Development

Whenever I'm writing something here and my subconscious whispers, "You're probably wrong," I should learn to stop and ask. Alas, I'm a blogger with a day job, so I usually hit "Publish" and wait for someone on the other side of the issue to set me straight.

Such is the case today with Mozilla's Firefox 3.0 release, which I (and a wide range of others) reported would be shipping with 80% of its (remaining) blocker bugs/issues still unresolved. The truth is not so simple, as it turns out.

Mike Shaver of Mozilla clarifies "blocker bugs" and puts things in perspective:

At some point, of course, the number of "bugs we'll ship with" will hit 100%, unless we manage to produce the first piece of bug free software I?ve ever worked with, but even with such numerical truisms aside, the picture here isn?t as simple as it seems.… Read more

Whatever happened to open-source projects being released according to development readiness, rather than an arbitrary release schedule?

Mozilla seems to have forgotten this, with The New York Times reporting that the upcoming Firefox 3.0 set to ship with only 20 percent of its remaining 700 "blocker" (serious enough to justify postponing a release) bugs resolved before it ships.

Of course, Mozilla has already fixed over 11,000 bugs, according to Mozilla developer Asa Dotzler. Even so, that doesn't answer the apparent fact that the Firefox development community is planning to ship a product before a wide range of known blocker bugs are resolved. (Firefox 3 meeting notes can be perused here.)

For now, the mountain to climb appears quite high, as The New York Times notes:

As Mozilla pushes to post Beta 1 of Firefox 3.0, it has asked developers to prioritize already-identified bugs so that the most important can be fixed. But according to notes of yesterday's Firefox 3.0 status meeting, that will leave about eight in 10 bugs untouched.… Read more

The thing about open source is that if you give it an inch, it will take a mile. Take Java, for instance. Apple has not stepped up to enable its iPhone to run Java, but that's OK. The community appears to have plans to do Apple's work for it:

Apple has not made Java capable of running on the [iPhone]. But Sun's Terrence Barr, technical evangelist for Java ME (Micro Edition), believes Apple's plans to release a software developer's kit for iPhone in early 2008 may result in the open-source phoneME version of Java ME … Read more

So close, and yet so far away. Scott Guthrie, General Manager within the Microsoft Developer Division, announced on his blog that Microsoft will be releasing the source code for its .NET Framework libraries with the .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 release in late 2007.

This isn't open source as the Microsoft Reference License which will govern the code release is a "look but don't modify or distribute" license. Still, baby steps for Microsoft. Guthrie writes:

One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.… Read more

In a sign that the web world finally recognizes its debt to open source, Yahoo is opening up an advanced research and development center - with a massive computing lab - to allow developers and researchers to test their systems software. In other words, Yahoo is opening up one of its labs to let people experiment with Yahoo/Internet-scale applications.

This is very cool.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said the program is intended to leverage its leadership in Hadoop, an open source distributed computing sub-project of the Apache Software Foundation, to enable researchers to modify and evaluate the systems software running on a 4,000 processor supercomputer provided by Yahoo.… Read more

Martin Peacock sent me a link to this fascinating study of ant behavior in The International Herald Tribune. The article tracks the research of Iain Couzin on ants, locusts, and even humans and their instinct and ability to swarm.

While it doesn't call out open source specifically, I found the "follow-the-leader" behavior corresponds nicely to the forking of open-source projects. Despite the talk about the importance of the fork to open source, we actually rarely see it happen. Why? Probably because the group inertia is such a strong force:

Couzin and his colleagues have built a model of the flow of information through swarms. Each individual has to balance two instincts: to stay with the group and to move in a desired direction. The scientists found that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively. They do not even need to send any special signals to the animals around them. They create a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction....… Read more

Who says open source isn't innovative? MIT just won an InfoWorld 100 award for Thalia, its enterprise "Flickr" application [PDF] used for managing images and media (e.g. print, web, lecture presentations, online exhibitions.) Thalia allows users to tag media with customizable, user-defined metadata (tags, discussion comments etc).

What powers it? OpenLaszlo and Alfresco.

MIT is integrating Thalia with Stellar, its course management system. More details on Thalia can be found here [PPT]. It's very cool.… Read more

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.

For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:

For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. (Isaiah 28:9-11)

Anyone that has tried to ramrod open source into an organization will appreciate this counsel from Isaiah. As a market phenomenon, open source - be it Linux, Apache, MySQL, SugarCRM, MuleSource, or another project - almost always has begun on the fringes of IT. With Linux it was the edge-of-the-network server at first, until it eventually claimed the data center. With many commercial open-source projects, the first entree into an enterprise is at the departmental level (and even before that, with the individual developer's desktop).

Milk before meat. Here a little and there a little. Start small (as with my two youngest daughters to the right) and grow into greatness. Getting there depends on patience, as Marten Mickos and Larry Augustin have individually written:… Read more

If I didn't already have a religion, I might set up a new one to worship Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal's amazing midfielder. Humble and yet incredible on the pitch, Fabregas may well be the best player on the planet right now (though Kaka, Messi, and others might beg to differ).

Which makes Fabregas' comments in Sunday's Times so refreshing, and so applicable to open source. Responding to a question as to why he has scored so many goals this season compared with last he notes:

The transformation, if there?s been one, is explained in team terms. "It's true I feel more free to go forward and that's down to [Mathieu] Flamini. He doesn't stop running, chasing the opponent. He has amazing energy....… Read more