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Barksdale has elected to return 300,000 shares granted to him in Netscape stock options. The most amazing part is that he did this on a day that the stock went up 6 points, on speculations of Netscape being bought-out by Sun. Realizing that Barksdale is pretty wealthy, this is still a pretty cool thing to do.

Marc Andressen, cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation, gave the keynote speech at C|Net's Web.Builder conference today. His speech focused on the future success of open source software, specifically Linux, Apache, and Mozilla. Real Audio is available.

Zach Beane writes "Macromedia has made the Flash specification publicly available." Good-let's hope we continue to see more of this, and that the release of Communicator by Netscape was only the first step by companies of this sort.

The purchase of Firefly by Microsoft may cause some major problems for Netscape. Firefly was in midst of developing a privacy component for Netscape's eCommerce server, something on which Netscape was wagering a large portion of their future revenue on.

Tim Newsome writes "Communicator 4.05 for Linux is out. Grab it from one of Netscape's FTP sites. Major things I noticed it that all the frame stuff (cut 'n paste, keyboard scrolling) works again." Hooray! Those bugs were driving me insane.

Mark Harrison writes "Jim Barksdale and Marc Andreesen both have posted columns on home.netscape.com reagarding the source code release. Barksdale's column is especially interesting. He is a pretty sharp suit. " Read Bark's Comments and Marc's Comments "

Mark Harrison writes "Jim Barksdale and Marc Andreesen both have posted columns on home.netscape.com reagarding the source code release. Barksdale's column is especially interesting. He is a pretty sharp suit. " Read Bark's Comments and Marc's Comments "

Jamie Zawinksi wrote in to tell me to tell everyone to lay off Mozilla.org and try one of the many mirrors- the huge demand has crippled the machine. Hit the link below to get a decent list of com and edu mirrors. Update:Couple of neato things, A screenshot of NS5 was sent in by Christopher Blizzard, and an insider who requested anonymity sent us a picture from this mornings big event, wrote "The main three people in this picture are Jim Barksdale, Jamie, and Tara Hernandez. Tara is manager of the build team. Just to the left of JimB is Jim Roskind, who led the Java-ectomy." Thanks guys.

ftp://odin.appliedtheory.com/pub/mirrors/mozilla/

http://www.gbnet.net/public/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.landfield.com/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.epix.net/pub/mozilla/

ftp://netscape.primehost.com/pub/ftp.mozilla.org/

ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/packages/www/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.muc.muohio.edu/pub/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.bogalusa.com/mozilla/

ftp://sod.off.net:211/pub/mozilla/

ftp://mirrors.javanet.net/pub/mirrors/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/net/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.cache-world.com/mirror/mozilla.org/

ftp://ftp.dqc.org/pub/

ftp://powermike.com/powermike.com/pub/ftp.mozilla.org

ftp://ftp.tos.net/pub/ftp.mozilla.org/

ftp://pfaffben.user.msu.edu/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.shuttle.org/mozilla/

ftp://mirror.neosoft.com/pub/mozilla/

http://www.us.inside.net/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.cise.ufl.edu/pub/mozilla/

http://sunsite.utk.edu/ftp/netscape-source/

ftp://mirror.tummy.com/pub/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.one.net/pub/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.mindwell.com/pub/mirrors/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.ntr.net/pub/mozilla/

ftp://ftp-netscape.connectnet.com/pub/netscape/source/

ftp://mozilla.meer.net/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.inetdev.org/mirrors/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.yggdrasil.com/mirrors/site/ftp.mozilla.org/pub/

ftp://mozilla.savages.com/

ftp://mirrors.xmission.com/mozilla/

ftp://ftp.dsnet.net/pub/

Jamie Zawinski of about:jwz fame writes "Hey, hype my party! Anyone who cares about open source is invited, and I'm sure that includes all Slashdot readers. Flyer, FAQ Read the FAQ. It's, uh, funny. " Join in the fun of celebrating one of the most important events in modern computing.

