futtta's blog

A couple of days ago I saw “Code Rush“, a non-fiction movie about life at Netscape while they were in the process of open sourcing their browser in 1998. It’s a great documentary about a defining moment in the history of the web, touching on subjects like code & quality (zarro boogs), the fight with Microsoft, the awkward marriage with AOL, the stock market, technology start-up culture and work versus life.

Open sourcing Communicator didn’t save Netscape as a company, but it did allow the Mozilla Organization to create a whole new browser suite based on XUL and NGlayout (later Gecko), which were 2 important building blocks for Phoenix, a standalone browser (instead of a suite) which we now know as Firefox.

Code Rush aired in 2000 on PBS in the States, but was released under a Creative Commons license in 2009. You can check out all footage (and search the transcripts) on clickmovement.org.

Apparently the Firefox-brand is  that strong that some want to be associated with it. But I’m not sure Mozilla (the not-for-profit or the corp) is fine with the blatant … “re-use” of their artwork.

The irony; Fox security offers fire- & theft-detection. But never mind, we’ve got Firefox 4 (beta7) to look forward to, haven’t we?

Net (via planet.grep.be) gelezen op de blog van Floris Lambrechts; Enso, de moderne command line user interface van Humanized, is vanaf nu gratis. En beter nog; Humanized overweegt ook om Enso volledig open source te maken en drie van de vijf Humanized-developers gaan voor Mozilla werken.

Ik installeerde Enso in augustus 2008 2007, nadat ik er op de Mozilla Developer-blog over gelezen had. De maand trial overtuigde me volledig, maar ik kocht het product uiteindelijk toch niet (gierig, lui, vergeetachtig, … zeg het maar). De gratis versie staat ondertussen al terug op mijn laptop. Nu uitkijken naar wat Aza Raskin en vrienden aan moois gaan toevoegen aan Firefox (en andere Mozilla producten).