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Has AOL Ruined Netscape?
Anonymous Coward sent it: a scathing, three-page ZDNet article that claims the AOL purchase has turned Netscape into a shadow of its former self, that morale there is low and employee turnover is high, and that the company is now mired in bureaucracy, caught between Sun and AOL managements. The article was so sad, I almost wanted to cry by the time I got to the end.
combining this article with nomo zilla and nscp/aol by jwz the view of AOL one gets is all but pretty.
Sad to see that what was in many ways such a great company pushing the boundaries, staying on the forefront of the web & Internet revolution, has broken into pieces.
RIP?
What matters to me in most Internet users is how they implement standards. they can add tons of URLs back to it AOL's domain, all kinds of 'paper clip inspired' interface kludge, that all ok
Fast, Faster, Fastest, Stable and Standards compliant. These other things that will return Netscape back to prominence on the desktop.
Personally, I am tired of hearing sob stories about Netscape. Why exactly should I feel badly for the employees that churned out crappy code, wouldn't return my calls when I was actively trying to purchase their product, and gave me hideous tech support afterwards?
People talk of Netscape as if it were some sort of fallen hero, but the fact is that Netscape is the reason we have never had a standards compliant browser available, ever. Navigator 1.0 added a bunch of crap without being compliant and it went downhill from there. And don't get me started on the bugs in their code.
In many ways, AOL got suckered by this deal. They should remember next time they are considering buying a software company to look at the code first.
The Mozilla project is the only thing that they have done right. I just hope it isn't too late for it to matter.
Woogie
The most interesting thing about this article, I thought, was how little of it applies to Mozilla.
Post jwz, it seems that morale at Mozilla has just been getting better and better. Developer turnover appears to be very low -- the same names are still appearing week after week in the status reports as 12 months ago. There's now a real confidence and enthusiasm that they are on a realistic timetable to deliver a world beating product -- and soon. Mozilla's culture is alive and well.
Yeah, it sounds from this article as if the rest of Netscape has taken a beating. Sic transit gloria mundi.
But as a consumer brand Netscape is defined by the browser. With Communicator 2000 in the next couple of months also including some of the goodies AOL has been keeping on its secret list, the Netscape brand is going to be back with a bang.
Netscape (the company) is dying - not just because of the corporate clash with AOL, but because they just don't have the technology.
The shipping Navigator is second rate compared to IE5, and who uses a Netscape server these days? For webservers, it's IIS vs Apache, and for application servers, the Netscape one has such a bad reputation that people are dumping it for anything else.
There is still the Netscape name, though, and that is worth a huge amount. Everybody has heard of Netscape, if only they could find a way to use that!
AOL should spin an E-Technology company off and give it the Netscape name - they would make billions! The value of AOL stock has nothing to do with Netscape, but if there was a relaunch of Netscape, with some valid technology it would rock - hell, they could sell support for Apache or something.
Forget this stuipid I-Planet thing. When did you ever hear anyone from Sun talking about that?
The game isn't over for Netscape, not by a long way, but I think it's future lies in technology, not services & portals.
--Donate food by clicking: www.thehungersite.com
I have been watching the browser wars with much interest in the last several months. This is because I manage a project developing Java applet based database clients. I find both browsers very buggy and don't particularly like either. At the moment there just isn't anything better. Unfortunately because of the slow movement at Netscape for the last year, I see Microsoft gaining quickly in performance and features, and will probably blow by Netscape in the next year.
I see IE as the biggest threat to Linux . The reason for that is I see the browser becoming the desktop of the future. If IE is the only real browser left, then Micrsoft will have an even bigger and stronger monopoly on "desktops" than they have now. Microsoft isn't about to make a Linux version of IE. And with out a good browser, Linux will never make the transition to the desktop from the server. (Taking over the server market I see as just a matter of time.) Part of my assumption here is that the next killer App will be built on top of a browser. And if IE is the only serious browser in town, then Microsoft still holds all the cards, (and a couple of spare Ace's).
