John Welch wrote:
>
> Now why can't more people respond like this. Damn, you want me to turn the
> volume down, the best way is a reasoned response like this one.
>From what I was reading, this was more or less what other people were
trying to tell you. The only difference, perhaps, is that other people
were running out of patience, since you are at least the fifth person
(that I remember) to address this issue in the last month or two.
> On 11/28/00 11:05 AM, in article [EMAIL PROTECTED], "Stuart
> Ballard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Ah, that's the 64,000 dollar question. Certainly not people here - if we
> > knew how to change NS marketting's minds, 6.0 would still be in beta.
> > Your best bet is still Netscape's feedback forms - I know that it's like
> > shouting into a black hole, but there is evidence that Netscape do pay a
> > small amount of attention to this information.
>
> True...actually, I figure that Mozilla has a better chance of getting
> something done, and there's a part of me that would LOVE to be able to write
> the "Screw netscape, run, NOW, get Mozilla!!!" for my outlets.
Well, it's not exactly an either-or question. As you are well aware by
now, anything Netscape writes (except for AOL branding stuff) goes into
Mozilla, and anything Mozilla produces goes into the next release of
Netscape (unless Netscape marketting decide to turn it off). So it may
be that Mozilla gets LDAP first (in fact it is practically certain,
because you can download a nightly build of Mozilla the very day LDAP is
added), but as soon as that happens, you are also assured that the next
Netscape version will get it. Similarly, if you are successful in
persuading Netscape (through whatever means), the code will actually get
written for Mozilla before it is incorporated into a Netscape release.
> > Well, neither is mail transfer as far as I'm concerned, and yet we have
> > at least 3 major open source mail transfer agents. What's boring to you
> > might be a fascinating problem for someone else. The trick is finding
> > that person - ideally without pissing everyone else here off in the
> > process.
>
> LOL...I LIKE LDAP, and it's really boring. I'm more amazed that it got
> dropped than anything else. Not basing Moz/NS6 off of the Communicator
> codebase is one thing...that's TOTALLY understandable. But you mean there
> was *nothing* that could be used to, if nothing else, be a head start?
Not a lot. The new architecture is so radically different and the old
code was so spaghettine (cool word huh?) that it really isn't providing
much help to the people trying to write this. Any coder will tell you
that the most difficult part of writing a feature is integrating it with
it's surrounding code - for example, proxy autoconfig was working for a
month or two for people who could manually download the pac file and
store it in a particular location, but it took a lot of extra work to
actually hook that up into the prefs UI and make it do what a *user*
would call "working".
> And
> the *real* kicker is that at *least* PR3 did a onetime dump of my LDAP
> address book. So even if it wasn't a live connection, I had *something*,
> which is always better than nothing...HINT ;-)
Well, file a bug to request that this feature be turned on in the
installer until LDAP is released... but I wouldn't really expect this to
happen; I don't think there will be more than a couple of future
releases (perhaps a 6.01 bugfix release with no new features) that don't
have LDAP.
> > Awesome. You'd be amazed how many people have complained, but then
> > refused to put their money where their mouths are.
>
> Well, it ain't money, but I'm doing what I can.
Good for you.
> >>> 4) Write it yourself.
> >>
> >> If I could, I would have done it months ago.
> >
> > I know, but I didn't want to leave that option out. There's also the
> > option, since you seem to be in a fairly large company with an IT
> > department, of actually hiring someone to write it.
>
> Hee...AER ain't big, but I got friends at *huge* places....they let me do
> the arguing, I like it ;-)
>
> I'm also an IS/Networking columnist for MacTech/MacWeek.com, an associate
> editor for MacFixIt, and I've done some stuff for MacKiDo.com as well.
Cool. So now that you understand these issues, you'll perhaps be
publicizing them a bit so that other people can learn them without
having to come in here and bitch?
> > I have even seen posts from Netscape people in different groups which
> > suggest that LDAP may be on the feature list for the next version. As
> > others have commented, NS management and marketting is stuck in the
> > closed mindset, so it's hard to get definite information, but you may
> > find that Netscape is *already* working on this.
>
> Which is also good to know, and maybe will tell them that you need *some*
> communication...
Yes. There are a lot of people here who are a little upset with some of
the decisions of Netscape, but we recognize that the hundreds of coders
they employ to write code and *give it away* to the mozilla project
tends to outweigh most of the bad decisions they have made.
(FWIW, my personal opinion is that the mailnews portion of NS6 should
have had at least two more betas before being considered release
quality. I don't think they should have shipped without LDAP, and I
don't think they should have shipped with the huge bloat and performance
issues currently present. I also take issue with certain aspects of
Netscape's design priorities in the browser - I know of a number of bugs
that *I* would have allowed the fixes for to be added prior to release,
but that Netscape was not prepared to risk. But Netscape 6 is their
browser, so they can include or exclude what they choose to.
On the other hand, I am *incredibly* glad that the *browser* portion was
shipped, because it finally means that I as a web developer can write
one version of my site which works the same in IE and Netscape (and just
include some basic fallback code for other browsers: IE3, NS3, NS4,
etc). It also means that writing good, valid code actually *means*
something - it means that the code works right under the latest Netscape
- and thus it's far easier to make standards-compliant a selling point
to website owners).
> Oh it's not a flamewar. That would involve long, intricate references to
> genetically - caused stupidity, and how peoples great - grandfathers
> shouldn't have gotten frisky with the family mongoose. ;-)
True. But it is a very long thread where the same points have been made
several times over.
> But I also have a
> fine sense of what a brushoff is, and that is what I've been getting. *THAT*
> is fuel on the fire. Your response is what Netscape should be giving, and is
> not. Maybe Mozilla should hire you as a fireman ;-)
Well, as I said, I remember at least 4 people before you who have
brought up this issue - all of them have purported to speak for large
organizations, but have mysteriously disappeared as soon as anyone
suggested that they actually help out in any way. You are the first, to
my knowledge, to have done anything different.
Since these people are programmers, and it isn't their job to deal with
customers (especially angry ones), you can perhaps understand why they
have given you a brushoff. It's not as if they didn't tell you where to
go - Netscape *are* the right people to ask, even though you aren't
likely to get an actual answer because Netscape are a typical faceless
corporation...
Stuart.
