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Netscape Out, iPlanet In
trims wrote to us with the an update on the AOL/Sun/Netscape triumvirate. Quite a lot of people have written that the the products are taking the name iPlanet, but it also appears that the name Netscape itself is being dropped from all but Navigator and Communicator. The article itself talks a bit about open source movement, and how the decision to drop the Netscape name was partly because Netscape had burned so many developers.
Communicator ran fine for me under 2.0.36, and continues to do so under 2.2.6 - I'm running the latest 4.61 release (4.5 was fine too), with the Shockwave and RealPlayer G2 (alpha) plugins - all fine :) I use it for mail and news also.
Maybe your problems are due to either botching the complicated 2.0 -> 2.2 upgrade, or running one of the more recent flaky 2.2 kernels? It does appear to have stabalized again, although I'm sticking with 2.2.6 for the time being...
We haven't forgotten that
Scott McNeily, head of Sun,
has called GNULinux a commie
OS. But, believe this: Our
$299 GNULinux Servers from Pogo
and others will destroy him in
just a short time. He is trapped
between the powerful MS monopoly
that wants him destroyed and the
GNULinux community that wants him
gone. There is no where for the
RAT to go except down with the
sinking ship. Our $299 GNUlinux
servers have plenty of iron already
and we will have more iron at less
cost with the Free Hardware Foundation
underway. Sun is finished they
are just lingering now. Scott will
regret the day he called GNULinux
a "commie" OS and we better not
find our code being exploited in
any of Sun's outrageously priced
systems.
There's still two-letter domains available in some of the non-US domains. .cx (Christmas Islands) still have a few good ones left, although you need a special reason for them to let you have one. Try http://nic.cx if your interested - they're cheap!
That's strange... I tried using MSIE 5.0 in
;)
Win2000, and it crashed about 5-10 times a day.
Netscape 4.6 crashes only once or twice a WEEK.
And when MSIE goes down, it f*cks up the entire
system.
If that's an "innovation" from MS, then I'll take
a "stagnant" company like Netscape/AOL any day...
-WW
--
Why are there so many Unix-using Star Trek fans?
When was the last time Picard said, "Computer, bring
Ahem.... What release? I had problems with NS 4.6 in RH 5.0, but I found the problem was likely the release since the problems (which I do agree that Netscape would MYSTERIOUSLY freeze on me. SUCK!) went away with RH 6.0 and Caldera 1.3 and up. Windows users: BEWARE IE5 and Windows 98 SE!!!
mozilla mathML group are scurrying...they freeze mid-august.
this is whats gonna be the next "netscape", yes? freeze in august to release in march...?
Communicator, Navigator, and Netcenter are not part of the Alliance. They retain the Netscape name. Your client is still Netscape.
The reason all of this is happening is that AOL bought Netscape almost entirely for Netcenter, their web site. They honestly didn't care that much about their products and technologies, except maybe Mozilla (which they want to be able to use for future "embedded" type stuff from what I understand). I don't think they would have let Sun use the brand for the server products.
iPlanet is now the name for all of the server products, which didn't have nearly the reputation (think general public, not slashdot readers) that their clients have had. AOL will continue to use the Netscape brand name, but you won't see anything coming from Sun or from the Alliance that says Netscape on it (or so I have been lead to believe).
The name i-Planet was acquired by Sun when they bought a startup last October--see http://www.i-planet.com/ (i-planet, not iplanet). i-Planet had several products. The technology from one of them (which was RemotePassage from i-Planet) was incorporated with some Sun technology and produced a product which you have have heard referred to by one of its many internal names, "sun.net". The name of the actual finished product was changed several times, but eventually they named the product i-Planet.
Now the Alliance thing comes along and they are reusing the name (but without the hyphen now). So the sun.net product is now being re-named; what was the i-Planet software package from Sun is now the iPlanet Webtop from the Sun|Netscape Alliance.