So from my point of view Mozilla is more important to linux than gnome/kde. Having said all of this, I have a question. A freind of mine and myself have talked about putting together a Mozilla distribution CD that contains "up to the week" source code, and the latest Milestone binaries currently found on mozilla.org. If you could buy one of these CDs, would you buy it? Would you report bugs or help with the Mozilla development? The only problem is that because of the rapid change in code and binaries, glass mastered CD's are out, it takes too long to have that done. And quick turn around for CD-R's is a bit higher per disk ($5-6). If you would buy and use a Mozilla distribution CD , mail me at Noble. Also we need people who can help set up the distribution for others OS's (Windows and Mac). I think we have Linux (and most unix) covered. E-mail me if you have time and knowledge to help with that.
But most importantly, help Mozilla anyway you can.
Second, Netscape's Unix-oriented tech culture started to hurt them when focus shifted towards usability features and cute UI flourishes in 1996. This was clear both on the browser side
and on the server side
I don't, however, fault them for their lousy tech support. I always found their server support group competent and responsive. It wasn't their fault that the product engineers would leave nasty bugs unfixed for release after release. That's why Apache's so compelling. And unless you had a special relationship with Microsoft, mediocre support like Netscape's was far above average.
AOL and Sun bought themselves a troubled company with a faltering product vision, and they knew it. That doesn't mean Mozilla's not great technology; it is. And it doesn't mean Netscape's server line isn't good. It is. That's why their mail, web, directory, cert and app servers are the basis for the iPlanet line. But both the client and server groups at Netscape were sorely lacking product architects with customer and market focus.
In this regard, the buyout offered Netscape a chance for redemption. If AOL can be made to care about Mozilla, their understanding of customer-focused (as opposed to geek-focused) usability can help it in ways XUL and XPFE as rallying slogans couldn't. And though Sun is still coming up to speed as a software vendor, they at least know how to listen to their customers in designing products in a way Netscape never did.
Folks,
If you think Microsoft smashing Netscape on the Windows platform is bad news, consider this possibility: Microsoft could easily direct its resources to create a Linux version (written under GPL guidelines) that will effectively finish off Netscape once and for all.
People conveniently forget that Microsoft has written a version of Internet Explorer that runs on the Sun Solaris operating system. It wouldn't take much work to convert that code into something that will run under Linux.
I mean, look at the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer. This version was literally written from scratch specifically for MacOS, and it's a very good and very FAST browser (it's certainly faster than Netscape Communicator 4.5 and later).
Because Internet Explorer for Linux will be open source, that bunch of 1,000 Linux programmers will be able to suggest changes that will improve it rapidly. Microsoft could make like quarterly releases of IE for Linux on CD-ROM (with all the suggestions and changes from Linux programmers).
Another thing people forget about is the MS-funded TransVirtual open-source Java project. Microsoft will likely incorporate TransVirtual Java code into Internet Explorer for Linux, and given TransVirtual's goal of full Sun Java 2.0 compliance, it'll be VERY interesting to see what Scott McNealy has to say if TransVirtual's open source Java VM and compiler is submitted to Sun for Sun compliance testing (especially given the fact that Sun is still reluctant to "open source" Java).
In short, don't just count out Microsoft just yet. They could literally turn the open source community upside down (and you wonder why Microsoft has opened a major development center in Mountain View, CA--the heart of Linux development).
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Netscape was a classic example of a naive, technology-driven start-up unable to cope with a leadership position and an excess of capital. AOL has simply saved the remaining Netscape employees from becoming unemployed and picked up a marginally well-trafficked Web site in the process. All the other problems are of Netscape's own making.
Specifically, they were never able to articulate a compelling technical vision. (c'mon, did *anyone* really think a Web browser was an operating system?) They never shipped a single product that was complete and of sufficient quality to warrant the market share they claimed or the price they charged. They never executed a successful acquisition strategy to do something constructive with the mass of cash they raised in their IPO.
So in the end, they ended up with a bunch of 3 year old technology, nothing new in the pipeline, no partners or acquisitions to take them in a new direction, and competitors that followed a logical path towards the commoditization of Netscape's entire product line.
