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Mozilla The Internet

MozillaZine Celebrates 5th Anniversary 132

Posted by timothy from the how-may-picoseconds-is-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine, the Mozilla news and advocacy site, is five years old today. They've got a fifth anniversary section, containing a message from their founder, a chronology (which makes a pretty good Mozilla timeline generally), some trivia (who's bright idea was Music to Code By?!) and an acknowledgements page. I think it's amazing that a free site like this has provided such a great service to the open-source community for half a decade. Cheers!"
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MozillaZine Celebrates 5th Anniversary More

MozillaZine Celebrates 5th Anniversary

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  • Hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)

    by MoeMoe ( 659154 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:53PM (#6847850)
    Wonder what I should bring as a present to the party.... Lets see, 5th anniversary... Thats paper or wood gifts right?

  • Party Hat! (Score:3, Funny)

    by trolman ( 648780 ) * on Monday September 01, 2003 @10:57PM (#6847865) Journal
    There was a Reported shortage of Godzilla heads at Spencers [spencergifts.com] this week. Now I understand!

  • Picoseconds? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rolocroz ( 625853 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:08PM (#6847903)
    from the how-many-picoseconds-is-that dept.

    5 years = 1.5778463 x 10^20 picoseconds. I love Google's calculator.

  • I hope for their sake.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CooCooCaChoo ( 668937 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:09PM (#6847909)
    They're not singing that awful song, "Every walking the dinosaur" ;-)

    5 years, small number of donations and it has become the corner stone of the Mozilla advocacy and users groups. 2 years, $40billion in the bank and Microsoft is still trying to creat that "community atmosphere". Maybe we should bottle some "community atmosphere" from Mozilla and sell it to Microsoft ;-)

    • Re:I hope for their sake.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Almighty Dave ( 663959 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:22PM (#6847949)
      Maybe we should wish in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up faster.

      Microsoft is a corporation. they are not trying to create "community atmosphere", they are trying to sell a product. If projecting the illusion of "community atmosphere" will help them market that product, then they will try to create that illusion. They care about profits, nothing more, nothing less.

      • is part of their grand plan. A while back Microsoft told an audience of MVP's that they would like to create the same sort of community development atmosphere as found in opensource projects. Later on they talked about expanding it to end users.

        The fact remains, Microsoft cannot create that atmosphere because leadership has to come from the top. If the top acts in the "dog eat dog" manor, then what will their ISV's and end users do?

        Ultimately, the ball is in Microsofts court. In terms of helping their bot

        • Microsoft cannot create that atmosphere because leadership has to come from the top.

          I totally disagree. The "duh" level definition of a leader is: someone with followers.
          Thus, even a jackass is a leader, if others become so and fall in behind.
          Microsoft has a lot of community going for it, in the form of MSDN.
          However, the fact that the profit motive sorts highest on the priority list, and the polarizing effect that has on the IT community at large, isn't going to help its growth a bit.
          Stuff like Mozi

    • Simple, you cannot sell or purchase (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) <doug.opengeek@org> on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:30PM (#6847982) Homepage Journal
      people that actually give a shit. Everybody knows Microsoft is here to make their cash pile larger at any cost.

      The Mozilla folks are here to make sure we have a good browser that runs on what we choose to run it on.

    • $40billion in the bank and Microsoft is still trying to creat that "community atmosphere".

      I honestly don't think they give a s**t about 'community atmosphere' now that they've discovered that you can't buy it, take it over or squeeze it out of the market.

    • Re:I hope for their sake.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SunPin ( 596554 ) <slashspam@@@cyberista...com> on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @12:21AM (#6848119) Homepage
      Every few months, I've given Mozilla a try just to keep the faith. This summer, 1.5 Beta found a permanent spot on my drive as the undisputed default browser/mail application. I just happened to avoid the sobig disaster because of it.

      Firebird looks slick but it's not ready for primetime quite yet. I like Thunderbird as well and I look forward to seeing it fully developed.

      The Mozilla Organization is a terrific example of open source producing something much better and even more innovative than commercial competitors.

      Internet Explorer cannot hold a candle to Mozilla 1.4/1.5. As people that were sitting on the fence decide to get involved (like myself), IE will have no reason to return even in 2008. It's completely over for IE.

