Matthew Thomas wrote:
> Ben Bucksch wrote:
>
>> ...
>> As I said, m.users won't help us here. They will either go to
>> netscape.communicator or m.apps.mailnews. Why should they go to
>> m.users?
>
> Because that's what they are, users.
You assume that they use the hierarchy. Many don't - they just search
for keywords, e.g. "mail", in the names. netscape.p.m.mail-news is a hit
for them, as will mozilla.dev.apps.mail-news be, unless we provide a
better hit.
> Are you in denial about all the people who can
> be seen posting on Slashdot, Mozillazine, ZDNet, Userland, et al.,
> talking about how they're using Mozilla as their primary browser?
Yes, I am. Normal people using Mozilla makes no sense, i.e. a lose-lose
situation, as I already outlined.
>> Everything else is misplaced and
>> we shouldn't even start to support it.
>
> Um, it's a bit late for that now.
Yell at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> If we didn't want people to use
> Mozilla full-time, mozilla.org would have never released any stable
> milestone builds which they *can* use full-time.
IMO, mozilla0.6 would be the first Milestone meeting that criteria. And
many here seem to think that dropping Milestone binaries is a good idea now.
>> The only alternative I see is
>> to completely change the policy of mozilla.org.
>
> Balderdash. People other than developers and testers are going to use
> mozilla.org's Mozilla builds for Web browsing, e-mail etc, regardless of
> whether or not mozilla.org sanctions such use.
Not if there are no builds at all.
> Either mozilla.org
> handles that (by having a mozilla.users group, for example), or it will
> continue to suffer the problem of end users coming into the developer
> groups (albeit to a lesser extent than when the groups were in the
> netscape.* hierarchy, because there won't be as many Mozilla users as
> Netscape users).
Yes, but you ignore my other arguments. Newsgroups are not enough.
Website, builds, bugtracking all have to be adjusted for that to work.
> It's not random enough. For example, the bug
> <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55639> where the Mozilla
> installer crashes on a Macintosh with not much memory available, and
> spews hundreds of XUL files all over the Desktop. Why wasn't this bug
> found earlier? Probably because the people who test Mozilla currently
> tend to be the sort of people who have high-end computers with plenty of memory.
That's why distributors create beta-versions, not?
> So your real problem here is that you're annoyed that people like me
> will be doing for free what people like you are intending to charge for
> -- providing support for end users.
I don't intend to charge for support for private users. I spend
countless of hours providing free support in the last weeks.
If I gather some money, which I can use to distribute Mozilla further
and pay a few Mozilla contributors to work on Mozilla, it is good for us
all, not?
And no, this is not my real problem. My problem is the inconsequence.
mozilla.org provides builds which are used by end-users, but
- neither the builds nor mozilla.org are appropriate for end-users, so
they lose.
- mozilla.org (and its contributors) loses, because end-users flood the
development fora.
- and, yes, Beonex loses, because end-users use Mozilla instead of Beonex.
If end-users used Beonex, they wouldn't complain in bugzilla about bugs,
but would complain to Beonex, which would ask them for money, so
somebody can be paid to fix the bugs.
