The future of Seamonkey?

[frg]

> it already works but there is the very real possibility that SeaMonkey will also kill XUL.

The biggest problem ist that SeaMonkey might probably be killed too when XUL is killed. With the current manpower and funding porting e10s, webextensions and rewriting the interface might not be possible in time. Its possible to compile SeaMonkey on top of the PaleMoon tree I heard but I am not so sure they will be able to properly maintain a Gecko clone for long. Time will tell.

I am also sure no SeaMonkey dev wants to kill XUL but retaining it and still using Gecko/Servo or whatever at the backend is likely not possible.

I think that Mozilla will fold in the next 2 to 3 years if they continue on the current way to nowhere. My hope is that a third party will take over or create a fork which is not so hostile or indifferent when it comes to the comm-central apps. But might be wishful thinking.

On the bright side 2.46 will hopefully out soon. Candidate 9 full build for all platforms and supported languages is done and I think its the final one.

And remember. If it works for you consider to donate money via the SeaMonkey website or actively supporting SeaMonkey. If you have some developing skills you don't need to have a degree in rocket science to fix bugs. Doing one of these is the only thing that will probably keep SeaMonkey floating.
This also goes for bug reporting or triaging. I have seen some threads in the newsgroups with over a dozen posts where people complained about specific errors. But no bug report opened. At least two times I just opened one myself because the error did affect me too. But I have enough on my hands and won't do this for every nit encountered.

FRG

[Peter Creasey]

Thanks for all the good info!

I haven't knowingly added any extensions; thus, this issue would seem to not _directly_ impact me...or am I missing something!?!

[therube]

> I haven't knowingly added any extensions

As in you don't use extensions?
In that case, nothing relating to extensions should affect you.


(Is ChatZilla considered an "extension"? [It is one also.] So got to figure that ChatZilla would need to be converted to a "webextension" too, or it would cease, come FF 53 / SeaMonkey 50.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1296885
Seemingly "approved", so the ability for it to even to work should be available - at some point in the future.
But then there is that 'lil ol' thing in that someone actually has to do the actual legwork to rewrite cZ as a webextension.)

[Frank Lion]

Nils Maier explains clearly and eloquently

You're biased as the guy bangs on in a very lengthy and continually outraged mode....just as you always do. (incidentally, it is known as the 'Never mind the quality, feel the width' style which, originally, was a phrase used to persuade you that quantity is more important than quality.)

Trust me, that is not explaining anything 'clearly and eloquently'.

I haven't knowingly added any extensions; thus, this issue would seem to not _directly_ impact me...or am I missing something!?!

Yep, you're missing that if SM doesn't exist that it will _directly_ impact_you.

[Peter Creasey]

Frank, Nope, not missing that...which is why I used the adjective "directly".

[Frank Lion]

Frank, Nope, not missing that...which is why I used the adjective "directly".

Well, leaving aside that 'directly' is actually an adverb, I just figured you were being humorously self-evident in a 'They are going to shoot all people wearing hats - I don't wear a hat, will I be shot?' type way.

[Peter Creasey]

Frank, Good comeback...on both counts!

[patrickjdempsey]

Yup.... creeping closer to "turn off updates or die trying" day. Sigh. Too bad the other browser options out there are absolutely miserable to use, slow, and crashy on my ancient machines.

[tonymec]

SeaMonkey 2.46 is out at last, see http://seamonkey-project.org/

[Frank Lion]

SeaMonkey 2.46 is out at last, see http://seamonkey-project.org/

Yep, but that doesn't get us much closer to knowing the reply from the SM Council to this, does it? - viewtopic.php?p=14725019#p14725019

The clue to why I keep on mentioning this is in the thread title.

[isaacschemm]

AFAIK they have not made any decisions yet. I think it's too early to figure that out right now, since Thunderbird will be facing exactly the same problem eventually.
SeaMonkey can go with Thunderbird (if they decide to fork), or go with Pale Moon / Goanna, or see if anyone else forks Gecko between now and then.

Version 2.49 can be an ESR which would give them until March 2018 before security updates end.

[Frank Lion]

AFAIK they have not made any decisions yet...

Well, we already know that's not right, because they decided this, didn't they? -

Forking the Mozilla source tree is not an option. The dev team is too small and would not be able to even fix all upcoming security bugs in a forked Gecko engine.

viewtopic.php?p=14725019#p14725019

I'm just asking for some clarification on that decision.

[tonymec]

The way I understand this, it means that if and when Gecko drops XUL and Toolkit drops XPI, SeaMonkey will lose, at least, the Modern theme, ChatZilla, DOM Inspector, and the newly-added Lightning, plus the ability to be customized by other extensions and complete themes, and possibly even its whole MailNews component (I'm less sure about the latter). I call that a shot in the foot head but that's only me and I'm not an "authorized opinion". But OTOH my little finger tells me that even if officially "deprecated", too much hangs on these capabilities for them to actually get dropped in the near future, even by Firefox. In the far future, as (IIRC) Keynes said, we're all dead. So… just make your own opinions, mine is no more (and possibly far less) than an "educated guess".

[Frank Lion]

Thanks, Tony.

[therube]

too much hangs on these capabilities for them to actually get dropped in the near future, even by Firefox

Uh, really. You really expect FF (Mozilla) to change/delay?
Certainly they will not change. Delay, only because they'll realize they're fubared even more then they expected (think addon signing). But only until they "fix" things, so they can proceed to finish their demise.
(At least that's what my crystal ball says.)