Stanimir Stamenkov wrote:
> Sat, 06 Aug 2011 21:47:15 +0100, /Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)/:
>> Robert Kaiser wrote:
>>
>>> Well, the mass of innovation-resistant people posting in those
>>> forums is at least one of the reasons why I moved away my focus
>>> from SeaMonkey and work on making Firefox more stable (in terms of
>>> not crashing) now.
>>
>> Understood, Robert. I can quite see that from the perspective
>> of a developer, pushing the frontiers of science is a far more
>> appealing prospect than a daily grind of bug-fixing and papering
>> over the cracks. Unfortunately, from a user perspective, major
>> change is rarely welcome, whilst increased security and incremental
>> bug fixes are universally appreciated.
>
> Do you guys clearly understand the SeaMonkey developers
> don't get paid for their work on SeaMonkey?
This guy understands it perfectly, and is very grateful
to those volunteers for their work and efforts on what
has, until recently, been a superb suite of software that
has formed a central part of his everyday working regime.
His concern is that this suite is now evolving in a way
and a direction that will make it ever less usable.
> Once again - it is all volunteer effort!
> Do you understand the maintenance of SeaMonkey
> involves various compromises to fit with the ever evolving Mozilla platform?
That may well be the reality of the situation, in which
case we should be neither surprised nor disappointed to
realise that what Seamonkey users want will be given far
less weight than what Mozilla and the Firefox team want.
Which does not make it any less of a shame.
> If you want completely feature frozen product -
> just use whatever version you've been satisfied
> with at some point in time. However you understand
> you can't use just that version because of necessary
> security fixes appearing in subsequent releases, or
> just because the browser or another component becomes
> too outdated to support required latest technologies.
> Note, the SeaMonkey developers don't develop these
> latest technologies and they can't provide security
> fixes to the platform on their own - we (the SeaMonkey
> users) are all dependent on the Mozilla platform
> (the development of which is mainly driven by the Firefox development).
> You can either continue to bitch,
Putting a reasoned argument on behalf of those who prefer stability
and security to non-essential change is not "bitching"; it is
offering a constructive criticism that should be interpreted
as such.
> or get your hands dirty by keeping track of how the Mozilla
> platform evolves, then get some technical knowledge to
> understand how this affects SeaMonkey, and then probably
> come up with some constructive comments... or code patches
> you're ready to maintain.
Like most Seamonkey users, I prefer to leave code changes to those
who know what they are doing; that should not make my input, as
a Seamonkey user since day-1, any less valued. And I have already
made some constructive comments, such as
o "Why are tabs now being forced on Seamonkey users ?"
o "Why are Seamonkey users now restricted to three levels
of zoom, compared to eight in earlier versions ?"
and
o "What is the expected/intended behaviour of the
DOM inspector if a wildcard is used as the leading
element of a value field in the "Find" dialogue ? ",
the latter two of which have elicited zero response.
> And of course, if you could come up with a successful business
> model which would fund the development of SeaMonkey in a direction
> you want - you're welcome to make it true.
If I could come up with a successful business model, I wouldn't
be a Seamonkey user; I would be the owner, president and CEO of
a LSE-listed company, the profits from which would be funding my
retirement.
Philip Taylor
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