      Mozilla is a victory for open source software. It's not a "me too" project that seeks to replicate IE to spite M$. More projects can/will learn from the Mozilla example. Microsoft is running out of time to open its software. Eventually, the OSS options will be better and widely known to the public.

      • Re:I hope for their sake.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by whereiswaldo ( 459052 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @01:05AM (#6848224) Journal
        Internet Explorer cannot hold a candle to Mozilla 1.4/1.5.

        I totally agree. But you know, Microsoft could have added Mozilla's features into IE with no significant technical problems. Why they haven't added advanced features into IE, in part, is because of their corporate agenda. This goes especially for ad blocking. Microsoft is the ad agency's friend. Mozilla is the user's friend. Microsoft pretend's to be the user's friend, but the veneer is wearing off.
        • I'm not sure that Microsoft was ever the user's friend. They are the next *AA anti-consumer bozos on the rise. They really haven't done what they want to do and what they are capable of doing with their desktop monopoly.

      • Re:I hope for their sake.. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > I just happened to avoid the sobig disaster because of it.

        Really? Mozilla seemed to have no problems letting me doubleclick on PIF files.

        BTW, you are pretty poor karma whore, by slashdot standards. Work harder.

  • Firebird (Score:4, Informative)

    by kgbspy ( 696931 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:10PM (#6847912)
    It took them five years to do it, but they've come up with the best web browser known to man: with daylight second, and Opera third.

    Here's hoping that the next five years sees the same committed focus to Firebird as has been poured into Mozilla.


    • Re:Firebird (Score:3, Interesting)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )
      I gotta give credit where it's due. Firebird was about the only modern browser I could install on the stupid win95a box(p54c-100 mhz, 16 megs of RAM, yech) I patched up for my parents so they could use hotmail at home. IE6 wouldn't install, period, and the IE5 autodownloader/installer wouldn't function . . . I didn't even bother trying Opera.

      Sadly, Firebird was still slow as all hell on that machine. Sure beats using Netscape 3 though.

    • Re:Firebird (Score:2, Funny)

      by smallpaul ( 65919 )
      Okay, I'll bite. What the hell is daylight?

      • Re:Firebird (Score:4, Funny)

        by kgbspy ( 696931 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @12:50AM (#6848192)

        Y'know... when you've been up until 4am debugging somebody else's badly written code, you finally get to sleep, and the garbage truck / noisy neighbour / dog next door wakes you up a few hours later. You get up, open the curtains, and this strange, transluscent, yellow stuff filters into your room.

        That's daylight.


      • eh ? Where you been living ? Daylight is a movie [imdb.com], dude. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise !

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ewithrow ( 409712 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:26PM (#6847967) Homepage
    From the timeline:

    MozillaZine asks its readers to pay the site's hosting fees. Much to our surprise, you do.

    Not a lot of confidence in their reader base.. ;)

  • Mozillazine deserves kudos... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:28PM (#6847975)
    I know a lot of Slashbots seem to think that all geekdom is required to mindlessly support Mozilla, and that it has always been that way. But I remember a time in days of yore when Mozilla was the project everybody loved to hate. It was _the_ example of Open Source gone awry - here's how not to open up your product, here's how not to manage an open source project, etc. And back then Mozillazine was a quiet place - but Chris kept it running, and a small gang of the faithful hung out, waiting with baited breath for the next Milestone, hoping against hope that it would be faster, better and... oh, never mind, it couldn't get cheaper.


    Anyway, the point is, these days the majority of us - geekdom, that is - use Mozilla or a Mozilla-derived browser (Galeon and Phoenix/Firebird). Mozillazine deserves a lot of credit for keeping the fan base alive during the long, dark period of time when it wasn't really clear that Mozilla was ever going to succeed. Thanks, Mozillazine, for giving me hope and keeping me and a lot of other hopeful users fed with info and inspired to stay involved and keep the project going.

