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AOL Lays Off 50 Netscape Coders
xcable points out a CNET story which begins "America Online on Tuesday said it has laid off 50 employees involved in Web browser development at its Netscape subsidiary amid a reorganization of its Mozilla open-source browser team," and offers a reminder that "AOL recently made a deal with Microsoft to use IE in future AOL releases." This adds a bit more detail to yesterday's (updated) story about the establishment of the Mozilla foundation.
You've got a pink slip!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I read that at first as 5.0 Netscape coders...
Omnis amans amens
If Mozilla surpasses IE in the next couple years, do you think AOL will try to bail on Microsoft? This could get interesting. The litigation is over for now so the browser wars must begin again... as if they ever ended.
What the hell are all those guys doing there?
All the best,
--Bob
I'm amazed those people still had jobs. What were they doing, anyway?
Software Engineer, AOL/Netscape 1999-2003 : Contributed bloat and bugs to massive failed project. Managed to continue to get paid for years beyond useful function. Perfected art of staring at monitor and 'zoning out' while pretending to work.
Idiot!
These aren't web jockies, they are the developers of Netscape/Mozilla.
As long as Steve Case was there, AOL was never going to cozy up to MS. Now that he's gone, you'll probably see a lot more of this now that AOL has to run themselves as a profit making concern.
$2 mn. for 10 coders for the Mozilla project isn't much, after you consider other expenses. I think AOL is acting as I'd predicted some time back - quick death for Netscape, slow poison to Mozilla, and surrender to the IE devil...
But then, to expect better from a company that settled a lawsuit with MS (for the latter's guilty conduct, mind you) is a bit too far.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
They're not web coders. They develop the browser not web pages.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
The Register have an interesting take on this too here
Seriously, I thought AOL was going to be using Netscape as their browser, the whole point in buying them? How did they get back in bed with MS?
-m
http://www.invisik.com
Now stop whining and playing around with those Linux boxen, boot to Windows XP and connect up to the hive. We have to complete our assimilation of the Alpha quadrant.
MS were found guilty of sharp practice in bundling IE with Windows, but they won the war anyway. How does anyone (except MS and AOL) benefit from this? If the judges had had the guts to make MS strip IE out of Windows we could actually have a level playing field. After all, browsers don't take all that long to download, even on a modem. But then we always knew AOL were evil, didn't we?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Looks like AOL is trying to untie itself from Netscape and Mozilla as much as possible. By establishing and funding the Foundation, they continue to make the browser possible without tying themselves to it. The seeming hypocrisy of AOL using the IE browser (so they can stay on the Windows desktop) while developing Mozilla is now resolved.
Saddening, but understandable from a business perspective. Hopefully every one of those coders will be rehired by the Foundation so they can continue to do what they do best, with or without AOL's direct support.
I bet Microsoft's happy to see another competitor dying, though.
I heard how you just got screwed by AOL. Please call me next week; I think I may have some work that will interest you!
Signed,
Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute
P.S. Bring a raincoat.
And this really isn't meant to be a troll, I just wanna know...
Does anyone here actually use Netscape as their default browser?
If you do, why? Is it solely for political/moral/whatever reasons, or does it offer some technical feature that you have not found in another browser?
How many people here have Netscape as a browser on their computer NOT as a primary browser, and why did you install it? WHy is it not the primary browser?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
Can't say I like this news. Slashdot swings between "Microsoft aint all that bad" to "Micro$oft teh d3v|1".
:)
I'll always be unhappy so long as they are able to influence my freedom to use free software.
Besides all that though, I'll just keep using galeon and konqueror. Great browsers
since there is no more IE for Mac being made.
So are AOL's long-term lease on IE, and its buy-high-sell-low Netscape strategy precursors of further mergers (think MSN/AOL)?
Not only could it provide many more chances for opportunistic middle managers to use layoffs to make it look like they're Doing Something, but the thought of putting Time Warner's clout behind its longstanding efforts at being a multimedia content provider must make MS salivate. (MSNBC? Zzzz.)
Ok, maybe I am paranoid, but I have been called worse.
.NET down everone's throat, by integrating it into AOL's interface.
Looking at the deal with IE and AOL, plus the (somewhat) recent announcement that MS is no longer releasing stand alone versions of IE, could this be a movement towards a buy-out/merger/axis of evil with the ailing AOL?
My thought is that if Microsoft is no longer releasing stand-alone versions of IE, then they are going to have to tie AOL pretty close to MS in order for IE to work. And since it won't stand-alone, forget AOL/IE on Mac.
I realize that Time-Warner just merged with AOL, however - it hasn't led to much, and TW might be looking to dump AOL's like the cancerous growth it is. However, AOL would give MS a huge subscriber base for their upcoming products, and perhaps give them just the opportunity to finally cram
-Coach
"Never upset a goalie, getting hit with a blocker is an unpleasent experience - facemask or not." -Me
My condolences to the 50 coders, though.
I think the consensus is that they did it mostly to use as a bargaining chip to force concessions out of Microsoft.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
Letting them go was doing them a favor
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
... what this would mean for mozilla, there you go.
Free speech is getting expensive...
I'm certainly not surprised. Between Microsoft, the newly created Mozilla Foundation, and the overabundance of programmers at this point in the first place, this was bound to happen for this specific instance, and it'll happen again, and again, and again, until there are more jobs than programmers. Hopefully this next time, people will realise that flooding the workplace with one specialized labour will cause that labour pool to spill over, and not so many people will try to become programmers anymore.
I think that I'll change my major to English, or swing dancing...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Looks like AOL is just outsourcing browser development and saving a buck or two by not having to pay the salaries for in-house development. By outsourcing, they can also just stand by and see what happens and eventually pick the fruit by using whatever browser comes out on top.
I'm guessing there are some legal strings attached, but I wonder whether a fully AOL-capable version of Mozilla, distrbuted almost like the original AOL virus itself (in this case, I would, for example, bring over an install CD to help my AOL-using parents to move beyond IE... even better if they could get around AOL 7.0 or whatever they're using). Yes, they can use whatever browser they want, but how about an email client that works?
Is there a legal barrier in place to prevent this, especially from former (and whoafully under appreciated) employees ? Since AOL never followed through while they were there, I think the only real justice at this point would be to let loose better, cross-platform software for the AOL userbase out there. Who knows, maybe some linux users will make the switch to AOL...
As an aside, a few troll comments here and there have suggested that now IE can be the one true client to create web content for... I give such commentary little credence, but is the SCO action on IBM (et al.) and the AOL action on Mozilla just bad timing, or is the fact that Microsoft money flows to both make any more interesting their coincidence?
Just a thought. Posted using Moz 1.4, by the way.
While I hate to see Netscape pushed aside by AOL, at least it promises to cut down their software package size by, oh, 50 meg?
KappaStone
There the proof then, competition is good for jobs because more people work on competing products.
50 Netscape codes go, but no more people are needed to work on IE.
So if you want more jobs, make sure there's more competition, not more retrictive copyright laws.
Simple.
Regardless, this is sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Here's hoping some far-sighted investors will pick up Netscape/Mozilla -- it would probably be the bargain of the week, especially if MSIE really is dead in the water until Longhorn is finished.
Maybe this is Larry Ellison's chance to show us once again how badly he hates Bill Gates.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Given the layoff of the 50 programmers at AOL, I think that the newly-formed Mozilla Foundation (the "MF"...heh) should hold a bake sale and use the proceeds to hire 50 programmers from New Dehli to replace them. the MF will need to raise at least $50 or $60 bucks to get started...
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
the difference between Opera and Mozilla Firebird to me?
NOW AOL using Microsuck Exploder in future releases, thats a travisty. Did AOL really have that much to fear from Microsoft. If they had used netscape, none of their users would have known, and better, everyone on the net would have worked to provide FOR aol and netscape, and dumped MS's needlessly propitory gabage
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
$2e6/50 = $20,000/yr
And, if that 50 was only 10% of the Netscape workforce, and we split that $2 mil over 500 users, that's a Christmas bonus, not a salary.
So, $1 mil/yr for the Moz Foundation is chump change. An earlier statement that "5 coders is plenty for Mozilla" seems kind of silly to me. I wonder how big the IE team is.
Thanks for the good time, honey, I'll call you. Here, buy yourself something nice.
Now we get to see how Moz survives as a *real* open-source project (i.e., w/out funding). At least it's got a good code base (right?).
John.
> The
> base algorithm for allocating MTRRs as efficiently as sanely possible
> is already in the kernel btw - or pretty close to it - its used by
> the Winchip code to cover RAM with out of order store.
I was confused too, I not-so-accidentally, accidentally pronounced it as "mozilla".
now we'll never get an official "AOL for Linux" client...
That's one heck of a lot of potential users who'll have to be weaned off AOL the hard way if we're ever to get them over on Linux...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Sorry, but who couldn't see this happening??
1) Microsoft changes default browser back to IE.
2) Mozilla foundation setup.
As far as I could see, the writing was on the wall for the Netscape coders at AOL as soon as they stopped using it. Why keep the coders if they aren't adding business benefit any longer?