(Incidentally, the webtop is a really nifty product that allows you secure remote access through a firewall via any SSL and Java aware browser; it can tunnel arbitrary protocols via a Java applet in the browser, so you can check your email behind the firewall from any airport net kiosk or similar access point.)
So, this has zilch to do with Mozilla, but it does affect all of the Netscape .* Server products and all of the Netscape .*Xpert products. But you probably don't use those anyway if you read Slashdot.
First, I'm taking the article with a grain of salt. I downloaded M7 a few weeks ago and was very impressed how far it has come. I know M8 has been released recently. Therefore, I am filing all comments about "Mozilla disappointment" under "Clueless/Myopic Industry Pundits Who Give Sound Bites Between Rounds of Solitaire".
Since the alliance, though, I'm hearing more statements from the Sun side of the alliance than AOL. Who's driving this bus? If AOL purchased Netscape, why is Sun making statements which suggest that they are distancing from Netscape? Why is AOL allowing this? Are they simply the lapdog for Sun now?
Sun is starting to make me a little nervous. Overall, they seem preoccupied with beating Microsoft. Is this because they actually want to BE Microsoft? I have no desire to see one marketshare-abusing entity replaced by another.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I've always started my name with an uppercase letter "John". Wonder if I can get a patent on that.
Double check your system files with sfc or that your vr on your motherboard is set properly...I do not know of this "crashing" that you speak of and believe it may be an isolated incident.
No 2002=e again, then i, then o.
:-)
The hidden lyrics are:
CmdrTaco had a website,
e i e i o.
And on that site there was some news,
e i e i o...
Or perhaps I need my dosage adjusted...
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Yes, the rest of us also wish you had had something to say.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
At the risk of sounding redundant, but yet maintaining relevance to this thread: They ARE keeping the name Netscape for the Navigator and Communicator for the very reasons that you think they should. Changing the name on other products should not affect them much, given that "those in the know" that are using the Netscape server product will be well aware of the name change, and new customers will be interested in the "new" product based on its qualities, not it's name.
Yeah, but are you really an insider?
I do think (as an outsider reading the tea leaves), that your comments are a pretty good match with my perception.
As far as 'brand' issues go (and this is just me talking), I think you make a really good point: "... I don't think they would have let Sun use the brand for the server products ...". Branding's a funny game, but I can see how AOL (as a consumer company) would not want to stretch the brand into an operation that they ultimately plan to spin off (... for other readers' benefit, the reason that Sun did not outright acquire Netscape's server business has more to do with taxes, than it does with wanting to make Star Wars allusions ...).
But AOL is using the brand: As someone else pointed out, AOL is launching an online service in Europe under the Netscape name. In addition, Netcenter, as you note, was a key asset in the AOL acquisition, and the Netscape name is still attached to the client software (and won't change based on some random speculation by some 'hacks' (the reporter kind)).
And as for the notion that the Netscape name has 'negative brand value' --- AOL acquired Netscape for (ultimately) ~$10 billion in stock. Anybody think it was for their quarterly earnings?
I doubt I'm the only one who's been waiting for this to happen ever since AOL assimilated netscape. But will the name change mean anything? A rose by any other name will still crash on every second page with java.
What's the deal with all these "i" prefixes? We've had "iMac", "iToaster", "iBook", and now "iPlanet". Guess it stands for "information".
I do think it grates a bit, though not as badly as "e-" does, as in "e-commerce", "e-business" etc.
Why is it that everyone seems to have to choose names like iMac, iPlanet, eWhatever, jMax, etc?
Who came up with this? Does it actually make more money?
This sig is false.
This sure is news to me. Millions of people still consider Netscape Navigator to be the One True Browser, and think of it as "Netscape" (not "Navigator" or "Communicator").
Bleh, this is sucky news.