Anyone with an ounce of business sense predicted in 1995 that Web browsers and Web servers would become integral parts of every operating system and ship on all new computers. Where did Netscape think they were going to make money? They can poor-mouth Microsoft all they want, but they simply put themselves out of business if for no other reason than a lack of vision.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
There are at least 10 sources to this article, but /none/ of them are identified in this story! It's a great story, but how can anyone believe it conclusively? ZDNet could have just as easily made the whole thing up!
Sure, it's believable, since AOL is evil incarnate [/dripping sarcasm] but I just have to say WTF Man, couldn't they have found one person in the rogues' gallery to own up to their statements? If they don't work for Netscape anymore, what the hell do they have to lose?
J.
damned vulpine http://sb.drtwister.com/
"Standard support is the BEST of any browser currently out there"
Big deal they first wiped out the competition and only then could they claim to offer the best support for standards. Just wait two months or so, then mozilla comes out.
"Java is limited cause it's sand boxed, and already there are efforts to extend it with signatures."
As far as I know signatures/certificates are in JDK 1.1 and newer version. Java operates in a sandbox by default. With the use of certificates you can allow applets outside the sandbox. I think Java's certificate model is a bit more sophisticated then ie's security model.
"It looks like just a long list box, but there are advanced features, there are at least 5 different dialogs each with their own dialogs and settings especially for Java. IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape."
With the default settings, ie is very insecure since vbscript and activex stuff are enabled then.
Netscape doesn't support these things and doesn't need the complex dialogs to turn them of.
"Security in some windows components are broken, which cause IE uses, makes IE broken (it's hard to draw the line where IE ends and other things start - ala COM)."
That's what we call a messy program. Netscape proves that you don't have to do things that way to make a browser so IE's insecurity is inexcusable.
Jilles
- Decent
- Open Source
- GPL'ed
How would this be anything other than good? Sure, it might contribute greatly to the death of Netscape, but who would care at that point? We'd have a decent open-source GPL'ed browser! Any problems (e.g. standards non-compliance, useless bloat) could be fixed, and the fixes could be distibuted thanks to the hypothetical licensing.The only real problem with your scenario is that it will never happen.
-- $SIGNATURE
have you ever looked at the security options in IE? ... IE allows a flexible range of customization and settings - MUCH more so that Netscape.
While I agree with Microsoft's design here in theory, in practice, there have been countless holes discovered in these settings, which make them useless.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Having lived through all of what the author describes, this article simply distorts Netscape's past year of history in order to create a flashy, attention-grabbing story --- even if it's of questionable accuracy.
;) Yeah, it takes a few months to order a new computer, and we see an AOL logo at company meetings. So what? Personally, I think AOL is a great company to work for, whether perceived as "cool" or not.
;)
1. Attrition: Yes, people have burned out and left Netscape. But, you know what? New, enthusiastic employees of equal or greater caliber --- excited about the work that's being done at Netscape, and already trained from hacking on the Mozilla source code --- have come back to replace them in full force. The net effect is zero.
2. Netscape culture: Guess what? For most employees, the culture *hasn't* appreciably changed. Employees' dogs and children still have company badges, and we drink all the beer we want.
3. 5.0 Release Date: The author provides no evidence that the turnover has resulted in the one year delay in the Communicator 5 beta. Which is convenient --- because no cause and effect relationship exists between these two events. As many Mozillans have pointed out already in far more detail, the delay came about from a ground-up rearchitecting of the entire product. (And anyone who is bothered by this can go to http://www.mozilla.org and help ship a browser; whining here won't do jacksquat.)
4. Barry Schuler's comments: I attended that meeting. Barry **never** made these comments. He was, however, busily serving up a barbeque after the meeting, as Mr. Barksdale himself would have done. (Another AOL executive, in fact, did make these comments, but the journalist is, in my opinion grossly stripping the comments out of their intended context, which would have been obvious had he attended the meeting.)
Based exclusively on my personal experiences, it looks to me as if this journalist sought to write an article about a topic, and then wedged the facts to fit his original preconceptions. We ain't dead yet.
