Divide by four
By glazou on Wednesday 10 August 2005, 11:40 - Mozilla - Permalink
Unfortunately, it seems that all the explanations the Mozilla Foundation gave were not enough. The kind of reactions below (real comments added to this blog) are still annoying because they are based on false assertions:
- " Im shocked, I am not happy about what MoFo will become within the next year "
- " Big money. this is indeed a sad day for MoFo "
- " Seems like all the good software is selling out. 2005 will be remembered as the year of the SELLOUT. If it's all about the money, then I'm back to using Maxthon/IE. As others have noted, it was good while it lasted, but some jackass always has to screw it up. "
So, in only three items because twelve items seem too much for some people:
- 1. What is the impact of the launch of Mozilla Corporation on the Mozilla projects ? Is there a commercial goal behind this change ?
- There is absolutely no impact. It's the same people, the same goal. The code remains free, open-source and tutti quanti.
- 2. Will the projects be managed differently and what's the impact on the community ?
- Again, nothing changes. No impact on the community, just visit #developers in irc.mozilla.org and you'll see by yourself. Nobody there is worried.
- 3. So why did the Foundation create a commercial subsidiary if it changes nothing ?
- Because it's easier. Who wants to do complex things when simple things are possible ? Mozilla needs money to survive, like it or not. So better be organized correctly to deal with partners.
Don't be paranoid, there's no hidden plan to be master-of-the-universe. From 1998 to 2005, you trusted the Mozilla team. You can still trust them. I trust them 10000%.
Comments
I completely understand, support and share your reaction, Daniel. These comments are obviously from people who have never met, even less worked, with the Mozilla team. When you know the dedication from Mitchell, Brendan and the rest (not forgetting Tristan in Europe too), it is difficult not to be shocked by comments like that. At least it shows that communicating our support for the Mozilla folks is important these days. Go team!
AMEN!
Could somebody explain me the difference why it is bad when people work on mozilla as employees of mozilla.com instead of previously netscape.com. The whole discussion is so insane. Mozilla has always been a project where OSS and buisiness met. For me this overlap is very fascinating and of the reasons to work on the project.
"Could somebody explain me the difference why it is bad when people work on mozilla as employees of mozilla.com instead of previously netscape.com. The whole discussion is so insane."
The same anti-business paranoia/idiocy was evident when all the open source fanatics would shun the Netscape browser as a piece of crap, but would go ga-ga over every nightly build of Mozilla. Nevermind that Netscape was almost completely identical to the Mozilla browser except with a few extra AOL-specific add-ons and a couple of advertising icons dumped on your desktop. (The one significant exception being when AOL did not ship the pop-up blocker in Netscape 7)
They also acted like Netscape employees were the spawn of Satan and Mozilla.org staffers were benevolent angels. Too bad the idiots couldn't grasp that both were getting their paychecks signed by AOL. Nor could they understand that AOL's funding made the Mozilla browser possible. Yes, there were a lot of morons making stupid decisions at AOL, but they were not the enemy. The concept of "don't bite the hand that feeds you" meant nothing to them.
The same idiots are now turning on the Mozilla Corporation. It is pretty pathetic.