The Death of SeaMonkey

A sly fox has the monkey house in an uproar and Billy G and the Redmond crew are licking their chops and hoping the OSS will start turning on each other. Here are some comments I made on Neil Deakin Blog about the Thick and Thin Mozilla browsers.

"The compartmentalized approach is nice and I love FireFox for its media attention. It is a good browser as well it should be, look at its parents. The Death of SeaMonkey is a highly dangerous idea in that it is creating a rift in the community. My greatest concern is the damage this whole argument can have on taking away from the OSS browser momentum. Do you think that IE 7 will care whether it tries to snuff out a burning fox or drowned a monkey in the sea? I think this argument needs to be settled quickly and quietly the idea of a “thin” browser FireFox and a suite of tools SeaMonkey joining together is the right path. The community should define the code difference and like comments already posted join Thunderbird, Sunbird and FireFox (with a basic extensions pack) and release as _________ 2.0 you fill in the blank FireFox or Mozilla. If “thin” is what you want in the installer offer the option

“Thin” -- just the browser
“Full”-- the kitchen sink
“Custom” -- what every developer chooses

The argument for FireFox is the press coverage and marketing hype that surrounds that flavor today so an argument could be made that FireFox 2.0 might be just the ticket to take the air out of the IE 7 release. Purest and domain name registrants, I am speaking to you Mozilla____.org/com/biz/us, Developers/Hackers/SourceForgians and the like all know the truth and you have no need to re brand your sites every one will know that at its core this 2.0 browser is Mozilla."

2005 InnoTech Oregon

March 9th and 10th I was able to attend the InnoTech conference at the convention center here in Portland Oregon. I am not one to give up two full days with out good cause, but when I saw the track focused on the Open Source Software (OSS) movement I had to attend. With titles like “Adopt Open Source Software or Die” and “How a Phenomenon is Turning into an Exciting New Industry” how could I not go. The “How a Phenomenon is Turning into an Exciting New Industry” was a panel discussion with:

Andrew Aitken, Founder and Managing Partner, Olliance Group, a Palo Alto-based open source consulting firm

Steve Bissell, President, Axian, Inc.

Daniel Frye, VP, IBM Linux Technology Center, IBM

William C. Campbell, CEO, Partner, Ater, Wynne

LaVonne Reimer, Executive Director, The Open Technology Business Center

This discussion was very informative and honest discussion of how OSS is growing up. If you love to tinker and play with code that is all well and good and the best of the OSS solutions started out as a night time hobby but they have now grown up into a force to be dealt with.
When it comes to the bottom line Mr. Frye with IBM was succinct and to the point with his comment about how the free nature and philanthropic nature of open source is great but IBM is in the business of making money and open source translates to billions of dollars in profits. That’s right billions with a “B”. So the notion of this little cottage fringe of software developers who live in this utopia of free code has meet the board room and free may mean no cost for the actual code but how to make it work and extending it to meet customer needs is a very viable and profitable notion.
I loved an analogy that William Campbell used when speaking of Microsoft and the “charge of the light brigade” idea of attacking them head on to take the desk top for Linux. If I may paraphrase him Mr. Campbell stated that this is a foolish notion to attack head on into the 800 pound gorilla of Redmond it is a poor utilization of man power and unneeded. He said to look at OSS as water that will flow around and flow through holes or cracks until the gorilla is on it own island surrounded by a sea OSS solutions. To add my own two cents I feel that Microsoft must build bridges and dams or a much better idea is to learn how to swim and join the current. There is a small glimmer that Redmond is putting on there water wings with three open source offerings FlexWiki, Windows Installer XML and Windows Template Library. I guess we will see if Wired article “The Microsoft Memo” comes to light.