Firefox lead engineer turned Google developer, Ben Goodger, announced on his Web log late this week that version 1.1 of Firefox will be delayed.
Developer: Firefox 1.1 to be Delayed
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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“…a non-public alpha will be released…”
Last time I checked, Firefox was an open-source project. How can they release a non-public version?
Well, you can probably compile your own by downloading the source from CVS.
However, they don’t have to provide CVS access to the changes either until they release a binary.
The non-public alpha is probably for internal testing (among firefox devs). Once they are confident that the changes don’t totally destroy the computer that they are installed on, they’ll release it to the public for more thourough testing.
Will Firefox have voice support like Opera 8 ?
>> Last time I checked, Firefox was an open-source project.
>> How can they release a non-public version?
Other Open Source projects, like OpenOffice.org, do that as well.
Why not directly link to Ben Goodger’s blog ?
Goodger writes:
“The likely possibility is a 1.1 Developer Preview (= alpha, NOT for general consumption), followed by a 1.1 Preview Release (= beta, wider consumption, feature complete), followed by RCs and a 1.1.”
and Betanews interprets “not for general consumption” as “a non-public alpha of 1.1”
hmm…
Just kidding. In any case, if 1.1 development release are to be “delayed”…what is this nightly I am running, isn’t it be definition a 1.1 alpha?
To me, “non-public alpha” means “an alpha build that we don’t push everywhere”. In other words, it gets released, but without all the fanfare of their other builds (even beta builds). You can get the builds yourself anyway, just grab a nightly build.
Among the major changes and fixes expected in Firefox 1.1 are a fix to the bug that causes the browser not to retain the scroll position when going back and forward through Web pages.
Yes! Finally! This is sometimes *really* irritating when using Firefox, especially compared to how Opera handles this (very fast).
trader? like stock? stock trader? googles doing well actually
oh, traitor..
From “ask asa” at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007414.html it appears voice support isn’t on the horizon.
A`ja asked, “Anything you can tell us about plans for addition of X+V 1.2 and CSS3 speech capabilities to Moz browsers, ala Opera 8 beta?”
A`ja, as far as I know, there aren’t any plans to add speech capabilities to the Mozilla apps.
That just means that it will either just be a nightly build that they don’t tell people about or something that is just from CVS. Either way, you are still free to grab it, but they don’t want to publicize something that could have huge flaws – expecially with the attention and mass-adoption that Firefox is getting (over 21million downloads).
Will Firefox have voice support like Opera 8 ?
What exactly do you mean? Something like the extension ‘Foxyvoice’?
Firefox has a daily build tree that is easily accessible from the ‘official’ download link.
“Firefox lead engineer turned Google developer”…
I surely don’t wanna flame so please keep that in mind. Can someone explain to me how can OSS community spread a theory about an OS software economy while its major actors are quitting their positions to join good old business companies?
Why should someone think that you can make of a living from OSS while as soon as they have a chance, OSS people is joining old business model? Torvalds works for a company, Goodger (who was Firefox’s lead eng according to this story… and we hear that Firefox is most successful 2004 product… something which should aim to break MS ruling…) he switched too… I didn’t compile any statistics but isn’t a bit weird that someone who’s leading one of most famous developers team quits this way?
If I was in the middle of deciding wether to release my product as OSS, I would wonder “Why OSS people do that?”. Aren’t they getting enough money? Ambition? However, that wouldn’t make my decision easier…
Foxyvoice just uses the MS Speech API to read the pages back to you.
Opera’s speech abilities include voice control and the X+V stuff which is way way beyond just a text to speech API.
For instance, the demo of X+V functionality that is probably most widespread is the Pizza order site.
The page asks you to order pizza and you speak the order to the browser. A bit different to text-to-speech
Visit http://www-306.ibm.com/software/pervasive/multimodal/pizza/ in Opera 8.0b1 to see what I mean.
