The roads I take...

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 52/2009 (December 21 - 27, 2009):

• Websites:
  Had forgotten to upload 2.0 page when releasing 2.0.1 but corrected that now.
• Various Discussions:
  Windows 2.0.1 freeze when entering addresses (related to OE contacts), Serbian L10n, external linkage for mailnews, etc.

Most of that week I spent at home relaxing, celebrating Christmas and playing some games with my parents. This week I'm starting a bit to come back, but celebrating the New Year will probably take away some more of my time. I hope everyone else is also refilling their batteries and coming back to full power in 2010!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 51/2009 (December 14 - 20, 2009):

• Releases:
  Released SeaMonkey 2.0.1, updating security and stability compared to 2.0 final, as well as fixing a number of other glitches found in the previous final release.
  As a side note, we know that caused lots of users to experience automated update the first time ever and leaves a number of them more or less excited!
• Build Machines:
  My patches for the buildbotcustom breakage and the checkout timeouts got reviews and were checked in.
  I also could get reviews for freezing branch extensions so that we don't inadvertently take string changes on the branch any more, which I checked in together with pulling ChatZilla from Mercurial on the branch.
  This made us not need local patching on the buildmaster any more, we're now finally running an unpatched tip of buildbotcustom there.
  After clobbering the dist/ directory on build machines, we saw some Windows failures that could be resolved with a full objdir clobber.
  At the weekend, we had problems with a build machine that only Mozilla System Operations could fix, I filed a bug for that.
• Metrics and Bug Radars:
  I worked myself through some numbers on the release bug radars that should not be, like any unfixed blocking bugs or requests on shipped releases, or similar things with approvals, or bugs targeted at shipped milestones. I could clear out most of those, or request them to be cleared, and one is a blocker that got reopened.
  I also did some work on improving how we receive data about daily downloads and active users from the Mozilla metrics team and how we store them and create reports. I got some preliminary views of the data done, but need to do more work on all this before making those reports fully accessible to the public.
  For now, I can tell you that we have almost 500,000 manually triggered downloads of SeaMonkey 2.0 (significantly more than any other version in 2009), peaking at almost 30,000 per day on October 28, and 1.1.x downloads dropping to <4% of the daily total since that day. Active Daily Users ("ADU") on 2.x have risen to over 50,000 as of December 12th (which is the last day we currently have data from), over 97% of those on stable releases, 550-650 on nightlies (150-200 of those on 2.1a1pre).
  More data will come in the following weeks, once I come around to work on the presentation a bit more.
• Various Discussions:
  Windows 2.0.1 freeze when entering addresses (related to OE contacts), Lightning beta nearing, interview for article on Asa's non-Google recommendation, 1.9.1.7 fast-cycle release, Serbian L10n, continued SeaMonkey 2.0 feedback and support group bashing, add-on support and compatibility and ways of improving that, Mozilla domain names (.com/.org), possible changes in Mozilla roadmap, Manifesto and privacy, etc.

It's good to be back into doing actual work after the vacation, but I also noticed that Christmas neared way faster than expected during working backlog and trying to stay relaxed - I've not even drunk any cup of Punch this winter even though our Christmas markets are so famous for all kinds of variations of that stuff (as well as "Glühwein" and "Glühmost", which are wine- or cider-based hot drinks). At least I could complete my collection of presents today...

With that, I wish y'all who celebrate it a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays if you have some, and all others a good time this week - I'll mostly step back from work and spend some time with my parents, grandparents, brother and probably his future wife, possibly also some friends of the family.

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 50/2009 (December 7 - 13, 2009):

• Releases:
  continued preparing SeaMonkey 2.0.1, an update of security and stability compared to 2.0 final, as well as of a number of other glitches found in the previous final release.
• Build Machines:
  Updated the buildbot environment on our master and all slaves to be current code again after 2.0.1 felt safe to not need more build work. This needed some downtime and tree closure, but it led to having our re-imaged Mac mini join the pool and give us some of the much-needed additional build power on the slowest-to-build platform.
  I found one new bug in buildbotcustom for which I had to find and manually apply a patch for the moment, and I filed a bug for the timeout issue for which I had manually applied a patch for some time already. With that, and a better solution for the branch extensions issue, I could make us be on target again to run an unpatched tip of buildbotcustom - for the moment, I needed the three patches applied manually though.
  I finally did/proposed the newer, better patch for the latter issue later in the same week as well.
• Mozilla Website Tools:
  On the way to a SeaMonkey 2.0.1 release, I realized was pointed to the fact that I should be able to add version info to the crash-stats site myself, and filed a bug to get access.
  When I finally updated my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes to 2.0 versions on AMO, I realized that there's a bogus L10n check for themes on add-on upload and filed that.
• Testday:
  The Mozilla people held a SeaMonkey 2.0 Testday on Friday, which I participated in with supporting people and asking for a few test tasks. When I got confirmed in the beginning of that day that updates from 2.0 to 2.0.1 didn't work on the "beta" channel, I looked for the reason, finally found the error on the update server and corrected it. Then we got that version smoketested, some litmus test descriptions corrected (thanks to Serge, who is now leading QA efforts), and some bugs filed, esp. on how to further improve our suite.
  Overall, a very successful day, with tonymec, Milos, and ashuges doing some good testing and bug filing, and ashuges teaming up with aakash to lead the testday - thanks to all those and Serge for making this a successful event!
• Various Discussions:
  Thunderbird 3.0 release, 1.9.1.6 security advisories, Lightning support, etc.

