Talk:Mozilla Application Suite/Archive 1

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corporate status

Could somebody more knowledgeable talk about the corporate status of Mozilla? Possibly a sentence or two about AOL, Netscape, and the newly created Mozilla Foundation (see www.mozillafoundation.org) (after AOL sacked Netscape but freed Mozilla (and even donated US$200M to the foundation)). —seav 23:38 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

First two sentences

"In February 1998, Netscape released most of the code base for its popular Communicator suite (including the Navigator browser) under an open source license. To support Mozilla's collaborative development, Netscape also created the Mozilla organization and mozilla.org website."

These sentences seem a little disjointed. It's not clear what Mozilla is. I'd fix it, but I don't know enought to fill in the gap. I think we just need a connection between open-source Communicator and Mozilla. --Spikey 16:23, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I've had a go. -- Tarquin 16:31, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Makes more sense now. But I still don't understand why AOL would release it under an open source license. To me it doesn't seem to make sense. -anon

Well, first of all AOL didn't release it under an open source licence - Netscape Communications Corporation, which was at the time a completely independent company, did; the article seems to me to be pretty clear on that. But as to why they released it, perhaps we could do with a bit more info. Basically, I think they wanted the help of the masses in bringing their next version up to scratch, seeing as something of a revolution was clearly needed... - IMSoP 00:24, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Communism and Mozilla

The blurb that was deleted:

Among the many complaints about Mozilla is the blatant communist imagery used by the project. While the use use of the red star with the yellow rim alone may be dismissd as an innocent coincidence, the infamous Mozilla Party website is often used as an examlple of the overt Communist imagery in Mozilla. [1]

seems NPOV so maybe it should have been reverted, but it was interesting to me nonetheless and if it's something that's commonly discussed among those familiar with Mozilla, maybe it should be mentioned in the article. Salasks 02:32, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Err, do you mean it seems POV? NPOV is the desired status. :) - Fennec (はさばくのきつね) 02:34, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have been a Mozilla follower for some time now and have never heard of any controversy about it. It seems like the person who submitted this blurb was just trying to put their own POV into it. If it is going to be added back in, it shouldn't be as a controversy because it doesn't really exist as far as I can tell. Some proof of such a controversy should be given before something like this should be taken as legitimate. -- LGagnon 03:55, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yeah my bad on the NPOV/POV; first time trying to use those terms. Anyway, did some pseudo-research and found that these splash screens made a dent in the blogosphere abt a year ago, though I'm not sure how many are using them today. Salasks 04:15, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Being the person who added the content, I think it is a valid piece of information. Maybe you can change the formatting and the language, but it is certainly something prominent in Mozilla. This is something outside the debate on Open Source software and is about Mozilla alone. I added the link to the mozilla party. You can also do a google search for "mozilla communist" or better yet a search on google groups and see the flame wars that have been going on about it. I think it would be silly to omit information like that sinply because one does not agree with it. Check out the following for some mention of the communist imagery : Moztips Usenet flame wars -A (cant figure out the timestamp thing :P )

"~~~~" produces, e.g., wwoods 17:26, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The mozilla party flyer is completely hilarious, in context, at least if you've read much JWZ (ie, why cooperation with RMS is impossible). Using communist imagery to promote an open-source product is pretty obviously a self-aware joke, although I can see why it might not seem so funny to humorless cold warriors or some older folks, even after being let in on the joke. Saucepan 18:00, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have to say, I think this is indeed a worthy inclusion: I was fascinated when I first came across this (through spotting a link being removed from this article, funnily enough). Crack-pot or not, it has to be said there is a surprising amount of truth to the claim (everything from the colour scheme to the fact that Mozillazine's logo is a blimp...) - although recently, the communist type imagery seems to have been largely phased out (you won't see "that red star" on the current http://mozilla.org, for instance). Maybe the Mozilla Foundation decided to put the controversy to rest by simply making it irrelevant? - IMSoP 18:53, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you can make a reference to someone who criticised the "communist" overtones to the images that the Mozilla project used, go ahead. Otherwise don't readd it. - Ta bu shi da yu 04:48, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I did some digging, and re-found the reference that I saw a long time ago through this diff. That actual page has, notably, been taken down but elsewhere on the same part of the site you can still find other anti-mozilla articles that refer to the claim, as well as conversations allegedly removed from MozillaZine. There's also some versions of the 'mozillapics' article in the Internet Archive. So it very much looks like the whole controversy may be placeable in the past tense (more recent articles about Mozilla there are more along the lines of constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement), but there's some references just to show that I didn't just hallucinate its existence. - IMSoP 12:58, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is Andkon... I took the Mozillapics down because I kept getting Google Image hits (hundreds per day) searching for Hitler, wasting a ton of bandwidth. And yes, I engage in constructive criticism now.

Was there anyone else complaining about the symbolism aside from andkon? I have followed the Mozilla project from the get go and IIRC he was the only one that brought this up. Also if I hadn't been reading jwz sites and mozillazine I don't think I would have even heard about it. Just wondering if one guy's personal bugbear is notable enough for the page. AlistairMcMillan 00:37, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well, the whole thing about millions of Europeans who lived under similar propaganda banners... Obviously, the developers finally noticed how not neutral this was and changed it. Others have complained about it was before.

