Mozilla 0.9.1, AKA Netscape 6.5 beta-1, Behind Schedule Already

Mike Angelo -- 29 May 2001 (c)

Webmaster´s Note: Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 was released June 7, 2001. Please see our story, Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 Browser-Suite Released, for download links and the details.

Mozilla 0.9.1 should have been branched from the main Mozilla development-tree trunk Friday, 25 May 2001. However, at publication time it has not been branched, yet. This is the second time in as many months that a Mozilla Milestone release has not been branched on schedule.

Blocker - Blocks development and/or testing work.
Critical - Crashes, loss of data, severe memory leak.
Major - Major loss of function.
Normal - This is the run of the mill bug.
Enhancement - Request for enhancement.

From Help Using The Bugzilla Query Form. Link in Resouces section,

The reason Mozilla 0.9.1 has not been branched from the main Mozilla development trunk is that there are many bugs targeted to Milestone 0.9.1 that have not been fixed, yet. Currently there are some 63 aassigned, new, or reopened bugs targeted to Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1. Four of these bugs are listed as blockers, 21 as critical, 12 as major, 25 normal, and one enhancement.

With this many serious un-fixed bugs targeted to Mozilla 9.1, it easily could be several days or more before Milestone 0.9.1 is branched from the main Mozilla development-tree trunk. It's likely that some of the less severe 0.9.1 bugs will be re-targeted to later Milestones in order to get Mozilla 0.9.1 branched sooner rather than later.

Note: In order to maintain the milestone release cycle schedule, the bug-triaging practice has been to re-target less critical bugs from the currently scheduled release to a later milestone release edition, or to Mozilla 1.0. Doing that clears the way for a milestone release that is free of bugs targeted for that release. However, it also allows lots of minor bugs to pile up targeted against later milestone releases and/or Mozilla 1.0. At publication time there are some 1,132 assigned, new, or reopened bugs targeted to Mozilla 1.0, 1,276 to Milestone 0.9.2, and 177 to Milestone 0.9.3. Please keep in mind that all these "bugs" are not problems. For example, some "bugs" are things such as requests for enhancements which are included in the Bugzilla database. Also please keep in mind that moving bugs to target a later Milestone edition, or Mozilla 1.0, does not magically remove them from the Milestone being pushed out the door. The problem described in the bug report is still in the Mozilla Milestone being released.

The May 2001 Mozilla Development Roadmap designates Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 as the "recommended beta branch time". That makes the Milestone 0.9.1 edition a particularly important milestone event for the Mozilla community. It also is an important event for those people and organizations that plan to base applications and browsers, or browser suites, upon the Mozilla application programming framework and/or the Mozilla browser-suite. Please see our article Mozilla Roadmap Plan Changed Again -- Mozilla 1.0 Set Back to Q4 2001 for more information about the May 2001 Mozilla Development Roadmap and development schedule.

Because Mozilla 0.9.1 is the "recommended' beta milestone, there is much effort to check-in lots of enhancements, improvements, and re-writes for Mozilla 0.9.1. That is so commercial vendors, such as Netscape, other organizations, and people that are building Mozilla-based products will have in Milestone 0.9.1 a fully-featured, solid, base upon which to build their product betas. It also helps to lay a better groundwork for Mozilla 1.0.

Incidentally, it appears that the Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 branch also will serve as the branch point for the upcoming Netscape 6.5 beta-1, Mozilla-based, browser-suite product. That perhaps puts even more focus and pressure on quality of the Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 release version.

Note: If the AOL-Time-Warner Netscape Division follows its Netscape 6 beta nomenclature you might see Netscape 6.5 beta-1 named Netscape 6.5 Preview Release 1 (NS 6.5 PR1) or something such as that rather than Netscape 6.5 beta-1. However, the Netscape 6 Preview Releases were heavily criticized. Netscape 6.0/6.01 has been heavily criticized also. So, do not be surprised if the Netscape Division tries to keep the NS 6.5 betas under wraps. It seems the Netscape Division's damage control strategy is to play ostrich and to go underground rather than to address the damage publicly and head-on.

The lion's share of Mozilla developers and staff are Netscape Division employees assigned to or on loan to the Mozilla Project. Additionally, the Netscape Division supports the lion's share of the Mozilla Organization and Project infrastructure. If you like, you can draw an inference here that there is lots of pressure to have a polished, well-featured, and stable Mozilla 0.9.1 branch upon which Netscape 6.5 beta-1 can be based. So look for product quality concerns to override scheduling concerns somewhat in branching and releasing Mozilla 0.9.1.

Netscape 6.5 could be Netscape's last battle in the browser wars if NS 6.5 is not a winner. Please see our two-part article, Is Netscape Losing the Browser Wars? Part I: Linux Could Be Netscape's Last Browser Battlefield and Part II: Why Are Major Linux Distributions Rejecting Netscape 6?.

Another factor that enters into a schedule-wise tardy Mozilla 0.9.1 branching is that Milestone 0.9 was branched about a week late. That, in itself, puts the entire Mozilla Roadmap and development plan a week behind schedule. However, if you look at it from that perspective, then if Mozilla 0.9.1 is branched any time prior to Friday, 1 June 2001 the Lizard tamers are catching up rather than falling further behind.

The Mozilla browser-suite is built on top of the cross-platform (XP) and open source Mozilla applications programming framework. It is the basic, prototype, Mozilla-based, browser-suite application upon which other browsers, such as Netscape 6 are built.

Currently, Mozilla pre-1.0 Milestone and daily development builds are available for the BSD, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Sun, and several UNIX platforms. Source code is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla builds.

Many new features have been added to the Mozilla browser suite recently. For example a Hierarchical History, Theme Uninstall, and Gopher Support were added in Mozilla 0.8.1. Also, lots of under-the-hood changes were made to ChatZilla, the Mozilla-based IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client in Mozilla 0.8.1. For more information about what's new and improved in 0.8.1, please see our article, Lizard On The Move: Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 Browser-Suite Released.

There has been lots of rewriting too. For example the image library was rewritten for Mozilla 0.9. The disk cache subsystem is being rewritten also. The level-1 cache rewrite was included in Mozilla 0.9. The game plan is to include the level-2 cache rewrite in Mozilla 0.9.1. For more information about what's new and improved in 0.9, please see our article, The Snail Moves: Mozilla Milestone 0.9 Browser-Suite Released.

On one hand all these check-ins greatly improve Mozilla. On the other hand, so many check-ins mean lots of QA (quality assurance) work and they usually result in more bugs that need fixing. That slows things down some schedule-wise. The trade-off here is between closing the development-tree down to new features and improvements and maintaining release schedules, or accepting the new features and improvements and risk getting behind schedule. Certainly these are some tough choices.

Stay Tuned.