“I must apologize to readers of my last column “(Mozilla
gambit reveals risks of open sourcing,” Oct. 18) and to people
working on Mozilla, Netscape’s open-source version of its browser
source code. I wanted to make two points that I still believe:
that open-source development may not help a public company deliver
software products in a predictable time frame; and that the Mozilla
project not only has yet to deliver the 5.0 version of Navigator,
but it may also never salvage the market share of Netscape’s
browser. Both are judgment calls open to debate, which I wanted to
provoke.”
“That said, I missed or confused some basic facts. I held on too
long to old information and negative impressions of Mozilla from
last year, following the hype that open source was Netscape’s
answer to the Microsoft juggernaut. I combined Mozilla with
Navigator, which I now see as separate. I didn’t follow the project
closely enough.”
“But in retrospect, it is unfair simply to blame Mozilla and the
open-source process for the delays and for making schedules more
unpredictable. The rewrite was unavoidable. Netscape deserves the
blame for not rearchitecting the browser code earlier.”