Competing web browsers

I think it is important to make a mention of the browsers that Mozilla competes with. While Mozilla holds it's own, when many people think of "web browser" they think "Internet Explorer", or "Internet Explorer and Netscape/Mozilla". Let's note the other ones. Also, this may help silence the often voiced criticism that "the IE page has a competing browsers section but the Mozilla one doesn't: Wikipedia must be biased!". - Ta bu shi da yu 11:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yep. Though a lengthy expository list like this doesn't really belong in the Mozilla article itself. This one should just have the list of browser names, and the contents of this list should be moved somewhere else, possibly to the intros of the articles in question - David Gerard 16:32, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think Category:Web browsers and Comparison of web browsers do a fine job of listing the relative merits of competing browser programs, and to that effect, I'm removing the "Competing web browsers" section from the IE, Mozilla, and Firefox articles (and possibly more if I see them.) --Ardonik.talk() 01:21, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

I suspect you are entirely correct - that section really didn't fit this article well - David Gerard 07:19, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Subprojects

I thought that the list at the bottom of the subprojects section looked mixed. The header reads "Also, the task of Mozilla development itself spurred the creation of tools for geographically distributed, cross-platform software development. Some of these tools were widely adopted by the larger open source community, including the following:" and the list includes Thunderbird and Rhino. I never heard of Rhino, but I use Thunderbird and I don't think that Thunderbird is well described as a tool for geographically distributed, cross-platform software development, although it can be used for that. Am I missing something, or should Thunderbird and Rhino be removed?--Chealer 07:51, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)

Rhino, apparently, is a by-product of Netscape's abandoned "Javagator" project that also produced Grendel; both are related to Mozilla in that they have been continued as open source projects under the auspices of mozilla.org, but it looks to me like Mozilla itself uses the C-based SpiderMonkey for its JS engine.

I certainly think Thunderbird is misplaced here; in fact, I think the "sub-projects" and "spin-off browsers" sections need reorganisation, and possibly merging - certainly they should be next to each other, rather than with other sections in between. Perhaps "Mozilla technology" could mention the structure of the suite itself, and then a "Related projects" section could deal with:

Development tools: bugzilla, tinderbox, bonsai, etc
Gecko-based browsers: whether they be gecko-GUI'd or just gecko-rendered
Projects based on Mozilla code: thunderbird, sunbird, XMLTerm, et al
Other projects hosted by mozilla.org: rhino, grendel, ElectricalFire, Mstone (although it's hard to tell where on the scale from 'active' to 'abandoned' these projects are)

What think ye? - IMSoP 14:00, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I've gone ahead and re-arranged it, so if anyone thinks I've done it really badly, they'll have to rearrange it better ;). Actually, my main worry is that this page as a whole is rather large, and could possibly do with being split up somehow. Hm... - IMSoP 20:03, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Security information

It appears that there is some criticism of the way Mozilla handles security problems. See [2], [3] and the following RUS-CERT advisory (can't read that last one, could someone translate?). Also see http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/security-bugs-policy.html We really should be adding this to the article, I just don't know where to put it. Also, we have nothing on the XUL vulnerability that I saw a while ago. If we pretty much flay Internet Explorer, then we should be at least adding this information to our article. - Ta bu shi da yu 06:20, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Not that I'm necessarily disagreeing with you, but we have to keep things in perspective. Mozilla isn't constantly on the news (and by news I mean things like CNN and BBC), with stories about security bugs that need to be patched ASAP. As far as I remember, the White House hasn't felt it necessary to hold a press conference to talk about security issues with Mozilla. Can't say they won't in the future, but it hasn't happened yet. AlistairMcMillan 09:41, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, but it has had some security issues, though not many to be sure and Mozilla has a much better track record than I.E. I don't see why we can't cover them. I mean, I'm not endorsing the criticism. At work I refuse to use anything except for Firefox. I just won't use IE. But nonetheless, criticisms have been made and I do think it means that we should report them. Besides this, my point wasn't meant to be a comparison between I.E. and Mozilla. It was meant to show that if we cover one thing in a similar article, and there is similar criticism for another related article it seems a bit POV not to include that criticism. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:59, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Local portals

There are a dozen of local portals, both official and unofficial, e.g. Mozilla Europe, Mozilla Japan, Mozilla Taiwan. Shall we add links to them in the "external links" section? - minghong 09:45 Jan 23 2005 (UTC)

XForms

Mozilla will support XForms really soon [4]. Should we mention it here or in Gecko? -- Minghong 20:15, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Clean up

This article should be cleaned up. e.g. "Mozilla-based app" should be moved to Gecko; "Mozilla Suite" should be moved to Seamonkey (if it is the final name of the "Mozilla 1.8"). This article should turn into a description of the Mozila history, and pointers to other Mozilla Foundation projects/products. --minghong 09:09, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree that anything not specific to the Mozilla Application Suite should be moved to some other page. However, the info on the Mozilla Suite should stay here because the Seamonkey Suite will be a completely separate product. --Schapel 13:25, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Maybe move the suite related stuffs to "Mozilla Suite"? This name is used on Mozilla website [5]. --minghong 08:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've just done that. ;-) --minghong 17:36, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)