(Forgetting the benefit to the community here)
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Totally offtopic, but why do so many people on /. say "boxen", instead of "boxes"?
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
They bundled an FTP client with Windows? Of all the anti-competitive... MONOPOLY!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
what's so funny about parent joke?
It's stupid. People with families get laid off and others laugh.
How would you like that to happen to you? Then again you probably dont have any dependents you care about.
is going the way of the dinosaur...With mozilla Firebird out, they choose IE ?!?! Game Over AOL, Game Over man
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Its bloated, slow and ugly! Im glad AOL got rid of that profit drain for good. There are simply better browers out there, Opera, Safari, Firebird, Camino, Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror, Internet Explorer, Omniweb, Atlantis, lynx and NCSA mosiac!
AOL has not killed Mozilla - it will continue, under the direction of the new Mozilla Foundation.
Of course, four of the browsers you list are based on Gecko, which is Mozilla technology.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
Its bloated, slow and ugly! Im glad AOL got rid of that profit drain for good. There are simply better browers out there, Opera, Safari, Firebird, Camino, Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror, Internet Explorer, Omniweb, Atlantis, lynx and NCSA mosiac!
You just named every other browser. By the way, Camino and Firebird are from Mozilla.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
What the hell does that have to do with AOL telling some of it's Netscape developers to piss off?
What sort of buisness decision is this that effectively cuts off their potential customer base? Tiing themselves to IE basically limits their customer base to bleeding edge windows systems. That old IE/media player/chat client just won't like that old hardware.
no text
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
So AOL promised MS to use IE in their next versions (is this only for AOL windows?). How does the future plan of IE not being stand-alone affect this AOL using IE issue? Will MS release a special "IE for AOL" version? Will AOL not include a browser and just use IE APIs straight from Windows? What about non Windows users? Macs?
[alk]
too bad, but not unexpected. Remember, AOL's purpose in life is to make money, not promote alternatives to Microsoft.
Tieing yourself to a browser more than 9 of 10 people don't want to use seems like a good way to cut sales, not increase them.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The parent comment is proof that Slashdot needs a "+1 Troll" moderation.
that is just this year's budget deficit, not total debt.
50 developers is 10% of the Netscape work force... however, AOL's 'official' position is that they're still supporting the browser & the web portal.
... and Walmart sure is selling a whole lotta Lindows PC these days.
aol official position
AOL is making a *huge* mistake by not using the Gecko engine as the core of their browser/ISP product. Right now they're using Gecko as the core in their Compuserve and Mac AOL product, but still using IE in the Windows product. Seems like they could streamline their internal coding operations by standardizing on one code base, which would ultimately save them more money than letting developers go.
Also, by using the Gecko engine in the product, they could in theory start offering AOL on Linux-based PC's; while that might sound like an unprofitable venture at first, I can't imagine all of those people purchasing Lindows-based PC's at Walmart not wanting AOL as their ISP
where's the time Netscape was a cool company and everyone wanted to work there..
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
Honestly tho, who fucking cares!? I mean, I'm sorry to those that lost their jobs, definitely - this is not directed at them. But as far as the AOL shitbag goes, you had to see this stuff coming from a mile away. They are not even remotely the same AOL that Case or jwz worked for. They are one of the largest media companies in the world!
All these biz guys understand the M$ biz guys. They're all about numbers and not innovation, so the bloodletting is beginning; nothing anyone can do about it.
Now, that said, Mozilla is the key here. I don't think it will die in the forseeable future. Combined with Linux gaining more and more ground, there must exist a free, open browser. Sure, Konqueror will hang around, but Mozilla will still have a larger user base. And companies that depend on that, like Redhat, IBM, Sun (once they ditch Netscape 4), and others, they will put development efforts into it. And if the Moz Foundation gets really strapped for cash, then just move it to SourceForge or Savannah.
Point is is that there is no use thinking or worrying about AOL or Netscape anymore. They've been goners for some time. Mozilla is the focus and given the 'freeness' of the code, it will continue to live on regardless of cut funding and developers. Granted, it might slow, but no worse than IE.
I for one am sorry my fellow coders are out of a job, but I have all the faith in the world for Moz cuz I think it's a great browser. I mean, c'mon, if the C=64 (long live the C=64!) can still live after all these years, why not Moz?
I like Netscape mail, and Netscape runs on ALL computers. What technical features do you like? I like stability.
The reason that AOL uses IE is to that MS will have AOL pre-packaged on the computers with a nifty shortcut link to install the software. This way a user doesn't have to download the software online, or worry about how they are going to get online. Most users are still using a modem, and have no way to get online unless they first contact an ISP. This way, AOL is already on the computer, and they don't have to call anyone. It's just there. That is why they use IE. And MS wants them to use it, well, because they are the largest ISP and they all use IE.
AOL will stop using IE when Windows starts to lose it's market share (by a LOT)
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
They say they love you, then they "go and see" your arch nemesis, for the money of course. Springer for senator? Perhaps he'll get a job as CEO of AOL after that!
stuff |
With Netscape circling the drain for so long, it was just a matter of time. Netscape was too far gone to be salvageable anyway. Mozilla has been a much better browser, almost from go, than Netscape ever was, which is a little surprising since they were based on the same code base.
On a related topic, I have fiddled with Mozilla and Opera and compared them, and I think it's safe to say that Opera's claim of being the fastest browser out there is incorrect.
Now that AOL has made a deal with the devil, Netscape's demise went from anticipated to guaranteed. I hate to see Netscape go, as it was a viable alternative at one time and some people out there still prefer it.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
I fondly remember the day (late 90s) when the ONLY reason I would use MSIE was when I had to go and download Netscape.
I have to wonder what the future of the browser/company once known as Netscape is now. It would be interesting if AOL sold it off as a subsidiary since obviously THEY'RE not going to use it anymore.
Oh well, this comes as no surprise, really. The real question here is, I have to wonder if AOLers even *know* what browser they're using. I love getting those tech support calls at work, and when I ask them what browser or e-mail client they're using, they just say, "AOL."
...this is just AOL cutting the Mozilla project loose. Yeah, $2 million contribution to the Mozilla Foundation isn't much, but I expect many other companies to contribute. No worries here. In fact, it seems appropriate that the Mozilla project is disconnected from AOL.
--Drunk as in Beer
A few months ago I would have cared. But last month Apple released Safari 1.0, and after using it for a while, I realized that Mozilla Navigator is a big, bloated mess, with endless confusing interface changes. Now I just do most of my important browsing with Safari, although I still mess with Mozilla at the office where I have to run Linux.
Other thoughts follow.
Mozilla advocates really only have one big point for pushing Mozilla- standards compliance with some particular group's standards. Honestly though, most people don't give a rat's ass about being compliant with W3C, Microsoft, or anyone else's. We just want the damned web sites to render right.
Mozilla/Netscape mail is nice, but I really only use it because I want to use Verisign certs on Linux without installing Gnome and I haven't gotten around to finding another client.
Composer is just crap, and produces some of the worst HTML out there. It's more efficient to buy Dreamweaver than it is to waste time trying to get anything to not look outright ugly when done with composer.
Address book is nice, but so are the dozens of other options out there. If Mozilla Mail didn't automatically fill propigate addresses to it, I wouldn't know it exists.
Chatzilla is pointless. There are dozens of great IRC clients around, nobody really needs more.
Bugzilla is nice, but if the Mozilla crew had been trying to make a decent browser instead of a huge suite of internet apps, it wouldn't have been needed.
To sum up, bloatware sucks.
If Netscape dies, there's a good chance it takes Mozilla with it. Moz may continue to exist as a standalone browser, but if Netscape goes by-by, does anyone really think that Macromedia and other companies will continue making plugins for anyone but Microsoft? I know some people hate flash and other plugins, but they've become a neccessity if you want full use of the web. And corporate support helped Mozilla get where it is today. Without AOL/Netscape's support, Mozilla would never have gotten off of the ground. All the volunteer developers in the world wont change the fact that being tied with Netscape helps Mozilla immensely. I wouldn't be so hasty in celebrating it's demise.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
>Of course, four of the browsers you list are based on Gecko, which is Mozilla technology.
And which four would that be? (the only one I know that's using Gecko in that list is Firebird)
Oops, too late.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Mozilla is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Mozilla community when IDC confirmed that Mozilla market share has dropped yet again. Now it is down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Mozilla has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Mozilla is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Mozilla's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Mozilla faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Mozilla because Mozilla is dying. Things are looking very bad for Mozilla. As many of us are already aware, Mozilla continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Netscape is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Netscape developers only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Netscape is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Due to the troubles of AOL, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and was taken over by AOL who sell another troubled service. Now AOL is also nearly dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Mozilla has steadily declined in market share. Mozilla is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Mozilla is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Mozilla continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Mozilla is dead.
Fact: Mozilla is dying
(With apologies to the original *BSD is dying troll).
Epiphany 0.8 is released. Epiphany is scheduled to become the official web browser for the Gnome desktop environment (GDE). It is based on the gecko rendering engine and has a simple easy to use interface.
That Mozilla's site has been completely revamped over night...
Alot of stuff happening at one time...