Allan J. Heim writes "I just picked up the March issue of Westech's High Technology Careers magazine (http://www.hightechcareers.com/), a free jobs magazine published a few times a year. On the cover was an article entitled "Is Learning UNIX Worth the Time?" here's the online version."

Raju Tavadia wrote in to give us this link and this one to a pair of articles about the Palm III- with pictures of the beast.

Hans Cathcart wrote in to correct me on James Nicolson's comments yesterday about the 3com/Pilot/Linux port. Apparently The Linux/microcontroller Project is still doing the port, so I'm not sure what 3com's connection was in all this. The huge response that the article recieved on Slashdot is something that high ranking people at 3com should see. Geek appeal sold a lot of Pilots- Linux will sell even more. They should do everything they can to support this project (read:Big cash donations to TLMP).

James Nicolson wrote in to tell us that at last nights SVLUG meeting, a 3com rep announced they would be porting Linux to the Pilot, and gave Linus a free Pilot. This is definately a great announcement- with the PIII coming down the pipe, every serious Linux nerd will bite on this. Pilot's are inexpensive and cool, and with Linux on them, they'll be indispensable.

Allright guys, this could be complete fiction, but I'm going to share it because I think it's an interesting idea. Lunglet wrote in to say "Unconfirmed rumours from within Intel are that Andy Grove has been meeting with Netscape Communications officials discussing nothing other than a buy-out by Intel.". I have absolutely no reason to think this rumor has any truth to it, but it is still an interesting thought. 6mos ago I would have seen this as a great idea (Intel could gain some ground on the NC front with Netscape at its side. As it sits, Intel loses a lot if NCs catch on). Anyway, I await everyone's thoughts on this.

Netscape has opened up Mozzila.org for dealing with the soon to be available source code to their browser. It's about time Mozilla (this link will only work under netscape) resurfaced- he's been missed for a long time. Thanks to Mike T for sending us This link where you can read about the site, and the dedicated Team that Netscape has on the job. Netscape is doing a great job so far and deserve congratulations. There will be growing pains for everyone in the next few months, but it'll be so worth it in another year!

Amid reports of intense competition and money losses, Netscape is reportedly speaking with several other companies about buying part or all of the company. While no deal is right around the corner, the company is speaking with Sun, IBM, AOL and Oracle, amongst others.

Taneli Leppä dropped me a note to say that Netscape has released a FAQ for people interested in developing the source code of Navigator.

Taneli Leppä dropped me a note to say that Netscape has released a FAQ for people interested in developing the source code of Navigator.

kossico told us that in the aftermath of Netscape's big news, News.com has a special feature about Free Software. Features RealAudio for RMS and more juicy Netscape tidbits.

Another area where Microsoft has been throwing its weight around is streaming net content. Its NetMeeting and NetShow apps are direct competition with RealAudio's main products. Streaming data, along with Push represents some of the biggest buzzwords that are going to affect the future of the net, and RealAudio is taking a step towards doing to Right Thing(tm) by opening up a programmers API to the internal organs of their software. This is a nice step in the right direction, but how about following Netscape's lead and releasing the source code under some form of the GPL?

Netscape was the second major company (after Sun) to go crazy with Java. According to this story though they are now one of the first to back out. Escalating development costs and the huge number of platforms are the reasons. The real question is now what the Free Software guys are going to do about it. If Java is more than a web widget maker, then it will be back.

This is the first of hopefully many Slashdot.org Editorials. In addition to just reporting the news, the Slashdot Team really wishes to try to put out new ideas, or share other information that our readers may find helpful, interesting, or entertaining.

We're standing at an amazing crossroad here. The Free Software Foundation, and especially the Linux OS have gained amazing ground. The mainstream press (eg the ZiffDavis marketing monopoly) actually now regularly acknowledge Linux along side MacOS and Windows as being a "Real" Operating system.

And then there is the browser world, where the race was once one horse, then hundreds, and now 2. Microsoft and Netscape have been battling it out for some time now, and Netscape's once unstoppable 70% market share has begun crumbling.