--- elig@prometheus-music.com's personal $.02.
"The original post said IE was bad at standards."
... unless you want to.
And they are right, it is. IE 5 is not HTML 4.0 compliant, does not conform to the XML 1.0 standard, makes a mess out of CSS 1.0, not to mention CSS 2.0, has a proprietary version of XSL.
The fact that netscape does not implement those standards is not relevant because it does not claim to do so.
I never said netscape was a good program, worse, I'm using ie 5 right now for the simple reason its better than ns 4.
"Uh. Yeah, you can not COMPONENTISE things, not reuse code and not add advanced features if you want to. "messy" is what I'd call netscape."
Agreed, they're both messy programs. But just wrapping your code in activeX doesn't make it any better. MS stuff has way to many dependencies on the lower level OS hence its poor security.
BTW. strange senctence: you cannot
As far as I know mozilla is crossplatform which means it is definately not based on COM. Probably they use some sort of ORB that resembles COM. At this point I would like to point out that MS did not invent COM, it's just a classical example of their embrace and extend policy. COM in it self is not evil but the stuff they put on top of it at MS is.
Jilles
Hmmm... Here's an equally true statement:
Netscape Navigator is not done properly. Standard support is poor, and undoubtedly the code implementing it is shoddy.
Security in Navigator has repeatedly been shown to be badly broken, and almost certainly not an integral part of the design.
The idea that digital signatures can protect a user from malicious code is ludicrous. (Netscape has this feature too.)
Yawn.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well quite honestly.. I'd have to say Netscape killed Netscape. Lack of vision, lack of conforming to standards, lack of interest in forming OEM relationships. Netscape literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, they _were_ the monopoly in the browser market..and they let Microsoft chew them up and spit them back out. Netscape was dead before AOL bought them. Now of course some people are angry at microsoft for making IE free...well let me ask you something, Gimp is free, Gimp is similar to Photoshop, a commercial product that costs quite a bundle. Gimp is packaged with most Linux distributions (if not all?) Is Gimp evil? Netscape should've created other sources of revenue. Also notice that we now have two competing browsers that are _free_ as opposed to having one browser that was not. The consumer benefitted from competition. If you believe netscape should've remained the monopoly..well don't point fingers at Microsoft then. Now the issue here is "What comes next?" AOL does have gigantic resources to use in competition with MS, not only are they a wealthy company, but they also command the largest Internet user base. After their contract expires in 2001 (?) They should be able to dump their new AOL-Netscape browser onto every one of their customers which could shift the playing field overnight.
Hold on to your hats, because I'm about to offer what appears to be a real commodity here on Slashdot: an informed opinion. I worked for Netscape from 95-99. I was there. Were you? That being said, keep in mind that this is my opinion. (#include ) The most prophetic thing I ever heard about Netscape was that it was eventually going to be a Harvard Business Study. From what I understand about those studies, that isn't very complimentary. Casting aside the inflamatory excesses of the ZDnet article, there are only two reasons why Netscape is in the position that they are in now: mismanagement and poor product quality. In that order. That should tell you something (i.e. mismanagement engenders poor product quality). I've read some comments in this thread that stated it was "wrong" for Netscape to consider the browser a "platform". Well, if we didn't convince you, we certainly convinced Microsoft. The Dept. of Justice was also able to convince Judge Jackson for us. (For those who haven't, those findings of fact are _great_ reading.) Let me let you all in on a little secret: the "Browser Wars" were/are a creation of the media and user communities. Boiled down to the purest fundamentals, our strategy was to create a networked computing "platform". Market share, especially after MS started doing their nasty, was only of marginal interest. We were trying to do something completely different. (And they are trying again with 5.0/Mozilla.) What? The "Browser Wars" didn't happen? Nonsense! I must be an idiot! How can I say that? Well, it's pretty easy, though many in the Slashdot/Linux community don't realize it. The fact is that there is a significant difference between "geek" computing and "consumer" computing. Consumers don't care about standards compliance. Consumers don't care about plugins and extenstions. Consumers care about one thing: they want what they're using to work and they don't care how. They were the target for the new platform. Our efforts were directed primarliy at them. For a whole host of reasons (mismanagement