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Re: Netscape goes GPL.



On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, Eli Marmor wrote:

> 1. It was not a big surprise. Netscape's step was logical, expected,
>    and was known to many (including me) for about a month. Many in

Barksdale was hinting about making the navigator free, but noone talked
about the sources becoming free too!

> 4. DO NOT BELIEVE Netscape's "first quarter of 98". As usual, half
>    of it is true. I think that "first quarter" is true. Regarding to
>    "98", I don't think. After all, Netscape does not have a good
>    history in promises and in standing in schedules.

you are confusing that with Microsoft's history maybe...

> 5. I don't understand why it looks so easy for you to put the
>    sources in the GPL. Most of the parts included in the
>    "professional" version are commercial, and owned by 3rd parties.

read the PR again, the pro release and parts are still sold. ($30 instead
of $70)

>    Many libraries of the basic version are commercial too. For
>    example, there are some key widgets which belong to 3rd parties
>    (e.g. the XmLGrid).

you either find a replacement or write one. I don't know what that library
does, but I have a feeling the windows version doesn't use it, for
instance.

>    And does anybody think that JavaSoft is going
>    to permit Netscape to publish the full sources of its Java VM?

Netscape's JVM was written by JavaSoft? that's news to me. I thought it
wan an in-house development. Ayway, Java is supposed to be an open
standard, why should the JVM sources be restricted? JDK is givven away
too.

>    And what about RSA?

RSA is included in PGP and other free source products.

> 7. During this discussion, someone compared Hebrew support for X to
>    Titanic project. As almost all of you know, I already did it, in
>    addition to dozens of other projects I did. It works perfectly,

yes, Eli, we know. this IS, however a linux list and I have yet to see
this thing run on linux.

Now that the navigator sources will be open to Linux, I'd like to see you
patch lesstiff to do Hebrew, because now we can make a dynamically linked
browser.

> 9. One claimed that freeing the sources of Netscape will improve it.
>    Unfortunately, the technical problem of Netscape is not lacking
...
>    Freeing the sources will allow Netscape to have many more
>    "exciting" features which nobody will need, but the stability will
>    not be improved.

again, if you paralellize this to the linux kernel and apache server
projects, you will see how the benefit of thousands of more eyes studying
the sources is very usefull for bug and security hole fixing. I think the
stability WILL improve, but maybe the flood of features will stop too,
because now the product development will not be pushed by a money-hungry
corporation, but by a stability-hungry group of hackers. Go see apache
again...


> P.S. The most important feature of a software product, as I claim
> again and again, is its source availability. But it is important
> only for us, as potential "customers"; It doesn't help Netscape :-(

it does help their image, their worries for the entire development process
etc.
NC has brought the Navigator as a product to a very mature stage. it was
never bound to be a very profitable product anyway, and now they can
concentrate on building a better server.

On Sat, 24 Jan 1998, Alexander Indenbaum wrote:

> First of all free source does not meen only GPL
> In the same way as Free Unix does not meen  only Linux.

read the PR again, I think they state there pretty clear that it's going
to be GPL.

I find it smart, it means that Microsoft can't steal their sources to
incorporate in IE...

> And another point.
> We already have sources for browser - Mosaic
> MASTER_SITES=   ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/Mosaic/Unix/source/

and who wrote that? go check again... Netscape is BASED on an early
Mosaic. Mosaic also lacks a lot of functionality that netscape has, it's
almost closer to lynx than to navigator.


--
Ira Abramov    <ira(a)scso.com>     whois: IA58
** Linux is like a Vorlon.  It is incredibly powerful, gives terse,
cryptic answers and has a lot of things going on in the background.