Negative article in The Register

[chinf]

El Reg blames demise of Netscape on Mozilla Project's failure to deliver decent code in time:


http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/31765.html


Flamethrowers at the ready?

[Gunnar]

Well, this is not their main point (note how the writer says "Both these points of view are caricatures, of course. ")

IMHO, their main point is the reference to usability and having the end user in mind (or not):

Netscape's death will provoke a thousand arguments, but none will be so useful as utility. Well, maybe and perhaps, browsers don't really matter too much. But the fact that Microsoft's miserable excuse for a web browser - a sorry piece of code that has been untouched by human hand for many years, now - speaks volumes about indulging the wrong kind of people with big responsibilities. In the end, it was these coders who failed us.

While I believe the coders did an excellent job, and Mozilla is far better from a usability point of view than the Register's writer would make us want to beleive, from my experience you should not let a coder be responsible for the usability part (this includes features, options,....) of a product or for deciding which bugs need fixing.

I hope that Mozilla's future development does address various usability bugs, that while technically being uninteresting, they are of great importance to the end user.


Of course, it is true that the focus of the Mozilla project so far has not been the end user, and this is where Netscape / AOL failed.

Hopefully future corporate sponsors of the Mozilla foundation will help address this by (financially) sponsoring the usability improvements.

[shadytrees]

Well, as long as they bashed IE, I'm okay with it. :-)

[dmccunney]

El Reg blames demise of Netscape on Mozilla Project's failure to deliver decent code in time:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/31765.html

Flamethrowers at the ready?

Nope. You can make justifiable criticisms of the Mozilla development process, but that wasn't the issue.

AOL used to use IE as the underlying browser. They got into a spat with MS and switched to Netscape instead. They've now kissed and made up with MS, and use IE again.

I don't care _how_ good Mozilla's code might have been, or how much faster they might have gotten it to market had they used a different development model. I don't think it would have made a difference in the end, because the decision had nothing to do with the quality or timeliness of the Mozilla code.

Remember, AOL has _problems_. They bought Time-Warner in the glory days of the Internet boom when they had stock price multiples that appeared to only go up. The boom turned into a bust. The on-line ad market largely disappeared. AOL is struggling to hold onto subscribers who have other options, especially with broadband, and to develop new sources of revenue. And the former Time-Warner folks are in the ascendant in the combined company. The biggest challenge for AOL Time-Warner's CEO Richard Parsons is to fix AOL.

It's about money. AOL sees working with Microsoft (and partnering with MSN?) as a way to build subscribers and revenue. The Netscape browser could not accomplish this, no matter how good it was.

Supporting Mozilla and Netscape development, and paying folks to work full time on an open-source project was an expense that AOL would find hard to justify when thier bottom line was taking a beating. I'm surprised the axe took this long to fall.
______
Dennis

[watcha]

It's about money. AOL sees working with Microsoft (and partnering with MSN?) as a way to build subscribers and revenue. The Netscape browser could not accomplish this, no matter how good it was.

A conversation in some dirty chit cave
money: yes!
m*ie: yes! i am a weak browser. so i can steal home user's money.
mo*: no! you shouldn't steal innocent ppl's money, time, informations.
cookie: save me at your home. *sigh*
ao*: i don't care as long as you love me.
ne*: me, too :P

--
note that this is just funny story, not fact .