Microsoft/Yahoo: Yang to Step Down

Current Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang has announced today he is stepping down and returning to his former role as Chief Yahoo!

The news ends an embattled tenure for the Yahoo co-founder, who took over as CEO in June 2007, replacing then CEO Terry Semel.

Now the big question is what does this mean for the still lingering merger/partnership/take-over with Yahoo and partnership with Microsoft. Yahoo is not doing so well, the stock has already lost nearly 2/3 (closed today  @ $10.63 per share) of it value since the take-over was announced. Back on February 1st Yahoo! stock shot up to $28.32 per share from $19.18 the day prior. Recall about a month ago Yahoo was urged to sell itself to Microsoft for $22 a share.

Further there is no immediate word as to when a successor for Yang will be appointed.

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) today announced that its Board of Directors has initiated a search for a new Chief Executive Officer. Jerry Yang, co-Founder of Yahoo!, has decided to return to his former role as Chief Yahoo! upon the appointment of his successor as CEO, and he will also continue to serve on the Board. Yang, 40, assumed the CEO role at the Board’s request in June 2007, and he has led Yahoo! through a strategic repositioning and transformation of its platform.

News Source: Microsoft Blog

Mozilla Project Weekly Status: November 17th

ADDONS.MOZILLA.ORG (AMO)

AMO 4.0.3 - Status: Pending Release

• fixed bugs
• Freeze – Nov. 10th
• Updates pushed tonight to coincide with collections & bandwagon dates — thanks to Neil, Fred and the rest of the team for their hard work on collections

AMO 4.0.4 - Status: In Process

• open bugs & fixed bugs
• Freeze – Dec 1

FIREFOX/GECKO

Fx 2.0.0.18 & Fx 3.0.4/Gecko 1.8.1.18 & 1.9.0.4 – Released

• Released: Novmeber 12th
• Feedback overall looks good.
• We’re having a post-mortem on Friday to discuss any issues during the release process.
• QA
  • 2.0.0.18/3.0.4
  • Released on Wednesday Nov 12th! Live bits testing.
  • Writing content for website changes for EOL [ss]
  • Created the 2.0.0.18 and 3.0.4 RRRT Wiki Pages

Fx 2.0.0.19 & Fx 3.0.5/Gecko 1.8.1.19 & 1.9.0.5 – Pending Code Freeze

• Code freeze Monday, November 17 at 11:59pm
• Aiming for release on December 16
• End of life for Firefox 2.0.0.x
• QA
  • 3.0.5 – Landed accessibility fixes that were approved for 3.0.5: bug 454211, bug 439566, bug 452710 [marcoz]
• Schedule (Estimated)
  • Tree opens: November 3
  • Code freeze: November 17 11:59pm
  • QA starts: November 18
  • Thanksgiving holiday: November 27 & 28
  • Builds start: December 1
  • Release to beta channel: December 9
  • Final Release: December 16

Fx 3.1b2 (Shiretoko)/Gecko 1.9.1b2 – Status: Pending Release

• For weekly engineering meeting notes and other info see the Platform page.
• Interesting queries related to Gecko 1.9.1
• 140 1.9.1 blockers.

  • 4 Blocking 1.9.1 P1s
  • 44 Blocking 1.9.1 P2s
  • 36 Blocking 1.9.1 P3s

• Ready to move to beta 2 this week
• focus for next few weeks will be outstanding blockers, polish and performance bugs
• primary goal is to ensure timely delivery of Firefox 3.1
• interesting queries
  • ~70 Firefox 3.1 Blockers
  • ~20 untriaged nominations

• QA
  • Finished beta 2 testplan [tchung]
  • Maintained Beta 1 Top Crashes page [ss]
  • Feature testing
    • Addons Updates: completed 10% more test cases. Now at 80% complete. [tchung]
    • Control Tab/Tab Preview: Added 25% more testcases [marcia]
    • Private Browsing: Completed the test plan and 50% of the test cases [marcia]
    • Developed on XHR tests [ctalbert]
    • Worked on CSS Border Radius tests, trying out the new patch for drawing SVG and CSS curves using the same code and coefficient functions. However, anti-aliasing issues still caused reference matching problems: bug 459148 [ctalbert]
    • Overall Feature testing status:
      • Testplan completion: 86%
      • Testcases planned: 748
      • Testcase completion: 59%
  • JS/Tracemonkey
    • Working on Testing TM fatal Assertion Crashes. [tomcat]
    • Trying to keep up with the still massive churn in the JavaScript engine which is occurring on the tracemonkey branch and then merging with the mozilla-central branch. Doing more continual build+test cycle on mozilla-central, tracemonkey and running tests for the shell and browser for opt and debug and jit enabled and jit disabled builds. [bc]
  • Accessibility
    • tested new features. Private Browsing: Works 100%. New CtrlTab: Is disabled for most Windows screen readers, behaves like old Ctrl+Tab keystroke in Firefox 3.0. [marcoz]
    • Started testing and defining each ARIA testcase on the ARIA testcases page on CodeTalks. This is to help ensure that ARIA implementations are consistent throughout browsers and assistive technologies.
  • Snow Leopard work: Installed the latest seed of Snow Leopard (10.6) on the machine in the lab and found bug 464353.
• Schedule
  • String freeze: October 30th @ 11:59 PM PDT
  • Code freeze: November 4th @ 11:59 PM PDT
  • Builds start: November 10th
  • QA starts: TBA
  • Release to beta channel: TBA
  • Final Release: November 21st

SUNBIRD/LIGHTNING

No Report

THUNDERBIRD

TBird 2.0.0.18 - Pending Release

• Highly dependent on Firefox 2.0.0.18
• Builds started last week
• Aiming for beta Wednesday, November 12
• QA
  • Beta was released on Wednesday Nov 12th!
  • Busy week! Executed BFT, l10n spot checks, update tests [abillings, juanb]
• Schedule

  • Code freeze: October 2th
  • Builds start: November 3rd
  • QA starts: November 5th
  • Release to beta channel: November 12th
  • Final Release: November 19th

TBird 3.0b1 (Shredder) - Status: In Process

• No Report
• Schedule

  • String Freeze: November 14th @ 23:59 Pacific.
  • Code freeze: November 18th @ 23:59 Pacific.
  • Builds start: TBD
  • QA starts: TBD
  • Release to beta channel: TBD
  • Final Release: TBD

Complete Meeting Notes