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
With Netscape, they had AIM support built right-in. All MSIE has is a little taskbar button for Messenger (I dunno if they have one for AIM, too). I'm pretty sure it won't be as easy to create a Netscape profile using your AIM login at the same time though.
And what about Real Player? IE integrates pretty well with Media Player. Actually, if Real Player up and died, it would be no big loss, but I wonder how AOL is still gonna push that stuff, if they don't push Netscape anymore that comes with it all.
Well, not like they were really pushing Netscape anyway. They just made it the default browser, and I'm sure the average AOLer didn't notice anyway. Without Netscape though, I imagine that the other two might have a harder time standing on their own.
I just hope WinAmp doesn't get the axe, too.
germ-ish....
:)
There is a kinda reverse version called dinglish but I'm not sure how the Germans spell it, probably d'englisch.
It means the way lots of english words are working their way into the German language so much so that they become suitable for everyday use. I'm not sure how official it is but most I've spoken to here (nrw/west germany) have heard of it.
germish...sounds like something that needs purifying
So Microsoft has more than enough cash on hand to buy out AOL/TW.
If the marketplace were completely free and unfettered, you'd think that Microsoft would, rather than pour money down the hole that has been MSN, simply buy out AOL with its 30 million subscribers.
But Microsoft won't do this because they know they can't; that the DoJ would immediately ask questions about unfair market consolidation were such a buyout offer made.
So instead MSFT pours money into MSN and leverages its dominant products of Windows, Office and Explorer to subsidize MSN.
As AOL dies slowly over a few years, this will be viewed as "OK", the marketplace in action, and no inconvenient questions will be raised except by AOL management and stockholders.
Since MS can rely upon a steady revenue stream from Windows and Office to subsidize its efforts into taking over new markets they enjoy an advantage that AOL and other competitors simply don't have.
People buy Windows and Office like they're a standard, a necessity, that's no more avoidable than paying gasoline taxes.
Yes, Microsoft has the enviable position of just collecting taxes - like a government. And competing against the government is a no-win situation.
It is a foregone conclusion that AOL will lose. They will wither to nothing, or simply to a marginally-sized pet, like Apple, who would have died long ago if Microsoft had decided to not release Office for Mac.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
And which four would that be?
Firebird, Camino (previously known as Chimera), Galeon and Epiphany.
Gerv
(gerv@mozilla.org)
I perused the article and I'm not sure if it's Mozilla or Netscape developers... they are not the same thing, and I'm sure AOL has developers who take Mozilla and massage it into Netscape. If those are the people getting laid off then I don't feel so bad.
Well, I feel bad for them, but I've always hated the changes AOL made to Mozilla before releasing it as Netscape - like when they removed the pop-up feature, and all the crap they include.
I too, though, find it painful explaining Mozilla to people over and over again.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
AOL kept them around long enough to extract that $750M from Microsoft without having to waste time and money pursuing the antitrust complaint.
Microsoft paid what is pocket change to them to deliver the final blow to the stake in the heart of what was once their biggest competitor in the browser arena. AOL/TW got badly needed cash, Microsoft got another seven years of IE dominance amongst the mouth-breathing internet user set. Web pages will continue to be designed so they'll look good for AOL retards instead of being designed to comply with established standards so they look good in all standards-compliant browsers.
As usual, Microsoft wins, the other party to the agreement thinks they won but will later realize they didn't, and the internet-using public loses.
It's also a very nifty way, if you're looking up a lot of things, to temporarily keep track of them. Keep the tabs open on the pages that are interesting, and close the ones that aren't.
I know that in principle the same thing could be acheived by opening new windows, but that get's very cluttered, especially if you have other apps open.
(I'm using Firebird on Windows 2000 at the moment)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Too busy to research, but can you name any countries that are solvent?
"AOL recently made a deal with Microsoft to use IE in future AOL releases."
Honestly, don't they change this every AOL version?
I'm amazed at the amount of AOL users that do not know they can minimize AOL and use whatever browser they want. Wait, no I'm not.
The letters A O L undergo a shift of +12 -1 +2.
According to the CIA the external debt is worth $862'000'000'000
but this figure has not been update since 1995.
Regarding to Opera... if you are comparing it to mozilla... Opera is faster, damn faster. At least on most pages I go, and I am not even counting the time it takes to load the first time, because my mozilla just crawls on this little Pentium I have at work.
rm -rf /home/leia
Printing too much money == Inflation
Bob Slydell: The Netscape developers.
Bill Lumbergh: Who're they?
Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guys, mumble a lot.
Bill Lumbergh: Oh, yeah.
Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of them being current employees here.
Bob Porter: I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that they were laid off five years ago and no one ever told them, but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, they still get paychecks.
Bob Slydell: So we just went a ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh: Great.
Dom Portwood: So um, the Netscape developers have been let go?
Bob Slydell: Well just a second there, professor. We uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So they won't be receiving paychecks anymore, so it will just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem solved from your end.
--- What
Sorry, that was supposed to be:
The letters A O L undergo a shift of +12 +4 +2.
Must...drink...more...coffee! [sigh]
The Sky is Falling!
That's next.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
AOL has announced that it will use IE for the browser for seven years. Microsoft has announced that there will no longer be a standalone version of IE. So, if AOL is to still work on existing Windows boxes, then it must remain at IE6. But, it's hard to beleive that they won't want to move to the latest and greatest (tongue in cheek) IE when it ships, but that would force AOL to either maintain separate code bases or drop support for current versions of Windows. If they choose the separate code bases, then using the least common denominator approach, AOL won't be able to include future web features, because they don't exist in IE6. Dropping support for older versions of Windows, is a very calculated risk. There are two possible outcomes. Facing a forced upgrade, either AOL's would switch to a different ISP or shell out the bucks for a new version of Windows (and possibly new hardware). My bet would be to switch ISPs, but I'm sure AOL and MS are counting on people buying a new version of Windows, instead. If they are right, that's not a bad investment for MS $750M to get AOL users to all buy a copy of the next version of Windows. At 35 million AOL subscribers and a $100 upgrade cost, MS stands to gross $3.5 billion dollars. Not a bad return on investment.
subject says it all.
Heh... totally. When I studied Deutsch at the Defense Language Institute, the course was so intense that people in their first week would be speaking German in their sleep. After a couple months, we would subconciously be slipping in and out of german and english when we spoke to others and not be aware of it. The term "germish" was what we called the mixxed gobbledy gook that we would come up with when we didn't know a word.
For instance:
"Wo bist die vcr-en?" == "Were are the VCRs?"
Oddly enough, this is a great way to practive the language until you know what the Deutsch word is for something.
It's kind of funny too as English has ALOT of German words and vice versa.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Firebird is a really nice, fast browser.
Does anyone here actually use Netscape as their default browser?
Mozilla; yes of course.
What's not to like?
I have a friend who has a real isp but only uses Hot mail because it works with the only interface they use IE, I have tried to show him how to use real internet mail but he is convinced that there is no such thing, such is the power of Microshaft.
If AOL folds too bad, people like AOL users or MSN users that can't figure out how to use a real ISP are better off the net anyway. The biggest cause of lame web sites, spam (ignorant gullible AOL and MSN users) and blogs might start to go away!
Just imagine AOL and MSN merged what a wonderful thing total control of the rinky dink part of the net by Microsoft. That along with their media positioning will make the Standard Oil monopoly look like a peanut vender. You want info, pay Redmond first, trusted computing my butt!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
the plural of beeeeeotch is beeeeeeotchae!
Well, according to ex-mozilla employee list one of the coders was:
- Driving an Alfa Romeo Spider, inspired by Dustin Hoffmans drive across the San Mateo bridge in "The Graduate", with a Netscape sticker
- Drinking 8 cans of soda a day and building a freakin replica of the golden gate bridge
- Doing bbqs at 5 Eden Avenue, Sunnyvale
- Kegs of guinness at above address
- Having the police turn up at above address - not to stop the party, but to check out Mike McQues Hummer
- 'Video conferencing' with parents back home in Ireland by sitting in front of Fish Cam!
- Heading with netscapees Tom Pixley and Rob Larrubio to Vegas to see U2 perform on the opening night on the Pop Mart tour, and getting more wasted than he has ever been in his life at 'Manhattan' in the New York New York hotel!
- Nerf gun wars.
- Duke Nuken wars.
- Mario Super Kart wars.
- Being interviewed or filmed once a week, and getting annoyed by it
- Writing a script that spat out random numbers on the screen for the film crews to get excited about
- Touring Be when they had 10 employees - and then getting a BeBox
- Taping up PABs monitor when he screwed up
- Beer Busts, and then going on the piss in Palo Alto with the cute admin girl from his building
Coding not included.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
My Grandma was Grace Hopper, you insensitive clod!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I think the original poster was asking why you chose Netscape as opposed to Mozilla or another browser with tabs, pop-up blocker, etc.
I would also like to know why anyone would download Netscape when they could have Mozilla. It's always been more up to date and less cluttered with extras.
Regarding to Opera... if you are comparing it to mozilla... Opera is faster, damn faster.
