Netscape says today's release of programming source code for its Communicator software won't just change the software, but the industry and the Net itself.
"We do not argue that it's unprecedented," said Jim Barksdale, Netscape's chief executive officer, at a press conference. There have been other significant free-source products, he said, like the Apache Web server and the Linux operating system - "but certainly nothing on the scale and scope of this amount of intellectual property."
Netscape is making the source code freely available at mozilla.org, the site established to foster and guide development of Netscape's browser source-code base. It's an 8 megabyte download, the company said, and is available for the Windows, Mac, and Unix platforms.
The company's hope is that by freely accessing and manipulating the open code, developers worldwide - from individual coders working out of their bedroom to established software companies - will harness the creativity of thousands of programmers into future versions of Netscape's Communicator software. In addition to these twists on the Netscape code, the company will continue to provide its own branded version of Communicator which will incorporate the best of the work contributed to mozilla.org.
"We expect new and better features, add-ons and related products, and faster implementation of relevant standards," said Bob Lisbon, Netscape's client product manager. "We anticipate a kids' version of the browser - things that we as a small and growing company probably couldn't do on our own." Broader platform support for the software on more operating systems is among Lisbon's list of hoped-for consequences of today's move.
Since the company announced that it would take the bold step of giving away its source code under a special public license, it has received a great deal of support from the developer community. "This flood of small and individual, but talented, developers volunteered to take the lead in helping out," Lisbon said.
The enthusiasm he referred to was echoed by one developer who plans to begin work on spin-off products based on the source code once he gets a good look at it.
"I like the enthusiasm of the people at mozilla.org - the honesty and the camaraderie, and the general way they're handling this," said Richard Grant. Grant heads up his own Bay Area Science Center, where he intends to incorporate Netscape code into "human-centered interfaces," like voice interaction with browser and email software.
Still, the developers have their work cut out, Grant said. "There's a lot of pain coming." Developers will face the challenge of working with software that they didn't write in the first place, he said, which means acquiring an understanding of it first.
Among the things developers will be puzzling out is the structure of the software's classes and functions, Grant said. "Are the classes well defined? Does it take me three passes through a search to find out why they reference something?" Those are the types of initial tasks, Grant said, that developers will have to undertake.
As software "artists" rise above the "dabblers and the journeymen," however, Grant has high expectations for the resulting incarnations of software. "I think this will change the face of the browser wars."
Netscape is staking a lot on that very notion. The success of its free client software - no longer a source of revenue - is critical to the company's new business strategy. As Lisbon said, "The client now paves the way for server sales."
