[ music | Nine Inch Nails – Terrible Lie ]

This kind of stuff burns me up. It’s like no one every checks anything.

“… putting an end to Mozilla’s development of a 12-year browser line that went back to the original Netscape.”

Last I checked, the vast majority of whatever was left of “the original Netscape” died with Communicator and the abortive 5.0 code dump. Once the changeover to Gecko and Necko took place, the bulk of the original code was gone. So Mozilla didn’t kill a 12 year old codebase, Netscape killed a 4-5 year old codebase. Netscapes 6 and 7 were based on the Mozilla suite, and Netscape 8 was a hybrid of Firefox and the IE core.

Further:

“The end of the Mozilla suite puts a bookmark on the longest-running browser family, one that traces its genealogy to 1994, when Netscape Navigator was first released in beta (under the name Mosaic), through 1996-97’s Netscape Communicator suite, and into the 1998 decision to take Netscape open-source.”

Again, no. If anything, Mozilla.org is continuing the legacy of what was started by that brash young startup Netscape oh so long ago. Today’s Firefox can trace it’s lineage back to the original Netscape browser just as directly as Mozilla Suite can, since Firefox is still built on top of the Gecko core at the heart of the Suite, Netscapes 6, 7, and 8, Thunderbird, Seamonkey, and others. Mozilla.org is the continuing generations of Netscape. If anything, today’s Mozilla Corp. is more “Netscape” than Netscape is now (a brand for AOL’s low cost dialup Internet service) or has been since 1998. They’re driving forward development of a cutting edge application, blazing a path that Microsoft once again is following, trying to catch up to the true innovators.

It makes for flashy copy, but it’s just wrong. Posting about the latest +0.0.1 and +0.0.0.1 releases isn’t sexy, but it’s more respectable than just making things up.

[ music | Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better ]

It’s spring, and time to cause panic! But rather than postulate about igniting the atmosphere with those new fangled atomic weapons, I’m just going to make my Dreamhost promocode doubly sweet. The discount is now twice what it was, $50 off any yearly plan, or $25, $30, or $40 off levels 1, 2, or 3 (respectively) for monthly plans. So if your current web host sucks (and if it’s not Dreamhost, it sucks) then this is the time to change over. I need to update the Webhost Shootout but it’s still valid. For the record, I’m currently paid up through November of 2007 and really have no plans on switching, if that is any kind of endoresement for you.

Previously, and more.

[ music | U2 – Mofo ]

Sometimes we overlook the little things. I switched from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox shortly after 1.0 came out, and after a short time getting used to it, loved it. Now, after two patches for 1.5, it’s just better than ever. And I’m looking at folks workinghard on FF2 and even planning and implementing groundwork for FF3, I stopped to think, “these folks really are serious. It’s not just an aimless passtime like it was in the first 8 years.” And they’re doing a pretty damn good job of it too. And in all the accolades Firefox has won, the devs haven’t really taken time to pat themselves on the back, they just keep working harder. I also just read this piece from Joel Sposky, and this passage jumped out and smacked me with it’s incredibly elegance, how it took the truth and boiled it down to the essence of the point about outsourcing.

“Here’s something Pradeep Singh taught me today: if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?”

That perfectly sums up why outsourcing internal development is not a solution in and of itself. And I thought about Firefox. Here you have a core group of devs working hard on a product, and producing magic, and you have some supporting players taking care of marketing FF, and support, and keeping the lights on and bills paid, and it’s working wonderfully. It’s working so well that they are making enough money to pay the devs and staff without even charging for the product. Everyone is benefiting, too. But before that, there were devs working for years on the core code without much recognition or accolades, they just kept working. And now with all the recognition and accolades, they’re still working hard. so I thought, let’s take a minute and just say Thank You. Thanks to everyone at MoFo and MoCo, thanks for Firefox, and Thunderbird, and everything else. We appreciate it.

[ music | Aimee Mann – Save Me ]

I have such a crushing headache my head feels like it’s filled with neutronium. I’m not sure if it’s gravity is trying to implode my head, or it’s explosive pressure is trying to blow open my skull. Either way, with various meds doing NOTHING to kill it, it’s time to pass out for a while and let it ooze out my ears.

[ music | Beastie Boys – Sabotage ]

I didn’t want to say anything until the personal courrier came, and he’s just left. I have in my hands a signed contract and my initial pay. I am now working for Miscrosoft as the head of their Community Conversion department. I’m helping Bill implement his “Closing Open Source” project, starting with Mozilla! Over the next few months, I’ll be contacting every single code contributor to Mozilla informing them we would like to purchase the copyright to their code. If they choose not to sell, I’ll share some of the data gathered by our Internal Intelligence department and attempt to blackmail them. If that fails, we’ll simply sue them into nonexistence. Simultaneously, we’ll be suing MoFo directly for what looks to be a giant stack of patent violations as well! The pile of violated patents I have here is in the four and a half foot tall range, so I think we’ll be able to bleed MoFo dry just in legal fees.

I’d like to thank Bill for this opportunity to help destroy what so many wonderful people have helped create over the years. Once the Berlin Wall fell, I was afraid the days of wholesale evil were behind us, but it’s alive and well in Microsoft. And remember, it’s all just business! Take care!