JTK wrote:
> Stuart Ballard wrote:
>
>>JTK wrote:
>>
>>>Garth Wallace wrote:
>>>
>>>>No. Webmail access, like AIM and Net2Phone, is one of the features that
>>>>Netscape adds to Netscape 6.x but does not contribute to Mozilla.
>>>>
>>>That doesn't sound very "Open" of them. Oh that's right, the whole
>>>"Open" thing was a sham from the get-go.
>>>
>>Oh, I get it. 3 closed features (AIM, Webmail, and AOL mail access)
>>means that having everything else open is a sham?
>
> Yeah, pretty much: "You work on the stuff we don't want to, we'll take
> it and bundle it with a bunch of stuff that's proprietary, and you get
> nada. So long, sucker!"
A bunch of useless stuff that's proprietary. How important is it that
you can access your webmail account through the mail client? The whole
point of web-based email is the ability to access it from the web
without needing a special email client.
AOL mail access by definition only matters to AOL users.
AIM is already available to everyone for free. Lack of integration with
a web browser doesn't make much of an impact.
Does anybody actually use Net2Phone? Seems like Voice-over-IP has a long
ways to go before it's really useful.
You may as well criticise BSD because companies can (and do) package it
with closed additions.
>>I have never had any desire to use AIM, Netscape webmail, or AOL mail.
>
> What about other web-based mail systems? It'd sure be nice to be able
> to hook up to Hotmail or Yahoo mail or Google mail or whatever-mail with
> Mozilla, wouldn't it? Well, I mean if the mail portion actually was in
> working order. What do you think the chances are of such functionality
> being added to Maozilla, Mr. Ballard? Do you really think AOL is going
> to give their official Politburo stamp of approval on such
> anti-AOL's-bottom-line functionality?
They don't have a choice. If somebody writes a patch, it works, and
enough people want to see it in the codebase, it'll get checked in. It
might not be good for AOL, but it would be good for Mozilla.
> And don't even bring up instant messaging, because we both know that AOL
> will fight anybody to the death on that one, even if the code has
> nothing to do with Maozilla.
Right, it doesn't. So why are *you* bringing it up?
>>I
>>can get a fully functioning browser (and an almost-adequate mail/news
>>client - last time I tried it it came within inches of being my
>>permanent client, but crashed just a little too much... I expect to
>>start using it full-time at 0.9.2) that does everything I need it to and
>>is 100% open.
>>
>>Is that a sham?
>
> Yep. Because it ain't 100% "Open". It's
> whatever-AOL-decides-to-let-the-suckers-work-on-% "Open".
Looks like JTK is trying to position himself as some sort of champion of
the open source methodology, despite the fact that he constantly
criticises Mozilla for not being release quality since it is available
for use (despite the fact that nobody at mozilla.org claims it is
release quality and that it has an 0.x version number, showing that he
has no real clue how open source development works).