My experience has actually been the opposite. I have to agree, Opera is plenty fast, but every time I have compared the two, Mozilla has left Opera behind. It very well could be a function of my Windows configuration, though, as I have done some odd things to my system. I haven't tried Opera under Linux (since early beta), so I can't compare there, but I have used Mozilla under Linux and have been most pleased.
Regardless, Mozilla and Opera are both faster than Netscape.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
The problem with Joe Average User trying to use any browser other than IE is that there are too many websites out there that ONLY work on IE. They don't use web standars, they use IE-specific code. Try to view those pages on Mozilla (or nearly any other browser that is standards-based,) and they simply don't work. It's a chicken-egg problem: those sites won't change, because 90% of users use IE. Users won't change, becuase many sites won't work outside IE. I had always hoped that if AOL switched to Mozilla, it would FORCE those websites to change, because of the number of users AOL has. Unfortunetly, it doesn't look like it will happen.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Netscape is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Netscape community when AOL confirmed that Netscape market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Netscape has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Netscape is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by falling dead last in the recent Hunting for Japanese scat porn comprehensive browsing test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict Netscape's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Netscape faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Netscape because Netscape is dying. Things are looking very bad for Netscape. As many of us are already aware, Netscape continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Netscape Navigator is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its logo recognition value to Disney's "Pirates of the Carribean". The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time
Netscape desktop icons like the lighthouse and Goatse man only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Netscape is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
CmdrTaco states that there are 7000 Slashdot readers using Mozilla. How many users of Netscape are there? Let's see. The number of fucked-up HTTP requests versus mangled GET strings on Slashdot is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Netscape users. Lynx requests on Slashdot are about half of the volume of Netscape reqests. Therefore there are about 700 users of who think that non-graphical browsing r0x0rs, kinda like your smelly grandfather's blather about the superiority of radio. A recent article put IE at about 80 percent of the browser market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 IE users. This is consistent with the number of properly formatted and executed HTTP sessions.
Due to the troubles out of Mammoth Cave, abysmal sales and so on, Netscape went out of business and was taken over by AOL who, like it or not, pollutes your precious intarweb with a bunch of X-gobbling juvenile delinquents. Now the Gecko engine is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Netscape has steadily declined in market share. Netscape is very sick andits long term survival prospects are very dim. If Gecko is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Netscape continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Netscape is dead.
Fact: Netscape is dying
Really? It's probably just my computer, but I'd have to be compiling it at run time and have it reniced to 10 or so to notice any slowdown. You've got a good point tho. Mozilla is pretty slow on older hardware.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
I read through the responses to your question(s) and it seems this pretty much sums it up (+/- a few things).
- Netscape/Mozilla (N/M) has tabbed browsing
- N/M works on all used platforms
- N/M Blocks popups
- N/M has mouse gestures (though I haven't gotten them to work).
- Group bookmarks
Here's what Opera (7) has:
- multiple windows inside parent window (aka, tabbed browsing)
- mouse gestures (that work right away)
- zooming in/out - I HATE the tiny fixed size fonts used these days.
-Sessions (save where you left off, save group of windows, etc... sounds a lot like group bookmarks)
-Opera blocks popups - either all, none, or only non-requested ones
-Opera works on atleast Linux & Windows, and I think Mac, and maybe other *nix. (Though if you buy it, you need a separate license for each OS, which is BS if you ask me).
Now, I know N/M is free (in both ways), and opera isn't. But to me, it's worth putting up with an ad in opera, vs the slowness of N/M.
IE is still my primary browser though, I juse use opera for specialize needs.
no comment
Then again, I don't really have an understanding of the mozilla/netscape relationship, just what I heard--mozilla started when netscape opened its code, aol gives mozilla money, aol gets all the cool stuff from mozilla and reinserts it into netscape. If it's more complicated than that and I'm missing something, please feel free to explain it to me.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
The information appears to be that all Mozilla coders have been laid off, or transferred to other projects. Mainly laid off.
The 10% figure appears because they counted a lot of people who have nothing to do with the browser as being a part of the "Netscape workforce". This is feasible because, as I read, there wasn't any official definiton of what the "Netscape workforce" was. So they adjusted it to make the announcement seem much less direct than it really was.
It's truly fortunate that this was postponed until Mozilla was essentially finished. I'm not sure of the wisdom of the breaking it apart into minor pieces, as that may require more effort than can easily be afforded, but it makes sense as each of those pieces will be easier to maintain. We should probably expect Mozilla development to slow down significantly from now on, however. At least until things are reorganized, and new development teams have formed. (If people aren't working full time on the project, you need lots more of them, which means a differnt project structure.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
or Galeon.
Or, write your own...
Everybody else does...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
while (!asleep()) sheep++
Well it looks like the day of Netscape's execution is nigh, but I wonder, with the formation of the Mozilla Foundation, why doesn't AOL donate the Netscape trademarks to the foundation.
Though Netscape has been increasingly marginalized, I think from a sheer brand name recognition point of view, if Mozilla, or Mozilla Firebird become Netscape, they will have a much easier time entering the collective conscious of many more people out there.
I tried Mozilla Firebird 0.6 for the first time yesterday and have to say I was very impressed! It was Netscape and Mozilla minus all the bloat, as advertised. If a Netscape 8 label is thrown on this and the usual barrage of AOL advertisements doesn't install with it, it could have a great chance of siezing some market share from the stagnating Explorer 6.
Of course, AOL will likely keep the Netscape trademark and simply let it get full of dust bunnies (as a portal web site no one will go to) to the point where no one remembers it anymore.... but if they'd only donate it to the Mozilla Foundation... it at least seems like a reach around for the current and future rounds of Netscape employees being fired.
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
This bodes well for our defensmen who need language - "Wo bist die vcr-en" = "Where are you, the vcrs?" or alternatively "I don't know how to speak ANY German" Even after a week, I'd imagine you'd know the principle parts of sein (To be). And German is a relatively easy language; imagine how well they must be doing with Arabic and Chinese. Yay!
P.S. Try "Wo sind die 'vcr-en'" or alternatively "Wo sind der Videorekorder?"
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
Eventually MS will turn on AOL and kill it. When your business depends so much on a product produced by a rival you don't cosy up to the rival, you work as hard as possible to become independent.
Why do you think EBAY bought PayPal?
If Microsoft was serious about security, they would look at the number of exploits against Mozilla, then look at IE, then drop the IE product and bundle Mozilla with Windows.
Regardless of the functionality, IE has been a security disaster for the Windows platform, and has cost Microsoft far, far more than it has gained.
AOL is also equally inept in its decision to bundle IE, for by doing so they weaken their own platform by equipping it with an "exploit magnet." AOL should have insisted that IE match the Mozilla security record for a reasonable duration before bundling IE.
A reasonable capitalist would have bundled Mozilla with Windows. Bill Gates is not a capitalist... he is a fascist.
i've run linux at home for over 5 years now. at work i'm pretty much forced to use windows for interop with everyone else (exchange, siebel, visio, VS.NET). i've pretty much always just used IE because it is well integrated with windows (anti-competitive etc...).
/. conspiracy theories - maybe its just a case of:
There are more Windows desktops on AOL targeted coputers that there are Linux and the fact that Windows and IE are closer orientated than Windows + Mozilla means that for the average AOL use, IE is just a better option period.
;)
a few months ago i thought i'd give mozilla another bash. if i was to screenshot and post my XP taskbar right now, you would see about 4 mozilla sessions open and about 2 ie sessions open. i hate having to do this, but some sites mozilla just doesn't handle. in some cases its poor HTML (mainly DHTML problems where non-visible layers aren't), in some cases it's performance, in some cases its flash/JAVA little idiosyncracies.
now, i could just submit a screenshot with 6 IE windows - because that would do the job just fine - but i go the mozilla route mainly out of respect. i will admit that its page rendering is a bit faster, but cutting 1/3 of a second off rendering a page vs. having to launch IE two or three times a day and copy and paste URLs around is not really worth it.
also, stability and bugs. i've discovered, i'd say, a few more bugs in mozilla than i have with IE (tab refreshing problems, mozilla mail client problems with IMAP servers etc...)
my point is, maybe its not AOL circuming to MS pressure or any other such wonderful
*sits back and admires the flame*
Yeah , on a Fast Machine you don't notice the difference. When your running a Intel Pentium 166MMX with 128mb of RAM and Linux Debian with X you notice. Mozilla is about as slow as a brick going on a level street. Even _any_ gecko based browser is slow. Opera is fast and works well.
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
"We're fucked."
Well, at least we still have Konquerer.
I have been using Mozilla since version 1.0, on both Windows and Linux. We have seen a great improvement in stability and performance, as well as a few useful features, since that first version.
:-)
...short of bug fixes, new features, and performance improvements in Mozilla... the user should not be able to tell the difference.
I think that it would be best for Mozilla to throw everything they have at tweaking Mozilla as is. New features are great, but if you want more people to switch from IE, Mozilla will have to be polished so that there aren't little quirks that frustrate IE users experimenting with Mozilla.
Not only that, but you can keep those experimenters by further improving Mozilla's performance and stability.
It might be next to impossible, but if Mozilla could load faster than IE, without Mozilla being pre-loaded in the background, you would win a big chunk of converts with that alone.
