[ Thanks to Beh H
L for this link. ]
“Without a doubt, the release of the Mozilla source code in
1996 struck a thunderbolt around the software world. In an era
which I shall call “post-Microsoft”, it was singularly unheard of.
Who in their right mind would release the source code that was
their bread and butter? But, Boom! There it was, Netscape had
released the source code of their browser and it had become an
“Open Source” project called Mozilla. Never heard of that – Open
Source?…”
“I read about how, hours after the source code release, hackers
around the world from antipodes to Silicon Valley were posting up
their versions of the Mozilla browser on the net. It was beginning
to sound like something out of Gibson (okay, Neal Stephenson as
well, but back in ’97 I’d never read Stephenson so …)…”