GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

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GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-28, 15:16

GRE is a bust

Although the Goanna Runtime Environment™ is in its concept a good idea, the implementation of it is a bust due to primarily the unnecessary build system changes that were not properly tested in terms of how they would impact application performance, operation and stability.
At the risk of being accused of "bashing" again by Tobin in his new-found circle of "friends", the truth is that this was primarily his plan and work, and driven by the desire to make the tree as opaque as possible to people who were still on UXP and did not have a commit history to draw from to follow location changes. Alongside that, a truncated repository with no history would complete his plan to obfuscate, primarily to thwart what he considered "enemies" in some kind of political conflict -- a concept I regularly told him to abandon and to stop waging war. I wasn't even aware that he had, apparently, put pretty much every project and fork that was not "us" on his infamous "wall of shame" while there were no good reasons to do so, and that just won't do, and is unacceptable.

While I still absolutely disagree with flaunting Open Source licensing terms, and will continue to defend my branding as a mark of quality assurance (which will likely continue to remain a point of conflict on operating systems where, although possible, we aren't allowed to use known-good in-tree libs), this kind of tunnel vision on his behalf has made it clear that a lot of his recent contributions as well as the work done in terms of re-shaping the platform services are, ultimately, moot as well as a liability. A project of this scope and complexity needs big picture approaches, not tunnel vision. There is also considerable doubt about the integrity of committed work in the period since our internal conflict happened at the end of last year.

So what will we do now?

Even though I really wanted to avoid parallel development which I've already done way too much of in this project, what needs to be done will ask for more of it.
The best way forward will be to go back to UXP, incorporate all the development advancements that are sane and trusted from GRE, and work on truly developing in the spirit of broad applicability and compatibility. I've already contacted the White Star developer to ask about collaboration and his adoption of UXP, and he expressed that he never really wanted the split, and we could find a way forward with joint efforts to support Mac as well as Windows and Linux in a more official capacity.
This will mean a lot of wasted work from all involved over the past months, but I think it's better to discard a few months of work than to toss the entire future of the project to the wind out of some sense of "exclusivity" that nobody really asked for (except maybe one...).

If Tobin decides to continue working on Mozilla code, which he seems to be flip-flopping on day by day, he's welcome to use the GRE code "he worked so hard for" and his "phobos" proprietary site code to have his own independent project; just not the name or trademarks. I will keep everything open from this point forward, no matter what may. Who knows, maybe one day in the future he'll even release Borealis on it and prove that the code is viable after all.

The repositories are in a bit of disarray at the moment but I will work on cleaning that up after making sure our current 29.4.* versions are as good as they are going to be (i.e. fixing the major reported issue in 29.4.5 asap). To clearly mark things we'll also be abandoning the v30 major version number for future releases which will be v31 and up, when they are done. Of course, we'll be keeping up with security issues for as long as it takes to re-unify the XUL platform.

If anything isn't clear, feel free to discuss below -- I'll be happy to amend this post with any pertinent questions to keep things easy to read and a compact write-up.

As a clarification, in case there are conflicting publications about what is and is not part of this project, here's a run-down of the various domains:
  • *.palemoon.org - under our control and once again available to the public
  • *.basilisk-browser.org - under our control, the browser is discontinued, but I'm still open to offers to take over the project if someone wants to continue an Australis-class browser on UXP. I just don't have the capacity to keep developing a second browser that is essentially the same as Pale Moon in operation but with a UI I don't like.
  • thereisonlyxul.org - operated by Tobin where he has published increasingly controversial information about XUL applications and forks.
  • fossamail.org - previously in use by me to publish the FossaMail mail client. The domain was claimed by Tobin after I let it lapse after the client was discontinued, and currently under his control.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Pause » 2022-03-28, 17:35

I had the understanding that "GRE" was simply the name you wanted to transition to for the platform due to the potential legal risks in continuing to use "XUL" in the original name.

I also don't recall any mention in IRC of any history being obfuscated, just the source being released as archives (without the git history) for a while due to the abuse (both license and personal) that was getting thrown about, with it being clear that the repo would be public again once enough time had passed for things to calm down.

In all honesty, it does come across to me as Tobin being used as a scapegoat for things you may have changed your mind on or not want to admit to being a part of/due to yourself (particularly given how broken 30 was for a lot of people).

I'm not saying either of you are perfect, as nobody is, just that it's the way it comes across as to me in what has happened/been announced in the short time since the split.

Of course, the only people who truly know for sure what happened fully are the two of you (and anyone else who happened to be there too, if any), but I'm still hopeful that the split was a series of misunderstandings, with no actual malice actually intended on either side (but perhaps assumed as such on the opposite side) that led to where we are at right now.

Perhaps in time it will turn out to have been a blessing in disguise, despite the way it came about, due to allowing each person to put their full focus on what they believe to be the best route forward for themselves.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Potkeny » 2022-03-28, 18:11

Moonchild wrote:
2022-03-28, 15:16
Of course, we'll be keeping up with security issues for as long as it takes to re-unify the XUL platform.
Does this mean that those of us who run 30.0.1 without noticeable problems should start to think about going back to v29 in the near future for security updates/etc.?

