Slashdot Mirror
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, 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.
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.
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.
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...
Netscape was pretty stable for me under 2.0.x. Once I switched over to 2.2.x it got so unstable I had to pitch it.
I've since switched to using VMware+NT+IE5 for web browsing and configured my linux desktop system for IP Masquerade.
And I thought Netscape took a lot of resources... the redeeming quality here though is that it WORKS....
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."
Maybe they are making the change precisely because people associate "Netscape" with the web browser, and not any of their other software. Therefore, they chose a new name for the other software to reduce confusion.
InterNic lists all the one-letter domain names, including i.com, as being "Reserved Domain," reserved to the USC Information Sciences Institute since December 1, 1993. Any ideas why?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Considering that the browser market targets desktop machines, whereas the Unix market targets server machines, the fact that IE 5 is superior to Netscape 4 should sell millions and millions of client OSes (read: Windows), whereas the fact that Unix is more stable than NT should sell thousands and thousands of server OSes (read: Unices like BSD). Clue: the sales money gets made in the volume market. The service/maintanence money gets made in the server market. Conclusion: there's money for everybody (but always second-place apps for those who run the server OS on their desktop)
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.