Meanwhile the Free Software world is facing a battle of its own. The Commercial browser world has been reduced to the big ones, but the free world is producing Mneumonic, Gzilla, and various other smaller projects. Many talented programmers slave away on these products, but each day, Microsoft gains ground.

Add the final piece of data to the mix:Netscape is losing money as well as browser market share. What's a company to do? Maybe the solution is simple:GPL Netscape's Source Code.

So now that you've stopped laughing, let's talk about this seriously for a moment. Let's look at why Netscape should seriously consider this:

Talented programmers from around the world would actively improve Netscape's browser. The Free Software Movement has proven that if some control is enforced at the center (eg Linus) programs can develop communally. Netscape would not have to pay most of the development cost of their software. Coordination, and key programmers would be essential, but minor once coders around the world join in.

Netscape needs browser dominance to fuel its server market, and to remain synonymous with the Internet. If current trends continue, MS will = the Internet in another year.

Netscape is losing money on the browser market. They need to release their browser for free to compete with Microsoft anyway.

Source code would allow compilation on other systems- say a Pentium optimized version, or whatever other optimizations become available for platform X.

Excellent Publicity generated by such an original move would earn Netscape respect from the Free Software junkies who often have somewhat negative feelings towards Netscape. These Free Software Junkies are gaining control of much of the world's IS departments, and Netscape's good name will get them places in these corporate worlds.

So that's all well and good for Netscape, but what about the rest of us. Netscape has taken a lot of heat for its gapping shortcomings. In particular its bloated size and slow performance. Why would the Free Software World want to take on this project?

GPL means we would have a state of the art free browser.

Netscape could be ported to GTK or Qt for faster performance and lower memory requirements than Motif.

Various web browser efforts could focus on a single project (which could have many faces) which already has so many of the features they need. Instead of these projects dividing the effort, they could unify.

The superior programming talents of the world's programmers would make Netscape the superior browser, which would win over converts back from Microsoft even on Wintel boxes where MS is gaining support.

New browsers derived from Netscape for more specific tasks could share things like an HTML rendering engine for commonality.

Now I realize that there are problems. Large parts of Netscape's code aren't really Netscape's to give away. The "about:" screen of Netscape Communicator lists 12 companies besides Netscape including Apple, Macromedia, Symantec and many others. Perhaps these modules are removed. Perhaps these modules could also GPLd. Netscape does need to maintain the primary code base, and finding someone with the charisma of Linus to steerhead the development of code from hundreds of people will me a challange. Then there are problems with large portions of the Free Software world disliking Netscape. I really hope this could change, especially if they were given the opportunity to maintain it.

I really think this could be the answer to a lot of problems. With the power of an Internet full of programmers, even Microsoft's Billions of R&D dollars would be threatened. And we would be guaranteed a real choice even if IE4 becomes the standard on Windows boxes.

What do you think?

by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
malda@slashdot.org

Well the doomsayers are out preaching that Netscape may be dying. They apparently lost millions of dollars in Q4, and according to this article at inforworld they may be backing down out of the Browser market, and focus more on the commercial side. Thanks to Amos Shapira for that one. The issue may be with the death of Netscape, where do we turn? Opera? Mneomonic? Gzilla? It may get interesting.

Perhaps the solution to Netscape's problem is more obvious then they may realize. If they GPLd their code and gave it out to the world, we would have a slew of powerful browsers developed by the same programmers that have brought us all those other great GPL apps. That would jump start the free browser universe and maybe people would focus on a single browser instead of dividing their time amongst so many other free browser projects. And since it is free, people may choose it instead of MS. Just a thought...

Netscape is expected to report a large q4 loss, in the range of 80 million or so. Many analysts had expected Netscape to actually clear a profit from q4, with some estimates as high as 14 cents per share. Does this spell for more troubled times ahead?

Probably not. Netscape says that most of the loss comes from a series of one-time charges, and is not indicative of a growing problem within the preimer browser company. However, with its' shrinking grasp on the browser market, it would seem that perhaps Marc isn't sleeping quite as well.