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Ben Goodger Reflects on the History of Firefox
Firefox Lead Engineer Ben Goodger has some
reflections on the history of Firefox. "The relationship between
Netscape and the Mozilla open source project was uneasy. Mozilla wanted an
independent identity, to be known as the community hub in which
contributors could make investments of code and trust, while companies like
Netscape productized the output. Netscape was not satisfied to let Mozilla
turn the crank however; building and shipping a product with as many
constraints as the Netscape browser was -- and remains -- a mighty
challenge. Netscape was convinced it was the only one that knew what needed
to be done. At the time, I think it was true." (Found on MozillaZine)
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Ben Goodger Reflects on the History of Firefox Posted Feb 15, 2006 4:27 UTC (Wed) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link] It's both sad and somewhat gratifying to read that the procedural roadblocks to early Mozilla development weren't present solely for external developers. It seems to have turned out pretty well now, 8 years later, but it was clear from the very beginning that Netscape had--and would continue to have--trouble letting go of the baby. I wonder how much potential development effort got frittered away because of such things... I suspect it was a pretty significant amount.
Greg
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