Sometimes you have to get paid. Just because someone gets a job doesnt mean they are abandoning their OSS software. Like all the retards who say bands sell out. We no duh, did you expect them to spend 20 years playing shitty clubs and bars?
Google has said they will allow him to work 20 hours a week on Mozilla Firefox. It sounds like a good thing to me. This way he gets a guaranteed paycheck for working on Firefox, instead of working on it in spair time.
<blockquote>This way he gets a guaranteed paycheck for working on Firefox, instead of working on it in spair time.</blockquote>
He was previously on the Mozilla foundation’s payroll.
There’s no sense in juming to conclusions yet. He is working part time for Mozilla and part time for Googe. Rumor has it Google is coming out with their own browser (hence the hiring of all the browser developers). Maybe he wants to help take his ideas on browsing in a new direction. Maybe he understands that Google can spread Firefox better than Mozilla. It doesn’t mean Firefox won’t be open source anymore. It seems to me the recent move of high profile OSS developers to top jobs in large companies is showing a new type of software economy. Not OSS vs proprietary, but one where OSS is a test bed for new technologies that eventually get marketed and spread through companies. And it’s not as if these companies are ripping off the OSS developers because they are giving them very nice jobs.
Foxyvoice just uses the MS Speech API to read the pages back to you.
FOr some of us, this is all we need
Also, you can use AT&T’s Natural voice which (according to the demo linked from the Foxyvoice page), sounds better than the one that comes with Opera.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=42
http://pryan.org/firefox/
The point I would like to emphasize is not if Firefox will keep existing or not (since I’m sure it will), but how can you give a proof that OSS economy is actually profitable (so that model is a good one) if you leave your OSS-oriented job for another in a standard, non-OSS, company?
I’m sure he will keep working on Firefox but if I was an OSS developer I would start asking myself a few questions. Plus, working for a good old company cannot actually be defined as a winning OSS model. At most, you can call that “working for OSS in spare time”… which is something WE also do.
Just my .02, since while I like the idea, I’m worried that it has been bad implemented.
Yep sure, Foxyvoice might be all you need. However my point was you can in no way compare Foxyvoice to Opera’s speech capabilities. One is a lazyman’s toy; the other, part of a focus on accessibility.
You say that Google is a non-OSS company, but if they start paying for Firefox development by paying for Ben’s time working on it then that makes them at least in part an OSS company (not to mention if they release a Mozilla based browser, which will itself have to be OSS).
what is googles source of income?
allso, have anyone noticed that the companys that hire oos developers are not pure shrinkwrapped companys like microsoft but rather ones that are either solution or hardware focused? these companys dont get payed pr licence sold but by hardware sales (and hardware is more or less useless without software, or vice versa for that matter) or payed by ongoing service and support contracts. hell, even microsoft is trying to move towards a solution and support based economy.
what is googles source of income?
Targeted advertisment. Very profitable, by the way. Look at the top of this page – you see about four google ads. Look at the left – another four. Surprisingly related to OSAlert content:)
One is a lazyman’s toy; the other, part of a focus on accessibility.
Lazyman’s toy? Pardon me, but the difference between reading a 25-page website out loud for someone (visually disadvantaged or otherwise ‘lazy’) or letting the computer do it is huge in terms of time-saving and energy-saving. I wouldn’t call it ‘lazy’ so easily…
I find it actually a part of accessibility as well. However the plugin doesn’t work well: the quality of the speech leaves much to be desired and it reads every text part out loud instead of a frame. It also reads out Google text ads! On OSAlert for example, it would start with the Google text ads. Selecting texts is possible, but thats not always practicle either. So i wouldn’t mind an alternative.
Foxyvoice, compared to what was described as additional feature in pizza / Opera 8, does nothing less than i need to AFAICT. But its an interesting feature. Is this feature Opera8 for Windows-only?
You’re right but many people (from RMS down to others) are claiming that you can have an economy, I mean a bussiness model, which is based only upon OSS and GPL rules (more or less). That is, OSS is a profitable model.
