March 2008

Microsoft Mum on Alleged Patents Violated

Back in May 2007, Microsoft publicly claimed Free Software Violates Patents! Todd Bishop had a lengthy article on this topic. Now, nearly a year later Microsoft won’t publicly disclose what patents are being infringed by Linux and other open-source programs. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith was appearing earlier today at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. Todd Bishop had a chance to speak to Smith on the phone about Microsoft’s reason for not listing what patents are being infringed upon: Will we publish, on the Web, a broader list? That is not something that any other company in…

Read More

Firefox 2.0.0.13 Released

While Mozilla has yet to make a grand announcement, I just checked getfirefox.com and Firefox 2.0.0.13 is listed as the most current version. However, it appear it has yet to be pushed out to the update channels. I fired up a ‘release’ (Firefox 2.0.0.12) build of Firefox 2.0 and just tried a ‘check for updates’ only to be told no updates were found. Yet, this is actually normal as Mozilla can delay the release to the update channels for up to 48 hours. The releases notes have been published, but are partially incomplete (sort of). If you click on the…

Read More

Week Update 2008-03-24

Here’s an overview of this week’s Update Meeting: Fx 2.0.0.13 Updated Release Schedule: Code freeze (semi-slushy): March 7 Builds start: March 10 QA starts: March 11 Release to beta channel: March 18 Final Release: March 25 Fx 2.0.0.14 Schedule in development Firefox 3 Beta 4 Beta 4 Shipped on March 10th Firefox 3 Beta 5 Code freeze: March 18 Builds start: QA starts: Release to beta channel: Final Release: March 27 Status: code complete for b5, except for branding changes (landed only for tagging step of build process) 93 blockers left for final, generally spread around well throughout the team…

Read More

New Fx Releases This Week

Happy Easter Checking on the in-progress releases page this morning, it appear the Fx 2.0.0.13 security update is still on schedule for release early this week. Should have confirmation with Monday’s Weekly Update meeting. Also still on track for the end of this week Firefox 3.0b5 aka ‘may be this will be the final beta’. A quick reminder while TBird update are normally released at the same time, TBird 2.0.0.13 update has been pushed backed to April 15th. Getting back to Fx 3.0b5, if this is indeed the final Beta release then it will be a major milestone. Recall Fx…

Read More

QuickTime Quirkiness

A couple of my pet peeves with software are applications that once installed, are very difficult if not impossible to completely remove from your system without nuking you hard drive. The other type of software is the kind that makes a mess on your system when it is installed. Case in point for this post, is QuickTime. Since I use iTunes, I have to have QuickTime on my system. I never use the QuickTime player as I use GOM Player (QuickTime videos via the QuickTime Alternative codec) for all my video player needs. So I launched iTunes which I hadn’t…

Read More

Reader’s Comment on Review: FoxyTunes

Once in a while, The Guru gets a reader’s comment that are best addressed via a blog entry. One such comment came into The Guru earlier this weekend in regards to the Review: Foxy Tunes entry. Here is the comment in it’s entirety from zoomman: I’m fascinated. I wish you would have explained why you thought that this add on was anything but fluff. What’s the point of this bit of dross? I run WinAmp as well, the first player that Foxy Tunes lists in its list of supported players (though not listed in the list that comes with the…

Read More

New Fx Releases This Week…

Happy Easter Checking on the in-progress releases page this morning, it appear the Fx 2.0.0.13 security update is still on schedule for release early this week. Should have confirmation with Monday’s Weekly Update meeting. Also still on track for the end of this week Firefox 3.0b5 aka ‘may be this will be the final beta’. A quick reminder while TBird update are normally released at the same time, TBird 2.0.0.13 update has been pushed backed to April 15th. Getting back to Fx 3.0b5, if this is indeed the final Beta release then it will be a major milestone. Recall Fx…

Read More

Week Update 2008-03-17

Here’s an overview of this week’s Update Meeting: Fx 2.0.0.13 Updated Release Schedule: Code freeze (semi-slushy): March 7 Builds start: March 10 QA starts: March 11 Release to beta channel: March 18 Final Release: March 25 or March 26 Firefox 3 Beta 4 Beta 4 Shipped on March 10th Firefox 3 Beta 5 Code freeze: March 18 8 P1s remaining, should be able to hit freeze target 46 blockers fixed since last week Builds start: QA starts: Release to beta channel: Final Release: March 27 Gecko 1.9 34 P1s, These are bugs that require a beta cycle due to risk:…

Read More

Major Releases In the Next 30-Days

I stumbled upon a link to the In-progress Releases page on the MozillaWiki via David Ascher. Over the next 30 days expect to see new releases for Fx 2, Fx 3 and Thunderbird 2: Firefox 2.0.0.13 is scheduled for release on or around March 25th. This has already been confirmed in the last Weekly Update meeting on March 10th. I also noticed this past Friday my Fx 2 nightly builds had been bumped up to Fx 2.0.0.14pre. Fx 2.0.0.13 should be released to the Beta Channel later this week. Firefox 3.0b5 is scheduled for release on or around March 27th….

Read More

New Thunderbird Engineers

Back in October things were looking very gloomy for Thunderbird. It was a bit of a double-whammy when Scott McGregor, Thunderbird lead engineer and David Bienvenu, developer announced they were leaving Mozilla. These announcements came about a month after, then CEO Mitchel Baker announced the split-off to Thunderbird Mail Corporation (MailCo, now known as Mozilla Messaging). Finally, some good news to report about Thunderbird. In his blog entry, Progress Update, David Ascher has announced Mark Banner (Standard8 on IRC) has signed on as a full-time on Thunderbird (effective next month). One of the projects that Mark will finally have time…

Read More