing a simple browser for a limited set of platforms (say Windows and Linux), using native widget sets. But if they had done so, then that's all that they would have.

Fortunately, the Mozilla team was not so short-sighted. At each turn, the Mozilla team asked an important question: Is it better to build this function, or is it better to build a general tool to provide this function?

Because of the Mozilla team's bold decisions, we now have:

1. A highly cross-platform browser, which is already being ported to most major platforms.
2. The Gecko page renderer, which has already been picked up and used in other products.
3. The XUL dynamic user-interface builder, which has already been used in other products.
4. The Bugzilla bug tracking system, which has already been used by other projects.
5. A cross-platform widget set, which allows for easy porting to other platforms, and is an attraction in itself for new platforms such as the Sony PlayStation.
6. The most standards-compliant browser available, including support for newer standards not yet addressed by IE.
7. A more powerful e-mail product, to help attract corporate Outlook users to Linux (though Outlook has recently been doing a good job of that all by itself).
8. A much more powerful basic HTML editor, including a show-codes mode.
9. Many new browser features, including a fully customizable user interface.

If the Mozilla team had followed Mr. Manley's advice, then IE really would have ended up dominating the Internet, because Mozilla would not be ready to compete in the area of dynamic content. As it stands, Mozilla is on track to being a cross-platform powerhouse, which can not only compete in its own right, but will energize the next generation of Internet appliances.

> Gecko, the rendering engine used by Mozilla, has been in fine working shape for nearly a year.

And anyone who wants to use Gecko to create a simple browser can do so. In fact, more than one group is doing so, for example, the Galeon browser.

> But at some point, the Mozilla team fell prey to the idea that it had to be a *platform*; it had to provide its own GUI, scripting language, mail/news client, Java support, on and on and on. Furthermore, it was to be pervasively multiplatform -- it should build on Macs, PCs, Linux boxes, Solaris, whatever.

First of all, multiplatform support was not a whim -- it was a major part of the original Netscape, and was a mandatory requirement for the new Mozilla. Likewise for the mail and news clients.

Second, the Mozilla team did not build Java support, rather, they wisely included a Java interface, so that any Java VM can be plugged into Netscape.

Third, the GUI (widget set), and scripting language (XUL), greatly simplified the job of making Mozilla cross-platform, while at the same time providing useful tools for other Open Source projects.

> And it had to do this in the face of a huge corporate restructuring and the defections of several key developers.

The only "huge corporate restructuring", of which I am aware, took place among the administrative staff of Netscape, after merging with AOL, and did not affect the developers.

I am also only aware of one defection of a key developer. There may have been others, but so what? There will always be disagreements among individuals regarding project direction. What matters is that the Mozilla project has successfully carried on.

> Anyone with a software engineering background can see that this is a recipe for disaster.

And yet there has been no disaster, which is not surprising, since the situation was not as Mr. Manley described.

> The phenomenon is known as "feature creep", and it devils software projects both small and large. Mozilla is a textbook case.

The Mozilla project has had a series of objectives, and has been quite hard-nosed about sticking to them. I'm not aware of significant "feature creep". But, of course, Mr. Manley considers cross-platform support, and XUL to be "feature creep". I will repeat: cross-platform support was a mandatory requirement, and XUL was a good case of building a tool to do the job, rather than blindly jumping in with brute force coding.

> Longtime Unix users remember Netscape Navigator 3.0 with much fondness -- some liked it so much they use it still. It was lean, it was fast, and it was stable as a rock. It was standards-compliant.

Mr. Manley again either doesn't know the history, or is mischaracterizing it.

The code underlying Netscape Navigator 3.0 was already a mess. The original Netscape was basically thrown together as fast as possible. The original developers stated that it was their intent, from the beginning, to rewrite the code, but they never found the time to do it.

It's true that Navigator was quite stable, at least at first. But many will remember that once Microsoft started pushing IE, many web pages started including HTML or Javascript that caused Navigator to crash. It became a race to keep Navigator upgraded, and following each upgrade, one would usually have a few months before new crashes started occurring. Strangely, the new crashes seemed to start some time after the next release of Frontpage, but I'm sure it was just a coincidence.

It's also true that Navigator was standards-compliant, since in those days, what Netscape implemented was the standard. But those were much simpler standards, and times have changed.

> How this wonderful program turned into the botch that was Navigator/Communicator 4.0 is a by-now familiar story -- Netscape got lazy and lost their edge.

This, again, is a mischaracterization of what happened.

Netscape got into a standards race with Microsoft. Meanwhile, however, Microsoft started giving away IE for free, then tied it to Windows, then signed agreements with the OEMs that forbade them to pre-install Navigator/Communicator on their PCs (as documented in the DOJ case). Thus Netscape found itself with the need to add a lot of functionality quickly, using the old, hard-to-maintain Navigator code, but without any funding.