The fact that many OSS high-profile people are quitting their positions as OSS-only developers, in my opinion undermines the idea that OSS can be an alternative model. The fact that a successfull OSS developer quits his position to join a non-OSS company (as Google doesn’t release its software as OS) means something. And the fact that he’s not the only one, that means something.
If your picture was right, Microsoft would be an OSS supporting company too as they had released many software for free (including source code), though they didn’t use any OSI license, as far as I know.
I think hobglobin remark is true: most OSS supporting companies are HW-selling companies, which (as such), failed to win OSes war (whatever reasons).
However, my question is: if a successfull developer like Mr. Firefox prefers to make his living from being employed to a company which is not an OSS one, why should anyone think that OSS is a protitable model? If that’s true for him, that could be true for less-known developers, who mostly work without getting any money.
IMO, when big companies started to pump their money into OSS, the true OSS model ceased to exist. And I think that Microsoft was really worried about OSS back in 99-00, when such model was growing without big bucks than now, when OSS software needs money from big companies to keep up with development. Microsoft stated that many times during 2004.
I believe that Google gets its money (or at least, was getting…) from licensing their technologies and incomes arising from targeted ads are less than that.
Google was licensing its technology to Yahoo (for example) until, last year, Yahoo announced to have developed a better technology itself and stopped using Google technology. I believe that they get more money from mainstream content providers than they do with ads. And I do believe that money they loss from content providers which stopped licensing their technology plus the threat of MS trying to enter that market was the main reason why they went to the market last year. They need to extend their products offer and build an integrated range of them to offer an integrated platform which will connect all services they’re developing (GMail and other technologies).
I think you are mixing business models on different scales.
First there is the OSS economy, i.e. companies relying on OSS products for profits, for example selling distributions or providing support and customisations for OSS software.
Second a software developer’s for income based on developing OSS.
The latter is already quite widespread, a lot of companies employ developers to work on OSS, for example IBM’s kernel developers, Novell’s GNOME and KDE developers.
IMO, when big companies started to pump their money into OSS, the true OSS model ceased to exist
Why so? As long as OSS gets developed and used, it works, doesn’t it?
If companies boost OOS development by hiring developers, even better.
I don’t think the goal of OSS is to become it’s own self-contained business model. It seems the goal is to give people more power when it comes to developing and/or fixing software. You can have OSS that releases the source to everyone and sells the binaries to non-developers. Hence the term ‘open source software’, not ‘free for all software’. Companies like Google can do a lot to help OSS bcause they have a lot to offer. This isn’t an us vs. them scenario, and not all companies are bad.
Of course it’s not US vs YOU. I’m very open-minded about this. However, such things are important because of scenario which is shaping.
The debate about whether an OSS economy could exist or not is important. Big companies entered this market for one explicit reason: availability of far underpaid workforce. Big companies know how (and can) get big bucks from OSS developers who, instead, almost work for free. Moreover, in most cases they actually work for free. This is not a good thing. I actually don’t care about MS or IBM or Sun or whatever. They’re just companies and companies (more or less) always work the same way. There aren’t good or evil companies. There is people working for money and people doing things for their own pleasure. However, it’s not good when big companies exploit and get big money from people working for their own pleasure. Big no-no.
Now, if an OSS economy can actually exist, those underpaid developers can hope to raise some money from their work. If such economy cannot exist, it’s better that they stop getting underpaid and exploited and start thinking to raise some money for their own life, while keeping to work in OSS *for their own pleasure*.
IMO, when major OSS actors escape OSS companies to join big companies, that means they don’t actually believe they can get real money out of their OSS position. If I were an OSS-only developer, I’ll start thinking about this.
An example: when a Firefox contributor will talk to Goodger (when he will have some time), will be he talking to a comrade developer (for Firefox) or a competitor which could use such ideas to shape his product (GoogleBrowser)? And when Mr. Goodger will have a very good idea, will he talk about it to his employee (which provides him money) at Google or to his comrades at Mozilla?
