Mozilla at One: An article by Frank Hecker

thaths writes "Frank Hecker, the person who wrote the paper that led to Netscape's release of the source code, has written a birthday piece on Mozilla , "

Comments

Paper -- which paper?

[Frank Hecker]

kzinti writes: I thought Cathedral and the Bazaar was the paper that led te Netscape's release of the Mozilla source...is there another paper I don't know about?

The short answer is yes; as is often the case, reality is more complicated than the sound-bite. To be as brief as I can without distorting history: Over the years several people at Netscape floated the idea of releasing source code for Navigator/Communicator; some did so in postings to internal newsgroups (like Jamie Zawinski), and some did so in private lobbying to management (like Eric Hahn, formerly Netscape's CTO). Prompted by two such newsgroup postings by Jamie and Eric Krock (now Gecko product manager), in the fall of 1997 I wrote a 30-page internal paper lobbying for release of source by explaining the business value for doing so; I also addressed various objections to releasing source, either showing how they were not really problems or describing how any problems could be handled. I sent that paper to Marc Andreessen, who in turn circulated it to other senior managers at Netscape. This paper was IMO one, but by no means the only, factor in the decision by Netscape management in January 1998 to release source. (For example, it was also important that Netscape decided to make Communicator binaries totally free at the same time; this removed a major objection to freeing the source code.)

Eric Raymond and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" came into the picture as follows: I was finishing up my paper, and was working on a section addressing the problem of coordinating development between Netscape and the net. (A major objection I thought would arise was how this could work successfully, or even if it would work at all.) I asked Jamie for advice, he gave me some, and then also pointed me to Eric's paper; I thought it addressed this particular problem quite nicely, and included a reference to "C&B" and a page or so summarizing its conclusions. Some of the senior managers (like Eric Hahn) liked "C&B" just as much as I did, in large part because of the implication that Netscape could potentially successfully leverage the work of lots of non-Netscape developers, even to the point of their driving the future direction of the product; Eric and others in turn promoted "C&B" within Netscape.

Once the decision to release source code was made, Netscape management then decided to bring in Eric and other people (Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, etc.) for advice. However the decision itself was a purely internal decision, in the sense that neither Eric or anyone else outside Netscape (to my knowledge) actually lobbied Netscape management on the source code issue; "outside" input was restricted to that provided by papers like "C&B", the GNU Manifesto, etc., and examples of free software businesses like Cygnus Solutions, Red Hat, and so on. (The Slashdot discussions about Netscape releasing source came in right before the Netscape decision was announced, but I don't know if they were actually a factor or not, because I don't know if the internal decision had actually been made by then.)

Incidentally, my original paper is not on the net, but I did a public paper "Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open Source Software" which incorporates huge chunks of my internal paper. In particular, the sections "Making the Business Case" and "Issues and Tactics" are close to what I wrote originally. However the licensing and business models sections of "Setting Up Shop" are new.