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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Software News => Topic started by: Troels_E on September 29, 2009, 05:37:47 PM

Title: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Troels_E on September 29, 2009, 05:37:47 PM
Project Timberwolf

Finally, the port of one of the most wanted software for
AmigaOS 4.1 has been tackled! The well known AmigaOS developers
Hans-Joerg Frieden and Thomas Frieden work already since
quite some time on a fully AmigaOS native port of Mozillas'
Firefox webbrowser!

Because of the unrealistic terms and conditions of the AmiZilla
bounty, it was decided to start a new bounty only for AmigaOS 4.1
and beyond. Thus this bounty is in no way related to AmiZilla.

Timberwolf is the project name of the AmigaOS port of the Firefox web
browser (for legal reasons it cannot be called Firefox). Firefox is an
award-winning open source web browser and is the de-facto-standard
browser across a wide variety of operating system, taking second place
in popularity after Microsoft' s Internet Explorer. Its features include
tabbed browsing, support for HTML 5, ECMAScript 3.1, and CSS 3,
extensibility through addons, and a lot more. In short, Firefox is the
most complete open source browser to date.

 Project: Timberwolf (http://www.amigabounty.net/?function=viewproject&projectid=44)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Dragster on September 29, 2009, 06:05:59 PM
Oh man! This is awesome!!!
 
The Frieden's roool!
 
Yeah!!!!!
 
 
It's time to add  some cash to that bounty :D
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on September 29, 2009, 09:07:36 PM
Blimey, I go to visit my bro for a few days and miss this? :lol:
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: klx300r on September 29, 2009, 09:46:25 PM
OMG!!!!!!! Frikkin AWESOME NEWS BABY :-)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: spihunter on September 29, 2009, 10:00:19 PM
Good news for the folks that shelled out all that cash for an A1 or Sam board :). They at least should get a modern browser with that setup!. It will be interesting to see if they leave any code open for AROS/MOS folks to look at?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: BooBoo1200 on September 29, 2009, 10:01:18 PM
Sounds great :-)
Ill believe it when I see it
Go TripOS 4.1+ ;-)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Pete_Noir on September 29, 2009, 10:03:48 PM
Great news. Will be a good incentive for people to get 4.1 :)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Akiko on September 29, 2009, 10:49:39 PM
Absolutely fantastic news.

One step closer to retiring my PC forever! :-)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: A1260 on September 30, 2009, 12:15:48 AM
great news!
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on September 30, 2009, 12:49:49 AM
The only advantage to Firefox are the plug ins, will they work?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Matt_H on September 30, 2009, 02:40:51 AM
Sorry to bring down the mood, but...

Quote
Because of the unrealistic terms and conditions of the AmiZilla
bounty, it was decided to start a new bounty only for AmigaOS 4.1
and beyond. Thus this bounty is in no way related to AmiZilla.
Are you kidding me? Clean code, OS3/OS4/MOS compatibility, and a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort involved are "unrealistic terms"? If there's one thing we Amigans are great at, it's wasting resources on duplicate efforts. Is it really so unreasonable to have a single bounty for Mozilla on the Amiga? Even an OS4-only version of AmiZilla is still worth ~$2500.

Quote
The port should not depend on any emulation techniques like using an X server or GTK; the goal is to make a real port that has as many AmigaOS specific features as possible.

Good! I assume that means it won't be using any of those sloppy SObjs either.

Again, sorry about the negativity. Sincere kudos to the developers for their milestone, but can't we have some Amiga-wide cooperation for once?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: TheMagicM on September 30, 2009, 03:31:34 AM
Quote from: Matt_H;524290
Sorry to bring down the mood, but...


Are you kidding me? Clean code, OS3/OS4/MOS compatibility, and a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort involved are "unrealistic terms"? If there's one thing we Amigans are great at, it's wasting resources on duplicate efforts. Is it really so unreasonable to have a single bounty for Mozilla on the Amiga? Even an OS4-only version of AmiZilla is still worth ~$2500.




$2500?  What if the new bounty they set up ends up having more than $2500 in it?  (If I'm understanding you correctly, meaning thats the max they'd get under the AmiZilla bounty).  See what I'm getting at?

As a good gesture, AmiZilla should transfer $2500 to the new bounty for this browser.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Golem!dk on September 30, 2009, 04:24:15 AM
Quote from: TheMagicM;524293
$2500?  What if the new bounty they set up ends up having more than $2500 in it?  (If I'm understanding you correctly, meaning thats the max they'd get under the AmiZilla bounty).  See what I'm getting at?

As a good gesture, AmiZilla should transfer $2500 to the new bounty for this browser.

With parts of the source staying closed? How do you imagine donors will feel about that?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: hooligan on September 30, 2009, 05:13:12 AM
Quote from: Golem!dk;524294
With parts of the source staying closed? How do you imagine donors will feel about that?

