How do I convince these sites that I do use Firefox? It gets called something else because of some stupid reasons, but it is really Firefox and nothing else. Every time I visit hotmail or orkut or some site which thinks that it is doing something so special that it needs to warn users about their browsers, these messages that make a mockery of my setup.
I can blame Mozilla for enforcing the trademark issues, or the Linux distribution I use to not comply with Mozilla’s trademark issues, or these sites for ignoring this issue altogether and pestering the user. Whoever gets blamed, the big loss here is for open source. I know the reasons, and I know the hacks, but the average Joe doesn’t. Not only do messages like these confuse the user, they also pose open source as another legal hell, as worse as the proprietary world.
I am the wrong person to interpret the legal language and understand reasons behind it, but I know for sure that if we want to promote open source to the common man issues like these should be avoided. At least recompilation of the source code should not inflect such penalties on the user. One of the solutions I can think of is to consider Firefox as a family of these browsers. User-agent is used to not only identify the browser but to also make assumptions about its capabilities. So use a common user-agent string, which need not be Firefox, across these browsers and use the official and unofficial branding everywhere else. We need Firefox Inside!
But I am sure better solutions can be found and users can be relieved of this pain. Else, more such forks from more such open source applications will only drive the common man away from open source.
Software sees a very high frequency of newer versions everyday, more so in the open source world. I have heard claims that this is just a way of the software developers/owners to continuously engage the user. However, reading faster horses (a must-read piece by JP) made me think that this is just the after-effect of engaging the user. Users get a lot of more say in software than in other tools. There might be other reasons, but the users’ direct participation has definitely accelerated the evolution of software products. [Continue]
The proponents of the agile methodologies wanted to change the way software development was done. I think that changes have happened, but unfortunately most of them are superficial ones, leading to failures and more notoreity for the underlying philosophy. Scott Nelson explains how some aspects of agile methodologies can be wrongly used. However, whatever I have seen yet, I think the most popular mistake, and the least realized one, is that a lot of teams are not skilled enough to execute agile projects. The principles of agile development call for a skillset, and most of which is not about programming. [Continue]
I was discussing about how some applications have adopted some of the vi key bindings. Like Google Reader, some tiling window managers like xmonad, and even bash has excellent support for editing in vi mode. Surprisingly not many know about this. Hence this post. Bash supports two editing modes, vi and emacs (which is the default) equally well. [Continue]
Object-Relational Mapping tools are the must-have features of rapid application development today. They provide an interface to the programmer to write the DB schema and query it using a programming language that he/she knows. They are the adapters in between the programming style and the declarative style of SQL. I am sure they are helpful in the beginning, because you can be quick with them. But does it hold true when your software gets some years old? [Continue]
So, PHP gets namespaces, and a namespace separator, and a lot of complaints with it. Is \ (rfc) a good choice as a namespace separator? I can’t say, but it sure is not what I expected for a namespace separator. The problem is that symbols used elsewhere for namespace separator already play a role in PHP. But would > or | [Continue]
JP has valuable insight on why open source is not adopted, based on both personal and academic observations. I remembered an old conversation with a friend, who said “Open source is Government of geeks, by geeks, for geeks!” Open source is geekland, and professionals are not invited! Now I think it is quite understandable why anyone with this perception will want to avoid open source at all costs. It also explains why most of the questions regarding open source sound as if the earthlings are asking about Martian life. Even the reactions start with disbelief and end with rejection. [Continue]
Google too steps towards supporting OpenID now. However, nowadays supporting OpenID has started to take different meanings. Most of the new supporters are providing OpenID, none of them accepting it. So, even if the likes of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL support OpenID, I have to manage a different account and login credentials with each of them. [Continue]
You will soon have your Windows Live ID work as an OpenID. Though many have supported OpenID, it is commendable that the Windows Live team has announced the commitment and has invited feedback. As a provider, this is one of the best things you can do, involve the user in making the system more usable. Of course there are still pressing issues on making OpenID effective. Two of the most apparent ones are usability and its lack of popularity amongst services. [Continue]
Bruce Eckel has perfectly articulated the rant against Python’s self parameter. The response to arguments about self in Python is “explicit is better than implicit.” In a discussion at Pycon Brazil, I realized that we do need self in the body of a method, but being forced to place it in the argument list is redundant. I’m not actually expecting it to change, but I want to try to establish that this isn’t a dumb argument. It is forcing the self in the parameter list of every method that irritates those who see it redundant. Guido has responded with some strong counter arguments. [Continue]
