Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog

Sounds as if the Ubuntu founders either think Microsoft is bluffing with the threat of patent infringements or could be they are not falling for Microsoft’s patent protection deal (blackmail) .

Novell, Xandros, Linspire … and Ubuntu? Nope, it’s not gonna happen, says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the popular Linux distribution, debunking rumors that Ubuntu will be the next to agree to a patent protection deal with Microsoft.

“Allegations of ‘infringement of unspecified patents’ carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for. It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit from a pure-IP-holder (Microsoft itself is regularly found to violate such patents and regularly settles such suits). People who pay protection money for that promise are likely living in a false sense of security.”

News Source: Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog >> Ubuntu Linux founder says no Microsoft deal

Here’s an overview of today’s (06/1 Weekly Update meeting (items in purple are noteworthy):

• Fx 1.5.0.12 - Major Update (1.5.0.12 > 2.0.0.4) still scheduled for Thursday (06/21)
• Fx 1.5.0.13 - ??? I think that was a typo as 1.5.0.12 is the last release on the 1.5 branch
• Fx 2.0.0.5 - Next regularly scheduled release on the 2.0 branch. Daily triage meetings at 10am PDT (650-903-0800, 91#, 262#). Tuesday (06/19) discussion on the 2.0.0.5 release schedule
• Fx 3.0:
  

  Places (Places team)

  • tagging backend landed
  • Dan Mills (thunder) demoed bookmark sync at Developer Day Tokyo
  • plenty of discussion about UI in dev.apps.firefox, please jump in
  • team is basically heads down working on A6 blockers

  Download Manager (sdwilsh)

  • Working on finalizing the spec for revised UI

  Password Manager (dolske)

  • Next up: FillDocument() cleanup (bug 380222), mconnor or gavin to review

  web-based content handlers (dmose)

  • backend refactoring patch done, awaiting review
  • UI mockups in dev.apps.firefox for those interested

  Site-specific prefs (myk)

  • New patch posted for persisting text zoom, mconnor on hook for review
  • New quit dialog (mwu)
    • Gives the option to save session, and closes all windows at once
    • Addresses problems with onbeforeunload handlers (Zimbra)
    • Still working out a couple kinks
  • Addons Manager (Rob Strong, Mossop, mwu)
  • better l10n support (bug 257155), waiting on review
  • backend for unifying plugin management (bug 382367)

  Malware (johnath, campd)

  • UI work (modification to netError to support more aggressive styling) should be patch-ready by EOD Monday (bug 380932).

  Identity UI (johnath)

  • Transitioning add-on code to patch. (bug 383183)

  HTTPS Error Pages (johnath)

  • Still trying to close on the specific dialogs that should be replaced with error pages, and on what mechanisms need to be added to allow trusting of sites with broken certs. (bug 327181).

  A6 Status

  • Still 62 blockers, need to retriage this week, please help out if you can

• Gecko 1.9a:
  

  Jason Orendorff starting today.

  Everyone is heads down, focusing on blockers.

  Textframe Enabling on Trunk.

  Need people to find and fix leaks. See: dbaron’s blog entry

  libxul was enabled last week (but backed out for mac only).

• TBird 1.5.0.13 - Mentioned but no discussion at this time
• TBird 2.0.0.4 - Released on Thursday (06/14)
• TBird 3:
  

  Everyone is still focused on moving mailnews to frozen linkage. Currently working on removing nsHashTable.h support from mailnews, exposing NS_EscapeURL through nsINetUtil, and finding a replacement for nsTextFormatter.

Complete meeting notes

Here’s your chance to promote Gran Paradiso (Firefox 3) with this poster or wallpapers (multiple sizes from 800×600 to 1920×1200 including 1440×900).

John Slater, Mozilla’s Creative Director has announced the release of a set of posters and wallpapers on Gran Paradiso, Firefox 3 code name.

John clarifies that this is purely for fun and part of an internal campaign. It is not part of any final product identity or marketing campaign.

News Source: Mozilla Links

The most recent nightly build (for those of you on the ‘nightly’ channel)  for Bon Echo on the Win32 platform is 2007061714 and can be obtained via the normal update process (Help >> Check For Updates).  I was able to successfully download this update this morning. There was NOT a nightly update for June 16th.  This issue was only affecting the Win32 builds.  For some odd reason the builds were not propagating from the Tinder Box to the FTP servers. See Bug 383775 for more details.