[3144] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Need to know if migration to Netscape 6 is feasible.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Feb 15 12:57:36 2002
Message-ID: <UwPIkBZz0001QDpolm@mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:57:33 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: tbelton@MIT.EDU, dryfoo@MIT.EDU
CC: release-team@MIT.EDU, owls@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200202150601.BAA08789@thelonious.mit.edu>
Gary gives me an opportunity to share a couple observations I've made
comparing Netscape to Mozilla that I think will be useful as we go
forward.
1. Will there be a 6.x+1 that is better? Almost certainly. Although it
is unclear exactly what Netscape's plans are, it probably involves
periodic re-synchronization with the Mozilla source tree to incorporate
more functionality and more bug fixes.
2. The current ugliness. (By "ugliness" I assume problems with
Certificates and AFS are meant.) I believe these are transient problems
that are in the process of being understood by the various players. I
think that currently Netscape is ahead of Mozilla on Certificates, but
that both will fully support Certificates before long. Mozilla is, I
believe, ahead on the AFS front. Both probably need to be solved before
we go live with a replacement for Netscape 4.
I see three significant, and persistant differences between Netscape and
Mozilla:
1. Mozilla will never be called "Netscape", and so there will always be
the potential for customer confusion. No matter if it acts exactly the
same, or if we tell people that Netscape is a 2 month old back-rev of
Mozilla, the name means a lot.
2. Netscape will ALWAYS lag behind Mozilla in functionality and will
GENERALLY lag behind Mozilla in bug fixes. This is because the
development model for Netscape seems to be:
1. Snapshot Mozilla
2. Add Netscape-proprietary components and amendments.
3. Package for distribution.
4. Repeat.
Mozilla's business model is the care and feeding of a development tree
with an easy way to fetch the latest binaries off the net, but not a lot
of user-level hand holding.
3. As business partners, Mozilla will ALWAYS be a more comfortable fit
than Netscape. Netscape's support resources duplicate our own Help
Desk. Even large enterprises are not allowed to work directly with
Netscape developers on anything.
Mozilla's bread and butter is to make it as easy as possible to
incorporate value from helpful developers.
So, when we find a problem, we can report it to Netscape, but we will
get no ability to track the problem as it makes its way to possibly
changing the product. We will have no escalation path for serious
problems. We will never know if a new release makes our problem better
or worse.
When we report a problem to Mozilla we will be able to track it every
step of the way to an actual changed product, and we will have a simple
and explicit way to report when a solved problem regresses. There is
also an escalation path but it is developer-centric rather than customer
centric.
Other places than MIT benefit greatly from Netscape Inc. having chosen
to be different from Mozilla.org. But our ability to offer the most
bug-free, and functional web browser based on the Mozilla code base
(which is inside Netscape 6) seems to me to involve partnering with
Mozilla.
Propably the operative tradeoff comes down to the relative values of
Netscape name recognition
versus
Easier ability to have our requirements affect the product.
If our requirements need not be implemented quickly, and if we're
willing to live with the risk that some requirements will never be met,
then sticking with Netscape is, indeed best.
In fact, "sticking with Netscape" is part of a continuum of efforts.
I'd recommend resources dedicated to collaboration with Mozilla as the
best way of getting our requirements into Netscape, even if the browser
our customers see NEVER is Mozilla.
-wdc
