Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 23:21:57 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us (Alex Belits) Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG, opsys@mail.webspan.net, marcs@znep.com, imp@village.org Subject: Re: Mike Shaver: Netscape gives away source code for Communicator Message-ID: <199801242321.QAA10882@usr04.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.980122225758.22800A-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us> from "Alex Belits" at Jan 22, 98 11:28:08 pm
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> > I think they are idiots if they give up control of the browser/server > > interface. > > HTTP standard is pretty much out of their hands already (and never > really was there). SSL, of course, was added by them, and more compatible > version of encrypted HTTP and MD5 authentication rejected, but that was > done in significantly less barbaric way than other things by the same > people at the same time. MIME, Multipart/Replace doesn't work on Internet Explorer. There are other examples. I think NetScape dominates the HTML standard; mostly because they have clever people thinking about how to improve the protocl, and they pay these people to do that. Ass opposed to havving some form of committee making the suggestions and decisions. > > I expect them to retain editorial control on the "official releases". > > This is, in fact, only slightly more restricted than GPL, wherein the > > GPL code is maintained by a central repository. Cygnus proved that > > there is room for one (and *only* one) editorial source per GPL style > > product. > > Emacs - XEmacs - Mule (ok, last one is now going to merge with every of > first two). And while not the most stable thing in the world, pgcc exists, > as a separate gcc branch. I've used Cygnus products. I like Cygnus producs. And EMACS, you're no Cygnus product. The reason there are two versions of EMACS is the reason there are three BSD's and many Linux distributions, twofold: 1) They aren't working in the same improvement space 2) They are engaged in actively preventing inclusion of both source bases in one for territorial reasons. This is admittedly a problem in a volunteer project, where the first is caused by there not being enough like-minded people to do the work without editorial/ego issues, and the second is because the reasons for the participation are largely ego, and since there are not enough people, the people who are there are engaged in crisis management, not planning. It's a nice catch-22. But like JAVA, Netscape will certainly be maintaining a source repository, exercising editorial control on it, and productizing for their "Pro" version. This is like Eudora Lite, with source code. In that sense, there is room for one "Cygnus": Netscape itself. > Do a > lot of people here know that "multipart/x-mixed-replace" server push works > on HTML documents and allows server-initiated update of them in browser? I certainly do; I use it. Explorer can't compete... > Of course, HTML is completely different story -- everybody remembers > ugly creations of tags war, and now it's shifted to J*scripts/stylesheets > war, but that's significantly less dangerous than proprietary extensions > to protocols, randomly being added by competing vendors. That's the good thing about Netscape being in it for money instead of ego: they can *plan* instead of just responding to crises -- "Oh no, we need something to do XXX!" "Just hack it in!" "No way, we are professionals". Etc. 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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