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mozilla.org is a strange thing. Mozilla is an open source project that sprung fully formed from the belly of the beast. Today, we're hearing the grunting and shuffling of the mating dance, as that lumbering beast joins with another. And many people are worried whether our little lizard is going to get trampled underneath. The thing to keep in mind here is that mozilla.org is not Netscape, and never has been. This is something that many people don't understand, or don't believe, but as we described in our original mission statement, the Mozilla Organization has a different agenda from Netscape. We were chartered to guide the open development of the Mozilla browser, and that is what we have done. But we have realized that there is something about the nature of mozilla.org that many people miss: mozilla.org is actually a very small number of people. We are three full time staff, and a handful of volunteers. And we mostly do not code. There are hundreds of people doing coding work on Mozilla: but those people do not work for mozilla.org. Most of those people work for Netscape, though a growing number of them work for other companies, or contribute on their own time (for example, the Autoconf and GTK-FE projects were almost entirely done by non-Netscape employees, and the XPFE effort has a huge amount of outside involvement, to name just a few.) We few at mozilla.org are guides; you hackers are many, and your decisions are what really count. We at mozilla.org try to provide guidance, mediation, and infrastructure, but the fact is that the real direction of the Mozilla project is dictated by the people who are actually coding it. That's all that matters: when the rubber hits the road, what does the program do? It does what the hackers working on it have made it do. Some people have the impression that the Mozilla agenda is set by
Netscape, and to some extent that is true: because Netscape is paying
more than a hundred people full-time salaries to work on the Mozilla
code In addition, Netscape is funding mozilla.org, those of us providing management and infrastructure and tools to this large, distributed software project. So, with Netscape being acquired, what does that mean to mozilla.org? Hopefully, it will mean nothing: hopefully, AOL didn't buy Netscape with the intention of turning Netscape into something that it is not; it's hard to imagine that they would spend $4 billion dollars on Netscape just to throw away the client. So, assuming that they still want to have a Netscape Navigator, it
is not unreasonable to assume that they will adopt the same attitude
that Netscape has: that open source works, and that the best way to
have a top- But let's think about some worst-case scenarios. Let's think about
the nightmares. What if AOL hates ``open source''? What if they want to
undo everything we've done, and make Mozilla be evil and proprietary
again? What if they just think that browsers are a waste of time, and
that they should just use MSIE forevermore?
Well, they simply cannot undo what has been done. The Mozilla code
is out there, and it cannot be recalled. It has been distributed under
an open source license, and nobody can ever take that away from you.
Ever.
If AOL hated open source, or didn't want to build their own
browser, what they could do is fail to contribute to Mozilla in
the future. They could stop paying those hundred-plus full-time
salaries, and they could stop funding those of us who are mozilla.org's
full-time employees.
But be clear on this: the agenda of Mozilla is set by those who
contribute to it. If you believe that mozilla.org is just a
smokescreen, that the organization exists only to swindle you out of
your hard work for the benefit of some shambling inhuman beast of a
corporation, then don't contribute to it. Take the source code, and
build your own browser based on it. Fork the tree. Do what's right.
That has always been your prerogative, since the day the source was
released.
And it hasn't happened Netscape realized that this is how it had to work. That is why
Netscape gave us the permission to charter mozilla.org the way we did,
and why Netscape has continued to give mozilla.org an unprecedented
level of autonomy.
Hopefully those who hold the purse strings in the future will take
an equally enlightened view. It is in their best interest to do so,
and we must hope that they realize that.
There are some vocal contingents on the net who hold a lot of
animosity toward AOL for one reason or another. There are other
contingents who hold similar animosity toward Netscape; perhaps for
similar reasons, perhaps for different. But in the end, what does it
matter? Either you get a good open source web browser out of the deal,
or you don't. Why should it matter who does the work? The work should
speak for itself, and be judged on its own merits. Anyone who is
willing to contribute to the Mozilla project should be welcomed with
open arms.
mozilla.org is not Netscape. And it is not now, nor will it ever
be, AOL.
My main point in writing the above was to point out to people that
the Mozilla project is bigger than Netscape, and the destinies of the two
are no longer inextricably tied together. To illustrate this, I talked
about worst-case scenarios, in an attempt to show that they really weren't
as bad as some people might expect them to be.
In case I wasn't clear enough, I didn't really expect this to be a
worst-case scenario. And thankfully, today, we have some statements from
Netscape and AOL executives to back that up!
(But who are you calling ``quirky?'')
``Mozilla is larger than Netscape, and that was its intention,''
Homer said. ``[Mozilla] is essentially a collaborative project that was
sponsored by a commercial entity.''
``The people that staff Mozilla.org are Netscape employees,'' he
added. ``The code that was contributed was code previously owned by
Netscape. However, it's also true that that code base will take on
life of its own someday.''
(Um, ``someday?'' I guess we need to show Mike some more recent
demos!)
Communicator's development and distribution efforts are likely to
remain relatively unchanged, according to executives. AOL will
continue to promote the Netscape browser through Netscape's Netcenter
portal site. Netscape's mozilla.org
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| Copyright © 1998-1999 The Mozilla Organization. | ||||||||||
