[Optimoz] Mouse Gestures extension moves, Optimoz Project closes

[Jens Bannmann]

Abstract: the Optimoz Project is closed, but the Mouse Gestures
extension is continued separately at www.mousegestures.org

When I joined Mouse Gestures nearly four years ago, Andy Edmonds was
leading the Optimoz Project, and the sole developer. At the end of 2004,
Andy left project leadership to me, as his then-new employer did not
allow him to contribute to open source projects. Since then, Mouse
Gestures became widely popular across the world - addons.mozilla.org
currently counts over two million downloads total, and 13000 per week.

However, the project failed to attract new developers who contribute
regularly - the single exception being Jochen. But two members cannot be 
called a project, and the last year proved that it just does not work. 
So while the Mouse Gestures extension's success exceeded all 
expectations, the Optimoz Project failed. Thus, Jochen and I decided to
finally be honest about things and close the project.

But this is not about death, it's about rebirth:

At the same time, Mouse Gestures is continued, now officially being an 
extension with a single developer. The hope is that without the added 
clutter of project management, communication and coordination with me, 
Jochen can move forward the extension better. At the same time, the 
extension is cleaned up under the hood and in terms of rarely-used features.

What changes:
- The name changes to "Mouse Gestures Redox" (no Optimoz anymore)
- New web site at http://www.mousegestures.org/
- No BugZilla anymore
- Mailing list will be replaced by a forum
- The idea of a "project" or a "team" is abandoned, though contributors
   are of course as welcome as ever
- Support for SeaMonkey 1.x and ChatZilla is dropped

What does not change:
- The extension ID; existing users will be upgraded to the new version.
- Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey (2.0+) support.
- Localizations. Jochen continues to work with the current localizers.
- Gesture Exchange is here to stay.

This will be a gradual transition. I will keep the mailing list open for 
a few weeks if anyone wants to post questions, good wishes or thanks. 
The Optimoz website will link to the new site for a while, until 
mousegestures.org's search engine rankings are high enough ;-)

Lastly, about me: my own involvement in Mouse Gestures will from now on 
be that of a user - at least for the time being. I'm pretty happy with 
the direction Jochen went and continues to go with the code, and am 
confident that all this is a good decision for Mouse Gestures. I hope 
you agree.

Finally, I want to thank you all for believing in and sticking to Mouse 
Gestures! It's been very rewarding for me to build something that is 
part of so many people's online experience.

Best regards,
Jens

P.S.: Just to keep things clear: there was no quarrel between me and 
Jochen, this have never been personal issues here - just the agreement 
that something needed to change for Mouse Gestures to survive.