Netscape Documentary

Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

MT sitting on chair talking wI speaker phone next to him

OK weve decided that the 130 meeting is now starting next to me in the chair is the

inestimable Jamie Zawinski have list of things want to talk about uh because think

it would be helpful to you if what Im talking about isnt helpful we can talk about

something helpful or leave the room

Uh product plans just wanted to review the product that this committee thinks its

shipping in the next six months were doing maintenance release

every quarter well

probably definitely do 4.6 we may very likely do 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12

whatever until we ship some other release that people really like laughter we do dot

release of that one and the first test of whether we do will be if people like will be 4.5 for

the net release that happens this summer but to tell people sort of generally accept some

other release other than as the release well

interesting be continuing to release on

basis

was checking the client uh user agent data that they publish once month and contrary

to popular opinion we are not in market in user agent share nose dive Its much
pretty

and 60% just kind of twiddling there If

you got to the

serversf

anyway another interesting thing is they break down browsers by version and march is the

month that the most run Netscape browser is the browser so we finally flipped the

switch and barely have more and thats been going

people running than down

over time so so thats good applause or bad depending on what you think that means..

.create server revenue and that has implications for what the people in this
building are

working on but the release is not driven by the people in this building its driven by the

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

server people needing features to make revenue and so were doing release based on the

assumption that if these people did other things we would fail to do that and we cant fail to

do that So theres that release and thats currently called 4.5 and then theres the release

which is...youre clicking Jamie..

oh well Im just turning down these client market share people telling them they

they should break it down by UNIX platform too laughter

um and then theres the release that

fe thing were actually betting thatciet

Development is the place where NetscÆjie is going to be able to get enough outside

developers that we can keep ahead of Microsoft in terms of doing the right things and in

the long run thats going to be the wSo the definition of 4.5 is revenUethe ddfhii$n

of this other release has to be what do with the Net it cant be we have to get thSe

server these features out for the web site people mean if you do that thats good but the

definition of this release has to be quote 5-0 code name 5-0 is what were going to call it

is the first Bet on the Net release and that is its definition There are other things

web
1i1ffdifrffiAffAhºvklllprovide features for the site etc fiis is the

Bet on the Net release and thats its purpose

inje

thing which was Mike Homer pulling

In that universe the source 331 number Out4fhis

body laughter..Im being filmed so...thats Mike Homer deciding that in order to make

the announcement earlier make sense that we had to deliver something in the same quarter

that we made the announcement which good thing from up and

is like
integrity standing

saying were do something

going to really interesting months from now people just

dont get excited about

..IæWiifiive the 331 be from that were

thing distraction think pretty much dialed

on that um map It
may be 5% distraction or 10% distraction but its not too bad That

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

kind of sanitizatjon would never ever make sense Because we have to do sanitization in

order to ship by

Rumor All right rooms where get said like

slashing keep sitting in sentences well

know because see it

happening that the mail and news people dont want to participate in

free source world That they dont get it they want to go off and continue down the

proprietary universe and that

upsets me and urn thats just bad thing to keep saying

And the thing that were driving to thats the thing that the bug list reflects our progress

towards urn and that is what eight days away seven days away its very very soon

Urn in the last week lots of bugs have been closed but its uh you know pouring stuffS

and stuff
coming out at the same rate so were down about 10 over two days even th%gh

quite few bugs have been closed we are down 3Oish from the of the week
beginning

We need to be substantially down because know that theres always or 10 bu

wont go away and until see the bug list down to the or 10 lev know were nd

where near shipping so we need to be down around to 20 level at the end of this week so

that can be pretty sum that were down to the or 10 level next week so that we can
early

beat up on the last or 10 the end of next week Theres ton of bugs ar
bugs at that

open theres lot of reasons for bugs being open hope Im gonna address some of those

next But thats the time map

OK verification process The verification process that am currently like

inventing goes

this we have set of practices that we have decided on in series of meetings as result

of our experience Some of this is written down and sorne of it is ..I want to document

those practices so that when we say moved code out left this kind of rnarker put

copyright notices all the things that are the standard practice that we have created for

sanitizing source code Ijust want to write it Im not inventing anything new Im just

documenting this is what we do to source file in order to rnake it clean. So there will be

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

document that is here as standard practice and then theres always exceptions for why

when look at these thing had to do something funny that didnt feel comfortable with

