I spend a fair chunk of time updating our platform between revs. (I just spent a fair amount of time fixing a shutdown problem that exists in the current Gecko embedding samples) I’d really rather be contributing to a more global solution than individually reinventing the wheel.

I’d like to discuss this in depth, but a hotel lobby in Denver isn’t the place…

Personally, I see it as a risk – if Firefox isn’t going to be on xulrunner, then it obviously isn’t committed to it (as a platform or as a base technology). If we do all the work to go to xulrunner (some of which will have a negative impact), is Firefox suddenly going to find something better and go in a different direction or just never use xulrunner itself which would make it kind of pointless to us (and a waste of time, especially when we’re doing so much catch-up already).

At the summit I was told that Firefox isn’t to far off xulrunner and was aiming to go to xulrunner – but I’ve not seen anything to confirm that. If that is the case, disregard my comments, but can someone actually do something about it to say, yes Firefox version x will be on xulrunner?

Firefox is a fantastic browser but why should we build RCP-application on top of XULRunner when Eclipse RCP already exists? Java-technologie is widespread in corporations and there are much more developers working with Java then with Javascript or XUL (not webapplications but business- and enterprise-applications)

Mozilla Foundation and Eclipse Foundation should team up and create a common RCP-platform.

It is hard for all of us to learn all those new technologies like Flex, Silverlight, Eclipse RCP and XULRunner.

The FOSS-communities should come together and create a common platform instead of the usual NIH (”my platform is the best… please use it and not the others”)

BTW will Mozilla ever change to a managed-code platfrom i.e. NET or Java (or the sucessor of Java?)?

Apps like Songbird want to do the same, but here’s the rub – they use a different XULRunner. There will be some work ahead before several different applications can truly share a XULRunner.

To me the biggest leap towards that promised land is obvious: MoCo’s marquee apps Firefox and Thunderbird should be delivered as XULRunner applications that run off a shared XULRunner.exe. As you say, it would be good for the ecosystem, great for the platform, and fantastic for other “powered by Mozilla” apps (”Got Firefox? Then you already have XULRunner, just download this small 3MB file to run a media player that works as well as Firefox.”).

‘To move “Mozilla”‘ I’ll file FF and TB bugs to make this so and assign them to Mr. Beltzner

Absolutely. But I still think it’s worth pointing put why XULRunner is of strategic importance to the Corporation. Any effort to turn it into a world-class development is going to require some level of buy-buyer from all concerned parties, after all.