Gervase Markham wrote:
>Footprint, Performance and Stability
>------------------------------------
>I want to start by making a controversial statement: we should have no, or
>very little criteria in these categories for Mozilla 1.0.
>
I do think that a 1.0 must be, above all, stable. Stable meaning:
- almost no crashs
- no known security holes
- no non-minor dataloss.
"almost no crashs" I would personally define as MTBF (mean time before
failure) of 250-500 hours.
>Why? Recently, we have been going through a stable period, and people are
>generally pleased with the levels of stability and performance Mozilla has
>reached.
>
Which "people"? People involved in the development of Mozilla?
Consider that they are used to bad quality. They know how to work around
and deal with crashs.
Also, are you sure that they are pleased with the stability in an
absolute sense of just in comparison to earlier releases? 1.0 must be
comparable in an absolute sense.
Compare Mozilla with other open-source software (!= GNOME :) ), and
Mozilla looks quite bad. 0.9.1 today crashed 8 times within an hour for me.
>Work continues, as it always does, and is an incremental process.
>
But 1.0 is an absolute milestone. No excuses allowed anymore.
>My point is that we should be happy with current levels
>
I disagree.
>We can't compare to
>4.x - because we do so much more. We can't compare to NS 6.0, because it
>sucked, perf-wise :-) We can't compare to IE, because it doesn't run on
>all the platforms Mozilla does.
>
We can, and IMO should, compare Mozilla to other applications on the
same platform. E.g. Mozilla Navigator Windows to MSIE6 or Mozilla
Mailnews Unix to Balsa.
>Standards Support
>
As for Mailnews:
* I think that 100% GNKSA-compliance (all MUSTs fulfilled) is what
we should provide for 1.0.
* I think that the output we create (format of msgs sent out) is
sane already.
* I can't comment on standards-compliance of network protocols like
POP3 and IMAP.
>Mozilla is an extremely large and complex application with a high barrier
>to entry for new engineers (particularly those outside Netscape.) Having
>each engineer spending a week doing a brain dump of stuff they know about
>their area would go a long way towards lowering that barrier, and
>increasing everyone's productivity.
>
Yes. :)