The result was that Netscape was forced to sell out to AOL. The good news was that, in the process, Navigator/Communicator was released as Open Source.

> They crammed a lot of terrible code into the browser, bloated it beyond belief, and made it the crash-prone joke that it is today.

I keep reading this claim, but it does not match with my own experience.

I ran Communicator 4.0, on Windows NT 4.0, and it was fairly stable. Yes, it would crash once every few weeks, but the alternative at the time, IE 4.0, used to crash multiple times a day, sometimes taking NT with it. Mind you, I did take certain steps to keep Communicator stable, which included turning off Java, shutting down Communicator at the end of each day (to release leaked memory), and avoiding ZDNet pages (whose Javascript seemed to cause serious memory leaks for Netscape).

I agree that Communicator is bloated, but it's not nearly as bad as, say, MS Office. For example, in my NT days, the surest way I knew to slow my PC to a crawl, and crash NT, was to embed Excel charts in a Word document, then try to adjust them. Apparently, 128MB of memory wasn't enough to do the job.

Later on, when I started using Communicator on Linux, I again ran into some problems (especially with Communicator 4.61), but still not serious (as long as I kept an eye on its memory usage). Now, I'm using Communicator 4.73, which seems to be quite a bit better, and hasn't crashed yet. I would also like to point out that neither Communicator, nor any other program, has ever crashed Linux on me.

I still run Communicator with Java turned off, which seems to be the most important stability factor. But that shouldn't surprise us, since, as we all know, Netscape gave up on trying to perfect their Java VM, in favour of letting users plug in their own preferred VM for each platform.

Finally, if Communicator is such a joke, why do between 15% and 30% of Windows users still insist on running it? Wouldn't it be much easier to simply accept IE (which is already loaded into memory as part of Windows)? Given Microsoft's recent security problems, I would suggest that most users consider IE to be a joke.

> Even Netscape realized this (too late), which is why they embarked on a project to rewrite the browser from the ground up. The Mozilla project lost most of the first year of its existence to a direction-change; it was decided to "componentize" the browser. While this was eventually achieved, a lot of the code produced until that point had to be thrown out.

Ah, so Mr. Manley does know some of the history, and yet, he still gets it wrong, or mischaracterizes it.

The Mozilla project did not start out to "rewrite the browser from the ground up", rather, they started out to rework the existing code, which is just the sort of pragmatic approach that Mr. Manley recommends. But that approach didn't work (because the code was in such bad shape), and after almost a year, they decided that they needed a new approach. It was at that point that they started over with what was essentially a rewrite.

> More developer time and effort wasted.

It wasn't more time wasted. It was the only major case of time wasted.

> But the other pieces of software -- the mail/news client, the XUL-driven "shell", the editor, and so on -- have sucked up developer effort at a ferocious rate.

As previously stated, the mail/news client is an essential deliverable (or else Netscape 6.0 would not be able to act as a replacement for Communicator), and XUL has probably saved more time than it cost to build, while providing many additional benefits such as branding (allowing ISPs to customize the appearance of Netscape).

> The current iteration of the browser, (M16 as I write this) is just as crash-prone and slow as the browser it is intended to replace!

This, more than anything else, appears to be intentional FUD.

If anything, M16 should be more crash-prone, and slower than the browser it is intended to replace. Why? Because M16 is development software! It hasn't even reached alpha-stage yet. Surely Mr. Manley knows that.

> It seems obvious that the Mozilla crew bit off far more than they could chew, but I think a deeper problem is that the development team reached too far.

The Mozilla team was ambitious, and in light of the way their product is coming together, and being adopted by other products and platforms, it appears that their ambition has paid off.

> They are trying to re-invent an entire *platform* when all most people want is a good browser that doesn't crash.

As previously stated, a "good browser that doesn't crash" wouldn't have been enough. If they had done only that, then they might as well have done nothing, because then there would be no Internet appliance revolution, and Microsoft might have ended up controlling Internet protocols.

> Mozilla is full of neato technology that half-works or doesn't work at all, and does it all v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

Let me repeat: Mozilla is still d-e-v-e-l-o-p-m-e-n-t s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e.

> I think most would agree that Microsoft "won" the browser war.

I don't agree at all. Within two years:

1. 10% or more of desktop users will be running Linux.
2. 10% or more of Internet users will be using an Internet appliance or game console (probably running Mozilla).
3. 10% or more of Internet users will be AOL (former IE) users running Netscape.
4. 10% or more of Internet users will be existing Windows Netscape users who held out for Mozilla.

Thus, in two years, IE's percentage of the browser market will be down to 60%, and still dropping. A business would be very foolish to standardize on IE-only Internet protocols, because it will cause them to lose a lot of clients.

> Nearly every Windows and Mac user has switched to IE, and most Unix/Linux users would too if only it were available on their platform.