Page rendering actually seems faster in Mozilla, with version 1.4 on Windows. So startup time should still be the big focus, but improving rendering time is still good
Some other people also recommend making Mozilla a complete and total IE replacement on Windows. I agree. It should become something like the Coke/Pepsi test. They should look, feel, and smell the same to the user. All menus should be laid out the same. All icons should look the same. All widgets should behave the same.
I know there are IE skins for Mozilla, but someone needs to go further with that idea and redo the entire browser interface, pulldown menus and all!
I have Netscape installed on my machine I use for web development to make sure any site I create works fine in IE/NS/Moz (no, i dont care about Opera users who probably browse as IE anyway)...
I appreciate your love and concern for us Opera users. Please find attached a package with your free vacation to Barbados. Don't be concerned by the suspicious white powder. It's beach sand included for extra Barbados flavour.;)
P.S. I don't browse as IE. Anyways, Opera users browsing as IE wouldn't confuse a good sniffer because "opera" is included in all Opera strings (just like "mozilla" is included in Microsoft's string).
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
"As I see it now, 1.4 might be the last major release -- the firebird/mozilla integration will undoubtably take place, but with 50 developers and monetary support gone, I doubt it will be to its full potential, and only be a footnote in the history of browsers. But I may be wrong. I hope I am wrong."
Hehe. Reminds me of that saying. "If you want to know who your friends are? Wait for your funeral."
Whew! Thanks for the correction. There for a minute I thought I wasn't getting it.
Or maybe AOL will just use whatever version of IE is installed.
"Do you think OpenOffice would survive if Sun dropped it tomorrow? No, it has no community." ximian and many of the gnome core hackers are starting to throw their considerable weight behind OOo ... if sun pulled out tommorro it would be just fine
this is a minomer... they were 450 *empoloyees* ... NS was much more thna just a browser dev team
"who gives a shit?"
I mean really. Like this is important?
Only retards use AOL or M$ or would care about either subject. I know a few older folks that use AOL and they live in constant fear of being hacked. They are also totally terrorized at the thought of trying something different.
They have some idea that if they don't march to the drumbeat of AOL / M$ that black helicopters will swoop down on them and ninja hit squads will bash their downs down and assassinate them for *thinking* about trying an alternative.
They feel that it's their lot in life to be a $lave to M$ and to AOL..
They are en$laved to the machine.
I shit you not.
Welp, I admit it. Looks like I was wrong. An AOL-supported Mozilla is dead.
What does this mean for the OS X AOL client? That's the one thing (Gecko-based OS X client is already out there) that made me think AOL'd keep going. Looks like IE 7 (or whatever) is going to have some really neat stuff. Enough that the MS licensing agreement with AOL makes it a good idea for AOL to kill Gecko as a back-up engine for its software.
Maybe the Safari embeddable engine is easy enough to use that AOL is going that way. Or maybe AOL OS X's engine will just fold up into proprietary software. The MPL allows that.
I don't feel *that* badly. AOL, whether it meant to or not, pulled the plug, strangely enough, immediately after Moz became the best browser on the market. That's good timing from where I'm sitting -- which is in front of a monitor, posting with Mozilla/Firebird.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
1. Popup blocking. ...)
2. Block images by server (waiting for block Flash by server
3. Tabbed browsing.
4. Bookmark groups of tabs.
does the current netscape-based AOL have these features? if AOL moves away from mozilla/netscape to IE, won't they be losing these features (assuming IE doesn't incorporate them come IE7)?
i would hate to be an AOLer who uses these features who then 'upgrades' to the newest IE7-based AOL and loses them.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20030601.html
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Now, XUL appeared as QT wasn't free and GTK wasn't ready. Why the usage of XUL is still limited to Mozilla? I would expect to see three competiting toolkits, QT, GTK and XUL, but it's not happened yet. Is XUL really ready to be used outside of Mozilla?
Less is more !
The real difference lies in the ads that keep Opera alive, IMO. I'm sure the zealots of Opera will point out the other differences, but I don't know them, nor care becaus ads suck.
The real difference lies in the configurability and usability features of Opera. It allows you to position any bar anywhere on the screen. Mozilla Firebird only lets you add one or two buttons to the toolbar. For Cthulhu's sake, Firebird doesn't even let you make the tab bar vertical (please, please correct me if I am wrong).
Opera lets you configure custom mouse gestures and key combinations internally (and get rid of the default ones such as Close Window).
Opera also doesn't force useful features into extensions. I couldn't live without Opera's three Show Images modes and the multiple User Stylesheet modes. Opera's the only browser with real zooming.
I don't know how Firebird 0.6 handles it, but Phoenix 0.3 switched to the nearest tab after closing one rather the last viewed one. That annoys the hell out of me.
Personally, I only use Mozilla Firebird to download university assignments because it provides me with a convenient second set of bookmarks. Almost all of my other browsing is done in Opera. IE is only touched when I need to make sure that the site I develops won't look horribly wrong to Jane Doe.
In many ways, MSIE6 has become what Netscape4 used to be -- a dead end. I've had lots of recent incidents where something looked good in Opera, looked good in Mozilla, and was totally fucked up in MSIE. Microsoft seems to think so too because they've officially killed it. Frankly, I suspect it's because they are doing a new internal rewrite and they don't want to put out a version that would work on Win98.
Sorry about the lack of point.;)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Heck, I'm so dependent on Firebird and Thunderbird now, I can't work without these tools. Can't some of us who are employed contribute small parts of our paychecks towards the Mozilla Foundation?
But that would mean that AOL users of older windows systems (IE6) would have different AOL features than users of new windows systems (IE7). Unless, of course, AOL only impliment features on their site that work with IE6 and ignore any new capabilities of newer versions of IE.
You clearly do not know anything about the architecture of Windows, IE or AOL's "browser". AOL is NOT using "IE" it is using the Windows HTML rendering engine which IE also uses...
Windows ships with an HTML rendering engine as a COM object. Internet Explorer (IE6) uses this rendering engine to render pages. So does the Windows shell, so does the Windows help system and so do many 3rd party apps, including AOL. This is the main reason that AOL used "IE" It was a componetized "browser" long before anyone at Netscape even understood the concept.
Windows will ALWAYS contain an HTML rendering engine that will ALWAYS be available to third party vendors. Even if there is no wrapper in the form of a stand alone browser ("IE") from MS itself. The interface to the engine is multi- layerd as well, always supporting the older protocols, so new version of the engine will still work with older versions of software written for it. (It is currently on it's 2nd API)
BTW if you want to see what is available to third parties, check out the "MyIE2" browser. A tabbed, mouse gestured, popup blocking alternative to IE built using the windows HTML rendering engine. It's still mssing a couple of more advanced features which I hope get added soon, but it just shows that the lack of a MS branded "IE" is no loss to anyone, in fact it's an incentive for 3rd party developers like AOL!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Does this mean that AOL/Netscape will not release anymore browsers under the "Netscape" banner? I know mozilla will continue to live, but what about Netscape Navigator?
What I find interesting is if AOL is going to exclusively use IE as a browser for upto seven years and if IE will no longer exist independently of Windows, what will AOL do for non-windows platforms? Will they contain a gecko-based browser on those platforms? I think I've read somewhere that the AOL Mac client is gecko based.
It would be extremely helpful for Mozilla marketing if AOL/TW would donate rights to the Netscape name to the Mozilla project. I have found that its really difficult to convince people that Mozilla is Netscape, however, Mozilla is defiantly worthy of that branding.
By Gretel Johnston, IDG News Service
w eb sitemgmt/story/0,10801,73850,00.html
AUGUST 29, 2002
Content Type: Story
Source: IDG News Service
New data on worldwide usage of Web browser software shows Netscape is once again being clobbered by rival browser Internet Explorer and now has an estimated market share of 3.4%, according to a statement from Internet researcher WebSideStory Inc.
That is a steep decline from the 13% share held by Netscape at the same time last year, said Geoff Johnston, vice president of product marketing at StatMarket, WebSideStory's Web site design and software developer service. Rival browser Internet Explorer, owned by Microsoft Corp., holds an estimated 96% of the market, up from 87% a year ago, according to WebSideStory in San Diego.
WebSideStory's figures were compiled independently, based on a random daily sample of 20 million visitors to thousands of Web sites that use its HitBox visitor analysis service. According to data compiled Monday, 3.4% of the visitors were using a Netscape browser, 96% were using Explorer and less than 1% were using the Opera browser from Opera Software ASA. The sample shows some fluctuation from day to day. But during the past several weeks, Netscape usage hasn't been higher than 4%, Johnston said. "
http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/
Today,IE actually has over 95% of the browser market.
AOL are being pragmatic, sensisble and prudent, and the right thing for their shareholders by trying to stop wasting money on a product of very little value to them.
A friend of mine at work were discussing this very thing just when the crappy Netscape 7.1 was released a couple weeks ago.
I also think that AOL should donate the Netscape trademark to the Mozilla Foundation. They would have a MUCH easier time with adoption because of name recognition.
