Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Tim McNerney wrote:
>
>>>Hear hear. I have the same feelings coming from a standards compliance
>>>point of view -- we have thousands of known bugs, certainly enough to keep
>>>us busy for a year at least (more, at the current rate). What's the rush?
>>>
>>What is the rush? I've got to say that is about the funniest thing I've
>>read in a while. How can anyone describe trying to release version 1.0
>>of a project within 3.5 years of starting it as rushing it? Mozilla
>>needs to release version 1.0, not for business reasons, but out of sheer
>>pain of having a project running years late.
>>
>
> How can something run late if it had no target release date?
You can hide your head in the sand and claim that it isn't late because
it never had an official release date. But by any reasonable estimate,
you are running years late. I think there is a good chance that Mozilla
1.0 will take the same amount of time that Netscape 1-4 took to release.
I don't know what went wrong. I've follwed the project from the
beginning. And .9.1 was finally, after more than three years, usable
enough that I've started using it for my daily work. But something went
horribly, horribly wrong with Mozilla. And though there were never any
publicly announced dates, I'd be willing to bet that there were a lot of
internal dates mentioned, none of which were ever met.
> The only firm date I've ever heard from mozilla.org for a 1.0 release date
> is "when it's ready".
I'm glad Apache doesn't use the same dictionary as mozilla.org, cause
apparently "ready" is defined as "when nobody cares anymore".
>>I think the developers, more than anything, need to reach that light
>>at the end of the tunnel which is the culmination of all their hard
>>work. If you don't release something at some point when it is "good
>>enough", you'll never release it.
>>
>
> We release something twice a day, with higher profile releases every 5
> weeks and even higher profile releases every 10 weeks, and commercial
> releases every n months. So releasing something is not a problem.
Yes, where n = 36 for the first commercial release. A 1.0 release has a
special meaning. You know this as well as I do, because you don't want
it to happen until everything is perfect. I'd be willing to wager that
it means something special to everyone who has contributed over the
years (and yes, I'm one of them) and though it may be tarnished for some
if it happens before it's "ready", it certainly would be a nice
accomplishment for those who've worked on it and still care.
It's fine if you want to go on about how you can do whatever you want
and release only when everyone is happy and no one can do anything about
it. You're right. Just don't expect anyone to give a shit when it does
happen. You'll have the most standards compliant browser (standards that
have almost all been superceded) that no one in the world uses.
--Tim
