Netscape Releases Communicator Code To The Net Community

Computergram International, April 1, 1998

Netscape Communications Corp yesterday entered a new era with a new business model when it released the source code to the forthcoming Communicator version 5.0 on a copyleft licensing basis to developers who wish to use the browser technology within their products, develop enhancements to it, or both.

Netscape recently launched its mozilla.org web site as the hub for developers to download the source code and post their enhancements, and it is expecting thousands of developers to contribute suggestions. Developers can use the source code, provided they post their enhancements back on the web site for use by Netscape and everybody else. It is a similar model to that employed by Linux inventor Linus Torvald, who also advised Netscape on its strategy. Both consumer and corporations can now deploy unlimited copies of Netscape's browsers for free. The company now expects to release version 5.0 of Communicator by the year-end. It had been due by yesterday, the end of the first quarter, but Netscape says it has a clutch of new features from its development team it wants to include in the release, plus all the enhancements it hopes to get from the internet community, hence the later roll-out. Netscape says it expects better quality and chief executive Jim Barksdale em phasized that any enhancements from net developers that Netscape includes in its own branded version will still go through all of its quality assurance mechanisms. He also expects a variety of different version of the browser to released under other vendors names for specific markets, such as a version for children that Netscape does not have the resources to develop on its own. Additional platforms and language support is also expected. Barksdale, who likened yesterday to the day in December 1994 when the company released version 1.0 of Navigator, said the decision to give away its client software at the end of January has "staunched the erosion of our market share," but the company was not willing to say exactly how many downloads it had given away since then, other than that in the first week of giveaways, downloads from its own servers increased by 50 percent. However, there was bound to be a rush at the start. Netscape says it is about to expand its partner download sites from the 70 or so it currently has. However, the company is hoping to get 125 million new clients distributed over the next 12 months. Netscape also released its Aurora user interface technology (CI No. 3,257) as part of the source code, which is based on its Resource Description Framework (RDF). Aurora is Netscape's answer to Microsoft Corp's Active Desktop technology, and is said to provide users with a single interface for multiple sources, such as the web, email, legacy applications or word processor documents. The RDF format is an extension to eXtensible mark-up language (XML) that describes how content is organized and has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as part of its XML work. The total source code download from mozilla.org is about 8Mb, depending on the platf orm. Finally, the company also announced yesterday that it is shipping version 1.1 of its Netscape ECXpert commerce exchange software.