Epiphany strategy vs. Firefox

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Apr 2, 2008, at 5:49 AM, Steve Bergman wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-02 at 23:16 +1300, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > However, the Epiphany team lacks programmers far more than it lacks 
> > ideas. :-)
>
> If this has already been discussed to death on this list, please feel
> free to ignore.  But that sounds like a serious problem.  What can be
> done about it?  What potential effect, if any, does the WebKit decision
> have upon this issue?  Should the project be recruiting PR people?  Or
> not?

I think if more people wrote, in more places, about small tasks that 
new Epiphany contributors could work on, that could help.

> Any chance of getting Epiphany included in the default install, or 
> even as default browser, in more Linux distros? (Fedora comes to mind. 
> Especially considering the WebKit move.  I wonder if Debian is tired 
> of maintaining IceWeasel?)

Speaking strictly for myself, and not for Canonical or the Ubuntu team:

I think there is a parallel between Firefox vs. Epiphany in Linux-based 
OSes now, and Internet Explorer vs. Safari on Mac OS X before 2005. In 
both cases, the operating system's default browser was supplied by a 
third party that was, understandably, more interested in making a 
browser for Windows. In both cases, this lack of attention showed in 
suboptimal performance, and a pretty but not-quite-right interface. But 
in both cases, the third party's brand name was reassuring for people 
using the OS.

For Linux-based OSes, that reassurance factor is large: Firefox on 
Windows is a gateway drug for Free Software, making it easier for 
people to switch to Firefox on Ubuntu (or Fedora, or Opensuse, etc) 
later. That's why I think Epiphany needs to be substantially *better* 
than Firefox, and have decent mindshare of its own, before it can 
dislodge Firefox as the default browser in any OS. (WebKit may help 
here, in that it may sometimes let Epiphany do things that Firefox 
can't.)

Some ways in which Epiphany could become obviously better than Firefox:
*   performance
*   aesthetics (including explanatory animations)
*   bookmark and history handling
*   Deskbar integration
*   NetworkManager integration
*   gnome-keyring integration
*   quick integration with any future platform coolness, such as
    Conduit.

> What have F-Spot and Tomboy done to gain the position of "The Golden 
> Ones" while Epiphany gets treated like a neglected step child?  Can 
> anything be gleaned from other projects which have successfully 
> claimed their fair share of the limelight?

F-Spot is noticably better than gthumb, and Tomboy is (reportedly) 
noticably better than Sticky Notes. Epiphany is not, yet, noticably 
better than Firefox.

> Epiphany has, of course, lived in the shadow of Firefox for a long 
> time.  But I've watched as the cracks have appeared and spread, and 
> today it's fairly obvious that distros are frustrated with 
> mozilla.com's policies and might be interested in making a break for 
> it.

People mutter and scowl about F-Spot and Tomboy using Mono, too -- but 
features, polish, and branding matter more.

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/