They are jumping from joy and happiness, finally those blue trolls and aros-suckers are getting NUTTIN while OS4-users gets to eat the cookie :)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: takemehomegrandma on September 30, 2009, 08:05:05 AM
Quote
for legal reasons it cannot be called Firefox


What legal reasons exactly? It's called Firefox on all the other platforms, yes? Is it because they don't want to contribute back their own complete sources to this *open source* project?


Quote
Are you kidding me? Clean code, OS3/OS4/MOS compatibility, and a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort involved are "unrealistic terms"? Is it really so unreasonable to have a single bounty for Mozilla on the Amiga? Even an OS4-only version of AmiZilla is still worth ~$2500.

Quote
As a good gesture, AmiZilla should transfer $2500 to the new bounty for this browser.


Absolutely not, that would be outright criminal! The AmiZilla bounty clearly constitutes the goal of *including all Amiga flavors*, in the *true spirit* of open source. This is what people donated their money to, and to use *that* money for something else, something like "we are using these open sources developed by so many people for so many years to create something that will be *exclusive* to us, and you can't have access to it" would be fraudulent. That's not why people donated money to the AmiZilla bounty. Make it *a true* open source project instead of searching for legal loop holes, and they can have *the whole* AmiZilla bounty for all I care. That's the spirit of open source, and that's the spirit of the AmiZilla bounty. But it's exactly this they consider "unrealistic terms", this whole open source thing. I see no "good gesture" about this project at all...


Quote
With parts of the source staying closed?


Here is a wild guess: Everything needed to build the open source Firefox browser on an Amiga platform?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: adolescent on September 30, 2009, 09:00:20 AM
@takemehomegrandma

They cannot sell it if it is called Firefox.

Quote
If you want to sell the product, you may do so, but you must call that product by another name—one unrelated to Mozilla or any of the Mozilla Marks (see the sections on "Modifications" and "Related Software" below).


http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Hans_ on September 30, 2009, 09:11:28 AM
Quote from: Matt_H;524290
Sorry to bring down the mood, but...


Are you kidding me? Clean code, OS3/OS4/MOS compatibility, and a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort involved are "unrealistic terms"? If there's one thing we Amigans are great at, it's wasting resources on duplicate efforts. Is it really so unreasonable to have a single bounty for Mozilla on the Amiga? Even an OS4-only version of AmiZilla is still worth ~$2500.


The Amizilla bounty has been around for years, and no cross-platform group has made a proper attempt at getting it working. Considering that the initial port to any Amiga compatible platform would be ~99% of the work, do you think that it's fair that the initial porters get just 25% of the bounty? I certainly don't, and take it that the Friedens don't either. I also don't see waiting for someone else to do all of the hard work, and then doing a quickie port to your favourite platform (and claiming 25% of the bounty for little effort) as real cooperation.

I also think that having to port to 68k Amigas is not worth it, they're too slow and don't have enough memory to use something as big as Firefox.

Hans
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Hans_ on September 30, 2009, 09:29:34 AM
Quote from: takemehomegrandma;524297
What legal reasons exactly? It's called Firefox on all the other platforms, yes? Is it because they don't want to contribute back their own complete sources to this *open source* project?


Actually no, Debian also contains a version of Firefox that's called IceWeasel for legal reasons, and that's an open-source project. Something about all modifications having to be approved by the Mozilla Foundation (including those necessary for porting).

Now a quick word about *open source*; not all open source licenses are GPL, and if the license says that the code can be used in closed-source projects, then the code can be used in closed-source projects (provided that all requirements are met). The MPL license clearly says that the code can be used together with closed-source files, so that means that they clearly have the original author's permission to do so.

Hans
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: cicero790 on September 30, 2009, 09:46:48 AM
We aros suckers sail the world wide internet ocean on our mighty Santy OWB and we take no prisoners. Stay clear. :lol:  Just wished it scrolled a little better. But  soon hopefully.

The whole thing makes me very glad. Its 2009 and AmigaOS and its hardware is on the market and a new browser galore is on the way. That's staying power.

Congratulations to the whole Amiga world for this.

When Google presents its new OS and the turmoil that may come of this could be an opening  for the NG Amiga OS's.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: takemehomegrandma on September 30, 2009, 09:49:22 AM
Quote from: Hans_;524303
Considering that the initial port to any Amiga compatible platform would be ~99% of the work, do you think that it's fair that the initial porters get just 25% of the bounty?


No, and that's not what "a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort" means, is it?


Quote
Now a quick word about *open source*; ... ...  The MPL license clearly says ... ... yada yada ...


