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Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

bugs.debian.org

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Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#51

Post by icebraining »

scrollaway wrote: post #9
Touche wrote: post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like…

I think this is a misunderstanding of the goals of Debian Stable.

The purpose is not to get a stable release of each upstream project and build a release from those. The goal is to get any release of each upstream project, test it for a few months to ensure there are no show-stopping bugs and to document the known ones, and then freeze it.

The goal is not to ensure lack of bugs, it's to ensure stability, that is, that no new bugs appear or existing behaviours change.

The goal is to allow the sysadmin to configure the system, test it - working around existing bugs - and leave it running, being reasonably sure that stuff won't randomly break until he upgrades the major version, while remaining secure.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#52

Post by jimmaswell »

Peaker wrote: post #26
moron4hire wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, to me, a point against package managers. Little Windows universe secret: Installers aren't that bad.

After using apt-get for everything, going back to manually finding an (untrusted) executable, running it, hitting a bunch of next buttons -- seems insane. It is quite bad. External dependencies are also nearly impractical this way, so all installers tend to embed their universe of dependencies, making for an even worse experience.

After simply using installers in Windows, dealing with conflicting package and library dependencies seems insane. I've been unable to use multiple applications on linux because of this issue whereas that would never happen on Windows where installers just have what they need without getting in each other's business.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#53

Post by nxzero »

oliwarner wrote: post #28

Congratulations HN, OP, we DDoSed the debian bug tracker. Please be considerate when linking to webapps. If there's a static or cached version available, please post that. In this case Debian's tracker mirrors everything to publicly mirrored mail servers (which are static), ie: https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.o...

HN should just do this by default; meaning if traffic gets results in a site response time dropping, it should know that that Google cache or the like is up, or provide a cache itself.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#54

Post by steveklabnik »

moron4hire wrote: post #49
steveklabnik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian user and Mozilla employee who uses Iceweasel here. I work on Rust, not Firefox though. > Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released > and how often? This has to do with the interaction between the original authors and the distribution itself. Let's go through an example: 1. I, Steve, write some bit of software, libfoo, and host it on my GitHub page. 2. Debian users would like…

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't make sense. It sounds like a really bad way to do software development.

It's fundamentally about decoupling. As the author of libfoo, I cannot keep up with all of the different Linux distros and how they do their thing. So you decouple the process by having two layers of maintainer; the upstream maintainer and the package maintainer. And I can't then also test my package with every other package on every other distro.

It has problems like anything else does, but it's pretty effective overall.

What specifically do you find bad about it?

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#55

Post by coldpie »

scrollaway wrote: post #9
Touche wrote: post #2

> On the contrary, Debian having a longer release cycle (about every two years), release cycles don't align. Then change your release cycle. Seriously, it's not that hard. Say that browsers are different and get released frequently. Create a firefox-lts package that is updated at the beginning of your Debian release cycle -- and never again. Let the firefox package be the firefox package, updated as frequently as ups…

Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like…

We still release every 2 weeks on the dot. Next release is on Friday.

And our stable branch is changing to yearly releases! We are going to do a code freeze every Fall and release in late Fall or early Winter. It is also going to receive more regular backports of "safe" improvements, so slow distros like Debian can benefit from important fixes. We've already had a dot-dot stable release this year!

http://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/shortlog/refs/heads/st...

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#56

Post by jhasse »

astrodust wrote: post #14
shmerl wrote: post #3

Related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=555935 Also, Debian is really lacking some more modern bug management / issue tracking system. It might be useful to provide e-mail interface for it, but I fail to see why it also can't be managed from some site at the same time instead of limiting it to read only view.

Although GitHub Issues has a lot of issues, for the singular reason that you can opt-in and opt-out of notifications on particular subjects I find it vastly more useful than most bug trackers. Is there a good open-source GitHub alternative that implements this feature?

> you can opt-in and opt-out of notifications on particular subjects

What do you mean by that? Doesn't every bug tracker implement that feature?

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#57

Post by lwhalen »

moron4hire wrote: post #48
regularfry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of a distribution is to provide a complete, working system. It's not just a collection of independent components, it's curated such that the whole is coherent.

So the shit MS got blasted for: bundling IE with Windows.

2 things: you have to manually install a Web browser. Under Debian, it is equally as easy to install Firefox as it is to install chromium and other competing browsers (no lock-in), and the big one: you are not compelled to pay for Debian like you are for Windows.

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#58

Post by shmerl »

moron4hire wrote: post #49
steveklabnik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian user and Mozilla employee who uses Iceweasel here. I work on Rust, not Firefox though. > Why does the operating system have any say on what applications get released > and how often? This has to do with the interaction between the original authors and the distribution itself. Let's go through an example: 1. I, Steve, write some bit of software, libfoo, and host it on my GitHub page. 2. Debian users would like…

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't make sense. It sounds like a really bad way to do software development.

What's the alternative? If you will try installing random stuff you'll get dependencies hell. Another extreme is self contained software, when each application bundles its own dependencies. Android does that more or less. But such approach causes major bloat and also increases security risks because you need to patch each application and its dependencies (which are duplicated in the multiple variants) once vulnerabilities are discovered.

Any better ideas than these two?

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#59

Post by coldpie »

dmm wrote: post #19
scrollaway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian implements the comical definition of Bureaucracy really well. Missing the forest for the trees and thinking that every single piece of software is built and released the same way. For a Linux distro that has been around so long, it's mind boggling they still don't understand that. Wine used to have the same problem - Wine's cycle had the Chrome-like cycle before Chrome even existed. Release every 2 weeks like…

> Release every 2 weeks like clockwork. Which means exciting new regressions every two weeks! When I used wine it was definitely the case that certain applications(games) worked better with specific wine versions so a continuous release cycle could result in breaking a working application. That's something users of stable are trying to avoid. If a user wants the latest version of a package you can always install it m…

I don't disagree with anything you said, but I would like to add that if you become aware of a program that used to work, but no longer does, PLEASE file a bug! We take regressions very seriously[1]. There are often reasons they can't be fixed immediately, but more often we can fix it quickly. But we have to know about it first!

[1] We even have an explicit regression tracker that places blame and shame on whoever broke it! http://source.winehq.org/regressions

Re: Renaming Iceweasel to Firefox

#60

Post by kbenson »

tonyarkles wrote: post #32
DHowett wrote: post #25

It's interesting that the Paul brings up the trademark license clause regarding for-pay distribution. If you are using the Mozilla Mark(s) for the unaltered binaries you are distributing, you may not charge for that product. While it restricts a freedom that Debian is unlikely to exercise, it's still a restriction. Presumably, that makes the trademark license indigestible to the Debian foundation?

Ahhhhhh, I've always wondered about clauses like that with the distribution of software compilations. For example, I can buy a Debian boxed set from here: http://www.jbox.ca/product-category/computers-tablets/softwa... or any of the other distributors: https://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/ . I think a clause like that would prevent them from selling those.

I'm fairly sure when you are buying physical copies of Linux distributions you are buying the service of compiling and copying it and providing physical media, the box, any manuals, etc. The source code at a minimum must be made freely available to others. That is, they aren't charging for the code delivered, but the delivery itself and the physical media.
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