…

Second, there’s the big issue of user control. The reason there’s more than one extension for many tasks is because we don’t all like the same presentation or features. This is a bit of a problem, I think, when Firefox integrated session saving (much as I like it). Theirs has strengths/weaknesses different from savers in Tab Mix Plus or Session Saver; if somebody prefers TMP or SS, sure, we can tell Firefox to use them instead, but that doesn’t get rid of the FF code taking up space.

As far as the guy freaking over “ripping off” Flock: go do some reading about what Open Source, Creative Commons, and Proprietary models are. Your preference is “proprietary” for both designs and code, it sounds like; you’re entitled to have it, but then you should focus on using software from that model, not be enraged that there’s a community that doesn’t share your view. (I know OSS and CC aren’t the same: the issue he’s angry about appears to be that sharing takes place at all, with or without permission, regardless of medium.)

I agree with the others that add-on or not, the big focus really *should* be with fixing Firefox’s major resource problems right now. Even if the problem is particular extensions, as I’ve often heard; in that case, it’s about time to start locking things so they *can’t* trash finished/full releases.

Thanks, Chris, for your clarification and insider perspective. I’m glad to hear it wasn’t so much disgruntlement as it is frustration. I know the Flock user community is just as anxious for the 1.0 release. CEO Shawn Hardin has communicated to us to several times in the last few months that getting 1.0 out this year is the number one priority. Flock has been great at conceptualizing the possibilities of the product but needs to change gears and execute now. I’m putting my faith in that for now. I’d rather Flock do it right with the 1.0 release than to release early and find major issues which may end its viability all together.

And thanks for explaining your work is available under CC. I was just somewhat confused by its use. As I work in multimedia development, anything that I develop or concept at my employer is legally owned by the company or the client regardless of whether the concept or application ever comes into fruition. These digital rights can be tricky. But if your work is not owned by Flock, then you should be able to distribute it as you choose.

I hope Flock will re-examine your concepts and work towards integrating them into the future releases.

Cheers!

The use of Chris Messina’s concepts that he developed while at Flock is disturbing. I’m surprised that Flock does not have a non-disclosure/non-compete for this type of work. Its one thing if Flock gives it a green light for use in open source, it is entirely another if it is being ripped off. It also sounds like from Chris’ comment on this post that he has some disgruntlement with Flock and this is a venue for being vindictive to his previous employer. I’d like to hope this is not the case at all.

Just to dispel any uncertainties, the mockup was in my Flickrstream for well over a year; I had no idea that the Mozilla guys were interested in it or were going to use it, nor did they ask for my permission in using it; it’s licensed under Creative Commons; their use is questionable, given the commercial nature of Mozilla, but it doesn’t offend me.

In terms of my “disgruntlement”, I’m simply impatient that much of what I was a part of at Flock has yet to see the light of day and that the Mozilla folks put something out first that was labeled “People the Browser” when clearly these ideas came from someplace else.

I don’t think it’s a matter of ripping anyone off; that’s not how software works, especially in the open source community. The designs I made are next-to-worthless if they don’t get built, and I was at Flock to help build a browser that understood that the web is a social place and not just a place for academic HTML papers.

I tried The Coop add-on and it has a long way to go; as such I’m not worried for Flock’s sake, but I do hope that it gets the conversation restarted about what a social browser might be like — and clearly there’s a lot of folks in the TechCrunch peanut gallery who fear change and resist the notion that browsers should finally reflect the way the web is actually being used today.

Ref: a Flock opinion of “The Coop” http://www.flock.com/node/9353
My Browsers: http://docs.goo...evision=_latest

We’ve imagined that Mozilla intended to leave it to third-party extension experts to incorporate social networking into Firefox, its wildly successful, open source browser. There are thousands of add-ons for Mozilla’s brightest star, each…

Why do companies always ruin great products with feature bloat? I want my browser to be really good at browsing the internet. I don’t want to have a friend’s list built into firefox. It would be fine if it was a plugin/extension. Don’t add it to the browser though! The firefox team should be working on making their browser more stable, faster, and reducing the memory foot print… not adding social network features. :[

So many products have followed this same path. Winamp playing movies, NERO trying to do do everything under the sun, including associating one of it’s apps with every single image and movie file format on my computer… Homesite 2.5 was the perfect web development tool before they fucked it up and killed it… the list goes on and on.

In reviewing The Coop, it does appear there is some overlap to functionality in the Flock browser. But there is still significantly more to Flock outside of sharing content. There is the whole interactive application for posting and consuming social content (i.e. blogging, picture uploads, searching via favorites service, etc.).

Also, Flock has been working on this concept for two years. So they have acquired some valuable information in that time about what works and what doesn’t in a social browser.

The use of Chris Messina’s concepts that he developed while at Flock is disturbing. I’m surprised that Flock does not have a non-disclosure/non-compete for this type of work. Its one thing if Flock gives it a green light for use in open source, it is entirely another if it is being ripped off. It also sounds like from Chris’ comment on this post that he has some disgruntlement with Flock and this is a venue for being vindictive to his previous employer. I’d like to hope this is not the case at all.

Finally, Flock has done something more than develop a social browser. It has developed a community which is the foundation and basis of any social network. Their team and evangelists are very involved, receptive and responsive to the collaboration from the user community. While there are millions of Firefox users, the community is still disparate.

From what I have seen so far, there is nothing very compelling about The Coop over the capabilities already established in Flock. Flock 1.0 will be released this year…CEO Shawn Hardin is going to make that happen.

I love reading TechCrunch, but it certainly would be nice if TC would have contacted Flock for comment on this post seeing as it has some tremendous implications to their operation. And if TC did seek comment with no success, that should have been stated in the post as well.

I’m proud to be a Flockstar and having had the opportunity to collaborate with such talented people on developing a best-in-class social browser.

Flock’s CEO Shawn Hardin responds to this post:
http://www.flock.com/node/9353

However, this is a compelling idea considering the number of networks out there; there are a number of solutions that aggregate ones various network profiles. Some are web-apps, some are browser add-ons, extenstions, plug-ins, etc, and some are stand alone (most of them are mentioned in the comments above. There is definitely a use-case here.

I am a long-time firefox user, but I obviously have no use for this at all. Please tell me where it was stated that this would become part of the firefox core. I just haven’t seen that stated anywhere. Proof?

It will be an add-on, guaranteed!
Jumping to conclusions about how this will be implemented can only be valuable to those who have something to lose from this new component for the firefox browser.