Nowhere did I claim that they were doing something illegal or violating any licenses.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Hans_ on September 30, 2009, 10:07:04 AM
Quote from: takemehomegrandma;524306
No, and that's not what "a split of bounty funds proportional to individuals' effort" means, is it?


The Amizilla bounty also states that a port to only one of the target platforms will only get 25% of the bounty. If someone in the team that did this said port did 70% of the work, then they would get 70% of that 25%.

Quote
Nowhere did I claim that they were doing something illegal or violating any licenses.


What you said suggested that you still feel that what they're doing is wrong, despite the Mozilla foundation - who wrote the original code - having given them permission (via the license).

Hans
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: zylesea on September 30, 2009, 10:32:41 AM
Quote from: Hans_;524303
The Amizilla bounty has been around for years, and no cross-platform group has made a proper attempt at getting it working. Considering that the initial port to any Amiga compatible platform would be ~99% of the work, do you think that it's fair that the initial porters get just 25% of the bounty?


If it is about 99% of the work and they leave out the 1 % to provide compiles for all Amiga flavours - then I would say own mistake. Either it is 99% then thy were pretty stupid to not provide the last percent to grab the whole cake or it may well be that it isn't 99%. Your math seems kind of wrong.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: PulsatingQuasar on September 30, 2009, 10:33:33 AM
What the f**k are you all complaining about? It's their spare time and they are going to do it the way they want it. So they chose to go another route. You can complain all you want but it's not going to change anything.


I think the Amizilla bounty should be cancelled since it has taken too long to produce anything. People who donated should get their money back or an option to transfer the money to another bounty. That is for me the whole reason why I don't stick any money in bounties. There is no deadline. I have no problem with a donation after the software has appeared. Did that for both OWB and Netsurf.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: takemehomegrandma on September 30, 2009, 10:40:07 AM
Quote from: Hans_;524308
The Amizilla bounty also states that a port to only one of the target platforms will only get 25% of the bounty. If someone in the team that did this said port did 70% of the work, then they would get 70% of that 25%.

What you said suggested that you still feel that what they're doing is wrong, despite the Mozilla foundation - who wrote the original code - having given them permission (via the license).


I replied to someone suggesting that AmiZilla money, raised for porting Mozilla to the Amiga platform with an *inclusive* philosophy (*no* Amiga flavor is excluded) in *the best open source spirit* (sources are completely open, anyone can contribute, future ports, updates, and maintenance can easily and forever be done by anyone, etc, etc), to a bounty with a proclaimed *exclusive* philosophy (the entire Amiga platform *but* OS4 is excluded) in *the worst open source spirit* (carefully reading all licenses to close and lock down as much as you are possibly allowed to). The Friedens can do whatever they want, and I'm sure they have read all the licenses (I haven't, and I won't). But transferring money from AmiZilla bounty to this one would *not* be a right thing to do. The two bounties are not only incompatible, they are in fact the very opposite to each other. They could easily have qualified for 100% of the AmiZilla bounty, but they choose a different way.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: takemehomegrandma on September 30, 2009, 10:54:11 AM
Quote from: zylesea;524310
If it is about 99% of the work and they leave out the 1 % to provide compiles for all Amiga flavours - then I would say own mistake. Either it is 99% then thy were pretty stupid to not provide the last percent to grab the whole cake or it may well be that it isn't 99%. Your math seems kind of wrong.


That's exactly what I'm saying. And if they didn't want to touch MorphOS, AROS, or AmigaOS 3.x themselves, they could easily have handed that 1% of the work/bounty to someone else. "Team AmiZilla/Timberwolf/whaterver" - Does 100% of the work, delivering a browser to 100% of the Amiga flavors, getting 100% of the bounty money. Not doing this is not because of "unrealistic terms", but because of internal decisions. Fine, they are perfectly free to make their own decisions. But *don't* touch the AmiZilla bounty for this!

(I doubt however, that the Friedens will ever reach much further than 1% of the work anyway, but that's a different matter)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: TheMagicM on September 30, 2009, 11:25:46 AM
Quote from: takemehomegrandma;524314

(I doubt however, that the Friedens will ever reach much further than 1% of the work anyway, but that's a different matter)


I wouldn't under estimate them two.  :)      them boys can code.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: ajlwalker on September 30, 2009, 11:42:06 AM
This is the first time I have logged into the site since it was re-done, congratulations and thanks for all the hard work to those involved.

However, it is just the very bitching and complaining on this thread that has stopped me viewing this site every day.

Those that think they are supporting the "community" (that is a laugh!) by complaining that this port is not for all Amiga flavours, are simply not doing what they think.

This is FANTASTIC news and should be encouraged.  Even if the Friedens effort doesn't make it onto AROS, it will still bring some users to AROS.  Anything that raises the profile of "Amiga" and this surely will, is good for all Amiga flavours.

