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CNET News.com: Empire building, Mozilla style

[ Thanks to S.Ramaswamy for this link.
]

“Netscape’s army of open-source programmers may not have turned
the tide in the browser wars, but that hasn’t stopped some
followers from moving on to the next front in the battle for
control of the Internet….”

“These efforts are getting a boost from a new CollabNet-backed
site called MozDev.org. Since September, it has offered independent
developers the infrastructure to work on Mozilla-based application
projects and stimulated those contributions into becoming one of
the hottest new areas of software development….”

“The Mozilla-based Web application “has the potential to be the
most powerful side of Mozilla yet (and Microsoft’s worst
nightmare),” reads the launch site of MozOffice, an open-source
productivity suite hosted by MozDev.org. “Fight the Microsoft.Net
world-domination strategy!”

“Whatever the worth of Mozilla technologies to create user
interfaces on the Web, analysts questioned the potential for
open-source developers to create software sufficiently secure for
commercial Web applications.”

“The difficulty we have in trying to move major Web development
projects to an open-source environment is that these are projects
that companies typically are betting their businesses on, that
require a great deal of reliability and security,” said Rob
Enderle, analyst with the Giga Information Group. “Open source
hasn’t lent itself to the security side of things. Too many people
know how it works, so that the opportunity for somebody to know how
to get around the security platform looks to be significantly
enhanced.”

Complete
Story

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