Oh to file source 331 bug Its just bug with target

fix version set to SRC 331 If you

file if you create bug with bug splat it doesnt let you set the target fix version cause

thats violation of our process for other releases to let the filer set fix date But
target

for source 331 thats not vio Theres two ways you can file source 331 bug

You can go to bug split file the bug and then when it filed the bug you click on
says
the

bug number and the youll et the target fix version and hit command Or if
you go to 331

you the same looks like that the enter bug

page has
it
splat get just bug split except

place to set the target fix version Which is also source 331 So every bug you enter there

unless you do something special ends up being source 331 bug

Verification process So we document the practices theres of places

list where you did

something different than the standard or you did something weird and youre
practices not

comfortable with urn as all as bugs assigned to me you can review...a body of people

that Netscape this has nothing to do with people in this roorn Netscapedeeides howthh

risk they want to take they want to have lawyers the want to have 1awr lawyers

whoever Netscape want us to elect and Im trying to get that body together to tQthe

verifiers sit down and say heres what we did heres the problems we experienced-this

the source this is the state of the source code as we know it And they go cant live with

that and then we go away and they tell the

body system OK am happy So the body

says theyre happy..

is it
delayed on yours laughter

Nobody tells me these things...OK so then therell be private Beta and hopefully..

side conversation

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

JZ About the user agent thats really complicated question Because it ties into what

were doing about version numbers mean so far in our history the version

numbers have been set by marketing right and so we need something little more

meaningful for that than that

Ml That essential correct we need to say this is how you parse version our user agent

strings in any universe ..well file bug on that..

Were still working on that source 331 but theres great fear and loathing about

what might life will be like on April first and whether understood how Id

accomplish things on that day

LT Take responsibility for it Certain areas of the tree say know what going on in the

and everything who whenever

them you check
tree people are working with so that in it

will be under more tight control like we are toward the end of development cycle like

when you get your code reviewed before you check it in Um there we are

going...theres going to be one repository this much we have And its going to be

owned eventually by Mozilla.org So when you check in to

your tree youll be checking

into
part
of the tree which Netscape owns which is going to be the NS crib tree and

theres going to be an tree uh which is gonna be owned by Mozilla.org Uh all the

parts that are used to build the free client are to be there So there will be tinder
going

boxes that. .work with so your like will be much be the

it pretty will practically same

except that the responsibility will be because there will be more people participating your

responsibility will be more strict about breaking the tree Youll have to be lot more

careful about the tree

breaking

There are two builds that Ive been working on one like the needs to slow to
pre-build pile

with your change and the

pre-build plus all the three party stuff also needs to build..

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LT yeah but generally people will either be working in one tree or the other mean if

youre working on third party thing that goes in its value add for Netscape if

thats what youre working on then your changes wont likely effect the

Mozilla.org tree ...or youre working on the free source tree and you might just

build the free thing because...

the biased things to where most of

guess the action Is going to happen and

believe for some time its going to be in this building

LT Sure what...its more serious breaking the trunk gets to be more serious When

youve...the more people that are working on the trunk the more serious trunk

breakage is right So were going to be having more people involved so therefor

it
gets more serious Its not just well we want to be more Fascist now so were

going to be more Fascist no

Theres whole lot of discussion about how this is going to be done

MT Were not talking about how its going to be done

LT No no whether theres going to be separate Mozilla.org in the very

repository

short time frame Theres when question Mozilla.org will have repository

some day...that day is very much in question and to when..

Ml Its transition question and the devils in the details it will be hard one to solve

so thats where were going Were not necessarily talking about what your life

will like although said that were really talking about what youre life will be like

on..

LT On some day..

MT In the steady state Life will probably be more miserable on April first than it will

eventually be...six months maybe

LT Im hoping month

MT Jamie did we announce on the site that were giving CMIS access

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

JZ Well we said we were considering it

LT You can go to the site and look for

questions like that

JZ Basically we think its good idea lot of people on the net think its good idea

now we just have to figure out how to make it work right and maybe we cant

and if thats the case then we change out minds

Will we be exposing the bugs that we have the bug list to outside

Ml There is plan to have bug list dont think were going to dump our current

bugs into the bug list dont know. .laughter

DM We cant dump our current bugs and we cant dump our current CVS logs out to

the world

LT You all know we have to sanitize those laughter

MT Currently in the bug system there is afield called the public description of the bug