    • I don't know I've always thought Mozilla was going to be my browser of choice. I started using it seriously with M9 and since M15 it has been my main browser. Since .9 it has been my only regulary used browser. I keep Crazy Browser around only for sites that use plugins that I hate to have installed normally (like flash) but where I might actually want to view the content (like Strongbad). Basically I could get by without ever using any other browser and would be very happy for it.
    • At its primary goal, Mozilla never really did succeed. Opening the Navigator suite's source code was Netscape's last flailing hope against IE's obvious future domination of the desktop, and it didn't work. Netscape had a majority market share then, and has around what, 5% now? Mozilla is a good cross-platform browser and all, so I guess you could say it's successful in that way, but if the Mozilla Project ever wanted to be successful against MS, they should have narrowed their scope and focused on a kickass

      • Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What really slowed mozilla down was not XUL, nor support for outlandish platforms, but gecko. The decision to go to gecko meant that they had to rewrite most of the browser suite. And since the goal was always making a product that was equivalent to communicator, not navigator, it took them a long time to rewrite everything. XUL and bugzilla were tools designed to speed up development, not slow it down.

        Ofcourse, they didn't really have a choice but to go to gecko, since the existing rendering engine was so
    • Most geeks also understand the importance of the Mozilla project... but what I'm deeply worried about is the fact that the Mozilla project doesn't make anyone any money. Sure, you can point to Netscape, but does the number of people using Netscape put enough ad revenue (or any other revenue) into the hands of AOL?

      Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer, especially since they recently solidified a deal keeping the IE renderer a core part of their client software, all but ma

      • Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by swdunlop ( 103066 ) <swdunlop AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @03:38AM (#6848632) Homepage
        Mozilla wasn't about money for AOL/Netscape/Time Warner; at least, not directly. It appears to have been a major piece of leverage in AOL's ongoing battles with Microsoft for placement on the Windows desktop. AOL's argument in these negotiations probably ran along the lines of: "Give us what we want, or we'll take Gecko, and drop IE's component, from our app."

        When Gecko was started, Microsoft's greatest fear was that web browsers were going to commodify operating systems; is it any wonder that one of Mozilla's most hyped features was XUL, a cross-platform widget toolkit? (And yes, hype is the applicable term, here.. I've finished a rather sizeable Javascript/XUL frontend to our e-business database. Some permanency in the API's, and some coherent documentation would be a wonderful thing..)
      • Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer

        Perhaps you missed this announcement [mozilla.org]? There was also a slashdot story [slashdot.org]. I won't rehash the arguments made in that thread for Mozillas post-AOL survival, but a few other corporations continue to make hefty contributions in both manpower and cash to Mozilla.
      • > Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer, especially since they recently solidified a deal keeping the IE renderer a core part of their client software, all but making Mozilla irrelevant?

        AOL for MacOSX runs on Gecko. Ironic, since that's probably Mozilla's worst platform. Bet your ass they're keeping their options open as far as supporting linux goes, e.g. if they decide to distribute some sort of AOL appliance.

        I see AOL as moving gradually toward becoming a vanilla

    • I know a lot of Slashbots seem to think that all geekdom is required to mindlessly support Mozilla, and that it has always been that way. But I remember a time in days of yore when Mozilla was the project everybody loved to hate. It was _the_ example of Open Source gone awry - here's how not to open up your product, here's how not to manage an open source project, etc.

      Which as far as I can see was (and still is) a correct assessment. Although I used Mozilla daily myself, it doesn't even appear on the st

      • It shows up as nearly 10% of hits on my site, if you include Netscape 6/7, Phoenix, and the various species of Netscape and Gecko based browsers. My mother uses it (or rather she used Navigator 7, a Mozilla based browser, until I showed her that Mozilla is the same thing with more features). To me that's not microscopic. Obviously, the average Joe or Jane still uses IE, but there are a lot of average Joes and Janes that have moved away from IE because of its lack of popup blocking. The not-showing-up-on
  • Has anyone gotten any of the plugins for Mozilla to work at all with Linux kernel 2.6.0x? I have posted bugs and such, with no response. Flash and java plugins don't work. It would seem that I'm the only one.
  • Does anyone know where to get the nightly builds with AA fonts support compiled in? For Redhat 9. It would take 50 years for my system to compile from source.

