On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 02:44:16 -0500 esteemed Greg Miller did hold forth
thusly:
> Not quite. We've been debating what bugs justifying refusing to release
> a 1.0. That doesn't mean other fixes can't go in if they're deemed
> sufficiently safe.
And I'm saying that the criteria for releasing Moz ought to be driven more by
the potential user population.
> > [quoted text muted]
> > Well, I have a very different sort of standard to propose. Lets use an
> > empirical standard based on user feedback of people who normally use a
> > different browser.
>
> This would require finding someone to fund such a study.
No. We make up forms on a web site that is pretty simple and that is what the
users use (plus e-mail to remind them to click to go to the site) to report
back their experience after a week. The traffic this would generate would be
so low that any of us with a static IP address could handle it. Companies
would need to be asked. Someone in the area would volunteer to go thru and
run the install for Moz on 100-200 machines (or smaller amounts and larger
numbers of organizations) of users who now do not have Moz or NS6.x on their
machines.
>It also sets a very high standard.
If Moz can't pass this standard then its not worth releasing.
>It might fail this test even if 100% of users felt
> it was a better browser, since people tend to continue using whatever
> software they're familiar with, even when convinced an alternative is
> better.
Then why is Moz being developed if no additional users are going to use it no
matter good it is?
> Of course, we'd still need other criteria for stopping a release as
> well, since pleasing users is only one part of the task. Mozilla is a
> developer-oriented product, and must meet the needs of developers who
> need to ship a browser, and must inspire confidence in decision makers
> at those same companies.
And yet ultimately at the end of the day Netscape's own browser is going to
use the vast bulk of Moz code in the NS browser. So Moz's test is a good test
for the potentially most widely used browser that will result from the Moz
effort. Plus, the Linux distros are shipping Moz builds. So Moz itself is
going to be widely used in Linux circles (since IE isn't there to compete
with it).
> > [quoted text muted]
> > If people who get the browser installed onto their machine won't use it then
> > the people who have to go download it won't use it either. We'd need to find
>
> Certainly not. In fact, almost nobody downloads and installs browsers.
> If we're counting on them to do that, Mozilla will be lucky to ever
> crack 10% marketshare no matter how good it is or what its reputation is
> like. ISPs and OS vendors decide what browsers people use.
But ISPs and OS vendors (except MS) make those decisions based on how likely
the users are going to be happy with the results. Right now Moz is in a
condition where the users would be less happy if made to use it rather than
IE.