It is too bad that Netscape 6.x scarred so many people too. I wish they hadn't released that one.
is how much severance/warning AOL gave these workers. If anything less than 60 days, then I would be quite upset about this. I have been laid off with just a week severance and have worked at places were there was no severance given to the people laid-off, so it's an issue I take fairly seriously. If AOL did not give a good severance, then I would certainly take part in an active boycott (educating others to their employment practices), both for buying products and services from/through them and for people seeking employment there.
Even if your lay-offs aren't large enough to meet the requirements of the WARN act, an employer should still give good notification or severance.
-no broken link
This is a surprise. I see it as a bad move on part of AOL. It has already embraced Mozilla (gecko), It has already put forth a lot of resources to support this group. I see no reason why AOL would move to Internet explorer after mozilla has already proved itself worthy.
Just a little clarification on how IE is embeded. From IE 4.0 on the API to embed the browser into an application has not changed. This is why the same version of AOL can be installed on 98, ME, 2k and XP without having to upgrade the browser component. So having backwards compatibility to 6 SP1 wouldn't be a hard thing.
Where MS becomes vulnerable is if cheap easy to use pre configed computers can offer everything and more, to the consumer. The only difficulty is the chip manufactures and how they are manipulated by MS. If AOL is about to fall then we are looking at a grim future, where you have no choice. God what am I saying it is already here. I am going to sell my toys, and by a G5 I have just about had enought of this MS bs.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Why don't the coders just go and get some decent lo-key jobs and then in their spare time work on mozilla?
There are of course sevceral problems:
1.) Where exactly can you get lo-key jobs quickly and easily
2.) There is the possibility whne they do work on mozilla, their contributions will look more like what AOL want (pop-ups, etc..) and less what mozilla users want.
Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
All 50 employees spent their morning moderating...
Its unfortunate when anyone loses a job. And its unfortunate that there is no longer a team of developers being paid to work on this free product (and presumably giving back to the open source Mozilla project, although I honestly don't know if or how much they did so).
That said, look at it from AOL's perspective.
There are quite a few sites that, sadly, only work properly with IE on Windows. Many of us may be willing and able to just "switch browsers" when we encounter such a site, but your stereotypical "AOL user" is not.
There are quite a few Mozilla-based browsers that are quite decent. I am using one (Camino for Mac OS X). But the Netscape browser was bloated. I distrust MS as much as the next guy, but I would choose IE over Netscape any day.
If AOL is or was really unable to use IE, there are alternatives. First, there are the other/better Mozilla-based browsers. I imagine there is at least one KHTML-based browser for Windows. And presumably AOL could make a deal with Opera to use their software.
It looks to me like AOL made a smart business decision to me. And since Mozilla is becoming a non-profit organization, I don't think this will have a significant effect on the open source community or code base.
I've used Mozilla for some time, and believe you me, that's not nearly as true as it used to be. As time has transpired, Linux has invaded the corporate desktop, too much Flash has become passe, DHTML is left behind in favor of more standards compliant JS, server-side scripting, and XSL (and other events have passed too), more and more web sites have gotten on the ball. So much so that I honestly can't remember the last time I visited a site that didn't render properly in Mozilla/Firebird. Hell, even Konqueror and KHTML seem to be good enough for me, and I use the internet A LOT.
While it's true that IE specific code is what I believe to be a disservice to the furthering of the internet, it's not the terminal cancer that we thought it was just a short time ago.
Worse news...AOL has signed a pact with microsoft to use MS servers for delivering digital content..Time Warmer digital content. MS quietly makes a huge deal like this and it slips under the radar on /...people are too busy bashing MS to see the forest for the trees.
There's a reason AOL bought Netscape at, and I quote from earlier in the article, "fire sale" prices. Netscape was losing. AOL didn't buy a grand ship. They bought salvage rights. Sure, the Netscape vessel had a keel above water at the time of purchase. But we all know it had already been skuttled and was taking on water fast. The Register makes it sound like AOL managed to sink Netscape all on their own.
Now, it would have been nice if AOL managed to bail out the floundering organization. Making Gecko the engine driving all AOL user web experiences would have been a great boon to Mozilla... and arguably the entire industry the world over. But again, AOL was interested in salvaging the pieces they understood. Not bailing out the company. Its the Netscape brand they liked. That... and something to use as leverage against a long-time foe.
AOL struck their deal with their nemessis. The leverage is no longer needed. They'll keep the brand and shed the code. After all, others have pointed out they are there to make money. Not plan ahead.
Is that a death knell for Netscape? Maybe. But then - it was doomed well before it became an AOL brand. Even if it was surely sunk after.
They're looking for a soft place to put the knife
Please keep in my that my ADHD keeps me a little scatter brained and I sometimes can't focus long enough to
It sounds more and more like AOL is cutting ties with the Mozilla project, first with the Mozilla Foundation and now dumping their development team. But as I understand the Mozilla Public License, all contributions are still owned by AOL, and they have the right to create a closed-source fork of Mozilla any time they feel like it.
So my question is, who owns the copyright to the code base now? AOL or the Mozilla Foundation? More important, does this fact mean that AOL can continue to use it as a hedge against Microsoft, even as they pass on all development costs to the community at large?
If that's the case, it sounds like a raw deal. Does anyone know? If someone understands the ins and outs of the MPL, and how it affects the new relationship between AOL and the Mozilla Project, I think a lot of people would be interested.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'm using Mozilla Firebird 0.6. I installed it initially because everyone was saying how awesome tabbed browsing is, but I don't get it. It feels just like a MS MDI application from the '90s and I thought current UI reseach held that these were bad things. Why is having tabs better than having a browser open for each page? I can tell you one reason it absolutely sucks - when you have 5 or 6 tabs open and you click the wrong X and accidently shut down Mozilla rather than just the current window. Also, with individuals browsers I can Alt-Tab between pages, which is what I've become trained to do. I don't even know the shortcut to switch between tabs. I still use Mozilla, but I no longer use tabs. What am I missing? Help please.
Don't tell my boss that, since I've been developing for Windows since 3.0. I am well aware of how the HTML rendering engine works as a COM object. I've programmed for it numerous times. But, whether it is imbeded or not, it doesn't change a thing. Microsoft has announced the current engine is dead and is being replaced and built into the OS. The new engine is based on a completely new code base and will have a new APIs and new features. So, assuming that the old engine can be made to work on the next version of Windows without conflicting with the new engine, AOL will either a) need to use it and forgo the improvements in the new engine or b) have two code bases to talk to two different APIs or c) drop support for older versions of Windows. If the old engine ends up being fully backwards compatable (which the current engine is not), then AOL still has two choices: a) forgo the improvements in the new engine and only write to the compatability layer or b) have two code bases to talk to two different APIs or c) drop support for older versions of Windows. If AOL chooses a), then MSN will surely defeat it as it will offer new features while AOL won't be able to. If they choose b), then they will expend large amounts of resources maintaining two different code bases and many paying subscribers will not get all of the features they are paying for. Finally, choice c) would abandon a large amount of their user base. No matter how you look at it AOL will become less of a player because in all of the solutions, they either loose to MSN or other ISPs or they abandon large portions of their user base (presumably to other ISPs since these people wouldn't be able to go to MSN with older Windows, either).
That is true until IE7. Microsoft is changing the APIs. That's one of the reasons they give for dropping the stand alone version and embedding it in the OS itself.
if they stopped confusing users by "marketing" two browsers (Netscape and Mozilla) which are essentially one.
Also, if AOL/Time Warner had popped a couple of bucks to advertise and demonstrate Mozilla in a commercial during the Super Bowl they would have grabbed a significant amount of market share. What a bunch of dummies! Now they are dependent on the Beast.
AOL lays off 50 Microsoft coders
Must-not-watch TV!
if they stopped confusing users by "marketing" two browsers (Netscape and Mozilla) which are essentially one.
Also, if AOL/Time Warner had popped a couple of bucks to advertise and demonstrate Mozilla in a commercial during the Super Bowl they would have grabbed a significant amount of market share. What a bunch of dummies! Now they are dependent on the Beast.
They generally mean "the program xxxx launches faster than yyyy". Mozilla renders pages significantly faster than IE - try them out side by side on a complicated page using CSS/DOM stuff; the speed difference is obvious. But IE does launch faster in terms of the time from clicking on the icon to the time when the browser window first opens, because so much of it is in memory as soon as Windows starts up because of the way its designed.
#DeleteChrome
Thanks a lot, Captain Obvious! (R)
Talk about the pot and the kettle!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I remember going into a sam's club and "Buying" netscape gold! Then the browser wars hit hard. Now selling a browser isn't even viable until the war ends (unless you're opera or omniWeb of course).
/. Heroics - 99.999%
The people who should be laid off are the nitwit executives who have so completely underestimated the value of their own assets. Mozilla is headed for ass-kicking country, and AOL is cozying up to Microsoft. What a bunch of idiots. No wonder they have so many problems. If I were a shareholder, I'd be seriously pissed. But then again, I'd never be a shareholder in a company that's so badly mismanaged.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Turn it into Open Source, that will show them...
I love Mozilla Firebird - it's probably my favourite piece of software, and I'd gladly pay for it.