(this is the same AC, really)
I posted the above comment using MSIE 5.0. It really is vastly superior to Communicator. In fact, MSIE is the only reason I still use Windows instead of Linux. The contrast between MSIE 5.0 and Linux Communicator 4.x is pretty striking...
So much time has gone by since webmonkey did a feature on M5, the party, the resignation, and I remember that as soon as I read that letter from jzw on his site, I immediately wanted to mail him to congratulate him for being such an enthusiastic person, who did so much in the past, but was then obviously going through some very hard shit.
(It was good that I didn't: I'd only got to the bit about jwz@aol.com followed by laughter by then, and further down it said it wasn't really his address...)
But in any case, I don't think netscape developers were "burned".
If Jwz hadn't resigned that day in such a big way, I (and lots of other webmonkey readers, and maybe even slashdot newbies) might never have heard of him. And that is the kind of people the web needs(and I'd name Bill Gates, Linus, Tim berners -lee, and so many more here, even just because they challenge us in positive or negative ways to work harder), because they are ordinary human beings trying to create what they dream is possible. Sometimes they fuck up or leave, but that is *not* burning!!
When we started this company, we were out to change the world. And we did that. Without us, the change probably would have happened anyway, maybe six months or a year later, and who-knows-what would have played out differently. But we were the ones who actually did it.
The Netscape experience showed, and is still showing us events in computing that are happening for the first time ever, that computing has had no experience of, simply because they were pioneers. Failure as well as success can be inspiring, because we can learn from those errors.
But of course, all this is from a humanistic point of view, not in the sense of organisational management. In that case they may be right, but the strategy of blocking out and trying to forget old mistakes never pays off in the long run. Perhaps the aol/sun/netscape conglomerate should challenge those mistakes instead of trying to cover them up...
Ale
The biggest worry that I have is that with this 'Alliance' including Sun technology (directory server components, application server components, and the like), I start to worry about Netscapes committment to Linux. Sun has always been 'borderline' on a Linux committment (no formal support plans, no server offerings, etc.). Is the committment to support Linux still there? Will there be iPlanet for Linux?
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
This mozilla bashing going on in the media is so tiring! It comes from two-bit reporters who likely have never seen Mozilla, and are just quoting FUD generated by other two-bit reporters. Mozilla is a fantastic piece of software. Considering the current incarnation has only been in development for eight or nine months, its make remarkable progress.
I think this is a knee-jerk reaction pushed by Sun to combat the fact that Netscape's name only has consumer value, not developer value which is the target of the "iPlant" marketing program.
I think Sun and AOL/Netscape are trying to take their existing products that aren't necessarily so highly regarded and brand them under another moniker to hide their roots. I'd expect product names to start changing too, so less clue-full developers who aren't watching these things may end up not realizing what the packages they're looking at actually are.
Sun's also in a tough position, as operating systems like Linux are becoming more capable of mission critical applications on Intel, Alpha, and other lower cost hardware. They're losing their monopoly on high-performance fault-tolerant systems.
I think there's also a growing trend (not growing fast enough, however) for companies developing major eApplications (can I coin that term?) to start utilizing network application architects to properly design the software, hardware, and network to provide better reliability, scalability and fault tolerance through intellegent system design rather than purchasing bigger iron. That trend, as it continues, will only serve to hurt Sun/Netscape more, because they're not going to be able to justify their extremely high hardware costs, and can't keep up with the pace of development in packages like Apache and JServ where high-performance fault-tolerant network application architecture is concerned.
I think its going to end up like all the other iProducts, like the iMac, iBook, etc. Marketing, marketing, marketing. With the real value of the product fairly low on technical merits when compared to price of competing products. Management types will like it...
The article gives the impression that the Browser will eventually become an AOL centric application. Is this true, or just another example of a DUR(Dumb Uninformed Reporter)?
