Mozilla co-founder quits Firefox veep role
'You were like a brick through a window' says, er, a mate
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A longtime Mozilla Corporation VP has quit the open source outfit he co-founded in 1998.
Mike Shaver, who oversaw technical strategy for the past six years at the Firefox maker, confirmed he was hanging up his hot foxy boots in a blog post. Shaver was among those who founded the Mozilla Organization following the release of Netscape's web browser source code.
"I haven't yet decided what's next, though I have some exciting opportunities to explore. I am still truly, madly, deeply in love with Mozilla and the web it is building, and grateful for the opportunities that it’s created for me," he wrote.
Ex-Firefox top developer Mike Beltzner led the tributes in the comments section on Shaver's blog.
"There are few easy ways to sum up your impact on the web, on Mozilla, and on your colleagues," he gushed.
"Sometimes it was like a brick through a plate glass window, sometimes it was like ripples on the water. All the time it was done with love and humanity."
Beltzner, who joined Mozilla in 2005, confirmed he had resigned from his post in February this year.
The two Mikes are both highly regarded in the open source community, so Shaver's exit will probably come as a big blow to Mozilla. ®
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COMMENTS
If current releases are anything to go by...
... probably a good time to leave.
I'm sure this post could cause a sea of down votes, whatever, but it's my opinion that firefox is heading down the wrong tracks as rapidly as the netscape which spawned it.
There's some sort of crazy version number 'catch up' going on with Chrome, or at least, that's how it seems.
I've had to cease using it on all my computers, because it seems to run so much slower than chrome.
As a former diehard fan of firefox, using it right from 0.6 (firebird) until a few months back, it's sad to see firefox seemingly in such poor shape - slow and bloated.
But hey, it could be just me ... or maybe not, most the other web devs I know have moved to chrome for similar reasons.
You're right, BUT...
Its not always that easy.
The bigger the project the harder it gets to fork it. Well, forking in itself is easy of course; you basically take the code, apply the required changes to make it yours and then you basically have your new product.
But then what ?
A big project means many people working on it and usually developers work on their own sections. As such its not unlikely (though heavily depending on the project) that you will encounter many different coding styles, many different ways things get solved and many cases where things may or may not been documented or commented.
Forking maybe easy, but reviving or maintaining such a project could become a totally different story all together.
As said in the topic; of course you're fully right that this is in essence a big advantage over closed source. But let's also not forget that often its not as easy as a simple "FORK!" and you're done. Sometimes its sheer impossible if you can't find enough people who are willing to help you out.
beauty of Open source projects
That's kind of the great thing about projects built around open source software like Mozilla/netscape code....you contribute while your hearts in it, and then someone new and young comes over and takes over when your done....AT WORST the new guy moves it in a way people don't like and FORK! all of a sudden a new person/solution emerges with a new different way to go... Let's see Apple pull that off with Job's retirement.... I for one do not envy Apple stock holders right now, kind of like IBM in the 80's they look like they own the world, but the writing is on the wall for those who care to look and they look set for a big fall to me (sure they will stay relevant, and maybe even strong again one day like IBM is now, but it will be a different company in a different time) If apple is counting on a flat screen and rounded corners lawsuits to defend their market share, they are definitely in trouble
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