The point still stands, all the source code is there and if people really want it for their platform of choice then do something about it!  If you are short sighted enough not to see the benefits to all from this, then just drive on and keep your bitching and amateur legal skills to yourself.

It is your attitudes that are driving people away from the platform.  Just think about that for a bit!
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: danwood on September 30, 2009, 11:55:12 AM
To be honest, the whole idea of Firefox on OS4 excited the heck out of me when it was first suggested many years ago.

Today not so much, I don't even use Firefox on my PC or Mac anymore, its all about Webkit these days, and lets not forget we already have a brilliant Webkit browser in the form of OWB (and netsurf, but that's never worked on my machine for some reason).  Firefox is slow, bloated, and uses up a ton of resources.  Safari and Chrome and other webkit browsers out perform it by a huge margin.

For a while we were getting weekly updates to OWB, but now there haven't been any for 4 months or so, I'm praying he hasn't given up work on it.  It still lacks a few things, a download manager being the most obvious.

I think we're better off putting our efforts into OWB and making it more usable, its almost thee.  If Joerg (I believe his name is, excuse me if I got it wrong) hasn't got the time to work on OWB now, maybe he could open the source so others can expand on it.

Firefox would have been great 4/5 years ago, but these days I say Webkit is a much better option.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: PulsatingQuasar on September 30, 2009, 12:19:57 PM
Not getting updates for 4 months doesn't mean he has stopped working on it. He could be busy with something else or he could be in the process of some major updates. DvPlayer and MPLayer for OS 4 don't get regular updates either.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: jj on September 30, 2009, 12:38:39 PM
People can do what they like.  Just because they want to go their own way they shouldn't be slated for it.
 
Some people really need to get a grip on the situation.

Despite the fact that even the most powerful 68k amiga( bar winuae) would struggle to run firefox so personally I think the orginal bounty was pie in the sky. (And yes htis is my opnion and not fact)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on September 30, 2009, 12:38:43 PM
Absolutely, Mozilla browsers just aren't as robust as webkit ones.  Firefox's main draw are the plugins, they do remarkable things, without them it's sort of antiquated.  You have to have two browsers nowadays.  

Quote from: danwood;524321
To be honest, the whole idea of Firefox on OS4 excited the heck out of me when it was first suggested many years ago.

Today not so much, I don't even use Firefox on my PC or Mac anymore, its all about Webkit these days, and lets not forget we already have a brilliant Webkit browser in the form of OWB (and netsurf, but that's never worked on my machine for some reason).  Firefox is slow, bloated, and uses up a ton of resources.  Safari and Chrome and other webkit browsers out perform it by a huge margin.

For a while we were getting weekly updates to OWB, but now there haven't been any for 4 months or so, I'm praying he hasn't given up work on it.  It still lacks a few things, a download manager being the most obvious.

I think we're better off putting our efforts into OWB and making it more usable, its almost thee.  If Joerg (I believe his name is, excuse me if I got it wrong) hasn't got the time to work on OWB now, maybe he could open the source so others can expand on it.

Firefox would have been great 4/5 years ago, but these days I say Webkit is a much better option.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Argo on September 30, 2009, 01:32:16 PM
This is great news. Keep up the good work guys.

People complained that the platform didn't have a modern browser. Now we have webkit based and soon firefox based browsers.
I don't see the issue. We should be happy to see our platform advance on all or even just one flavor.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: takemehomegrandma on September 30, 2009, 05:40:14 PM
@ PulsatingQuasar, ajlwalker, JJ, Argo (I feel you all directed your "quit whining" posts to me)

There is no issue. I'm not whining. I couldn't care less in what ways the Friedens and/or Hyperion try to raise their peanut money this time around, and it's not like their views on Open Source are unknown to anyone. There are no surprises here, and I don't deny them their right to do what they do.

The only thing I said was: Don't give them any *AmiZilla* money, as long as they think the AmiZilla terms and conditions are "unrealistic". It's a matter of principle - the AmiZilla donations was for the benefit of *the entire Amiga platform*, which obviously isn't within the Friedens interest (which I of course understand and respect).
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: cv643d on September 30, 2009, 07:34:17 PM
Quote from: spihunter;524275
Good news for the folks that shelled out all that cash for an A1 or Sam board :). They at least should get a modern browser with that setup!. It will be interesting to see if they leave any code open for AROS/MOS folks to look at?


Or those who shelled out cash for OS4.1 for Pegasos 2.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on September 30, 2009, 07:39:11 PM
Quote from: Matt_H;524290
Good! I assume that means it won't be using any of those sloppy SObjs either.

Again, sorry about the negativity. Sincere kudos to the developers for their milestone, but can't we have some Amiga-wide cooperation for once?

