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eWeek starts the year off with a little Microbashing built into a requiem for Netscape Navigator. The opinion piece alleges that the brower's death was a homicide instead of self-inflicted. It's just a sampling of how certain segments of the open source software (OSS) community make the entire community look bad. Or look so biased that the wider IT world won't pay attention to the benefits of OSS.

First you have to realize that in the world view of the journalist that wrote the eWeek article, based on other opinions he has posted, Microsoft, Ballmer and Gates are responsible for global warming, AIDS, the war in Iraq and the genocide in Darfur. Specifically, this particular analysis of Microsoft's involvement in the failure of Netscape as a business entity forgets some inconvenient truths (to coin a phrase).

In the mid 1990s, Apache and the NSCA at the University of Illinois--among others-were OSSing web server software and browser software respectively, perhaps even before Microsoft started bundling it. Netscape's business plan to charge money for functionality "users" could get for free, without adding any other value, was fundamentally flawed from the beginning. That Wall St. bought into the idea by giving Clark and Andreessen millions of dollars is not a sign that it was a good business plan.

Oh by the way, in the mid 1990s, the major "users" of web server software (the real business Netscape was in) were IBM and Oracle, not the corner grocer. They had to make a tough decision: pay Netscape or get it OSS. It wasn't a tough decision especially once Netscape decided to "add value" by competing with Lotus Notes, which IBM was acquiring around the same time.

But telling the whole story ruins the Microbashing. I am not saying Microsoft did not participate in some illegal "tying" and get caught just the way IBM and others have over the history of the IT industry. It just didn't have anything to do with Netscape's demise. By the way, Navigator's still effectively available OSS via Mozilla.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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Posted by: Swashbuckler at January 4, 2008 12:51 PM | Permalink