Lots of things on the Internet can move quickly but browsers are not Internet software the way that Google or Facebook are. Browsers are still desktop software and things don't move as quickly there thanks to slow PC upgrade cycles and the absolute dominance that software like Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer had a decade ago. Turning that massive ship took longer than many imagined but it is happening.<p>Jamie gave the open source Mozilla project about a year and a half, including the months of pre-source release preparation (and I think that's being generous.) Brendan Eich and Mitchell Baker didn't give up so easily and thirteen-plus years later they're still giving all they've got to make sure that Mozilla continues to be successful in promoting choice, opportunity, and participation on the Web.<p>Some things are worth fighting for and I believe that the Web is one of those things. I'm proud to work with some of the founding members of mozilla.org and think it's a phenomenal thing that such talented people are willing to commit their professional lives to the Mozilla mission when there were and still are far sexier opportunities available to all of them.
I interviewed at Netscape shortly after they announced they would release the browser as open source (June '98, ended up going to Inktomi). I remember being very excited about this, and downloading the source when it first became available. I found out that my (decent) desktop machine was not powerful enough to compile it. When I found a machine that could compile it, it took about 8 hours.<p>No surprise that it remained a Netscape project for so long.
Excellent documentary on YouTube covering the year long open-sourcing of Mozilla, right up to the point of jwz leaving Netscape.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig</a><p>(via codinghorror: <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/lived-fast-died-young-left-a-tired-corpse.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/lived-fast-died-you...</a> )
"you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company"<p>Awesome insight. Absolutely breathtaking. Explains so much of what happens at larger companies.
That was a good post and I had forgotten about it over the years.<p>It prompted me to write up some of my own thoughts on the current day Mozilla Community: <a href="http://daniele.livejournal.com/80677.html" rel="nofollow">http://daniele.livejournal.com/80677.html</a>