MCBastos wrote:
Interviewed by CNN on 5/2/2010 02:59, Rufus told the world:
Where I get confused is that I read a lot of posts here that fall back
on - "but we're just all volunteers, the other guys are paid"...which
comes off sounding like I should expect less.
What I really think is that everyone involved is equally competent -
paid or not. And when things all start looking the same or similar
between products, it starts looking like you are all working together in
any event. So...just what should I expect?
Seamonkey reuses a lot of stuff (like the entire innards, and parts of
the user interface) which was originally written for Firefox and
Thunderbird. So, yes, you are going go see similarities in
functionality. Also, there's a matter of general style -- Seamonkey
considers itself as part of the Mozilla "family", so SM borrows some
styling cues from FF&TB.
That's pretty much what I as thinking, and why I keep saying things like
"code sharing" and/or "collaboration". That only makes common sense.
At least at it's roots - even if the SM team did or does branch off of
that basic code.
As has been mentioned, the Mozilla Corporation (responsible for Firefox)
and Mozilla Messaging (responsible for Thunderbird) have actual budgets,
with money coming part from grants (they are both owned by the Mozilla
Foundation, which is a registered charity) and part from business deals
like the Google advertising thing. So they can hire people to supplement
the volunteer developers. This is important for two reasons:
1- Paid developers can give eight-hour days, five days a week.
Volunteers can give one or two hours a day, and perhaps not even every
day. So the hours add up.
Ok - now that makes things very clear...I took a guess that my
postulated "Moz-corp" was a "non-profit" of some sort. Bottom line
though, is that they have an organizational hierarchy, focus, and
strategy...they operate as a business.
Something that seems missing in SM team
approach/organization/practice...at least it appears that way, reading
some of the bug threads. Just because people aren't being paid
shouldn't stop them from employing best professional practices, IMO.
2- Some kinds of expertise are hard to come by in a volunteer basis,
because the job can't be easily split among a lot of people. User
interface design is a good example. You want a consistent UI, not a
patchwork, so you need somebody to head the whole project -- that means
a lot of hours, way above what can be reasonably expected from a
volunteer. So Firefox has full-time paid UI guys, and Seamonkey doesn't.
That's why Mac users are impressed with Thunderbird 3 -- a lot of work
went into making TB3/Mac mesh well with OSX. SM doesn't have this kind
of resources, so SM/Mac does not mesh as well -- the SM/Mac look is less
customized, more similar to the SM/Win and SM/Linux looks.
What does seem a bit odd to me is that the PC interfaces are also
looking more "Mac-like", IMO...something I wouldn't have expected. I
can understand wanting to economize effort, and I could see that
happening with the OS X/Linux versions, but I wouldn't have thought the
Mac users would "win out" in a UI/UE trade...not that I'll complain
about that.
Thanks again.
--
- Rufus
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