Meeting Mr Firefox: Johnathan Nightingale

Mozilla and its central Firefox project are themes that I have returned to often on this blog. That's not so surprising: Mozilla is one of the oldest free software projects, starting back in 1998 when Netscape stunned the world by announcing that it would open up its key product, Netscape Navigator. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mozilla's Big Comeback

Mozilla is now something of a venerable institution in the open source world - the first release of browser code by Netscape took place back in 1998. Even Firefox is eight years old, which seems pretty incredible.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of Microsoft, Netscape, Patents and Open Standards

I still remember well the day in October 1994 when I downloaded the first beta of Netscape's browser. It was instantly obvious that this was a step beyond anything we'd had until then, and that it was the dawn of a new Internet era.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Pandora's Box 2.0: Opening proprietary code

Open source lies at the heart of Google – it runs a modified form of Linux on its vast server farms, and uses many other free software programs in its operations. This makes giving back to the open source community not just the right thing to do but enlightened self-interest: the stronger free software becomes, the more Google can build upon it (cynics would say feed off it).

On The H Open.

Mozilla's Brendan Eich on the Birth of Firefox

A couple of weeks ago I posted the first part of an interview with Brendan Eich, who is Mozilla's CTO. That covered the early years of browsers at Netscape, and the origin of Mozilla. Somewhat belatedly, here's the second part of that interview, which picks up the story at the beginning of this millennium, and reveals the complex sequence of events that led to the creation of Mozilla Firefox.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Mozilla's Brendan Eich on JavaScript - and Microsoft Buying Netscape

It seems so long ago now, but for those of us lucky enough (and old enough) to have been there, the launch of Netscape's 0.9 version of its Netscape Navigator browser in October 1994 was clearly the beginning of a new era. For a few years, Netscape was the centre of the Internet universe - it's home page was the first you checked each morning for news about what was happening on this strange new Web thing that the company was doing so much to define.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of HTML

HTML began life as a clever hack of a pre-existing approach. As Tim Berners-Lee explains in his book, “Weaving the Web”:

Since I knew it would be difficult to encourage the whole world to use a new global information system, I wanted to bring on board every group I could. There was a family of markup languages, the standard generalised markup language (SGML), already preferred by some of the world's top documentation community and at the time considered the only potential document standard among the hypertext community. I developed HTML to look like a member of that family.

On The H Open.

The Day I Nearly Dumped Firefox

I remember well the moment when the beta version of Netscape Navigator 0.9 was released in October 1994. It was so clearly superior to the main Mosaic browser I was running at the time, that there was no question about using anything else thereafter.

On Open Enterprise blog.

South Korea: Super Fast, and Finally Free

Imagine a country that has one of the best Internet infrastructures in the world, and yet its government effectively forbids the use of GNU/Linux through a requirement that everyone employ a decade-old Windows-only technology for many key online transactions. That country is South Korea, where 1 Gbits/second Internet connections are planned for 2012; and that Windows-only technology is ActiveX.

On The H Open.

Should *Mozilla* Fork Firefox?

Apparently, there's an interesting thread over on a site called Quora about the future of Firefox. I say apparently, since I can't seem to join the site (“we'll e-mail when we're ready for you to try out the service” - thanks a bunch: obviously it's only for the Chosen Few). Anyway, according to TechCrunch, the meat of the argument is this:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Many Happy Returns, Apache

We tend to think of free software as (mostly) new, so the fact that Apache celebrated its 15th birthday yesterday seems pretty extraordinary. We also typically think of free software as being the perennial plucky underdog, but as this post on the Apache Software Foundation Blog reminds us, Apache has been the leading Web server for almost its entire existence...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Happy Birthday, Mozilla - and Thanks for Being Here

Seven years ago, Mozilla 1.0 was launched:

Mozilla.org, the organization that coordinates Mozilla open-source development and provides services to assist the Mozilla community, today announced the release of Mozilla 1.0, the first major-version public release of the Mozilla software. A full-fledged browser suite based on the latest Internet standards as well as a cross-platform toolkit, Mozilla 1.0 is targeted at the developer community and enables the creation of Internet-based applications. Mozilla 1.0 was developed in an open source environment and built by harnessing the creative power of thousands of programmers and tens of thousands of testers on the Internet, incorporating their best enhancements.

On Open Enterprise blog.

A Timeline of Microsoft Hurt

I've often written about particular instances where Microsoft has bullied competitors; it's a pretty sorry tale. But that story becomes extraordinary when told in detail, and as a sequence of actions whose sole purpose was to drive off competition by any means.

If you're interested in how Microsoft sought to undermine DR-DOS, WordPerfect, Netscape and Java - to say nothing of GNU/Linux - you can find out here in this document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). As you might guess from the subject matter of the report, this is a bunch of companies who are not overly enamoured of Microsoft:

ECIS has acted as an advocate of interoperability since its inception in 1989. The association believes strongly in the benefits of a competitive and innovative ICT sector, and seeks to support such an environment by actively participating in the promotion of any initiative aimed at favoring interoperability, competition on the merits, innovation, and consumers' interests in the area of information and communication technology.

ECIS’ members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers Adobe Systems, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.

Leaving aside the sad fact that a European organisation can't spell "favouring", it's pretty clear that this is not an objective, balanced picture. But as far as I can tell, it's not untruthful, and its statements are butteressed with references to relevant documents and news items that make it useful for further exploration.

Defining Moments in Web History

Although Tim Berners-Lee made his “Information Management” proposal back in March 1989, the key moment for what became the World Wide Web was October 1994, when the start-up Mosaic Communications – later known as Netscape – released its browser, optimised for PC users and dial-up modems....

On Computer Weekly.

What Mozilla's Bespin Bespeaks

One of the most interesting developments in the open source world is the way that Mozilla has changed in recent years. What started out as a (slightly shambolic) attempt to hack a decent browser out of the wreckage of the Netscape Communicator code, has turned into arguably one of the two or three most important forces in free software today (you can draw up your own list)....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Second Life's Grand Opening

I wonder whether in retrospect Linden Lab's decision to open up the code of Second Life will turn out to be as momentous as when Netscape gave its Navigator code to the new Mozilla project? Interestingly, Linden Lab specifically invoked that precedent when it made the announcement:

In 1993, NCSA released their liberally licensed, but proprietary, Mosaic 2.0 browser with support for inline images arguably heralding the start of the web as we know it today. In an act of either acceptance of the inevitable or simple desperation, Netscape Communications released the bulk of the Netscape Communicator code base to form the foundation of projects as Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird.

We are not desperate, and we welcome the inevitable with open arms.

Stepping up the development of the Second Life Grid to everyone interested, I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.

A year later, it's a good moment to review where we are, and here are two useful contributions, one from Wagner James Au, the other from LWN's Jonathan Corbet. Things seem to be moving on, and it will be interesting to watch how this area develops.

Open Source White Box Social Networks

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Netscape Story: From Mosaic to Mozilla

On Open Enterprise blog.

Browser Wars Redux: Don't Touch That Meme

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft, Browsers and Bundling

It's déjà vu all over again:

Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer web browser to Windows.

The complaint, which was filed by the Norwegian firm with the European Commission yesterday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.

Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser.

It didn't do any good last time, but this is the EU rather than the US, so it will be interesting compare and contrast the outcomes. Still, I have to say that the real solution is not to file this kind of anti-trust suit, but to deploy Firefox. Obviously, that's not an option for Opera, which may explain why they've taken this route.