[geeks] Firefox, affect of cache capacity settings

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 @ 13:38 -0400, Nick B. said:

> On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 12:32:25PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> <Usefull and interesting information cut>
> Thank you, this is exactly what I would prefer to see.

All of it was true and useful, wether you preferred it or not.

Bitching is the only reason the Mozilla project finally got off its ass
and started fixing 10 year old bugs in the code. 

Bitching is what made Firefox the best overall browser out there, and is
probably the only thing that will force them to polish the code.

It has very serious problems, and it need not be that way.

> And, RE: AIX, if I'd paid a few million $ for Firefox, I'd probably
> hold it to a higher standard, 

I'm sure you won't agree, but here is how I view this whole "it was
free" idea that I keep hearing:

The whole "it is free software" excuse for poor design and debugging
always has been a lame one and always will be.

The price you paid for something is irrelevant when looking at the flaws
in any engineering project. That always has been a lame excuse and
always will be.

Besides, Firefox is not free.  You might not pay for it directly, but it
has definitely been paid for.

Firefox and almost all other top open source projects cost society many
millions of dollars a year in WWW hosting, networking, advertising,
subsidized workers, etc.

It's ridiculous to say that end users have no right to expect a certain
level of quality when their money is being spent, directly or otherwise.

It's one thing to release code and say, "here it is, I don't support or
promote it.  Use it as you wish."  That's fine.

But projects like Mozilla say, "Here is a professional product and/or
viable alternative to XYZ.  We just spent $12 million of other people's
money developing and promoting it, but damned if we are going to fix it
or listen to user requests."

Sorry, but that's just wrong.

Firefox is now a publicly supported software project, and should be
developed with sound engineering principles and pride in mind.

Also, think about it: if free software truly is to be a viable
alternative to commercial products and we are to depend on it,
how can anyone say that we have no right to have high expectations of
it?

In that context, surely you can see how "it's free, you have the source,
fix it yourself" is ethically bankrupt.

I'm not trying to give a hard time, but in mind this really is a very
big deal, and I think it is even dangerous for us to take that kind of
position.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth
low--And even the English, perchance their hour will come!"]