A year ago Thursday, Netscape released the source code of its Communicator Web browser. The newborn "Mozilla" project was widely seen as its last-ditch effort to take down Microsoft by enlisting a potential army of thousands of volunteer programmers.
But there's still no sign of a working consumer version of Mozilla. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the company fired 850 people.
Wired News spoke with Mitchell Baker, Netscape's "chief lizard wrangler" and point person for the company's various Mozilla projects. For comparison's sake, we asked the same questions of Netscape Communicator product manager Eric Mann.
Wired News: A year after its birth, how has Mozilla worked?
Mitchell Baker: Mozilla at its birth was a set of code and a great idea. It was a radical move a year ago. In the intervening year, open source activity has ignited. The radicalness of the idea is fading ... and we're beginning to see the release of [Mozilla-built] code.
Eric Mann: There are lot of different ways to measure "working." For starters, we actually have people who are not on the Netscape payroll that are actually generating Netscape product. They are in no way affiliated with Netscape other than they participate in Mozilla.org, which is an organization that Netscape also participates in.
The more important contribution is the caliber of what is in development. If you take a look at Gecko [the next generation HTML drawing "engine"], that's pretty impressive stuff. While Explorer is getting bigger and bigger, we've got a rendering engine that fits in 1.6 MB.
People are following Netscape's lead, because they believe in the open source model. When all is said and done, we'll have a more stable product as well as faster product.
WN: Why did [Mozilla project leader] Jamie Zawinski need to write "statement of independence" following the AOL purchase?"
EM: Jamie believes in the open source movement. It's one of the reasons Netscape wanted him in that role. I think he had concerns, especially about [how] AOL would move forward with Mozilla. AOL has made a stated and repeated commitment to open source. Jamie wanted to make sure it remained an open source.
MB: AOL can make what decisions it makes, but Mozilla code is licensed under Mozilla. That is an independent piece of code. We have the independence granted to us by the license. Netscape doesn't have the contractual ability to control that code anymore. That's a pretty good guarantee of independence.
