"benway.com" wrote:
>
> I've got a quandry. I loath the "commercial" N6 is going to be. I love
> what Mozilla is and will be. I've been using Moz nightlies since the
> beginning. What I'm wondering is: Will I be able to settle in with
> Mozilla and STAY with it? I don't want to convert everything over to
> Moz and 6 or 8 months later be stuck. I'm sure N6 will be around for
> many years, but I would like to avoid (as I said) the "commercial" release.
>
> Is it going to be safe to stick with Mozilla? Will she always be there
> for me?
Frankly, I'd bet *more* money on Mozilla being around than on Netscape 6
being around. There's not much prospect of Netscape taking their
engineers away from Mozilla; if Netscape 6 is still around then Mozilla
will be by definition. The reverse is not true.
I think both products are going to be around a long time, but if
Netscape The Company should wither and die (eg AOL decides not to
continue to support the product, or AOL itself goes bankrupt) Mozilla
will still be around, and there are dozens if not hundreds of people
working on the code who are not Netscape employees.
Open Source gives you assurance that no closed source product ever can.
If you're *really really* dependent on Mozilla (and you're rich) and
it's unmaintained, you could even spend some money and hire somebody to
maintain it yourself. You couldn't do that with Netscape 6.
Stuart.