  • loving firebird (Score:5, Informative)

    by planckscale ( 579258 ) on Monday September 01, 2003 @11:52PM (#6848037) Journal
    This browser *in use now* is my newest best friend (I know, sad huh). Simple, elegant, tabs, history, caches, privacy, and it's download manager are all that I need. Also, it just performs faster, blocks popups, it's free and just seems to have more for my money. I'd like to see better plug-in support; java, shockwave, Wild tangent and some other plugins aren't exactly mindless installs in some cases. Also I would like to see Firebird run in memory in the background like Mozilla does, and a download "acceleration" with mulitple FTP sites would be a bonus. Otherwise, it's my favorite DEFAULT browser :-)

    • Re:loving firebird (Score:3, Interesting)

      by simon_aus ( 649753 )
      I understand what you mean about love, not in a natural way at all.

      A few weeks ago I was building some SAP middleware stuff at a hosting site (full MS) and showed our OS/DB guy firebird 0.6 - he won't touch anything else and this stuff is only supported on IE 5 and up.

      Then I showed the hosting company MD the difference in connecting to our external web mail on MS Exchange. I had been whining about its crap access speed for months. Two (2) seconds to load rather than 120++, nobody really believes it unless
      • Then try typing "about:config" in the address bar. Well, I'm starting to rant :)

        Since when is Moz's lack of a proper configuration method a feature? 'About:config' is great compared to having nothing, but I would much rather have a nice check-box in a preferences page compared to having to know that I need to open 'about:config', add a new key called 'general.smoothScroll' of type 'boolean' and set it to 'true'. Come on, how is that a bragging right?
        • It seems like configuration is always a problem of finding the right balance between presenting too many options to the user, and not presenting enough. Mozilla's approach is to make an easy to use Preferences control panel available, and by including about:config for use by power users.

          For more fun option management, check out Preferential [mozdev.org]
    • I agree! It is such a damn nice browser to use. I am still perplexed as to why some of my techie work mates still opt to use IE when they know such a supreme browser like this exists!

      • I am still perplexed as to why some of my techie work mates still opt to use IE when they know such a supreme browser like this exists!

        Quite perplexing indeed. I have a friend who is quite paranoid about privacy leaks and abhors pop-ups. However, he will not try an alternative to IE. Ever.

        One day, after a lot of beer and persuasion, I installed Firebird on his machine.

        Two weeks later, it vanished. The stated reason? MozFB takes longer to load, and some sites don't render properly.

        Quite perplexing, yes.

  • What better way to celebrate an aniversary... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @12:07AM (#6848075)
    then with a slashdotting?

  • 5 years....awesome! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Robowally ( 649265 )
    I've been using Mozilla for about 5 years......and happy with it for most of that time. I have used it exclusively for about the last 4 years. I still have no use for 'local folders' in the email client....what are they for? Now looking forward to Firebird and Thunderbird!

    • Re:5 years....awesome! (Score:3, Informative)

      by afidel ( 530433 )
      Local folders are for clients using IMAP with a limited amount of storage space who wish to retain archives without running a local IMAP server. You can also use them to collate email from multiple accounts (say you have various aliases and want to combine all PO's into a single location).

  • Firebird and Thunderbird (Score:4, Interesting)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @12:46AM (#6848178) Homepage Journal
    I honestly think that these two apps can replace IE/OE on most people's home computers within 6 months. I try to evangelized Firebird with my friends and coworkers and it worked up until the new google toolbar for IE started blocking popups.. I still love it though. Love live the *bird.

  • Mozilla is Dangerous (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've thought long and hard about the Internet phoenominon known as "Mozilla," or more frequently, "Open-Source Fascist Dinosaur - a name aptly deserved, taking into consideration the political philosophies of its filthy hippie developers and its inability to load even the simplest page before the sun goes supernova. During this thinking-period, which I like to call "the long thought," I have thunk up many thoughts, and I feel that these think-thoughts need to be shared.

    Mozilla scares me. I often use Mozill

  • Music to Code By (Score:3, Funny)

    by YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT ( 651184 ) on Tuesday September 02, 2003 @01:40AM (#6848300) Homepage Journal
    (who's bright idea was Music to Code By?!)

    Just as a curio, the linked page features as the second selection Wesley Willis [wesleywillis.org] - who sadly passed away just a little while ago on the 21st of August, aged 40. I also used to listen to Wesleys strange stream of conciousness punk rants while coding. I'll miss you, Wes.

    -- YLFI

  • ... perhaps a gift of penis enlargment pills and generic viagra wrapped up Nigeriam spam printouts might be appropriate.

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