Moments of Transition
It’s true: Netscape is no longer a viable entity. I’ll leave it to others to draw conclusions regarding how this move is related to the agreement AOL and Microsoft reached a while back. Y’all can probably do a much better job of it anyway.
From what I can discern, there will be no more new versions of Netscape; the browser will go into maintenance mode, whatever that means. More than half the staff was let go today, and Mozilla has been spun off into an independent, non-profit foundation supported by AOL, IBM, Sun, and others. I have no idea what will happen with netscape.com itself. DevEdge will cease producing new content, it would seem, which is a shame. We produced some really good stuff, and had more in the pipeline. Hopefully that forthcoming material will find another outlet.
For now, I still have a job, although my team’s been split up and sent to different organizations within AOL. I don’t know yet how this will turn out for me, but I do know that today I’m saddened by the loss. Yes, Mozilla will go on, but another pioneering force of the Web has just been painfully dimmed. It’s worth a moment to reflect on where we’ve been… and where we might be headed.