But IE is available for Unix. Unfortunately, Microsoft followed Mr. Manley's pragmatic, quick-and-dirty approach when porting IE to Unix, and the result is a bloated mess that nobody uses.

> Mozilla may (eventually) be finished, but it is increasingly unlikely that it will be relevant to anyone except Linux users.

After the initial false start, the Mozilla team will have rewritten the browser in less than two years. And if that isn't amazing enough, they will have produced the world's most standards-compliant browser, and it will include revolutionary features that allow it to become a true web-application platform (something Microsoft has only talked about).

Also, through its cross-platform support, Mozilla will revolutionize the Internet appliance industry.

I call that relevant.

> Mozilla has squandered a lot of goodwill and user perseverance over the past two years.

Nonsense -- Mozilla hasn't squandered a thing. The development has taken the required amount of time. Forces friendly to Microsoft, however, have certainly used that time to try to undermine Mozilla's reputation.

Anyone who has experimented with the major milestones can see how much progress has been made (say, between M14 and M16), yet these milestones are only months apart. It's clear that Mozilla development is proceeding at a brisk pace.

To the Mozilla developers, I say, "Carry on -- you're doing a fine job." And to Netscape, for releasing the source, and to AOL, for funding the project, I say, "Thank-you."

Index Mode   |   Flat Mode   |   Thread Mode   |   Thread Flat     Talkback(s) Name  and Date   Gotta say I changed my mind    H. Aurag Jul 25, 2000, 03:27:21     Open Source=    Steve Jul 25, 2000, 03:36:55     Nicely Said    Anonymous Coward Jul 25, 2000, 03:43:33     Mozilla is said to be too big, bloated. Look at Em    vitor Jul 25, 2000, 03:47:59     Manley toeing the party line    Mark Bialkowski Jul 25, 2000, 03:59:29     java and the mistake    Mike Palczewski Jul 25, 2000, 04:29:37     Mike Cornwall    Bill Browser Jul 25, 2000, 04:30:16     We need a _browser_ *NOW*!    Svartalf Jul 25, 2000, 04:32:33     Netscape won the browser war    Art Cancro Jul 25, 2000, 04:43:38     And Thank You!    Akoma Jul 25, 2000, 04:55:37     The only thing that matters to me..    revengance Jul 25, 2000, 04:59:42     moz/gecko/galeon...    Jerry Ruhe Jul 25, 2000, 05:12:48     emacs is a problem    Mike Palczewski Jul 25, 2000, 05:49:50     Re: We need a _browser_ *NOW*!    J. J. Ramsey Jul 25, 2000, 05:59:11     Re: Netscape won the browser war    none Jul 25, 2000, 06:31:30     Great article    SeSe Jul 25, 2000, 07:23:40     FUD    Joe Jul 25, 2000, 07:29:58     "defensive fud"    PL Jul 25, 2000, 09:41:00     Mike, Mike, Mike. At least you're honest in y    Dean Pannell (a.k.a. dinotrac) Jul 25, 2000, 10:47:11     Mozilla The Dinosaur    Frodo Jul 25, 2000, 12:41:44     The difference between mozilla and emacs    Frodo Jul 25, 2000, 12:44:09     Team Mozilla    Jul 25, 2000, 13:24:16     I Would Rather Mozilla Be Delayed    Scott Bradley Jul 25, 2000, 13:54:06     already useful    Casey Perkins Jul 25, 2000, 14:04:12     I see a lot...    d@ Jul 25, 2000, 14:46:10     Re: Mike Cornwall    ac Jul 25, 2000, 16:18:54     Small stable *browser* needed, not mozilla    Vincent Fox Jul 25, 2000, 16:20:03     Re: FUD    ac Jul 25, 2000, 16:34:25     Re: FUD    Myddrin Jul 25, 2000, 16:36:39     Galeon *does* have keyboard nav    Asheesh Laroia Jul 25, 2000, 16:48:54     Re: java and the mistake    Mike Cornall Jul 25, 2000, 16:49:43     Give us a decent alternative, please!    chris Jul 25, 2000, 16:51:57     Damn it! Build your own!    tim Jul 25, 2000, 17:17:00     A difference that makes no difference...    Woodrow Hill Jul 25, 2000, 17:22:00     Two quotes that just annoy me.    