As someone who is in the middle of the fray on this, I'm going to add my $.02. It's not Sun who's screwing things up, it's AOL. AOL is driving people out of Netscape because their managers are clueless, don't listen to the people actually working on stuff, and in general have an east coast mentality and don't give a damn about anything other than not taking responsibility for their own actions. Their main goal is to not lose their own jobs.
Although the Sun alliance part is screwed up too, it's actually doing a lot more for the company than AOL is. Less people have left from the Alliance side than from the AOL side. The server products are moving forward (all of them) and the Sun people (Mark Tolliver and such) actually listen to the Netscape people and use their ideas if they're good.
Blame AOL for ruining Netscape, not Sun.
"Planet" is not better: ...
PlanetHollywood, planetit.com, PlanetRadio,
Well, I may be mistaken, but I think IE automatically allocates enough resources to each window you have open. In Netscape, you choose how much you want to let it take. There's so much more that's configurable. I guess I don't tend to like programs that do everything for me. ;]
Also, (I'm running a Windoze box where I am now) IE has never worked correctly on this system. If it crashed, it'd take everything down with it, and there tended to be a horrific lack of options. (I've not used MSIE5 though.) And it'd crash often.
Netscape has proven itself much more reliable, at least to me.
Can't sleep, the clowns will eat me...
I wrote a Perl script to call 'whois' for aaa.com through zzz.com. All gone... :-( Then I change the script to call 'whois' for every word in the Linux dictionary file. There were hundreds of .com names left, but most really sucked, like:
abandons.com
accelerations.com
adagios.com
adventured.com
arithmetize.com
arithmetized.com
arithmetizes.com
authorizers.com
availed.com
axiomatization.com
axiomatize.com
baptizes.com
bitterest.com
blighted.com
bloats.com
branchings.com
brutalizes.com
Sun's also in a tough position, as operating systems like Linux are becoming more capable of mission critical applications on Intel, Alpha, and other lower cost hardware. They're losing their monopoly on high-performance fault-tolerant systems.
... for companies developing major eApplications ... to start utilizing network application architects to properly design the software, hardware, and network to provide better reliability, scalability and fault tolerance through intellegent system design rather than purchasing bigger iron.
Linux on the Intel or Alpha has a helluva long way to go before it can match the fault tolerance of the proprietary Sun hardware running Solaris. When you have total control over the hardware platform, you can do things like manage the booting process on multiple servers remotely, boot using kernels pulled from a network machine, have hot-swappable system boards, power supplies, and storage. Not to mention that an E10000 is a LOT more scalable than anything linux currently runs on.
I think there's also a growing trend
The increase in use of "eApplications" only increases the need for the kinds of servers Sun makes the most money on. "Bigger iron" on the server-side (Sun's market) means you can serve up e-commerce and "eApplications" to more clients.
That trend, as it continues, will only serve to hurt Sun/Netscape more, because they're not going to be able to justify their extremely high hardware costs, and can't keep up with the pace of development in packages like Apache and JServ where high-performance fault-tolerant network application architecture is concerned.
See my first paragraph for a justification of Sun's high hardware cost. As for Apache and JServ, Sun is fostering their development by providing the code for the JSDK 2.1 reference platform to the JServ team.
Of course, this suggests a great strategy for companies starting out in things like e-commerce. Use linux with something like Apache/JServ, and when you grow enough to need to scale up and gain more fault-tolerance (and you can afford it), you can move to the Sun enterprise platform and keep the same server software running under Solaris.
Let's think about this, AOL used to be a great friend to the Redmond monolith...
Now AOL has been named enemy of the MSN group. Big surprise there, but what was Redmond's big problem over the last few years?
Think just maybe M$ has there fingers in AOL still? With the big plan to ruin Sun and Netscape? Makes me think.
