There are many success stories like this in open source, but this is such a neat one, I have to call it out. It basically goes like this:
Webdev makes awesome app (I have seen it. It’s is truly awesome. For any app, really, but *especially* for a web app). But awesome app is not as awesome as it could be in places. Webdev investigates. Finds a bottleneck in Firefox. Files bug. Goes through the seven circles of hell (XPCOM). Submits a patch. Goes through several review iterations. Patch gets committed.
Bobby Holley tells the whole story in his blog post. It’s short and worth a read.
This contribution is a testament to open source and Mozilla’s open development style. I wish we had more contributions like this (duh), but you’re probably not surprised to hear that this is pretty rare. Sure, it has to do with the level of complexity of some of the code. But, there are tons of relatively easy-to-approach parts in Firefox.
So I ask, have you ever come across a bug in Firefox that you really wanted to fix but didn’t/couldn’t? If so, what stopped you and what could perhaps have helped you?