And we are exposing urn certain fields of the bug system to any customer who

give us enough money that it means that theyre really serious about needing that

and they can only see certain fields like what version it was filed against what its

current priority is what the an see limited number of

public description is they

fields And there is some plan to possibly give that same kind of access to

everyone so there was like the description and then theres the public description

So in the description it
says some jerk vice president at MCI thinks this is really

and have no idea whats going on with that and its

important waste of my time

and Im not doing anything about it And then in the public description it
says

engineering priorities have decided that laughter..

sanitization isnt just evil words theres theres

tfkThe actually security implications

number of bugs where its significant not to indicate the date to not
significant

indicate what the resolution is and some of them you know too hard to do now

you know hope and pray laughte

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

.ca
Ml Somebody kill that camera man and get his film So Ive mentioned this before

theres going to be some sort of documentary so that we cant lie about what

happened later in the future and there starting filming next week and theyre

beating their deadline this is the early beta release of their filming experience So

you may see them you cant assume that someone from PR is going to watch the

film and take out all the things that shouldnt have said...so need to have
you

some level of care about what you say

comments laughter

Is it
possible to maybe set up bug system that would be publicly available that

maybe the public is fiddling with

MT Talk to terry in licensing about that We said that there would be and terry is

working it but cant say what terrys current thinking is

Comment laughter

JZ David if
you assume that most of the work is going to be done at Netscape in the

steady state then were wasting our time

LT Hes not saying in the steady state hes just saying..

But dont know that youre right even in the long term Jamie

JZ Right its year from now most

true that it might be that in of the work is still done

inside Netscape But if thats true there is no point in the source

giving away

Thats not valid statement dont with that

agree

comments

MT ...is an escalation level release and will not contain any new features In the mail

news space where there are servers in that need our

shipping quarter that clients in

for someone to have reason to buy

The net in general has declared that large bloated communicators are bad thing

and so Netscape is to hear them in this Were not going

going way to ship large

bloated communicators the were

anymore first thing going to ship on the net is

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Tape Michael Toy All Hands Meeting 3/5/98

MT Its their plan to pull from the 4.Ox maintenance tree occasionally once month

as it seem appropriate

JR Well they missed pile of changes in Java mean they were already way behind

are they going to theyre not going to come back and land how many different

places am supposed to check in to

Ml OK just the 4.0 branch.

JR OK its good that you both answered differently...laughter

MT Then Im not going to say anything dont ask me dont know the answer

TH Jim go talk to Chris Hoffman about this

JR Im really hoping that management is going to bring this together and cut these

numbers down because right now the numbers are growing and other people

cant move these changes around safely they are going to be very sorry when we

try

So you think that Java and everything outside of mail and news should be checking

in

LT We are checking the 4.05 and we are checking into 5.0 the tip OK and were not

handling all the pulls even though AWG is going to land an monster on 4.05

becoming 4.06 someone else is going to move the monster that was too hard..

MT or they may ask you for

help but they have the responsibility to pull from the

maintenance 4.Ox maintenance release to 4.5

The plan is to try to get customers weaned off of..

Ml The first
interesting question is is there
somebody whos going to do this or is it

gonna fall
through the cracks and not happen Someone need to pay attention to

what this need to be done They are it the tip

absolutely doing They are watching

They may very well come to

you and say oh please Jim its going to take me

months to do it..

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JR Actually ...my group that really did the work

...what the plan to actually make it down to 20 bugs by tomorrow

MT Aw actually almost made it out of the room OK laughter no later..

TH There is set of latered bugs and if

any of those bugs are latered and they dont

have my name on it Im going to slap you Latered means its third party thing

MT hope that people are understanding that they can file bug against me because

are really uncomfortable about something will flush lot of the did
basically

ey of my work theres one thing Im little uncomfortable about so Im not closing

the bug bug So all those bugs should be either reassigned to me or closed as Ive

sanitized that and have new bug filed against me Um the other thing to do is to

keep the pressure on the open bugs The reality of software development is its

done when its done And would really like the number to be 20 and if its not

20 tomorrow then its really unlikely that were making 313 but cant make it
go

to 20 if it cant possibly go to 20 The only people who can make it

go to 20 are

you people and trust

you people to do the right thing If it cant be 20 then its

not 20

the ug list is at 20

MT Great lets get 4.05 binaries and tell em its the source code laughter well just

disassemble the binaries and say there Its source code Victory

Ml On Monday Mozilla.org may need to craft an apology thats really good idea If

looks like make

it
theyre not going to it

LT You say instead of press release crafting an apology..

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