Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 23:33:52 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: avalon@coombs.anu.edu.au (Darren Reed) Cc: jmb@FreeBSD.ORG, danny@panda.hilink.com.au, AdamT@smginc.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, sef@kithrup.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Free netscape - good or bad ? Message-ID: <199801242333.QAA11301@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199801231527.HAA10770@hub.freebsd.org> from "Darren Reed" at Jan 24, 98 02:14:32 am
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> I beg to differ. If Netscape no longer participate in the product, > then that is good for Microsoft - the Netscape browser becomes yet > another shareware/freeware product with no real support, etc. > > Granted not everyone thinks like that but some people DO. You guys all need to go to the NetScape site, and read their whole roadmap (if you can read a 300 page Novel in an hour without speed-reading, it should take you about 15 minutes). After that, you will know that they plan to contribute engineering resources, maintain a seperate "Pro" product, like Eudora does (implies productization/stabilization passes), and distribute "In the spirit of the GPL". That last could mean anything from "Artistic License, but not GPL itself", to Sun JAVA-stlye license (the old, good one, not the new, ugly one), To a BSD style license (unlikely; they would have to trust MS to obey "not invented here" -- or they could let MS take the code, and then sieze full editorial control). I wonder how this will impact other less free browsers? I know of at least one that was gaining marketshare on both NS and MS that will probably be FUD'ed if not actually hurt by the prospect. Oh, yeah. The code is not due to be put up for FTP until March 31st; if anyone was expecting "next Monday", they will be disappointed; I'd say they have a little internal strife over licensing terms and techniques they will use to leverage the code to settle on before they will go public. The delay makes a JAVA-style or "Free for non-commercial use" style license extremely likely, IMO. Now, can we move this thread to chat? Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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