and poor quality), we were unable to achieve this. MS was, irrespective of the underhanded and illegal crap they did to make sure they were able to. Yes, as an engineer I agree that standards compliance would be a wonderful thing. There are several problems, though. The main one being I don't think developers (not just in the OSS community) don't know what they mean by the term "standards compliance". Do you know how many ambiguities are in the average standards document? (More than there should be.) What happens when the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. MS) zigs, and the rest of the community zags? This is what I think of when I hear people whining for "standards compliance": developers want their code to work and they don't care how. Does that sound like the above definition of a consumer? Bingo! It should. Achieving true standards compliance will take a lot more activism than the community is putting out. About that activism for a moment. For all the adulation Netscape/AOL got for starting the Mozilla project, the amount of useful work that has come from outside the company doesn't measure up. Sorry to burst your bubble, guys, but according to my still-connected comrades there are at most a dozen or two useful outside contributors. Most of the people who blindly assert that Open Source == Good do like to look at the code and _maybe_ tweak it for their own purposes, but the truth is that there is a high barrier to entry into the community because the source tree is an undocumented rats nest. So where are the people to document it? (More than the current 'Find the Design Patterns' thingy that's happenning.) Where are the thousands of people to QA? There's a lot more to QA than just swiping the bits and complaining about bugs. Open Source is not automatically good. It only matters if there is an active community that sincerely cares and goes out of it's way to allow newcomers to contribute without alpha-male "I'm elite and you're not," posturing. I'm firmly convinced that the success of any open source project is directly proportional to the extent that it fosters a "good" community. The Mozilla Project would not exist if AOL didn't pay the salaries of the majority of engineers who work on it. I'm sorry but that's not my definition of a "good" community. Two things have to happen if open source is to be more than a flash in the pan. The first is that the community has to realize that consumers don't care how things work. This is hard because it is fundamental to geek nature to care about how things work. The second thing is that enough socialization has to take place to end posturing, encourage newcomers, and understand that not all work can be sexy. The Mozilla project has a lot of thankless work that needs to be done. For those that truly care about their computing environment and open development communities, try to contribute whatever you can whenever you can. You may not get the reward and recognition you want, but when people talk about how great the new open source browser is, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you contributed. Having volunteered in areas outside the open source community, that feeling is more valuable than our whacked capitalist^100 culture makes it out to be.
Netcenter is still one of the top 5 sites on the internet in terms of hits. How can you say that it's fallen off the map. It gets more hits the /. ever will.
-Brent--
I can't believe the amount of negative posts about Netscape in this topic. The story itself was already crap but it looks like all the backstabbers are busy this weekend. I can't but wonder if some ACs are here to try to boost opinions that Netscape lost because of an inferior product.
Now let's have a reality check. Netscape is not about Communicator anymore. It's been about Mozilla already for more than a year. Sure they have released new versions of Communicator, but all the hard development and hopes are on Mozilla. And believe me, Mozilla is looking better and better every day. Just grab a nightly build from ftp.mozilla.org and see with your own eyes.
Mozilla has been built from ground up. It's well designed and has some really ground breaking code. It's already faster than IE and there's still a lot to optimize. The nightly build for win32 is just 5,2 MB. Compare that to the 18,1 MB bloat of Communicator and tens of megs of MSIE. Those who have programmed know that the bigger the executable, the more it contains ugly spaghetti code. Mozilla is also perfect for cell phones and hand held devices as it's small, componentized and runs on a free OS. That gives Mozilla a difinite edge compared to MSIE.
We've been patiently waiting for Mozilla for a year already. Now that Mozilla is getting close to ready, we get to read all these horror stories about Netscape being dead. It's just FUD and if you read the Findings of Fact-document, you don't have to be a genious to figure out who's feeding these news. But it doesn't matter what ZDNet, Gartner or Microsoft say. Mozilla will ship within 2-3 months and it will be a great product.