If I were people at Mozilla, I would have asked him to leave any Firefox task before accepting a position in Google. Just my opinion, of course.
Numerous important open source coders have tacit agreements with employers who hired them largely based on their project credentials. This has been a non-issue for years.
I don’t see how companies are exploiting anyone if all they do is within the rights granted by the OSS developers through their licences.
If a developer feels his/her work should not be commercially available he/she should choose appropriate licencing terms.
In my opinion outsourcing developer jobs to low-wage countries is exploitation, the developers there should be entitled to get the same amount of money a developer over here is, after all they are doing the same work.
IMO, when major OSS actors escape OSS companies to join big companies, that means they don’t actually believe they can get real money out of their OSS position.
I currently don’t know of any OSS actor “escaping” from an OSS company. I’d interpret “escaping” as fleeing a position because you see no future in it.
When people change their employers can have a lot of reasons for it, for example an interesting postion or project, a nice working atmosphere, workplace closer to home, etc.
Actually I think it is quite different: more and more companies start hiring developers associated with OSS projects and have them work part time or even full time on that project.
Sounds like a great opportunity for all currently unemployed or full time CSS developing OSS developers.
Some years ago only companies who where fully dependent on OSS work, like Linux distributors, where hiring OSS developers, nowadays even big old sytle IT companies are doing it.
If I were people at Mozilla, I would have asked him to leave any Firefox task before accepting a position in Google. Just my opinion, of course.
This would be very unwise IMHO. They would loose a good developer and miss the chance of getting additional funding for Mozilla development.
After all Google is paying 20 hours a week of Mozilla development while the Mozilla foundation can employ another developer on Goodger’s old job.
Total: +20 hours payed for Mozilla development time.
I see… so OSS is just a way to find a better position in a bigger company.
That looks different from what OSS gurus are claiming. However, I agree with you about this. But I feel that’s a point which makes what I said stronger.
In my opinion, big companies are exploting developers because:
a) they don’t pay for ideas a single developer had. If you were to achieve same results with in-house developers, you should have many of them working for you so you had to pay many $$$. This way, you can gather ideas from the community and use them (or simply patch them to suit your needs) without having to actually hire them. Big savings here for such companies and big loose of money for developers.
b) they can gather ideas and their implementation from the market without paying a dollar for them. Then, they are able to turn that into big money. Big companies have real possibilities to turn such ideas and implementation into money while single developers cannot. Yet, big companies have no obligation to developers.
c) big companies can always influence developers by “financing” their ideas so they don’t really need to hire them.
This looks like old debate about flexibility for job marketplace. Capitalism asks for more “flexibility” which only means reduced wages and less obligations toward workers. To me, that’s exploitation.
By the way, regarding Mozilla, surely Mozilla get 20hours per week of work but my questions about conflicting interests still remain unanswered. Will such conflicting interests assure Firefox a better or worse development? (for what regards Goodger, of course, not the whole project).
Anyway, this discussion has been very interesting. Thank you all.
Again, isn’t everyone a potential dev? Isn’t *everyone* potentially an internal developer of Firefox?
Being an open source project, this is very strange language to hear from them.
Must we become *like* closed-source projects in order to defeat them, sort of like becoming like the Soviets in order to topple them?