Ok, this is off topic but IMHO, supporting shared objects was one of the best new features I've seen from a developer perspective. Existing library/interface methods just don't seem to have what it takes to support shared C++ code. Without them, you end up having to static link C++ object code, making your executables huge.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Hattig on September 30, 2009, 08:50:35 PM
Well it's all well and good, but it's not 2006 anymore. A port of Chromium (Google Chrome, which is Webkit based) would be more desirable these days, in my opinion.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on September 30, 2009, 09:52:34 PM
Maybe the Amizilla bounty could be changed to allow for the port of any modern browser to all Amiga related platforms?  Wen the bounty was set it was very much a two browser world, well three, but Safari was Mac only.  Now we have Chrome, Safari for both Mac and PC, Opera and Firefox, with IE still PC only.  Having any of these available on all Amiga platforms would be great.

I think the key is multi-platform availability, we don't want to leave the Classic users behind if at all possible.

Also browsers are moving targets, any port should be able to incorporate improvements to the browser made in the future.

The webkit v gecko wars could easily fill several libraries.  Each has it's strengths and weaknesses.  There have been suggestions that Mozilla abandon gecko for webkit but I don't see that happening.  The next few years are going to be real interesting browser war wise....



Quote from: Hattig;524387
Well it's all well and good, but it's not 2006 anymore. A port of Chromium (Google Chrome, which is Webkit based) would be more desirable these days, in my opinion.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on September 30, 2009, 09:57:32 PM
Ah, the answer is out of Tuvalu, Lunascape!

http://www.lunascape.tv/
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: danwood on September 30, 2009, 11:35:42 PM
Quote from: PulsatingQuasar;524322
Not getting updates for 4 months doesn't mean he has stopped working on it. He could be busy with something else or he could be in the process of some major updates. DvPlayer and MPLayer for OS 4 don't get regular updates either.


Yeah I hope not, but my point was he was doing weekly updates for a long time, unlike DVPlayer etc.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Fab on October 01, 2009, 01:32:52 AM
Quote from: Karlos;524373
Ok, this is off topic but IMHO, supporting shared objects was one of the best new features I've seen from a developer perspective. Existing library/interface methods just don't seem to have what it takes to support shared C++ code. Without them, you end up having to static link C++ object code, making your executables huge.


However, shared objects on OS4 are technically *not* shared. :)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Matt_H on October 01, 2009, 01:57:57 AM
Ho boy, I really stirred up a hornet's nest with this one. Let's see...

I feel like the new bounty makes the AmiZilla bounty redundant, which means all that money remains in permanant limbo status, useless. If they're asking the community to contribute funding to the project, then it would have been nice if they had respected the community's existing funding mechanism by allowing everyone who contributed to AmiZilla to get some kind of tangible return on their investment.

That's not to say the developers can't, or even shouldn't set things up the way that's most advantageous to them (the Firefox card in OS4's deck would do much good attracting users/sales from outside the community). Starting their own bounty ( With blackjack, and hookers! ) just struck me as... impolite.

But I can already imagine scores of others from outside the community laughing derisively at the Amiga's collective failure to collect an easy paycheck, and at keeping the project closed and static rather than trying to integrate it into the regular Firefox build tree as has been done with NetSurf.

And why does compatibility across Amiga platforms matter? How about being able to share user/developer resources and testing platforms to iron out bugs and improve the overall product? Even if a 68K version is too slow for real hardware, it'd be a great asset for WinUAE or bootable x86 Amiga emulation environments.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Let the celebrating resume.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Matt_H on October 01, 2009, 02:24:23 AM
Quote from: Karlos;524373
Ok, this is off topic but IMHO, supporting shared objects was one of the best new features I've seen from a developer perspective. Existing library/interface methods just don't seem to have what it takes to support shared C++ code. Without them, you end up having to static link C++ object code, making your executables huge.


As a developer, I think your opinion holds more weight, but, as I've said elsewhere, from a user perspective, they really bring down the parsimony of the system. I really don't like having to maintain both Libs: and SObjs:, especially since every .so I've looked at doesn't have an Amiga version string. It might help if they belonged in Libs: or Libs:SObjs instead of SObjs:, but I'm not sure.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on October 01, 2009, 03:09:19 AM
Simple the money was donated for one purpose, it would be at the very least immoral if not illegal to give it to someone who has not completed the task that the money was given for.  It's not a question of what the brothers hyperion do, they are free to do whatever they want, just without the Amizilla bounty.  They aren't open source folks, they probably will want to keep the code to themselves and not take outside money anyway.

Quote from: Matt_H;524406
Ho boy, I really stirred up a hornet's nest with this one. Let's see...