The quality of Netscape on non-microsoft platforms certainly may be something to debate about, but it's certainly not anything more then your opinion that Netscape sucks on other platforms. Certainly there are many people who believe that IE on Solaris and HP sucks worse.
But it is fact, as documented in the FoF that Judge Jackson released, that Microsoft intentionally made it a "jolting" experience when users tried to use Netscape as the default browser under Windows. So maybe MS didn't make it suck, but the certainly did make it hard for you to make it the default browser on Windows. I know for one that it isn't a problem to make Netscape the default browser on Linux.
-Brent--
I had inside experience with Netscape before AOL gobbled them up. It wasn't a very pretty sight. Netscape couldn't finish any products--they would often cancel them right after a big we're-making-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread gala. The Netscape that most people think of had already died out long before AOL came along.
Yep, but that Netscape code is going away anyways, so it doesn't matter. And most of those issues didn't exist when the browser was first developed meaning that there basically had to be kludges to get them in.
However, that's no big deal, because we have Mozilla now. Mozilla was written from scratch with all these issues in mind, so it implements them in a documentably superiour manner.
-Brent--
So you don't believe Microsoft engages in FUD campaigns, and other unethical behaviour?
h tml
Here are some Microsoft quotes for you . . .
Microsoft's Brad Silverberg re DR-DOS:
"We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the bugs. We'll provide info a few bugs at a time to stretch it out."
Microsoft analysis paper re DR-DOS:
"On the PR side, we have begun an 'aggressive leak campaign' for MS-DOS 5.0. The goal is to build anticipation for MS-DOS 5.0, and diffuse potential excitement/momentum from the DR DOS 5.0 announcement."
Microsoft PR plan re DR-DOS:
"Objectives: FUD DR DOS with every editorial contact made."
Microsoft's Brad Silverberg re DR-DOS:
"What the guy is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is dr-dos and then go out to buy ms-dos. or decide not to take the risk for all the other machines he has to buy for in the office."
Microsoft J++ Pricing Proposal re Java:
The "strategic objective" is to "kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
Memo re Java:
"at this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."
Microsoft's Vinod Valloppillil re Linux:
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
Microsoft's James Allchin re Netscape:
"I don't understand how IE is going to win. The current path is simply to copy everything that Netscape does packaging and product wise. Let's [suppose] IE is as good as Navigator/Communicator. Who wins? The one with 80% market share. Maybe being free helps us, but once people are used to a product it is hard to change them. Consider Office. We are more expensive today and we're still winning. My conclusion is that we must leverage Windows more. Treating IE as just an add-on to Windows which is cross-platform [means] losing our biggest advantage -- Windows marketshare. We should dedicate a cross group team to come up with ways to leverage Windows technically more. . . . We should think about an integrated solution -- that is our strength."
Microsoft's James Allchin re Netscape:
"Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have [less than] 20%. . . . I am convinced we have to use Windows -- this is the one thing they don't have. . . . We have to be competitive with features, but we need something more -- Windows integration."
"If you agree that Windows is a huge asset, then it follows quickly that we are not investing sufficiently in finding ways to tie IE and Windows together."
Microsoft's Paul Maritz on Netscape:
The major reason for this is . . . to combat Nscp, we have to [] position the browser as "going away" and do deeper integration on Windows.
Microsoft's Christian Wildfeuer on Netscape:
"The stunning insight is this: To make [users] switch away from Netscape, we need to make them upgrade to Memphis. . . . It seems clear to me that it will be very hard to increase browser market share on the merits of IE 4 alone. It will be more important to leverage the OS asset to make people use IE instead of Navigator."
Microsoft executive re Netscape:
Content drives browser adoption, and we need to go to the top five sites and ask them, "What can we do to get you to adopt IE?" We should be prepared to write a check, buy sites, or add features -- basically do whatever it takes to drive adoption.
Microsoft's Brad Chase re Netscape:
"We will bind the shell to the Internet Explorer, so that running any other browser is a jolting experience."
Yep. Just honest-to-goodness competition on the merits of their products -- in a pig's eye.
