Seeker of Truth
06-03-2003, 06:48 AM
AOL assimilated by the Microsoft Borg
Opinion Future of Mozilla.org, Netscape and web standards in jeopardy.
By Fernando Cassia: Monday 02 June 2003, 11:01
WHILE SOME technology-impaired Wall Street "analysts", pro-Microsoft lobby groups, like the Association for Competitive Technology, and "easy-money" stockholders cheered the recent AOL-Microsoft settlement, people on the open source front have been experiencing lots of fear and uncertainty after news of this deal broke out. There is a record level of internal turmoil at Netscape, sources say.
Why the outrage about the future of Netscape? Netscape is not only "another browser company". Netscape is at the heart of the Mozilla.org open source project. Over 75 programmers and enginneers on Netscape/AOL's payroll work on it (and to this day, continue to work on the upcoming Mozilla 1.4/Netscape 7.1 release) and they have been doing so for the last five years.
Yes, there are many outsiders... a few programmers on IBM's payroll porting mozilla to IBM's own Aix unix and OS/2 operating systems, some folks from HP, and so on. But the core development of the "Gecko engine" is still the labour of love of Netscape programmers, on Netscape's payroll. Netscape and its sister mozilla.org project, as the folks at Webstandards.org say, helped "make the playing field more level".
Well, not for long, it seems.
Everything indicates that the new head of the AOL division wants to pull the plug entirelly on Netscape. Yes, AOL might be assimilated by the Redmond Menace. In exchange for pocket change, AOL seems pleased to surrender the browser market, and about to decide to throw away their biggest assests, their technology investment and technological independence, down the drain. Put in military terms, they are about to destroy their tactical weapons and wave a white flag.
Sources inside the company confirm that while plans to finish current projects (the Netscape 7.1 browser based on Mozilla 1.4) and the "Aol Communicator" email client for "power users" based on Netscape 7 Mail are under way, fear is that it is as far as they will go.
The rumour is that all Netscape Gecko code has been pulled from future versions of the AOL client, and when Netscape 7.1 and AOL Communicator ship in a month or so Gecko will be scrapped entirely. 75 highly skilled people would get the axe, many of them working on the mozilla.org project, with the remaining 10-20% reassigned to other jobs. To top all this, it seems that there has been a "suggestion" from management so that people with @netscape.com email addresses start switching their emails to @aol.com. Does anyone need seed the writing on the wall?
More @ theinquirer.net (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9802)
Opinion Future of Mozilla.org, Netscape and web standards in jeopardy.
By Fernando Cassia: Monday 02 June 2003, 11:01
WHILE SOME technology-impaired Wall Street "analysts", pro-Microsoft lobby groups, like the Association for Competitive Technology, and "easy-money" stockholders cheered the recent AOL-Microsoft settlement, people on the open source front have been experiencing lots of fear and uncertainty after news of this deal broke out. There is a record level of internal turmoil at Netscape, sources say.
Why the outrage about the future of Netscape? Netscape is not only "another browser company". Netscape is at the heart of the Mozilla.org open source project. Over 75 programmers and enginneers on Netscape/AOL's payroll work on it (and to this day, continue to work on the upcoming Mozilla 1.4/Netscape 7.1 release) and they have been doing so for the last five years.
Yes, there are many outsiders... a few programmers on IBM's payroll porting mozilla to IBM's own Aix unix and OS/2 operating systems, some folks from HP, and so on. But the core development of the "Gecko engine" is still the labour of love of Netscape programmers, on Netscape's payroll. Netscape and its sister mozilla.org project, as the folks at Webstandards.org say, helped "make the playing field more level".
Well, not for long, it seems.
Everything indicates that the new head of the AOL division wants to pull the plug entirelly on Netscape. Yes, AOL might be assimilated by the Redmond Menace. In exchange for pocket change, AOL seems pleased to surrender the browser market, and about to decide to throw away their biggest assests, their technology investment and technological independence, down the drain. Put in military terms, they are about to destroy their tactical weapons and wave a white flag.
Sources inside the company confirm that while plans to finish current projects (the Netscape 7.1 browser based on Mozilla 1.4) and the "Aol Communicator" email client for "power users" based on Netscape 7 Mail are under way, fear is that it is as far as they will go.
The rumour is that all Netscape Gecko code has been pulled from future versions of the AOL client, and when Netscape 7.1 and AOL Communicator ship in a month or so Gecko will be scrapped entirely. 75 highly skilled people would get the axe, many of them working on the mozilla.org project, with the remaining 10-20% reassigned to other jobs. To top all this, it seems that there has been a "suggestion" from management so that people with @netscape.com email addresses start switching their emails to @aol.com. Does anyone need seed the writing on the wall?
More @ theinquirer.net (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9802)