I feel like the new bounty makes the AmiZilla bounty redundant, which means all that money remains in permanant limbo status, useless. If they're asking the community to contribute funding to the project, then it would have been nice if they had respected the community's existing funding mechanism by allowing everyone who contributed to AmiZilla to get some kind of tangible return on their investment.

That's not to say the developers can't, or even shouldn't set things up the way that's most advantageous to them (the Firefox card in OS4's deck would do much good attracting users/sales from outside the community). Starting their own bounty ( With blackjack, and hookers! ) just struck me as... impolite.

But I can already imagine scores of others from outside the community laughing derisively at the Amiga's collective failure to collect an easy paycheck, and at keeping the project closed and static rather than trying to integrate it into the regular Firefox build tree as has been done with NetSurf.

And why does compatibility across Amiga platforms matter? How about being able to share user/developer resources and testing platforms to iron out bugs and improve the overall product? Even if a 68K version is too slow for real hardware, it'd be a great asset for WinUAE or bootable x86 Amiga emulation environments.

Anyway, that's my opinion. Let the celebrating resume.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: PulsatingQuasar on October 01, 2009, 07:44:10 AM
In all fairness the money in the AmiZilla bounty isn't even the maintainers to guard over. I think the maintainer of the AmiZilla bounty has the duty in informing the donaters of the status of the AmiZilla bounty( 0%) and inform donaters of alternative projects or a refund option.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 10:25:58 AM
Quote from: Matt_H;524407
As a developer, I think your opinion holds more weight, but, as I've said elsewhere, from a user perspective, they really bring down the parsimony of the system. I really don't like having to maintain both Libs: and SObjs:, especially since every .so I've looked at doesn't have an Amiga version string. It might help if they belonged in Libs: or Libs:SObjs instead of SObjs:, but I'm not sure.


Well, you have to remember, .so files are not really an amiga standard. They've come from glibc. Under linux, the version numbering is usually maintained through symbolic links.

However, there's nothing at all stopping a .so file compiled for OS4 having a static version string that can be read by the version command. The fact that they don't is probably more down to the fact that most .so files are straight ports of libraries from linux.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 01, 2009, 10:43:38 AM
Quote from: Fab;524405
However, shared objects on OS4 are technically *not* shared. :)


Dunno what they smiley's for. They still have their uses. They save hard disk space, bug fixes in shared objects don't require all apps that use them to be recompiled, and combined with dlopen/dlsym are a very handy way of making C++ based plugins.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: itix on October 01, 2009, 10:46:01 AM
Quote from: Karlos;524373
Ok, this is off topic but IMHO, supporting shared objects was one of the best new features I've seen from a developer perspective. Existing library/interface methods just don't seem to have what it takes to support shared C++ code. Without them, you end up having to static link C++ object code, making your executables huge.


They are not shared and C++ dynamic linking libraries stop working when there is new GCC version.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 01, 2009, 10:56:23 AM
BTW, to all the people claiming we don't really need it since we have OWB, FireFox 3.5+ brings a lot of cool stuff to OS4.x that OWB doesn't, including:

* HTML5, presumably including cool stuff like the video tag
* A download manager
* A really good address-bar history system
* An excellent selection of plugins (a lot of which should be cross-platform)
* Private browsing
* Better security features
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 01, 2009, 10:57:42 AM
Quote from: itix;524424
They are not shared and C++ dynamic linking libraries stop working when there is new GCC version.


So what. You're free to use shared libraries or shared objects, depending on what suits your needs the best.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: jj on October 01, 2009, 11:05:36 AM
Quote from: takemehomegrandma;524356
@ PulsatingQuasar, ajlwalker, JJ, Argo (I feel you all directed your "quit whining" posts to me)
 
There is no issue. I'm not whining. I couldn't care less in what ways the Friedens and/or Hyperion try to raise their peanut money this time around, and it's not like their views on Open Source are unknown to anyone. There are no surprises here, and I don't deny them their right to do what they do.
 
The only thing I said was: Don't give them any *AmiZilla* money, as long as they think the AmiZilla terms and conditions are "unrealistic". It's a matter of principle - the AmiZilla donations was for the benefit of *the entire Amiga platform*, which obviously isn't within the Friedens interest (which I of course understand and respect).

 
I agree they shouldn't get any of the other bounty.  Just don't agree that some people are having a go because they have decidede to go their own way.   And this is not pointed at you
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: itix on October 01, 2009, 11:23:59 AM
Quote from: xeron;524427
So what. You're free to use shared libraries or shared objects, depending on what suits your needs the best.


Sure. But OS4 does not have shared objects. You can use shared libraries or dynamically linked objects. Nothing in those objects are shared. And there is nothing wrong with dynamic linking. Karlos was just confused about it.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 11:32:08 AM
Quote from: itix;524424
They are not shared and C++ dynamic linking libraries stop working when there is new GCC version.

They are not shared presently in memory (in the sense that shared libraries are), but they are shared in the sense that they are not statically linked against the executable.

Also, newer versions of the compiler don't necessarily always break shared objects. After all, I have shared objects on my linux box that span several versions of gcc and they all work fine. Dependencies between shared objects are more likely to cause a problem.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: itix on October 01, 2009, 12:25:23 PM
Quote from: Karlos;524431
They are not shared presently in memory (in the sense that shared libraries are), but they are shared in the sense that they are not statically linked against the executable.


In other operating systems it is called dynamic linking. Wikipedia article about Windows DLL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library) could be interesting reading to all amigans.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 12:35:21 PM
Quote from: itix;524434
In other operating systems it is called dynamic linking. Wikipedia article about Windows DLL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic-link_library) could be interesting reading to all amigans.


Yes, I know. I have actually written .so files for linux.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Fab on October 01, 2009, 03:29:05 PM
Quote from: xeron;524426
BTW, to all the people claiming we don't really need it since we have OWB, FireFox 3.5+ brings a lot of cool stuff to OS4.x that OWB doesn't, including:

* HTML5, presumably including cool stuff like the video tag
* A download manager
* A really good address-bar history system
* An excellent selection of plugins (a lot of which should be cross-platform)
* Private browsing
* Better security features


- OWB/Webkit supports HTML5 and
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Fab on October 01, 2009, 03:33:38 PM
Quote from: xeron;524423
Dunno what they smiley's for. They still have their uses. They save hard disk space, bug fixes in shared objects don't require all apps that use them to be recompiled, and combined with dlopen/dlsym are a very handy way of making C++ based plugins.


Like itix said, it's an heresy to rely on a C++ interface in general (shared object or not), since it can break at each gcc release. For the rest, i think it's just pure lazyness to use shared objects instead of a shared library.

In OWB, I implemented a shared library-based version of the plugin system and it wasn't particularly harder, and it's quite more amiga-like too (the irony). :)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 04:45:56 PM
Have you tried writing code that provides properly extensible C++ classes (complete with virtual functions) in an amigaos shared library? It is up to the compiler/linker implementation to decide how virtual function tables work, not the operating system.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: bluestarweb on October 01, 2009, 04:48:40 PM
wow..this rekindles my interest anew in the amiga, mights go out and buy one the new motherbaords that run AOS 4.1...admittedly i'm curious after having only been emulating for the last few years
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 01, 2009, 06:17:28 PM
Quote from: Fab;524451
- OWB/Webkit supports HTML5 and


Does any port of OWB to Amigoid systems support this?

Quote

(same for the good address bar history)


The OS4 OWB port has a reasonable address bar history, but the Firefox 3.x one is better. Is the OWB MorphOS one as good?

Quote

And of course, it's a better idea to port firefox if you're unable to design a browser GUI yourself. :)


Who says the Friedens couldn't? The GUI is not the hardest part of a browser, but if you get a GUI that hundreds of people already work on, thats a bonus.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 01, 2009, 06:18:57 PM
Quote from: Fab;524452
it wasn't particularly harder, and it's quite more amiga-like too (the irony). :)


What irony? Who cares? OS4 offers developers more choice. I fail to see why that is a bad thing.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: kolla on October 01, 2009, 06:22:12 PM
Quote from: xeron;524423
Dunno what they smiley's for. They still have their uses. They save hard disk space, bug fixes in shared objects don't require all apps that use them to be recompiled, and combined with dlopen/dlsym are a very handy way of making C++ based plugins.


I had no idea smileys are that versatile.:confused:
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: kolla on October 01, 2009, 06:42:34 PM
Quote from: xeron;524465
What irony? Who cares? OS4 offers developers more choice. I fail to see why that is a bad thing.

The irony is AmigaOS4.x developers failing to develop software the way Amiga software is meant to. As for who cares? How many are left to care? Giving developers choice is not always the right thing to do, unless ofcourse "a big mess" is the goal.

As for Firefox, I keep it around for the same reasons someone might keep IE6 around. I always found Firefox way too much of a resource hungry slowmess and moved over to Konqueror back in KDE3.2 days or so. Firefox can be fast at rendering pages, but it's way too sluggish to use. Another annoying thing is that plugins bring down the entire browser; on Konqueror I can kill off the flashplayer without it having any effect on the browser.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Fab on October 01, 2009, 07:09:59 PM
Quote
Does any port of OWB to Amigoid systems support this?


I'll implement in the MorphOS port, at least.

Quote
The OS4 OWB port has a reasonable address bar history, but the Firefox 3.x one is better. Is the OWB MorphOS one as good?


Hard to say. At the moment, the OWB MorphOS one shows a sorted by date/name list with favicon/url/title, popping up for autocompletion if needed. But it can always be improved for sure.


Quote

Who says the Friedens couldn't? The GUI is not the hardest part of a browser, but if you get a GUI that hundreds of people already work on, thats a bonus.


It's not really about difficulty but time and motivation. In MorphOS, porting the basic OWB layers such as thread/IO/memory/network and so on took about one week (these layers being more or less the same as the ones needed for Firefox), but the GUI itself is still always in development after more than 7 months (and there's still much to do). So I perfectly see the point in getting for free an already fully functional GUI.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: itix on October 01, 2009, 10:10:36 PM
Quote from: Karlos;524457
Have you tried writing code that provides properly extensible C++ classes (complete with virtual functions) in an amigaos shared library?


True. You cant do that.

Quote

It is up to the compiler/linker implementation to decide how virtual function tables work, not the operating system.


And this is exactly the problem. It is compiler specific and you can not always mix C++ libraries compiled with different GCC versions.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 10:11:08 PM
Firefox is a handy application. Sure it is slow and clunky these days, especially compared to webkit based browsers, but then why not have both if both are available?

A few years ago, I bet most of the people now slating firefox were praising it ;)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 01, 2009, 10:17:30 PM
Quote from: itix;524486
True. You cant do that.


I wasted many hours trying to work around it too. In the end, it just isn't possible.

Quote
And this is exactly the problem. It is compiler specific and you can not always mix C++ libraries compiled with different GCC versions.


It is compiler specific yes, and no you can't always mix versions, but the .so format has been pretty much standardised these days. There was quite an effort to tidy it up. Since amigaos 4 only has .so files from gcc 4.x, there aren't likely to be quite the problems you got when glibc got upgraded in linux.

If you assume for a moment that .so files on OS4 are primarily for C++ code (they don't have to be, of course, but I wouldn't write a C .so for amigaos when I could write a shared library instead) and that the only C++ compiler on OS4.0/1 is gcc 4, most of the above objections don't really apply.

Of course, if a new version of gcc decides to change .so files dramatically again, then yes, there will be a problem. However, the revamp  in the last major glibc, though necessary to properly make .so files useful for C++ was something nobody is keen to repeat, not even for C++0x. The current .so format should be future compatible for the latter anyway and hence could be around for some time.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: xeron on October 02, 2009, 07:40:04 AM
Quote from: kolla;524469
The irony is AmigaOS4.x developers failing to develop software the way Amiga software is meant to.


What the hell? Since when is there a giant rule book of what you must do. "Thou shalt not do anything that AmigaOS3.1 didn't offer!". Please.

Quote

unless ofcourse "a big mess" is the goal.


What big mess?
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 02, 2009, 09:40:19 AM
Quote from: xeron;524505
What the hell? Since when is there a giant rule book of what you must do. "Thou shalt not do anything that AmigaOS3.1 didn't offer!". Please.

People going down that road when criticising support for .so files should consider that ELF is not an amiga 3.x standard either, yet I don't see any complaints about the fact it is used in both MOS and OS4. And why not? It's a sensible standard. Likewise .so is a sensible choice, particularly for C++ since quite frankly, there is no other widely accepted, open alternative.

Quote
What big mess?

I suppose having 3.x libraries, 4.x interfaces and .so files could be construed as somewhat excessive. However, I rather like .so file support, simply because neither of the others lend themselves to enabling runtime linked C++ code.
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: persia on October 02, 2009, 12:20:13 PM
Like moves on, Gecko is bloatware, for MS Windows users it was better than trident and that was enough then.  Today Firefox is sort of your grandfather's browser, nice and slow and unforgiving of small web page variations.

Quote from: Karlos;524487
Firefox is a handy application. Sure it is slow and clunky these days, especially compared to webkit based browsers, but then why not have both if both are available?

A few years ago, I bet most of the people now slating firefox were praising it ;)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: itix on October 02, 2009, 02:21:28 PM
Quote from: Karlos;524509
People going down that road when criticising support for .so files should consider that ELF is not an amiga 3.x standard either


It is not and there were massive flame wars in the Amiga community ten years ago. "ELF is a monster !!!" being the most famous quote from that era.

Quote

Likewise .so is a sensible choice, particularly for C++ since quite frankly, there is no other widely accepted, open alternative.


C++ sucks anyway ;-)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Karlos on October 02, 2009, 02:44:32 PM
Quote from: itix;524529
It is not and there were massive flame wars in the Amiga community ten years ago. "ELF is a monster !!!" being the most famous quote from that era.


ELF is a sensible format. It was just very alien to people accustom to the usual hunk format.

Quote
C++ sucks anyway ;-)


Yo mamma... (etc)
Title: Re: Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1
Post by: Pyromania on April 09, 2011, 10:07:44 AM
It would be nice if this finally came out.