MozillaZine

Daniel Glazman Starting Company to Develop Composer

Thursday September 18th, 2003

Ex-Netscape employee Daniel Glazman has announced that he is starting a company to continue the development of Composer, the Mozilla Web page editor. In a Glazblog posting that also covers meals with ex-colleagues and the availability of nose drops, Daniel outlines his new venture: "I am now in the process of starting my own company here in France to continue working on Composer. This company will develop software solutions for the World Wide Web and offer a variety of services around web underlying technologies and open-source tools. I think we will even become W3C member... Wish me good luck!"

Daniel has worked on the Editor portion of the Mozilla codebase for several years and was employed by Netscape Communications Corporation from November 2000 until July 2003. Earlier this year, he announced his intention to continue maintaining Composer, which will eventually become a standalone application like Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird.

#1 Income?

by wvh

Thursday September 18th, 2003 5:50 PM

It's not so clear to me how he expects to make enough of a profit to live with the development of the open source Mozilla Composer component. A 'services' company offering 'software solutions' for the WWW? Are there IT companies that don't do that these days? I wish him good luck ofcourse, but it just sounds like a really vague business plan, a dot.com bubble. Or am I being overly negative?

#3 Re: Income?

by corwin

Thursday September 18th, 2003 6:16 PM

If you look at his CV on his site, you'll see that he is not exactly a long-haired open source hippy but a very high profile developper who was in charge of huge corporate projects at a global scale over the last 10 years, I wouldn't worry if I were you, this is not a press release but a comment on his web site and my guess is that what will distinguish him from other web IT companies is the word "underlying" :-)

#8 Re: Re: Income?

by wvh

Friday September 19th, 2003 3:59 PM

I don't doubt he is qualified to do whatever he wants to do with the internet. That does not mean that starting a company from zero and attract customers, in this day and age, is something that happens lightly. To be able to sell what you are making (be it a product or service), is something completely different than knowing a lot about the internet, browsers, programming. In fact, most people that are bright in scientific ways, are notoriously bad in selling their ideas, especially to an oversaturated market.

So while I wouldn't dare of doubting his capacities, I do want to remark that 'offering solutions and services' doesn't sound like a very original businessplan, and that I can't see the connection with Mozilla (Composer). Read: I'm curious to find out what his plans are exactly.

Besides, being a long-haired open source hippy and a very high profile developer are not mutually exclusive. Nor does 'high profile developer' imply better quality of software than people who make programs for the love of it... quite the opposite in many cases, as e.g. Mozilla itself clearly shows.

#16 Re: Re: Re: Income?

by fuzzygorilla

Sunday September 21st, 2003 8:32 AM

Are you offering to be an investor? If not, then why would anyone be willing to layout a realistic business plan for you? As you point out - a good business plan is worth real $$$. Let it be enough that Daniel is willing to pursue the opportunity. He may not succeed (although there is a good chance he can) but at least he is making an effort. More power to him and I hope he spends his time developing his business plan and pursuing opportunities rather than responding to random strangers on a website asking to see detailed business plans for which they have no use.

#2 great news

by joschi

Thursday September 18th, 2003 6:14 PM

and a great idea, i look forward to trying your standalone version of composer. good luck!

#4 Big fan of Glazman

by GuruJ

Thursday September 18th, 2003 8:10 PM

I wish him all the best and good luck with his venture!

#5 A very smart guy with a plan

by tristouille

Friday September 19th, 2003 1:51 AM

I know Daniel for years, and have been his neighbour in the Netscape office these last 2 years. Daniel is smart, and if he starts a company, I'm positive that he has a plan (and a good one). His announcement is excellent news for Composer, and I wish him the best of luck in this new adventure. Open-Source needs more contributors like Daniel, and the Web needs a decent, open-source HTML editor. Go Composer, Go Daniel !

#9 Re: A very smart guy with a plan

by bugs4hj

Friday September 19th, 2003 4:19 PM

He might be a smart person, a good friend to you, but that doens't make him a good entrepreneur, a good business man. A lot of new startups are gone before year three ends. Lets hope he makes it. I hope him all the best.