I don’t see companies hiring OSS devs as exploitation, because it’s up to the devs to take the job or not. For a lot of these high profile devs, the software is more important than the philosophy behind it. As for the small timers, they aren’t adding their own code to these projects to that only other people interested in OSS can use it. That’s like starting a band that refuses to sign with a major label because they don’t want the world to hear their music. Take for example a Google browser based on Firefox. By current estimates, with Mozilla pushing Firefox, they expect to get between 10 and 15% marketshare in the next year. Now don’t get me wrong, that would be absolutely wonderful. It would make people take notice of how bad IE is. A user demand of that size may even get MS to update IE. But right now, Google is the second most popular brand name in the world. If they released a browser (obviously they wouldn’t sell it), it would get massive attention that Mozilla just can’t provide. Now say maybe 3/4 of all the Google user saw it and decided to try it out. That would give it about a 40% marketshare in a few months. That would not only cause people to think about a new browser, that would cause a shift in web standards. Firefox itself would remain open source, and a Google version would only have a few added features, like maybe a built in GMail reader or something. Then all the people contributing code to Mozilla can see the effects of their work on tens of millions of desktops, not to mention seeing it displace Internet Explorer and push web standards forward.
And if they still feel they are being exploited, they can choose to stop contributing.
I understand what you are saying but I don’t think this is exploitation.
All developer in question knowingly chose to licence their work in a way that does not forbid commerical usage.
Some developers even choose licences where even changes can be kept secret, like for example BSD.
If any developer feels he/she is being exploited there is no way to force them to continue their work.
Being used by companies to create profit is a boost marketing wise for a project, it visualises the software’s quality to the customers. If a customer sees no value in buying it from such a company they can always get it directly from the source.
And after all a lot of companies contribute back by several ways, sometimes even by employing developers.
This looks like old debate about flexibility for job marketplace. Capitalism asks for more “flexibility” which only means reduced wages and less obligations toward workers. To me, that’s exploitation.
I fully agree with this, but I see no connection to OSS work where contributors work for at their own choice on their own terms.
By the way, regarding Mozilla, surely Mozilla get 20hours per week of work but my questions about conflicting interests still remain unanswered.
True, but IMHO this really depends on the developer. If they are closely associated with a project, it is not likely they are going to hurt it.
However my point was you can in no way compare Foxyvoice to Opera’s speech capabilities.
You can when it comes to the text-to-speech part. In fact, I believe Firefox has the advantage here because if you want to select a long web page to read out loud and there’s an image, table of text, text ad, etc. in your way, you can right click and ‘remove object’ via the ‘Nuke Anything’ extension. AFAIK, this option is not available in Opera. Text-to-speech is something that some people find very useful. In Opera, I’ve used the feature to turn some of my eBooks into audiobooks so I can listen to them while on the road. I will definitely be looking into the Firefox extension because of the ‘problem’ with Opera I mentioned above.
I too can see what you are getting at, but don’t agree with the relevance of it. For starters, and OSS economy and an OSS business model are two entirely different things, as has come out pretty well in this discussion. An OSS economy can exist even if no viable OSS business models do.
Second, the viability of an OSS business model depends on the specific market of the OSS products. For example, there is obviously a viable OSS business model in the market of OS distributions (RedHat, et. al.). There is probably not one in browser market (in the traditional sense, at least). Note that this merely parallels the proprietary world: for the most part companies find they can charge for OS’s, but not for browsers.
Third, there are a lot of non-traditional senses in which a viable business model might exist. I’m not sure about their actual take, but the Debian-based Libranet distro is put out by two people and sold for around $40. If they sell 2,000 of those in a year they are making $40,000 a piece. As I said, I have no clue if Libranet sells that many, but this is an example of a non-tradtional business model that might exist in some markets. OSS makes that possible because without OSS, two people could never bring to market an OS distro.
In other words, the OSS business model (like any other business model) is a value-added system. If you can add sufficient value to your raw material, you can probably make a business out of it.
Fourth, you suggest that companies are exploiting developers. But before companies started paying any attention to OSS software, the developers were still doing the same amount of work. Your ‘exploitation’ points are:
1. Companies don’t pay developers for their Intellectual Property.
Yes they do! They pay exactly the same fee that the developer demanded, and the same fee that everyone else pays. That fee is adherence to the OSS license that is required in order to distribute the IP. Not many people like to be told that they are being ‘exploited’ by someone who pays them their asking price. If they were really being exploited in any meaningful sense of the term, they would change the dynamics of the deal. It is entirely within their power to do so.
