RIP Netscape
Netscape has been killed off. AOL has laid off the Mozilla (notice the new site) team and is in the process of dismantling Netscape.
Netscape has had its ups and downs. In its youth, it was the best, fastest, and most innovative browser of its time. It enjoyed a tremendous IPO early in the dot com boom. I can still remember buying Netscape 2.0 at CompUSA for $30 on 5 floppy discs. It was free to download, it was just too large for my 14.4kbps modem. It was worth the $30. Then, Internet Explorer was barely a browser. It had no features to compete with the be all end all browser that was Netscape.
As Microsoft started to realize the future of the Internet, they put a lot of time and money into Internet Explorer. They engineered Windows' Explorer file manager and Internet Explorer to be one in the same application. This as well as other marketing (must…be…objective………..) arrangements enabled Internet Explorer to become the number one browser and eventually capture an estimated unprecedented 90% of the market.
Later in its years Netscape the browser was was freely distributed as well as its source code. And so Mozilla.org, the open source project that invited non employees to download the source code, hack away at bugs or contribute new features, and submit their changes was created. Mozilla went on to become one of THE open source projects, and still is today. It is heralded as proof that open source can and will continue to generate and maintain good software.
Not all is lost though. Mozilla has been cast out as a non-profit organization. AOL kicked it out onto the street with a handful of developers and $2 million dollars. Sun Microsystems as well as other companies have pledged support for them and the project should go on as it was. But without the help and/or limitations of its corporate big brother.
Hopefully this is a good thing. Mozilla has a lot to prove now. They are on their own. Being one of the most familiar open source projects is a lot to bolster. But they can and will do it. Maybe even more comfortably now.
This decision made by AOL in no doubt was leveraged by the Microsoft Vs Netscape decision that led to a mound of cash cast towards AOL in exchange for certain liberties for Microsoft. One being that Internet Explorer would remain the browser used for AOL's client software. This indeed is a shame.
Its hard to believe that such a huge and classic piece of software is gone. If you were a fan of Netscape, don't forget that Mozilla is what was riding underneath it, and its gets better every day. I encourage you to download it, or Firebird. If you are on Mac Os X and haven't already checked out Camino than I suggest you do so.
Old and recent employees of the two projects are gathering here and leaving notes from their years working there.