Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>
> Your article is full of factual errors as well as serious misconceptions
> about the impact of the Open Source movement -- of which Linux is just
> one component. (Others include Apache, BIND, sendmail, and Perl.)
> I strongly recommend reading Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and the
> Bazaar", as well as the Keith Porterfield "Information Wants to
> be Valuable". I also suggest spending a few years on the appropriate
> mailing lists, newsgroups and web sites in order to gain an understanding
> of just what this is all about.
I agree with Rich here. Good recommendations.
> > Is anyone going to spend dozens of hours to improve the Netscape browser [...]
>
> Yes.
>
> See www.mozilla.org, one heck of a lot of developers are contributing
> to the development of the open source browser.
Indeed. The point the original argument misses is that while NS will be
taking the best of the breed stuff to sell to the average consumer, they
don't corner the market. Anyone who knows netscape code can now do
numerous things with it, including:
1. Use their additions as cool publicity tools to promote their services
and abilities
2. Bundled various versions of the browser and browser tools with other
applications, like CD-ROMs and net appliance applications, that they can
make money from (they just can't charge for the browser). However, as
we discussed early last week, often I don't want a full bloated
browser--I want an HTML viewer. So if I have an option of using a net
based program with a bloated IE or NS5, or a streamlined browser suited
to the task, I'll take the latter.
3. hacking the code gives you insights to handling net protocols that
can be applied to other money-making projects . . . and you learn from
good, well commented source
People won't devote lifetimes to hacking mozilla, but there will always
be a stream of people going into and out of the code-writing base for
the reasons noted above, and many more they'll think of on their own.
Brett
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