Well money talks... During my presentation I mentioned that several big companies want to develop Mozilla applications but didn't want the bloat that today the entire platform requires. I also mentioned that most embedded devise makers loved the idea of Mozilla but couldn't get past the size. Well enough of these have now come together to offer to support mozilla changing and that's the reason for the roadmap. (note that one of the co authors of this David Hyatt, is also one of the lead developers of safari). Please note that this is *only* a proposal The 11 people staff of Mozilla.org (5 paid for by netscape) all believe in it but several other companies are contributing to Mozilla and will also have to "buy in". I don't really think this is going to be a problem but want to stress this so that if a few months down the road you don't see any changes you'll understand why. In the big picture if we're able to swing this it could be seen as proof that open source projects can change faster than their proprietary counterparts. Phoenix was a *very* good idea and exactly the kind of innovation that can prove the open source concept. This actually makes Mozilla *more* of development environment. Most platforms are componet based and the only thing that kept Mozilla from being was that it legacy of being a browser. Now (if the new proposal is inacted) the Mozilla team can work closer to how the Java team works. If you only want to work on the mail team (thunderbird) you can and don't ever have to learn anything about the composer (there is a proposed name for the new composer but I can't remember). Also you'll be able to swap composer / mail tool / IM *much* easier. Calendar is going to be a "stand alone" project and in theory so will every piece of the suite. Notice that now with phx being the browser we now can speak easier. One of the hardest things to do as a Mozilla Technology Evangelist is to get people to understand the difference between Mozilla the platform, Mozilla the browser and Mozilla the application suite. Now will have Phoenix the browser, Netscape (or whomever) the application suite, and Mozilla the platform. I expect there will be several different applications suites sort of like we have distro for Linux. Made up of several Mozilla applications. So for example for a Netscape user hopefully they won't notice any changes. They will download Netscape and by default they will have all the tools they had before. However for people interested in downloading directly from Mozilla you'll be able to pick up (and leave) whatever you want. This is actually pushing us toward Mozilla 2.0 but nobody seems to want to call it that yet. So my personal thoughts? Good idea makes it *much* easier to push Mozilla as a platform. Will allow us to compete with Opera etc much better and will allow people who just want to work on the browser to simply work on the browser. What I don't like (and these are minor things) is while I believe in the new code submission format (its been proven to work with m/b, phoenix, and chimera) it will make it harder for me _personally_ to get code in. But I'll just suck it in and deal with it. My *major* problem with this proposal is its essentially crippling XUL (my favorite componet). Now hopefully this will only be for a short time. Phoenix version of XUL has some nice features. But 1) now I have to relearn XUL and 2) the phx version doesn't have anywhere *near* as many tags. So I'm concerned about current XUL apps I have out there and how will I create new apps without these tags. But like I said that's a short term problem and a minor one at that. Overall I'm hopeful this will works If I didn't answer you question let me know and I'll try again. . Also I'll be adding my thoughts to my blogger at http://www.carlparrish.com Carl Parrish (cparrish@carlparrish.com) http://www.carlparrish.com --- Registered Linux User #295761 http://counter.li.org On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 19:49, Dennis Kibbe wrote: > After Carl's presentation on Mozilla last month the new roadmap made public > today seems like a U-turn for the project. What is your perpective Carl? Is > Mozilla no longer aiming to be a development environment? Browsing (Phoenix) and > mail (Minotaur) to be split? What about calendar and the other projects? > > Help us understand, Carl. > > Dennis Kibbe > > ------------------------------------------------- > This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --