Project Timberwolf - Firefox for AmigaOS4.1

[jj]

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)

[persia]

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.  

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.

[Argo]

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.

[takemehomegrandma]

@ 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).

[cv643d]

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.

[Karlos]

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.

[Hattig]

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.

[persia]

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....

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.

[persia]

Ah, the answer is out of Tuvalu, Lunascape!

http://www.lunascape.tv/

[danwood]

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.

[Fab]

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.

[Matt_H]

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.

[Matt_H]

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.

[persia]

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.

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.

[PulsatingQuasar]

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.

[Karlos]

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.