I won't give much additional comment to that week, some good stuff happened and I could shorten my backlogs from vacation and get to some actual new work - but I somehow didn't come around to post this update about last week for almost the whole of this week, so I'll leave it stand as it is - and hope the next update for the actual current week will come around faster

(I know I'm very late for a Weekly Status Update, I still need to write up the one for last week, hope to come to it soon.)

I wanted to write this post on the day of the actual anniversary, but I got caught in a few other things... In any case, On December 17th, 1999, which happens to be just two days more than 10 years today, I wrote a small, innocent newsgroup message:


And I got an instant reply from the back-then L10n coordinator at Netscape/Mozilla, containing among other things those two sentences:


That was "fatal" in the sense that it pointed to my fate in the upcoming years. What has started with trying what that technology could do was turning into a major mission.
In the hours or days before, I had (out of interest what new things would come out of my beloved Netscape side of the "browser wars") downloaded a new milestone version of this "Mozilla" development software, whose downloadable test binaries were provided under the "project Seamonkey". I was intrigued by the open philosophy but also the technology, as it looked like I would understand those UI files in the "chrome" directory, and they were even easier than the Visual Basic stuff I knew! Among other things like playing with the CSS and what I could screw there (birth of the LCARStrek theme), I tried if replacing the strings in those *.dtd files would really have an influence on the screen by putting German words instead of English ones in there - and it worked! I tried a few more things, read up on all kinds of info about this L10n effort with DTD files, and decided I could help this open-minded project by contributing to the German localization.
And after that reply from Tao, I was suddenly leading the German efforts (note that he's talking of "THE German translation contributor") and saw myself in the mission of providing a full translation of that early development piece of software.

10 years later, I can't believe how long it's been, where it has led to and what a fun ride it turned out to be. I've seen lots of things here with Mozilla in those years, I've got to know a huge number of very bright and incredibly cool people in all parts of the project, and I lived with it through seeing Netscape slowly go down, being an enthusiastic player on the sidelines of the game the Internet world played, up to the rise of Firefox, its incredible success, contributing to the installation of a new Mozilla Foundation Executive Director, and the funding and stabilization of the SeaMonkey project, and I hope I'll still have many more years to be with that project, do something for the greater world and our community, leave my footprints here and there, and above all, have fun working with all those cool people we have in the Mozilla community.

I would have never imagined that this small newsgroup message would change my life in such a large way, but 10 years later I couldn't be happier about actually having taken that step and get this ball rolling by offering my help.

I encourage everyone to not think twice in similar situations and try to help a cool project like Mozilla if they have the chance to - the rewards are much higher than the effort you invest in it!

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 49/2009 (November 30 - December 6, 2009):

• Releases:
  Freshly being back from vacation, I prepared SeaMonkey 2.0.1 this week. This is mostly a security and stability update to the 2.0 release, but also fixes a number of other glitches in that release.
  The branch nightlies now report as SeaMonkey 2.0.2pre.
• Build Machines:
  I updated the SeaMonkey build configuration for a change in how test results are reported. That made browser-chrome tests be reported to the tinderbox view correctly again.
  I filed a bug for further updating the configuration to be on top of current code again, but I wanted to have 2.0.1 out of the way for that, as I expect some redness and possibly also some work I need to do on the release configurations. Probably I will look into this on the upcoming weekend if it looks good that we can release 2.0.1 as it is right now.
  Those further updates will also be needed to fully get the re-imaged mini into the build/test pool after I got everything else finished up on that machine in this last week.
• SeaMonkey L10n:
  For 2.0.1, we can add Italian as a new available language.
  Japanese is almost ready, but still fails to build correctly due to ChatZilla string differences.
  The first build of 2.0.1 had issues as Spanish (Spain) had ChatZilla string changes that we can't take in 2.0.x and failed to build. Due to the swift reaction of Ricardo, our localizer for that language, we has a very good turnaround time to be able to do a second build where all locales built correctly.
• Various Discussions:
  SeaMonkey 2.0 feedback - download manager, form management and other things, upcoming SeaMonkey test day, Thunderbird 3.0 getting ready for release, code signing, extension updates and 2.0.x series, commit access policy, etc.

I spent a lot of time this week working the backlogs of bugmails, normal emails (not counting anything related to support, those always get treated as low priority here), and newsgroups, as well as skimming over planet entries from the three weeks when I was gone, but I also could get started on some good work items. I'm approaching most things a bit more relaxed right now though, and I'll try to continue that habit.

Oh, and as a sidenote, the 2.0 versions of my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes are now online on the SeaMonkey add-ons website as well as on my personal themes page.