Didn't want to do that, with all my addons/themes working and v30 being mostly fine (I think I feel the cache problem on certain sites, luckily not too bad for me), but it sounds like I should not try to wait until v31.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-28, 20:07

Pause wrote:
2022-03-28, 17:35
I also don't recall any mention in IRC of any history being obfuscated
Of course it wasn't mentioned, because the plan was to throw up a large barrier for the people who caused the abuse to do so again in the future and effectively cut them off from future development, and to drop that on them with the release to make it a potentially very discouraging situation. While I agreed with the desire to not give the abusers any more quarter than I had to, this was still all Tobin's plan and execution, and I did question the extent to which he went doing all that.
Pause wrote:
2022-03-28, 17:35
In all honesty, it does come across to me as Tobin being used as a scapegoat for things you may have changed your mind on or not want to admit to being a part of/due to yourself (particularly given how broken 30 was for a lot of people).
I'm sure Tobin has some marvellous story about it which he has been telling everyone on IRC how somehow I am to blame for everything. People who know me know I am the first to admit my own mistakes and do not use scapegoats. But you can make up your own mind, I guess, and believe whomever you want to believe.
Well, just look at the commit history in the repo I opened up with the history there. All the moving and obfuscation/renaming was done by Tobin, and not because I "ordered him to". In fact, it made things significantly more difficult for me to develop on because I had to constantly try and find where things had moved to, and porting of Mozilla sec patches became a headache, but I was willing to go along with it in most cases because the resulting structure did make a lot of sense with better categorization of parts of the source tree than where it traditionally was Mozilla-style.
The breakage of v30 was also not as severe as you might think and v30 is actually usable (and would be even more so if including the fix I'm making an out of bound release for on v29 tomorrow) barring the problems with extensions (which couldn't be solved with no working add-ons site! And phobos as it turned out being mostly proprietary and not MPL, I couldn't even run one for v30 myself) and the language packs being problematic as a result of moving front-end parts around and me making an honest mistake in the manifests that was quickly solved. And like any previous milestone with big source code changes there would always be teething problems. This was the case previously and would be the case this time as well. We all knew this; however with what was done I couldn't respond normally to user feedback and actually address it, hence the recall before too many people would be stuck on a broken setup.

I don't want this to become another "Tobin thread" though, so please just leave it at this. If you want to discuss this more then send me a PM, but don't become a relay for him, please. I ended communication for a reason.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-28, 20:15

Potkeny wrote:
2022-03-28, 18:11
Does this mean that those of us who run 30.0.1 without noticeable problems should start to think about going back to v29 in the near future for security updates/etc.?

Didn't want to do that, with all my addons/themes working and v30 being mostly fine (I think I feel the cache problem on certain sites, luckily not too bad for me), but it sounds like I should not try to wait until v31.
At this point I do recommend everyone on v30, problematic or not, to go back to v29.4.* -- it's not within our now even smaller team's capacity to maintain 29 and 30 and move forward to the future version. I can barely breathe as it is. V30.0.* will fall behind in security if you stay on it. of course you can still decide to stay on it but ultimately you'd just postpone work you need to do to replace any -fxguid extensions (who are likely also not going to be updated or fixed if they don't work properly) anyway...
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"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Pause » 2022-03-28, 21:17

I do think it makes more sense to be on GitHub than a self-hosted repo though, given the collaboration potential of users stumbling across it because of already being registered on there.

As well as due to the stories there's been in the past of projects having their self-hosted repos compromised and switching to GitHub, so they don't have to worry about having to handle that side of things and focus on the actual coding instead.

(Edited to add a missing word.)
Last edited by Pause on 2022-03-28, 21:37, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-28, 21:19

If Github wasn't Chrome-centric in its site code, we would still be there. That's the simple truth of it.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Nightbird » 2022-03-28, 21:38

When dbsoft (the White Star developer) will be unbanned ?
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Potkeny » 2022-03-28, 21:58

Moonchild wrote:
2022-03-28, 20:15
At this point I do recommend everyone on v30, problematic or not, to go back to v29.4.*
I understand, thank you.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by DjogaRo » 2022-03-28, 22:43

Moonchild wrote:
2022-03-28, 20:07
because the resulting structure did make a lot of sense with better categorization of parts of the source tree than where it traditionally was Mozilla-style.
Comprehensibility in a complex software project is priceless. Shouldn't you rather continue that path?

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-29, 01:23

DjogaRo wrote:
2022-03-28, 22:43
Comprehensibility in a complex software project is priceless. Shouldn't you rather continue that path?
Not at the expense of viability.
Perhaps later we'll revisit improving the tree's structure, but not with the breakneck speed it was attempted now with the fallout it had.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Giraffe » 2022-03-29, 08:21

I'd go back from 30 but is it possible without breaking things?
I've already updated a few extensions for 30, so I assume that these would stop working(?).
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by back2themoon » 2022-03-29, 10:36

It might work, it might break. You can try - depends on your profile.

