" What's important is that it's succeeding in unexpected ways ,perhaps not the ones that Netscape's management originally hoped, but significant nonetheless. " What did Netscape actually hope?And why is it different from what is here now?

Tim O'Reilly is one articulate person. I have now read an interview about free software in which the word "dialectical" is used and the interviewee quotes Rilke. Thank you Tim and Eric for washing the residue of slashdot flames and stains from my mind ...

On Mozilla I think he's right. Excellent new open source tools like bugzilla and bonsai may not have been part of the original vision but are a great fringe benefit nonetheless. And beyond the browser itself the impact of XML/RDF/XUL/XP/Gecko is going to take a while to assess but the tools may certainly overshadow what they serve to build.