If this were another industry, say for example the car industry, would we be nearly so forgiving? Having read both the letter blasting Netscape and the holy-war response from Mozillazine, I certainly agree that the WSP's letter lacked tact (and perhaps expressed a great fear in their own potential uselessless), but the response baffles me. If this were a car company and not an information company, they would have gone down long ago. Such rants as "well, progress takes time; what do you want, we're working as hard as we can?" are only signs of frustration, not progress.
It also seems to me that it's been overlooked how seriously the merger of Netscape and AOL has effected Netscape. They are not the same company now that they were when they pioneered the early versions of Netscape. Many of their employees jumped ship after the merger, and even as hard as AOL supposedly worked to kill the bugs in the NS 4.x series, it was not enough to make up for the shoddy coding that has earned Netscape its miserable market share.
Fundamentally, if Netscape is unwilling/unable to release a product that is functional and standards compliant, it would seem that the browser market will be dominated by Microsoft. This is certainly not desirable, but until a company is willing to put the time and effort in to balance features against the need to turn out regular and stable clients, we are at the mercy of the only company that even tries (and still fails), Microsoft.
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It also seems to me that it's been overlooked how seriously the merger of Netscape and AOL has effected Netscape. They are not the same company now that they were when they pioneered the early versions of Netscape. Many of their employees jumped ship after the merger, and even as hard as AOL supposedly worked to kill the bugs in the NS 4.x series, it was not enough to make up for the shoddy coding that has earned Netscape its miserable market share.
Fundamentally, if Netscape is unwilling/unable to release a product that is functional and standards compliant, it would seem that the browser market will be dominated by Microsoft. This is certainly not desirable, but until a company is willing to put the time and effort in to balance features against the need to turn out regular and stable clients, we are at the mercy of the only company that even tries (and still fails), Microsoft.
Netscape is dead. Long live Netscape!