Closer To The Ideal

Brendan Eich invented Javascript back in 1994, when he was working at Netscape. He’s since been busy with Mozilla. He is on the board, and he is a leading voice arguing that Thunderbird must be cut off from the rest of the Mozilla organization:

Turning this into a “I doubt MoCo ‘cares’ for other XUL apps than Firefox” is both:

1. irresponsible — sayrer’s right, we have to favor Firefox, “we” being the whole community, but especially MoCo (as distinct from MoFo); and

2. categorically confused — emotional when the topic here is technical: how to do Mozilla 2 so that all XUL apps have a better future, without serializing with 1.9 or taking on impossible workload in keeping to the current tree rules every day we develop Mozilla 2 in the new repo.
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Money is not the issue. Hiring is one issue. Management bandwidth is another. Build infrastructure is yet another. Organization focus is yet another, and it’s a vague term, but obvious to anyone who has worked at a startup that grew into a big company. I could write about it at length and define it concretely, but I’m out of time here.
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I’m focusing on Mozilla 2. That’s necessary and overriding. Thunderbird will have to fly free. If it does not reach a promised land, even with a good plan and some investment, I will be sad. But I will not jeopardize Firefox and the platform, which depend on Mozilla 2, by spending more time on it than my MF board duties require.

So again, apart from my board duties you won’t hear from me on this thread. And I’m not going to speak for the Mozilla Foundation board, or preempt them in any way. All the above is my opinion, which I’ve shared before. I’ve given my reasoning. I hope it’s both sound and valid, and that it can overcome raw feelings and help others, so that we can all improve the situation.