2. The developer probably does not have the resources to turn his ideas into real money. The company does.
How do you get out of that situation that the developer deserves money? There seems to be a strange sense of entitlement going on here. Basically you are wanting to tack something onto the GPL, and (I guess) can’t understand why anyone would use the GPL without your extra little bit tacked on. They must just be getting exploited…. Well, I suggest that there are a lot of people out there whose motivations you haven’t considered, or can’t comprehend.
3. Companies can “fund” rather than hire these developers.
Great! Here is an example of the OSS system working just how the developers want. They provide a valuable service to companies (OSS software is free and high-quality), and companies, in return, are required to abide by the terms of OSS licenses. Who is the winner here? Everyone.
The company gets free, high-quality software. Say what you want about limitations or side-effects, there is no denying that the ability to stand on so many shoulders allows companies to do things they could never otherwise pull off. It lets companies and ideas succeed that couldn’t even get off the ground otherwise.
The developer gets continued control of the project. How much control over Linux do you think Linus would have if he had been hired as a straight-out employee 10 years ago by IBM and Linux had been IBM’s proprietary OS the whole time? Compare that to the control he has now. Big difference, and worth losing out on job security when what you really care about is software. There is also a huge culture out there that just does not care about the things you care about. Job security and a steady paycheck mean having to brown-nose the boss and not make waves. They mean having to wake up at 7am instead of 2pm. They mean having to “earn” vacation time. They mean your programming project, probably started as a labor of love in your spare time, a hobby, becomes “work” that you can’t put down when you want. Not everyone wants this.
The rest of us get software designed by someone whose top priority is the quality/usefulness/coolness of the software, not its adherence to the latest marketing scheme or its inclusion of the latest enterprise buzz-words. But most importantly, the rest of use get software that is Free. As in libre. If we stop liking the developer or his sponsor company and their ideas, we can go off with the code and do our own thing. That is what the developer wanted, so much so that he made it his top priority (over money).
Bottom line: money isn’t everything. And don’t talk to me about having to put food on the table. There are a million ways to do that, and MOST don’t require a full-time job or even a high-school education. If you want the 5-bedroom house in the suburbs with the Cadillac Escalade and the ski boat and the winter cabin, then sure, go get yourself a job (and a savings account…).
That’s a big novel you wrote there.
“And don’t talk to me about having to put food on the table. There are a million ways to do that”
Name a dozen legal ways then. You’ll struggle and I’ll bet “write software and give it away” doesn’t appear on the list. “write difficult to use but necessary software and give it away then charge for support” might. But that’s a very difficult task and there’s something immoral about writing software that’s difficult to use so you can charge people for help in using it.
“”And don’t talk to me about having to put food on the table. There are a million ways to do that”
Name a dozen legal ways then. You’ll struggle and I’ll bet “write software and give it away” doesn’t appear on the list. “write difficult to use but necessary software and give it away then charge for support” might. But that’s a very difficult task and there’s something immoral about writing software that’s difficult to use so you can charge people for help in using it.”
A dozen legal ways to make money? You do realize there are billions of people making money that have jobs outside of the software industry, right?
But for funs sake, off the top of my head…
1 – McDonalds
2 – Burger King
3 – Wendys
4 – Taco Bell
5 – Krystal
6 – White Castle
7 – Arbys
8 – Captain Dees
9 – Waffle House
10 – IHOP
11 – Subway
12 – Checkers
Need some more? And to think, like the original author said, none of those require a full time position or a high school education. It’s not hard to make money when that’s your goal. The trick is to stop complaining about not having any and go out and make some. If morons like Rob Glaser can do it, anyone can.
one can allso get a job as a it admin somewhere and write oss software in the downtime. if you run a tight ship then most of the time your hanging around for some mergency or other, or maybe some routine upgrades and repairs. company gets a working it infrastructure, you get a paycheck and the ability to write oss…