Sources:
DR-DOS Case - Consolidated Statement of Facts:
http://www.drdos.com/fullstory/factstat.html
Java Case - Motion for Preliminary Injunction:
http://java.sun.com/lawsuit/051498.unfair.html
Linux - Halloween Document:
http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.
DOJ Case - Findings of Fact:
http://usvms.gpo.gov/findfact.html
I use IE 5 on Windows because I've found that using Netscape 4.7 was a "jolting" experience. However, IE 5 crashes or otherwise chokes up at least once a week on me. But that's okay, because I'm only using it until Mozilla is released.
-Brent--
Its happening. One of the greatest things I have seen is the separation of rendering engine from the application. The KDE html rendering component is being ported to bonobo and wrappers for mozilla is already underway IIRC. With HTML rendering everywhere will give GNU a truly web desktop... the right way I because of the nature of open development.
Also there is mnemonic. If you are extreme web surfer dude you won't care about mnemonic. But the mnemonic project is looking to do a very extensable browser interface. They want to do HTML, XML, TeX, MathML, etc. And I don't think it is tied to GUI.
GZilla is coming along nicely I think. Then there is Lynx which is a viable alternative right now. I use it consistantly and the only reason I use netscape occasionally is because too many web developers don't care about text-only users...
Then there is emacs/w3. I haven't been able to get this one to work but I hear it has impressive CSS support.
Just remember this when considering Bazaar development. Programmers program because it is interesting and not for production value. Just because we have two great desktops doesn't mean we won't have another superfluous desktop or ten more. Same thing goes for every other free software project. If it is interesting it will be done, how much it benefits our revolution is often beside the point.
Nothing is more important than the hack.
***Beginning*of*Signiture***
Linux? That's GNU/Linux to you mister!
Just because some people find they need to upload/download pictures of themselves and others and their dogs doesn't mean they have no right to the bandwidth. If they pay for it then they can do what they want with it. Many people don't need computers but they have them, I would rather have them use AOL and call tech support than have them call me so I can explain TCP/IP to them.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
OK, your making pretty much the same point I did:
Mozilla uses a ms com like orb but ms did not invent it.
About the technical advantages of COM, sure it is convenient that you make a COM component of anything. This includes Java classes (through a bridge).
But why would people want to use RMI when they have COM? Apart from its platform independence, RMI can do some stuff COM cannot: download classes from a remote spot, serialize objects over a network connection and some other stuff. All this at the cost of language independence.
Likewise, JINI can use the same mechanisms to do cool stuff you simply cannot do with COM.
So a language dependency has the great advantage that you can do language specific stuff.
"Microsoft are big and considered evil, but they really do have some pretty neat technologies, and they manage to integrate them well into the windows api (giving them away free)."
I don't really think discussing companies in terms of good and evil makes much sense and of course MS did some neat stuff. I don't think COM is neat, though. A lot of win32 programmers seem to be really impressed with it but from where I'm standing its just a very simple ORB with lots of stuff strapped on top of it. I've seen much more impressive stuff like CORBA and voyager and considering this, MS could have pulled out something more advanced if they had taken the time to do the research & development instead of hacking a simple RPC mechanism on top of OLE.
Of course even a simple ORB allows you to do some neat distributed programming but that's not the point.
That's exactly the reason why the mozilla team used a COM like orb. It's relatively simple to implement, small, fast and provides what they need. I'm sure if rpc would have been in the requirements they would have chosen something more heavier: CORBA.
Jilles
As a customer of both companies, this doesn't seem bad at all. I've seen worse upgrade headaches from a single vendor. What are Sun's customers pissed about with regard to their server software? They've got the most popular commercial Unix out there, and some of the best hardware and hardware support around. Their own server software line was never that popular in the first place, and moving customers from one standards-compliant server software line to another isn't bad at all.
Yeah, iPlanet == Sun, but it's not like changing the brand name means the underlying products came out of nowhere.
Are you a paying customer of either? Personally, I'd rather use OpenLDAP, Cyrus, and an EJB appserver that plays nice with Apache. But as a customer of both Sun and Netscape over the years, I think the Sun adoption of the Netscape server product line is good news.