In all fairness regarding his comment about Netscape - anyone who invested in Netscape at the IPO (and certainly before the IPO) at $2.9B - made a ton of money on the Internet. On the last day of trading, after the AOL exit 4 years it was worth (cash, stock, etc...) around $10B. Thank Mike Homer for pushing that one through, and Jim Barksdale for being savvy enough to recognize it as the right play.
Also, they started from scratch, they didn't take NCSA's Mosaic public, they left the university, brought in some established players, created a new company, and re-wrote the entire browser from scratch. SamA wants to take everything the non-profit created and just make it for profit. If he want's to do that he can create a new company, lure away the talent, start from scratch, and run from there. This "it's just like Mosaic -> Netscape" line is total bullshit and either Gruber doesn't remember like I do or he's intentionally misleading for some other goal.
Agreed. I think originally, it would have been more accurate to say IE was based on Mosaic. If I recall correctly, I think Microsoft bought out Spyglass Mosaic to base IE on, and that browser had been licensed from the NCSA. Netscape on the other hand had originally been Mosaic Communications(anyone remember home.mcom.com?) and changed the name when they did the clean rewrite. I think the name Mozilla came about because they were looking for a 'Mosaic Killer' or something along those lines. Memories are kind of fuzzy so I'm sure someone on here has a better recollection.
Yes. Microsoft licensed a version of Mosaic from Spyglass who got license from NCSA.The name change had nothing to do with the re-write. They never used Mosaic except in the name and were facing a suit from NCSA or the university (I can't remember) so they changed it. You are correct about Mozilla. I worked for Mozilla for 25 years and can attest to that.
Microsoft didn't buy it from Spyglass, they licensed it and agreed to pay royalties per copy. Then they gave it away for free to avoid paying royalties [0] while illegally sabotaging Netscape's business at the same time.
