WishMaster wrote:Could you please explain us the connection between AOL and Mozilla Firefox?
Please tell me you are not serious?
Don't you know who is behind the product you are praising and so passionate about? Don't you know that Mozilla was originally intended to be the new rendering engine for the struggling Netscape who could no longer compete with IE and that AOL bought Netscape so they could integrate Mozilla into their browser instead of their then IE based browser?
Been around 10 years, so my memory is shady on all the specifics, so I am quoting directly from Mozilla's site, and other sources so it is 100% factual and not my interpretation:
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:mozilla.org is a strange thing. Mozilla is an open source project that sprung fully formed from the belly of the
beast. Today, we're hearing the grunting and shuffling of the mating dance, as that lumbering beast joins with
another. And many people are worried whether our little lizard is going to get trampled underneath.
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:mozilla.org is actually a very small number of people. We are three full time staff, and a handful of volunteers. And we mostly do not code. There are hundreds of people doing coding work on Mozilla: but those people do not work for mozilla.org. Most of those people work for Netscape,
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:Netscape is paying more than a hundred people full-time salaries to work on the Mozilla code base
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:In addition, Netscape is funding mozilla.org, those of us providing management and infrastructure and tools to this large, distributed software project.
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:So, with Netscape being acquired, what does that mean to mozilla.org? Hopefully, it will mean nothing: hopefully, AOL didn't buy Netscape with the intention of turning Netscape into something that it is not; it's hard to imagine that they would spend $4 billion dollars on Netscape just to throw away the client.
By Jamie Zawinski (23-Nov-98) wrote:If AOL hated open source, or didn't want to build their own browser, what they could do is fail to contribute to Mozilla in the future. They could stop paying those hundred-plus full-time salaries, and they could stop funding those of us who are mozilla.org's full-time employees.
One month after AOL bought Netscape/Mozilla...
CNET News.com wrote:AOL, Mozilla lose key evangelist -- As Mozilla.org celebrates its first anniversary at an elaborate celebration tonight, it will do so under the pall of losing one of its most influential founding members.
Longtime Netscape client engineer and Mozilla.org pioneer and evangelist Jamie Zawinski handed in his resignation today, CNET News.com has learned. The surprise move comes as a blow to Netscape's new owner, America Online, which has so far warded off any high-profile defections from the vital engineering and development divisions of Netscape, which AOL acquired last month.
And the site:
By Jamie Zawinski wrote:my employer can blow me.
With such quotes as:
By Jamie Zawinski wrote:Meanwhile, the bloatware at Netscape keeps ballooning.
By Jamie Zawinski wrote:What is most amazing about this is not the event itself, but rather, what it indicates: Netscape has gone from ``hot young world-changing startup'' to Apple levels of unadulterated uselessness in fewer than four years, and with fewer than 3,000 employees.
By Jamie Zawinski wrote:But I guess Netscape has always done everything faster and bigger. Including burning out.
Fast forward a few years... And our now our confirmation of the original reason for purchasing Netscape/Mozilla years ago:
Robin Miller wrote:AOL embraces Linux and Mozilla, plans to drop MS Explorer. Good-bye Explorer, hello Mozilla... The Gecko rendering engine at the heart of the Mozilla Web browser is scheduled to replace Microsoft's Internet Explorer as AOL's default browser
Quoted from pages:
http://www.mozilla.org/fear.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-223837.html
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/blowme.html
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid ... ode=thread
People only focus on Microsoft as the "evil" monopoly, even though AOL has continued to grow over the years into all venues of the industry. IMHO, AOL has always been worse than MS. AOL owned off the top of my head: Time Inc., AOL, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Time Warner Cable, CNN, HBO, TBS, Turner Broadcasting System and The CW Television Network, ICQ, WinAmp, Netscape (including Mozilla), and last month bought Adtech. (I know I am leaving out dozens of other major properties.)
Actually this was a nice trip down memory lane, and a reminder of how AOL has managed to destroy every thing they touch, own or acquire.
What is ironic, is even though I am anti-AOL and increasingly anti-MS, I really like Bill Gates and Steve Case.
WishMaster: you have still not answered how having a browser be open source makes it more secure than any other browser? Please explain how the "bad guys" having the source for the browser you use helps security?
I would really like to know. So many people rave about it, but nobody can ever explain it?