/HJ

#10 Re: Re: A very smart guy with a plan

by bugs4hj

Friday September 19th, 2003 4:20 PM

s/hope him/wish him

#6 I appreciate the CLEAN things that COMPOSER does

by slok

Friday September 19th, 2003 3:01 AM

Thanks for creating GREAT software and ALL the BEST

#7 We really need this

by slippytoad

Friday September 19th, 2003 2:45 PM

I can't stress how important it is that this work continue. There currently is no decent (lightweight) WYSIWYG HTML editor for Linux so I use Composer (only - I use Firebird/Thunderbird otherwise) to do all my HTML editing on Linux. Keep it going!!

#11 replies

by glazou

Saturday September 20th, 2003 2:12 AM

Hey guys, do you really think I am diving into this admin mess (don't forget I am living in France and not in California, starting a company is a bureaucratic jungle here) without a high probability of short-term profitability ? I don't know about you, but _I_ don't want to commit financial suicide.

#13 Da Man!

by jedbro

Saturday September 20th, 2003 9:55 AM

You the Man Glazou!

#15 Re: replies

by fuzzygorilla

Sunday September 21st, 2003 8:25 AM

I wish you the best of luck in life and business. Judging from the successes of companies like Cygnus, TransGaming, CodeWeavers, RedHat, MySQL AB, Covalent Technologies, ActiveState, Sleepycat Software, Zope, Namesys, Ximian, PostgreSQL, Erfrakon, and many others, if you have a good business plan with a good software product, you can make money with open source software. The 'unbundling' of Mozilla into separate applications gives an even greater chance of competing with commercial WYSIWYG HTML design tools and other applications (form design, IDE tools, etc) with a solid open source product. Go for it! You may not become the next Bill Gates but you will be able to provide a decent life for your family and employees.

#17 Re: bureaucratic jungle

by lucifer

Monday September 22nd, 2003 12:30 PM

dear Glazou, don't waste you time, use the luxembourg- or more better the Dutch-route to get all the legal basics to establish your company, maximum 2 weeks incl. VAT registration, then make your French subsidiary :-)

regards micha

#12 Hurra for Daniel

by fab

Saturday September 20th, 2003 9:16 AM

I've had the pleasure of meeting Daniel and I'm sure he has a really good plan.

Admin issues aside, it's a good opportunity for him to prove that good management is possible in a software/service company (as he has ranted so much about it in the last months) ;-)

Best of luck,

-Fabian.

#14 new binaries any time soon?

by flacco

Saturday September 20th, 2003 12:18 PM

will we see new composer++ binaries soon?

#18 more than simple editor?

by reeder

Wednesday October 1st, 2003 7:11 AM

Until fairly recently composer was not very good, in my opinion, and so I have always written simple html by hand. I did try composer again in Mozilla 1.4 and found it much improved. If glazou is responsible for that improvement then I am glad he will continue. But what I'd really like is for a good open source *site wide* page development program. I don't need lots of fancy javascript or flash, but I'd like a good system for creating and enforcing consistent style and navigation. I'd like to retire my m4 macros and makefiles. And maybe someday I'll be able to turn off my keypunch machine and line printer, too. ;-)

Good luck, glazou.

-- William

#19 more than simple editor?

by reeder

Wednesday October 1st, 2003 8:07 AM

Until fairly recently composer was not very good, in my opinion, and so I have always written simple html by hand. I did try composer again in Mozilla 1.4 and found it much improved. If glazou is responsible for that improvement then I am glad he will continue. But what I'd really like is for a good open source *site wide* page development program. I don't need lots of fancy javascript or flash, but I'd like a good system for creating and enforcing consistent style and navigation. I'd like to retire my m4 macros and makefiles. And maybe someday I'll be able to turn off my keypunch machine and line printer, too. ;-)

Good luck, glazou.

-- William