[WEB4LIB] RE:The beginning of the end for the Netscape Browser???

[Raymond Wood]

On Fri, Jun 08, 2001 at 02:19:38PM -0700, Thomas Dowling wrote:
> I've never been very sympathetic to Netscape's plight.  

Nor I, for the same reasons you outline below.  In fact, I found out
somewhere along the line that the 'Mozilla' name, originally associated
with the Navigator browser, is derived from the the phrase 'Mozaic
Killer' (does anyone remember Mozaic?  :)  Netscape's raison d'etre was
to kill off a nice free browser and replace it with their own
proprietary creation.  For a while, they certainly succeeded...

> They made their
> name by running roughshod over the standards of the time, tacitly
> encouraging developers to write pages that didn't work in other browsers,
> which rapidly whithered and died.  I do get a chuckle out of remembering
> their early plans to knock Microsoft off by using open standards, and then
> having Microsoft squish them [in part] through better adherence to those
> standards.
>
> Netscape was the 4th grade bully who got carried away and picked a fight
> with the 5th grade bully.

True enough.  The only trouble I have with this line of discussion
though, is that it focuses on the little bully to the avoidance of the
big bully.  

I think it's important not to forget who the real bully is here.
 
Raymond