I already gave $15 to mozdev.org for the upgrade, but when will the Mozilla Foundation start accepting donations?
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
That won't happen unless Microsoft drops IE and starts shipping Mozilla.
Here are my thoughts as to why MS might be thinking of getting out of the browser business (at least as much as they can)
First off, what good has it done Microsoft to fight and win the browser wars? How much cash have they spent on a product they can never sell? A product that they are going to have to maintain for between now and forever and that will never bring in a cent. While at the time of the war I can see how they were probably frightened that the browser was somehow going to make the OS completely irrelevant (though I could never understand that one) and they felt it was necessary to do whatever was necessary to make sure that didn't happen, what is IE (or whetever you want to call the internet components being built into the next OS) going to give them now? How much revenue is it going to generate?
If rumours are to be believed one of the reasons why they're not updateing IE for a while is that it's in as bad a need of a rewrite as Mozilla was and that's probably going to be expensive. Whether or not that's true, they are still going to have to maintain thier internet code and that's going to cost money. While 'improved internet abilities' will look nice on the marketing materials for the next Windows I doubt it would be a real driving force for people to upgrade, especially when the older OSes can get the same if not better functionality from a free download.
Look at how they've stopped IE for the Mac, even on windows IE will no longer exist as such - it will just be a part of the OS. So in some ways, they've already dropped the browser. As such maybe instead of developing the bits that made up IE they might source the internet technology they need from outside. There's nothing to really stop them using Gecko or KHTML ala Safari - after all they do use open source software (like bits of Interix) they just don't make a song and dance about it. Alternativly they could license Opera technology, a bit more expensive but they'd be less likely to loose face from all thier anti-open source efforts.
Tk
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
We owe AOL a lot for making the Mozilla project possible. We're lucky they didn't pull the plug three years ago or we'd have a serious problem in the browser world.
Guess what, hotshot? The answer to that question is: Whichever one will not take 4+ years to ship in a working form while the world's largest and most predatory corporation is working overtime to dig your grave.
Please notice that despite the nonstop handwaving from the Mozilla team about how maintaining seperate native interfaces for the assorted Gecko frontends was supposed to be some sort of impossible herculean task that no reasonable person could be expected to tackle, in the time that it took to produce ONE semi-functional version of Mozilla, Opera Software, a company with not even a tenth of AOLNSCP's resources, produced multiple versions of a fully functional web browser, for all of Mozilla's major target platforms. Not only did they produce, maintain and upgrade native Windows, MacOS and Linux versions of Opera, but they increased their market share, and made money doing it.
"We had no choice but to implement XUL/XPFE" is the Big Lie of the entire Netscape saga. The fact that mozilla team members are still stating it with cultish earnestness suggests not that you all came to a reasoned engineering decision, but that your project management was not merely incompetant, but downright pathological. If 1% market share and the firing of your entire development team isn't enough to convince you that somewhere, somehow, you made the wrong decision, you are simply delusional.
Hopefully, some of the core Mozilla developers and managers will use some of their newly acquired free time to read Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month." When Brooks talks about the Second-System Effect, he's talking about you.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
That was, of course, supposed to say "World's largest and most predatory software corporation." MS is big, but it ain't GM or Exxon...yet.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
AOLs last chance for survival would have been an AOL Linux distribution, sent out free to everyone, just so they could keep subscribers.
You could write solid HTML that doesn't depend on the idiosyncracies of ANY browser, including IE.
Sorry, but when I see comments like that, I really have no sympathy for anyone who is stuck coding for IE only. You contributed to the problem youself.
Seen adverts in the UK recently for 'AOL 8' which, amongst other spurious features, boasts 'popup blocking'.
Seems like something Mozilla-based, then?
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
Yeah, I know, the "Free Software" community will keep Mozilla alive. Except where have they been up till now? Mozilla has been open-source for five years, and still almost all development has been done by Netscape employees.
Face it, Mozilla is dead. It's not the standard browser anywhere, except for a few zealots and the small number of people who do everything on Solaris or Irix. Not even Apple backs it.
Mind you, I'm not happy about this. I hate Microsoft being able to ignore web standards. I hate that you can only use SVG in plugin-based "objects". But fighting battles that were lost years ago is not going to change any of this.
Maybe, and I say maybe there is hope for the kHTML engine, which is the basis of Sonqueror and Safari. I've always like this engine, even when it was new and buggy. It's small, it's fast, and every time I look at it, it's drastically better.
I very much doubt if Internet Explorer will ever lose its supremacy. But if you just can't tolerate this, forget the bloated Gecko engine and start thinking about a Windows port of kHTML.
150 million. I would expect MS to try and bury AOL real soon now.
I'm just curious because... What if there is room to screw Microsoft by including IE but not using it or deligating it to a trivial roll while using gecko for their browsing engine of choice? Just think of all the laughs that would induce.
if im not mistaken aol uses IE in theyre software hell if its not the current version it infects your system with it and all of theyre ads and what not
Except that AOL didn't pay for TW with money. They paid for it with stock. AOL stock was worth a lot, but only based on promises of future profits. That dream is gone, and a lot of TW shareholders and execs are not happy. And that's why Case is gone.
As an insider, let me say that I *wish* AOL would choose Netscape 7 (or Mozilla 1.4) as their default browser. However, the reason they choose IE isn't because they're "in bed" with Microsoft - it's because the executives feel IE gives a better browser experience. The execs don't give two cents about open source - they care that users get the best web experience possible.
And lets face it - they're probably right. IE renders broken pages better, it supports ActiveX and all the Microsoft-isms which just don't work or look right on Netscape/Mozilla. I don't particularly *like* IE, but if some moron creates a broken page with poorly formatted HTML, it's much more likely to look right in IE.
It's all about business, and if people feel their web experience is sub-par, they'll jump ship. Period.
Great, so everyone can use IE(sorry, the MS HTML rendering engine)'s broken parser! Woo hoo!
I agree. I have a laptop (p120 16Mb of ram) with Windows 98 (lite) on it. Phoenix loads in around 2 minutes or so, after that it's difficult to tell if windows is frozen or Phoenix is trying to do something. Opera actually is much faster on this machine than Netscape 3 ever was on my P133 with 48 Megs of RAM.
I think each will end up filling a nitch as computers get faster, you wont see much of a difference between Opera and Moz on the desktop, but getting moz to work on something like a phone would almost be a joke.
MS may lose ground in the browser market because they have frozen IE at version 6 SP1
Yes but IE does have (free) third-party add-ons available such as CrazyBrowser and AvantBrowser that offer many great features similar to Mozilla. While CrazyBrowser development appears to be nailed to the perch or just resting, AvantBrowser is steaming along with a pretty active user community. Dunno if the masses are aware of these, though.
AOL have no obligation to use IE. MS essentially gave them the right to use it for 7 years. The right, not the requirement.
Ofcourse, what would switching to gecko do for them? It wouldn't make AOL any faster, since the IE engine is pretty fast. It wouldn't improve site compatibility. It would get them better standards compatibility, but come on, it's AOL, what do they care about standards compatibility?
The one reason I might see for them to use gecko instead of IE is to make the AOL experience more uniform across platforms. They already use gecko in everything except AOL for windows. But I highly doubt this weighs in as heavily as staying on MS's good graces AND having the de facto browser standard be your core.
I'm exercising my karma-burning perogative baby...
Fuck AOL.
Fuck those cockmunching peabrain shiteating worthless motherfuckers.
Thank you.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Yes, but how much time were the volunteers spending on it? My guess it that after the layoff, there will be fewer people working on Mozilla full-time. There may be a big difference between somebody who works on a project as his full-time job, and somebody who works on it after coming home at night tired from a full day at work.
After everything settles down, I'd be curious to know how many *hours* were spent each month working on Mozilla before the layoff, after the layoff, six months after the layoff, a year after the layoff, etc.
Finally, can one reasonably the volunteers to be as qualified, experienced, efficient and productive and the people who worked on it full-time?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Does this mean the end of Netscape's Mozilla-based web browser product line?
Yes, I guess they'll make lots of money by working with MS, just like WordPerfect, Stac, and Borland did.
Of course nothing is new in Netscape 6.2. It was released 14 months ago. Get your facts straight before bitching. Or do you just get off on bitching and don't need a real reason?
Netscape 6.2.3 release notes
So obviously Mozilla aren't alone in seeing value in that. With Opera now releasing for Linux with a couple of days of a Windows release we already see some benefits.
It is certainly time to review decisions made on Mozilla. Not with any mind to assign blame or proclaim that something was an obvious mistake but to calmly appraise with the benefit of hindsight in an attempt to learn.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Um... last I knew 'die' isn't 'you. Unless the german language changed. Du=you (of course this is the informal form). As in:
'Wo bist du?' oder vielleicht, 'wo sind sie?'
My deutsch ist sehr schlecht but apparently it's still better than yours.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Still I deserve a big label of 'stupid' slapped square on my forehead before people start calling me Bush jr over in Deutschland.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
It's not the same.
Everyone I've introduced to Mozilla has used it over IE. They don't always go to the effort to download and Mozilla themselves, but when IE and Moz are both installed (a level playing field), everyone I've shown Moz to has continued to click on Moz instead of IE.