Best way is to separately back up your bookmarks etc. and go back to v29.4.* with a clean profile. You will need to find the non-v30 versions of those updated extensions, but that shouldn't be difficult.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Moonchild » 2022-03-29, 12:37

Giraffe wrote:
2022-03-29, 08:21
I've already updated a few extensions for 30, so I assume that these would stop working(?).
You'll have to reinstall the non-fxguid versions for those. Since the add-ons site is available again that should be trivial.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by WiseWolf » 2022-03-29, 14:05

Moonchild wrote:
2022-03-28, 20:07
Pause wrote:
2022-03-28, 17:35
I also don't recall any mention in IRC of any history being obfuscated
I don't want this to become another "Tobin thread" though, so please just leave it at this. If you want to discuss this more then send me a PM, but don't become a relay for him, please. I ended communication for a reason.
Off-topic:
Agreed, its the wrong topic area for this anyhow

Hope your new version does better than the old one. I am curious to see where it will head, though!

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by athenian200 » 2022-03-29, 20:24

I can vouch for everything MC said above, I was there as well and saw the whole thing unfolding.

I had doubts about GRE from the beginning, and I secretly hoped MC would shoot the idea down before it ever got off the ground. I even expressed once that I was surprised he didn't push back on GRE more given that it clearly conflicted with his vision for the project, but didn't dare to say more than that. My first memory of it was having development effectively grind to a halt for about a month, with several in-progress issues being dropped on the ground because of the scramble to move over to a new repo and outside collaboration becoming impossible, and all the resources being directed toward this huge reorganization project that left me working on whatever C++ bits I wanted to work on pretty much alone in my own little silo while fighting muscle memory to deal with code being moved. I also had to jump through hoops to keep SunOS support from being totally broken, since the build system was changing in random ways. It usually turned out that Linux was having the same problems as SunOS, whenever that was actually tested (not very often). There was a huge lack of Unix testing in general, except what I did to keep SunOS building and prove it wasn't broken and unfixable. So I was constantly figuring out what had been done and compensating. The whole thing felt like a test of my dedication sometimes. I passed, and therefore GRE still builds on SunOS. I suspected the lack of beta testing combined with all the large changes would become a problem at some point, especially when there were months of delays, and unfortunately it did.

My personal hope is that we can change the tone of the project going forwards... that there can be more professionalism, politeness, and alliance-building. In other words, I hope that we can be more like Athens and less like Sparta.
"The Athenians, however, represent the unity of these opposites; in them, mind or spirit has emerged from the Theban subjectivity without losing itself in the Spartan objectivity of ethical life. With the Athenians, the rights of the State and of the individual found as perfect a union as was possible at all at the level of the Greek spirit." -- Hegel's philosophy of Mind

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by andyprough » 2022-03-30, 00:35

athenian200 wrote:
2022-03-29, 20:24
I had doubts about GRE from the beginning, and I secretly hoped MC would shoot the idea down before it ever got off the ground. I even expressed once that I was surprised he didn't push back on GRE more given that it clearly conflicted with his vision for the project, but didn't dare to say more than that.
Perhaps a bit more bold assertiveness is in order...

Reminds me of a funny comment about the aftermath of the French revolution, when speaking one's mind could result in literally losing one's head. Someone asked "what could be worse"? The answer - having two heads, and getting them both chopped off.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Trippynet » 2022-03-30, 19:05

Giraffe wrote:
2022-03-29, 08:21
I'd go back from 30 but is it possible without breaking things?
I've already updated a few extensions for 30, so I assume that these would stop working(?).
It worked for me. Backed up my profile, popped the latest 29.* on and everything worked apart from some of my addons. Grabbed the correct versions from the addons site and they burst back into life, complete with the previous settings they had.

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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by Giraffe » 2022-03-31, 07:30

Well, it seems to be OK. No add-ons marked as incompatible, but haven't tried all of them yet.
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Re: GRE is a bust, and here's why and what we'll do now.

Unread post by __NM64__ » 2022-04-01, 02:40

So if downgrading to 29.4.5 from 30.0.1 seems to "just work" on the surface of things, I don't suppose there's some sort of behind-the-scenes hidden profile corruption gremlins I should be wary of that may not make themselves apparent until later?

That being said, the only thing that has changed between now and my 29.4.4 backup is history and bookmarks and, last I was aware of, both are stored in the "places.sqlite" file. Since I actually use portable Pale Moon for various reasons, would it actually be a better idea if I simply restored my backup of portable 29.4.4 in its entirety and just replace the aforementioned places.sqlite file with the one from portable 30.0.1?

Actually this "copying over the places.sqlite file" was even my planned future migration path of moving from Pale Moon for Windows to Pale Moon for Linux, so general insight into whether this is even something that's a good idea at all would be appreciated.

(from my not-really-existent software-dev savvy-ness, it was my impression that.sqlite files are just a standard database format and therefore there shouldn't really be any compatibility issues even if one went all the way back to like Firefox 4, but maybe that's just my lack of savvy-ness showing itself)

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