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Mozilla Severs Netscape News Legacy

Posted by Zonk on from the you-can-never-go-home-again dept.

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "After years of official separation, Mozilla is just now shaking off some of the last vestiges of its parental association with Netscape. From the article: 'Mozilla's Usenet public newsgroups have been moved from netscape.public.mozilla.* to just mozilla.*. The renaming officially ends Mozilla's public Netscape news legacy after more than 8 years of active use. Most of the approximately 63 different newsgroups that began with the old moniker have now been officially abandoned.' Related: Earlier this week Netscape Communications released version 8.1 of its Netscape Browser."

9 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Includes by someguy456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sadly, today's Netscape is just a shadow of its former self: "What's Included in the Download? Installation may include Netscape 8.1 Browser, Netscape ISP, McAfee, Rhapsody, Real Arcade and WeatherBug." Sad.

    --
    Robert Bindler
    A Computer Science student's views on technology.
  2. Finally by thelem · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The renaming of the newsgroups has been one of the failures of the mozilla projects, and has dragged on for years.

    It caused problems back before even Netscape 6 was released. The newsgroups were intended for developers, but because they were called "netscape.public.mozilla.x" they would get loads of noise from people looking for help with Netscape 4. Thats died down now, or at least moved on to questions about Firefox. Having said that, I'm a fan of what Mozilla.org has done, and if the names of their newsgroups are my biggest criticism of them then they must be doing something right.

    This change should also help reduce the amount of spam on the newsgroups, since they will only be accessible through the mozilla news server and google groups

    1. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What tard decided to create a whole new hierarchy rather than legitimate new groups in comp.infosystems.www.browsers?

  3. Times have changed. by gasmonso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While is sad to see Netscape fizzle away, it was the browser that took on IE and fought the good fight. Mozilla and Firefox are the next evolution in the fight against IE. There is one constant in this universe though and that is Internet Explorer :( Hopefully this stiff competition will make IE a good browser once again.

    http://religiousfreaks.com/
    1. Re:Times have changed. by Psiren · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...and used it's monopolistic position - combined with some rather unethical tactics - to grab users away from Netscape.

      While there is an element of truth in that, Netscape was more responsible for its downfall than Microsoft was. They made a lot of poor decisions, and failed to make the browser experience better, instead preferring to get into a feature war with IE, one they were ultimately to lose.

      A good example of this was Netscape not working with roaming profiles. At my place of work (before my time, but I've discussed it at length with my colleague) they were unable to use Netscape because of this. Numerous discussions with the company resulted in nothing productive - they just weren't interested. That was responsible for a good number of enterprises switching to IE.

      The Mozilla foundation have so far done a good job on focusing on making the browser better, adhering to standards (yes, they still have some way to go) and making the user the focus. Lets hope they continue this way, esepcially when IE 7 is released. I'd hate to see another feature war break out.

  4. Re:I wonder when they'll get rid of "ns*" then... by Andrew+Tanenbaum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why consider the prefix to be an annoyance? Moz/FF was built on the shoulders of giants (Netscape), and we should not actively work to deny this.

  5. Breathing by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Netscape used to be able to charge corporations money to use their browser.

    When Microsoft gave away IE for free, it cut off Netscape's revenue source. I blame the downfall in software quality on Netscape's inability to find a new revenue stream.

    Or to put it another way... even if they implemented roaming profiles, you'd still be paying Microsoft and not paying Netscape.

  6. Camino by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why consider the prefix to be an annoyance?

    Because on the Mac OS X platform, NS meaning Netscape conflicts with NS meaning NextStep.

  7. Re:boring rehash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    "You don't remember a little anti-trust trial do you?"

    How could we forget. It allowed Netscape's founders to make a lot more money selling the company then they would have made if MS had never entered the browser market. Competition was inevitable, they were just lucky it came from a company with a lot of legal baggage so they could play the victim card and sell the legal candy to AOL for big bucks.