Alexei P Jul 25, 2000, 17:28:55     Re: Small stable *browser* needed, not mozilla    DrXym Jul 25, 2000, 18:01:05     Mozilla is *NOT* trying to build an application pl    Mike Cornall Jul 25, 2000, 18:06:35     Re: Re: Netscape won the browser war    AJWM Jul 25, 2000, 18:31:31     Re: Galeon *does* have keyboard nav    Sean Jul 25, 2000, 18:36:09     One Objection . . .    llywrch Jul 25, 2000, 19:19:41     Latest nightly builds looking good    Doug Lay Jul 25, 2000, 19:55:33     Trying Out Mozilla on Linux    Mike Cornall Jul 25, 2000, 20:00:48     Netscape on Windows    Ted Clark Jul 25, 2000, 20:28:33     RE: Netscape on Windows    Joezilla Jul 25, 2000, 22:19:27     Uh, Mr. Cornall? Mozilla does not exist.    Luke Seubert Jul 25, 2000, 22:45:47     your joking right?    Robert Jul 26, 2000, 00:32:13     Re: Uh, Mr. Cornall? Mozilla does not exist.    danny Jul 26, 2000, 00:36:24     Re: Uh, Mr. Cornall? Mozilla does not exist.    Mike Cornall Jul 26, 2000, 01:23:28     converting the heathen    kurtz Jul 26, 2000, 01:36:50     Oh well then what's this    Triceratops Jul 26, 2000, 02:00:58     Re: Netscape won the browser war    James Jul 26, 2000, 14:02:37     Re: Netscape won the browser war    John Jul 26, 2000, 16:36:36     Competing Against Microsoft.Net    Tom Heeloo Jul 27, 2000, 20:46:24     Web Page Development Five Years Behind Anyway    Ron Tarrant Jul 28, 2000, 12:56:52     RIP-Mozilla! I'll bet on Opera.    Alex L. Jul 30, 2000, 17:54:21     bunk    dave Jul 31, 2000, 17:27:36     Re: RIP-Mozilla! I'll bet on Opera.    Hugh Semmler Aug 1, 2000, 01:33:34     what are you trying to say?    blablabla Aug 3, 2000, 04:39:34     Re: RIP-Mozilla! I'll bet on Opera.    Pete Pratt Aug 3, 2000, 06:47:42     M16 not alpha?    Anon Aug 3, 2000, 09:00:27     Lest we forget last week's events    Dracos Aug 3, 2000, 10:08:10     Re: Small stable *browser* needed, not mozilla    Joeri Sebrechts Aug 3, 2000, 10:29:55     Re: Mike, Mike, Mike. At least you're honest    Mike Tulloch Aug 3, 2000, 12:30:41     Re: M16 not alpha?    Mike Cornall Aug 3, 2000, 14:49:53     Re: Re: Mike, Mike, Mike. At least you're hone    Mike Cornall Aug 3, 2000, 15:01:46     Haste makes waste    Rodney Quaye Aug 3, 2000, 16:05:31     ĞMS is rolling full speed ahead defining web stand    RvR Aug 3, 2000, 16:59:40     more improvement in Mozilla since then than betwee    RvR Aug 3, 2000, 17:03:20     Re: Re: Netscape won the browser war    me Aug 3, 2000, 19:31:15     Re: Manley toeing the party line    friendly dude Aug 3, 2000, 21:37:12     Re: Haste makes waste    Matt Lewellyn Aug 3, 2000, 22:18:48     Re: Re: M16 not alpha?    Anon Aug 3, 2000, 23:01:39     The author is biased    Emmanuel Pirsch Aug 4, 2000, 13:34:01     I saw IE 5.5 today    Lazar Aug 4, 2000, 15:11:44     Re: moz/gecko/galeon...    Steve Aug 4, 2000, 22:28:34     Re: Re: Mike, Mike, Mike. At least you're hon    Steve Aug 4, 2000, 23:06:55     Re: Re: FUD    Steve Aug 4, 2000, 23:43:25     Mozilla advocates    Ben Turner Aug 5, 2000, 07:33:35     BS from the mozilla team    Peter Bertok Aug 6, 2000, 08:32:10     Re: BS from the mozilla team    Mike Cornall Aug 6, 2000, 17:16:36     Gecko alone???    James E. LaBarre Aug 7, 2000, 03:04:24     Re: I saw IE 5.5 today    scratch Aug 7, 2000, 18:17:06     Re: Re: Uh, Mr. Cornall? Mozilla does not exi    abreu Aug 8, 2000, 22:55:49     Re: Re: Mike Cornwall    abreu Aug 8, 2000, 23:28:19     Re:Mozilla does TOO exist    dean Aug 9, 2000, 00:37:40     Expanding the View    Dave Aug 10, 2000, 00:24:38     Re: People bitching is better than not giving a da    Anthony Chua Aug 12, 2000, 14:51:51     Re: Re: Mike, Mike, Mike. At least you're hon    Tarage Nov 2, 2005, 14:24:06     Home | Search Talkbacks | Customize View    Top of Page   Enter your comments below: * Your Name: * Your Email Address: * Subject: CC: [will also send this talkback to an E-Mail address] * Comments: Tags allowed:<I>,<B> and <U>. See our talkback-policy for more about talkback content. Fields marked with * are required!