ZDNet on AOL/MozillaThursday October 14th, 1999Tony Gorman has this news: "ZDNet's Devhead column has a very positive article ["America Online: A Web Developer's Best Friend. Can AOL Adapt?"] on Mozilla and standards support. It starts of with a no holds barred swipe at Netscape which - in my opinion - is almost entirely accurate and consequently deserved. It then moves on to talk about Mozilla in perhaps the most positive terms I have ever read. It talks about the XUL initiative as being revolutionary and praises the efforts to make the lizard "almost flawless" in its support for standards. While the point it is making is to do with AOL's attempts to adapt to the market, it raises Mozilla's role in this to being central, which can only be a good thing." from the article [Why the delay? For starters, I'd bet that Steve Case just loves watching Microsoft squirm under the DOJ's thumb. Netscape's vanishing market share isn't helping Microsoft's case, and the trend towards a one-browser Web may yet help seal the company's fate. ] Well, I never thought of it that way... There's been quite a biyt of speculation as to why Netscape isn't screaming Mozilla's praises, and this is as good a reason as I can think of. I mean, mozilla, in any form, will always have a strong techie/non-MSOS following, so the browser will always be around, but to anounce that they've got a giant-killer waiting in the wings might be used as fodder for the MS lawyers... hmmm. interesting << I mean, mozilla, in any form, will always have a strong techie/non-MSOS following, so the browser will always be around, but to anounce that they've got a giant-killer waiting in the wings might be used as fodder for the MS lawyers... >> Seeing how MS argued that Linux was going to destroy them if they didn't stay "competitive", and now that the base is basically over, they post a page saying that Linux doesn't even come close to providing the power of NT, I'd say you're right. By hyping Mozilla, they'd have just helped Microsoft, and basically ended up obstructing justice, in a manner of speaking. However, now that the case is over, and Mozilla is nearing completion, I think we'll start hearing a lot more about Mozilla. -Brent While the trial is over, the judge's findings of fact have not yet been released, though they are due by year's end. As the article mentioned, this is a major reason AOL has downplayed the browser portion of their purchase, but we really aren't likely to hear much more about it until Communicator 5.0 is out, honestly, because the 4.x code sucks so bad. These two reasons are why AOL 5.0 has IE5 - 4.x code is definitely not modular enough to suit AOL's purposes. I just want 5.0 to be done... 2000 is going to be a very exciting year for the Internet, obviously. Don't fret about people not knowing about Mozilla. Basically... NS/AOL have HAD to let the market share drop if they wanted any chance at winning the case... they know that with one flip of the switch (figuratively) they can add 17+ million to the browser numbers by switching AOL to Com5/Mozilla... If anyone believes that AOL doesn't have a version of its package running with a prototype Mozilla browser in it... you're very naive. Steve Case is a smart man in terms of how to make and hold a market. Just like Bill Gates in a lot of ways. The sole purpose for him buying Netscape is to get rid of AOL's reliance on Netscape, after getting "jacked" for putting AOL on the Win95/98 desktop. Mark my words... when the trial is over... amazingly AOL 6 will appear... and the browser will have an AOL skin on it... but be all Mozilla/Com 5. yes... 2000 will be THE pivotal year in the young life of this extrodinary communications medium. I liked this article. Matt seems to understand Mozilla and makes some very good points. This is the kind of article we need to make sure people read and encourage news sources to publish more like it. #6 Hopefully other news sources will just Cut&Pasby SomeSmartAss Thursday October 14th, 1999 1:23 PM ... like they seem to have done with the other, less flattering, Mozilla/Netscape Articles. I just hope that writing positive (or at least fair) articles catches on quickly in the media after the wave of those negative ones. That ZDNet article IS interesting, it has points that I would have never thought about before. <:3)~~ |