Peter Naulls has announced that he is "making excellent progress" on his Firefox port, and despite it not actually running yet, is asking users to contribute financially to the development work.Firefox is a very popular open source and powerful web browser, available on various mainstream platforms. The browser, sprung from the Mozilla project, has received praise from the media for bring fun and ease of use back to web surfing. Peter hopes to port Firefox to RISC OS, and use the development work to help pave the way for further larger software ports - such as Gnumeric and Kaffe. He also believes that userbase favourite Netsurf is better as a fast lightweight browser, compared to the feature rich Firefox.
Very much like the approach MW Software took in the funding Gimp-Print, Peter's now asking for users to pledge cash up front and pay when a beta version of the Firefox port is available. He's asking for 25 or 50 quid per person, which includes a subscription to the Unix Porting Project. Peter argues that the size of the RISC OS platform means that developers such as himself must approach users for money before work can begin: as evidenced by MW Software and RISCOS Ltd.
"The time I have put in has been significant, and although I don't regret the decisions I made, it has certainly also considerably compromised me financially by not being able to take up more fiscally rewarding work," said Peter in his statement.
"The contributions to the UPP have been helpful and in many cases very generous, but ultimately, given the small number, sadly rather modest. The bottom line is that very shortly, it will become untenable for me to continue to spend significant time on this project because I simply will not be able to afford to do so."
This is, of course, not the first time Peter has asked for money from the platform. Around September 2002, he first kicked up a fuss and announced his intentions to port Konqueror or some other open source browser to RISC OS. Since then, he has ported simple but graphical web browser Dillo to the platform.
Links
riscos.info website - see Firefox pledge announcement for more details, payment, etc. Screenshots promised soon
Peter Naulls is a drobe.co.uk writer.