Matt Coughlin wrote:
>  > You probably do not have enough rights to reassign a bug that you
>  > neither reported nor own. And you saw the other buttons probably
>  > because you were not logged in at that time.
> 
> Yep, that seems to be the case.  I tried not logging in first and 
> assigning it.

If you just click "accept this bug", it will be assigned, but it will 
not change who it is assigned to.

>  That did change the status to assigned, but the 
> assigned-to info still says [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sort of a half change. 
>  Maybe that indicates a bug in bugzilla - that I was able to change the 
> status despite having insufficient rights to do so.

Hm, maybe you did have the rights. If you click "Edit prefs" in the 
footer of the page and click permissions, do you see "can edit all 
aspects of a bug"?

> I sent an e-mail to the module owner, the peers, and the bug reporter, 
> asking if one of them could assign me to the bug.

Er, you could have asked in irc.mozilla.org #mozilla or here too.

> I notice they all have an e-mail domain of "netscape.com".  I wonder how 
> independent of AOL (the owner of Netscape)

Of AOL? Completely. Of Netscape? I'll come to that below.

> the development work of 
> Mozilla is (i.e. if bureaucracy and corporate agendas get in the way).

Bureaucracy of Netscape is no real factor. Netscape employees do have 
additional rules to follow, but they do not affect outside contributors.

I mean, many people working on Mozilla are Netscape employees; but far 
not all. There are Sun and IBM people, people of other companies, and 
those who are not paid for working on Mozilla.

> I wonder to what extent the open-source community is able to shape the 
> direction and development work of Mozilla, and to what extent AOL does 
> this?

Well, the "direction" is probably shaped by [EMAIL PROTECTED], who are 
the leaders of the project. A list of the drivers can be found at the 
bottom of http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html

But the direction is of course also shaped by all people who submit 
patches.

But the real control is probably in the hands of the module owners, who 
accept or refuse patches. Many of them do work for Netscape, but this is 
no problem (in general). The interests of Netscape hardly conflict with 
the interests of others (a good example of a conflict is the "seperate 
urlbar from toolbar" bug... where a netscape employee, don't remember 
who, insisted on the default layout not to be changed...)


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