Most people do want Mozilla. They just don't know it yet.
well, its on the fuckedcompany website and their link is to economic times times
seems like netscape has been losing the war for a long time. and i think it continues.
its a shame, i like netscape.
I'm said to see all this good programmers going! But maybe thus Mozilla will survive AOL at the end of the story - as AOL is imploding now and Mozilla will go ahead on its way to a really Open Source community project now. (I also would like to see it GNU GPLed.) about:mozilla Regards, Jan
struktur AG, a large software producer of content & collaboration management software in Germany is seeking for open source developers.
If you are familiar with free software, C/C++ and/or Python, contact struktur AG. The head quarter of struktur AG is located in Stuttgart, Germany. Their customers are Deutsche Bank, Daimler Chrysler, Kaufhof and others.
Web: www.icoya.com
email: info@struktur.de
It's time to put up or shut up on OSS - let's contribute rather than complain. The O'Reilly books on XUL have been published and the solid featureful codebase (of 1.4) has been finally, truly freed. Phoenix from ashes anyone? ...
... its stock may have tanked but they are doing something useful and making money (barely) now. No reason Mozilla.org can't do the same.
We should also all say THANK YOU to AOL for supporting the development of Mozilla. It could have been killed years ago but AOL visionaries kept it alive until it was "ready" for the wild. The $2 foundation grant should keep the foundation in servers and bandwidth as long as it needs and with a skeleton crew of CVS, bugzilla maintainers, build engineer detritus cleaners and sysadmin staff time the burn rate will be low.
How about mozdev.org and mozilla.org teaming up to share bandwidth and hardware? How about cutting over to SVN and getting tigris.org to collaborate? Bugzilla should be a fabulously attractive project for collaboration.
Sourceforge has focused
Sun and Redhat will provide build environments for weekly builds (nightlies are overkill) and gecko will be honed to the point wher it takes 10 lines of code to embed.
But who the heck will do the windows builds?!!
Maybe it is time for us to recognize that even when we work on free software, we should insist on being paid to do so. We are all collectivly screwing ourselves. Why should aol pay for anyone to do anything if people will do it for free. Mozilla will always be there for them, and if they ever should see the need to slap some branding on it, they can.
RMS acts like it is vulger to insist on payment for services. Perhaps RMS lives in a world where people don't have to eat or have shelter, but the rest of us do not. It is time for us to come together and insist on being paid for what we do.
If you are not being paid a living wage for what you do, maybe you should question if what you are doing is in your self interest. Eroding the demand for programmers hurts more people than just yourself. Your gift to the world might be hurting the people who can least afford it, while propping up large corporations. Just wait till more companies realize the free ride available to them in the form of free software.
Please put that back in your ass. Microsoft never said they were changing the API.
A reasonable person would assume they would add a NET API, but it's purely slashbot wishful thinking that MS would piss off their core supporters by breaking existing applications.
Then again, imagining a turtle drying up on a hot race day is quite funny.
A few months back (4-6 months ago not sure) I downloaded Netscape 4.5 I believe to try and work on website compatibility with it.
I've since lost the files and reinstalled Windows and needed to go get the files again for a new site compatibility problem. Well... just you go and find it now. They used to have a "Download Older Versions of Netscape" link or two. Now? Well if they are still there, they are well hidden. In fact, one link which has a link to a "Free Download" of 4.7 takes you straight to 7.1 download page.
This is beyond no longer developing Netscape. Removing old versions from the site? Excuse me?
Netscape Navigator 3.0 made the company famous, but that was long long time ago.
Netscape Communicator 4 gave the company a bad reputation. It was buggy, unstable, and with lots of proprietary "features," oh and the "blink" tag too.
Netscape 5 never existed, because it took too long to develop. And people are begining to forget the Netscape brand name.
Netscape 6 finally released, but it was not ready at all. Scared off even die-hard Netscape fans.
Netscape 7 released by AOL with AOL spyware and craps. Most people would rather use Mozilla.
With all its mistakes and bad reputation, don't you think it is better to get rid of the Netscape brand name?
Oh I'm sorry to intrude on the golden light of wisdom that is you. I'm sorry. So what is it I've missed in 14 months with NS. Time travel? Instant configuration? Does it run an order of magnitude faster? Is it fucking magic? Tell me tell me oh Yoda. Or shut the fuck up and take a breath and realize that NS is shit. Yeah it is, get over it.
Israel. We give this six billion dollars a year.
Phillip
This would explain why so many open Mozilla bugs are going unfixed, even after dozens of votes and months of waiting.... I don't blame them.
At the last company I worked at, people were somewhat paralyzed by fear over losing their jobs to really concentrate on fixing bugs. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing is happening at AOL/Mozilla. It seems to be happening throughout the entire IT industry in Western countries.
It would make my day if a company would make a solid guarantee, such as "We will have 0 layoffs this quarter if we make over $X in sales or hit milestone X on our project", and stick to this guarantee. It would give employees a goal to shoot for, instead of being kept in the dark with that sword hanging over them.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
The only time I allow IE to run on my Windows box is for my regular McAfee updates and Windows Update. They're the only things I haven't been able to break of the IE habit (so far).
I run Mozilla and Mozilla Firebird on Windows, Mozilla/Mozilla Firebird/Konqueror/Lynx on Linux (depending on my mood). Got no use for IE, except as a bug collector. I have Netscape 7.x on my Win box, but why bother? I never use it.
AOL killed Netscape just by buying it. AOL=newbies=bye bye, Netscape. It's sad to see that Spry Mosaic (my first real browser, and the ancestor of Netscape) has ended this way.
Mosaic is dead. Long live Mozilla!
"A generation which ignores history has no past and no future." -- Robert Heinlein
(I'm using Firebird on Windows 2000 at the moment)
Unfortunately the tab support in Firebird is broken. They removed the "close other tabs" command, for some reason. I often open a shitload of tabs, and on finding something interesting I "close other tabs", to ease up the task of opening and reading yet more tabs. This is perhaps the main reason I still use Mozilla Classic.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
> America's bankrupt.
Morally or economically?
You did it wrong. In the religion of 1337LiNuXes, the IE to Mozilla ordinance goes as follows:
When you follow this these ordinaces of the 1337LiNuXes, you will surely find happiness! Praise Linus! ;-)
I wouldn't choose to phrase it that way, but in this case, effectively, yes, I do. These people have a job: to communicate to/with their clients. They should write their code to do that as best they can. Standards are merely a means to an end, in this or any other industry. They are not, and should not be, an end in themselves.
Like it or not (and I don't like it any more than you do) IE effectively defines the current standard. IE has 96% market penetration (source: BBC News article today). At that point, what Microsoft say is more important than what a "standards" body says.
I would much rather IE and others all signed up to the W3C standards. But the simple fact is that we're talking about businesses trying to do a job. In the real world, the pragmatic thing to do is to write for the vast majority of your customer base (IE users) first, and any others ("standards" people using alternative browsers) later.
Fortunately, it doesn't take 96% of the effort to reach those 96% of your clients, so it's usually possible to address both IE and non-IE visitors without prohibitive extra effort. However, if you put principles ahead of pragmatism in this sort of environment, you fail. It's really as simple as that. It sucks, but I know it, you know it really, and nothing either of us writes here is going to change it.
That's one perspective. A more realistic one might be that if your standard isn't followed by 96% of the market then it has no right to call itself a standard and it is your "standard" that is broken.
Standards aren't supposed to define new things, they're supposed to codify common practice so that others can match it. A standards body that doesn't have the market leader on its side has at best a dubious remit. When that market leader represents all but 4% of the market, does the standards body really have any remit at all? (Clearly, this isn't a black and white question and I'm overstating the case, but there's an element of truth here that I think needs to be understood.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"A reasonable person would assume they would add a NET API, but it's purely slashbot wishful thinking that MS would piss off their core supporters by breaking existing applications."
I see you haven't tried Windows 2003 server! And for the record, he's right, the APIs have changed.
If you have ever walked into an internet cafe anywhere around the world, then you are likely to only be using IE and Windows. For many people the only contact they have with a PC is in internet cafes and most owners put a minimum install. You will also notice that Java is only available in the form of Microsoft's VM, so forget coding your applets with swing, or any other technology not part of JDK 1.1
For people who aren't techies the story is similar. They install what they understand and also what their peers seem to be using. Trying to explain the non-marketed alternatives is not easy. All too often we come off as techies and scare them because we do things differently.
Mozilla has a chance to exist, but it needs to be marketed differently. It needs to be included in the Linux distros and possibly even other 'marginal' OSs. MacOS X now has Safari, so Apple is unlikely to want to include Mozilla as an alternative, because that would mean that they would have to support it. Splitting Mozilla into several components is likely to help as this would make the browser much more appealing to many people. People seem to understand separate products better than a super product that does everything.
To make Mozilla more recognised, I believe three things need to be done: a) provide a 'supported' version b) get inet cafe owner to offer it, or at least Phoenix as an alternative and c) not use the Netscape name. The last point come from me talking to people who think of the cludge of Netscape 4.x when I am talking about Netscape 7.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.