One of the things that I like about the web is the fact that I as a small, individual can actually figure out how to make the things I need the most on the net work... Now, I understand that cybersquating is a problem for some folks, but I think that these new policies are more likely to hurt the little guy than the big guys. I for one, do not use credit cards and don't really plan to, but now it looks like in the future I will be required to get a credit card in order to actually be able to order my domain name... If I mail in the cost for the domain name, by the time my check arrives the Domain Name might be sold to someone else. Further, since I generally use Money Orders it's probably going to be a pain in the a** to get my money back. So instead of the current situation where it takes me a few moments to register my name, and send in the check... I may end up doing a back and forth dance to establish a domain name for a period of months and that name I get is not necessarily the one I want. Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
No worse then "e" for electronic
or "x" for gen-x / techie.
Three years ago everything had to be e-this or e-that. eCommerce, eZines, eBusiness.
Today, everything is i. iMac, iToaster, iBook, iPlanet.
I predict that in three years everything will be o. Well have oData and oMarkets and oTaxes.
Just as in the previous cases, very few people will actually remember what the prepended vowel is supposed to mean. But they'll buy the product anyway.
-- The oG (tm)
It's evolution in action. What I long for is the day that we get "And Sometimes 'Y'" prefixing everything. I'm there already. Sometimes I look at my blue screen and say "yMicrosoft."
(glibc2, I guess), and add more fonts to your system. This will take care of most of "deficiencies", you see.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well, since the company was previously referred to as the "Sun/Netscape Alliance", they've dropped both names. So what?
Unless they replace the Netscape folks (PHBs) as well as the name, people will still be burned.
my two coppers
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
I agree. The article is a piece from the beginning, with a bunch of negative quotes and nothing forward-looking.
And they talk about a number of Sun's throwaway objects. At least they aren't chucking anything sa stupid as "Microsoft Bob".
---
John
"Survivors of DOS 4.0 : NEVER SURRENDER! LINUX NOW!!"
Am I the only one to whom this seems obvious?
Even /. has been bought out... (Not a slam or a flame, just an observation.)
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The following appeared on Monday :-
AOL Uses Netscape Name For New Free Net Service
19 July - DN Wire -- America Online is to launch its own free Internet access service next month in a bid to win back custom from no-charge rival Freeserve.
The new service - to be called Netscape Online - will be offered alongside AOL's subscription-based AOL and CompuServe services.
AOL is hoping that the introduction of Netscape Online won't dent revenue from the other AOL services because all three are aimed at different markets.
Whereas AOL is targeted at a family audience, and CompuServe business users, Netscape Online is expected to prove popular with young, male and single cost-conscious consumers.
While unlikely to offer the same range of services as AOL and CompuServe, Netscape Online will include America Online's popular instant messenger and buddy list chat features.
The introduction of the new service should help AOL fight back against no-subs giant Freeserve. Freeserve has attracted 1.32-million active users since its launch last September. AOL currently has about a million members.
Although software company Netscape - which AOL bought for $4-billion this January - will provide the brand-name and look for Netscape Online, the full extent of Netscape's involvement in the running of the new service is not yet known.
So there are some last bastions of the netscape name.
Am I the only one who's noticed that SlashDot is completely dominated by corporate news these days? Look at the articles posted here today, for example:
1) QNX
2) NSI
3) AOL/Sun/Netscape
4) Game Consoles (Sony/Nintendo,...)
5) AOL
6) Telstra
7) Westwood
8) USPS
9) Perl (finally!)
10) WalMart
Boring.
One, or arguably 2 articles out of 10 dealing with something *other* than what the corporations are up to. What I want to know about is what *we* up to -- where are the stories about the latest developments in free software projects like GNOME or KDE, etc. I'm sick of seeing stories about the latest IPO from some tech-related corporation. I want "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", not news for businessmen.
A disgruntled long-time fan of Slashdot.
Communicator 5.0 (due out in december) is the successor to 4.6, as is being developed internally by Netscape/AOL. Mozilla, the open source project/browser, is a separate deal, and AFAIK doesn't have a target release date yet (although of course the milestone snapshots are already available).
So long, Netscape. Nice knowin' ya.