Mozilla: A failure by almost any measure.
Posted on September 13, 2005
I have just been reading Open Source Development with CVS, and I came across the folllowing amusing (in hindsight) paragraphs:
The importance of releasing runnable code was demonstrated by one of the most well publicized mis-starts in the history of free software. Netscape Communications Corporation announced in January 1998 that it would publicly release the source code to their Navigator Web browser under a license allowing others to modify and redistribute the source code. The news sent a wave of excitement through the free software community. The lack of a good free Web browser had long been a serious problem, and Netscape was claiming that it would solve it in one stroke.
Netscape’s sincerity was not faked; the company did exactly as it said. However, three and a half years later, the project is a failure by almost any measure. It is still possible that a working Web browser might arise from the tangle of code available from www.mozilla.org, but don’t hold your breath. Despite the huge demand for a free Web browser and the many programmers willing to contribute their talents to make it happen, the long-awaited production release of Mozilla still does not exist.
The point the book was making (go read it) was actually valid (make the first release of an open-source project compile and run), and the original release of Mozilla into the open-source world was fairly disasterous, but look how it turned out.
» Filed Under Blogger Posts
Comments
Leave a Reply