3 ms·

I don't recall all the details since this was about a decade ago, but as far as I can recall, Netscape got sued by the U. of Illinois & they wound up settling o

by NSX2 19y ago

I don't recall all the details since this was about a decade ago, but as far as I can recall, Netscape got sued by the U. of Illinois & they wound up settling out of court for millions. In addition, as for the open-source thing, I believe it wasn't totally open-source originally which is what caused the lawsuit when Netscape distributed the browser for free. Anyway these points are off-track; in conclusion startups are secretive because while execution may be crucial, so is being realistic enough to realize you're not in the best position to execute properly and that it's best to keep your mouth shut until you are, lest someone who is in a better position to execute than you are run off with "your thing." And there are plenty of people who can/would run off with your thing, take the credit for it and not think twice about what happens to you as a result of their behavior.

wallflower 19y ago
Marc deserves credit for proposing IMG. http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht... "I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag: IMG Required argument is SRC="url". This names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull over the network and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text at the point of the tag's occurrence."
brlewis 19y ago
When you make accusations you should not go on recollection. Mosaic was open source from its earliest days. Marc was not just one of many students working on it, he was the most prominent developer on the project. That's my recollection, but it's also what I find when I look for sources to cite: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0262.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0262.ht...
- NSX2 19y ago
  Actually your "source" doesn't cite anything other than that he worked on the project; I never debated that. As to whether or not he was the "most prominent developer" on the project, well, according to history as written by rich successful people, Bill Gates was the most "prominent developer" of the PC, Larry Ellison was the most "prominent developer" of the database, and Larry Wynn was the most "prominent developer" of casinos which have nothing to do with mob connections, and Donald Trump is the most "prominent developer" of mega-luxury buildings he had no hand in developing other than lending his name to. Seriously have you never been in a work situation where your boss took credit for your work and claimed he was the most "prominent developer" of something YOU did? I can't be the only one who appreciates Dilbert ...
  - brlewis 19y ago
    First, a little context. You're the one challenging the general consensus of Marc's involvement with Mosaic, so the burden of proof is on you to show that he was merely one of many students involved with the project. I'm merely casting doubt on your assertion. Second, the email I cited was written in 1993, before the WWW was anything big. If, as you claim, Marc was one of many students, then he was improperly crediting the work as that of himself and one other. Someone else from NCSA would have spoken up on the www-talk list to set things straight. If you want to change your story from him being one of many students to him being the boss who took credit for his underlings' work, please be explicit about it. Also, please cite a source.
    - NSX2 19y ago
      Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? You're putting words in my mouth to create straw man arguements. I never challenged the "general consensus" of Marks involvement with Mosaic - I even explicitly stated this in a prior post if you bothered to read. Second, one email signed by two students doesn't mean anything. He never says anything in the email you cited other than he and another person are looking for feedback. For all you know his professor could have given him and that other guy that task as an asignment. Nowhere in the email does it say anything to the effect of, "Oh and BTW, I'm the guy who wrote all the code for this." Third, for all you know there could have been plenty of responses to the effect that you said. One out of context email doesn't "prove" anything, especially if it was written by the guy in question. Not to mention if he had the balls to run off with his professor's work, I'm sure he was smart enough to leave a paper trail, or in this case, an email trail. Give me your personal email - I'll send you a pre-dated email "proving" that I invented YouTube.. There you go - I just sent you an email, nobody on the internet is contesting my email, so according to your logic, this is "proof" that I invented YouTube. Third of all, I'm not "changing my story" - since I doubt you've ever been in an academic environment where somebody took your stuff and ran with it, I was trying to cite something that was more likely in terms of people taking credit for other people's work - something I thought you could better relate to. "Also, please cite a source" - if you bothered to check my other posting I cited 2, and if you google "Lawsuit", "Netscape", "University of Illinoise" you can find plenty of evidence to this effect. I just did and plenty of stuff comes up relating to this. If you're too lazy to find any info on this yourself, well I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. They got sued, the lawsuit involved theft of intellectual property, copywrite infringement and license violations, which would suggest that it was not 100% open-source - it was available conditional to the license, which Netscape clearly violated when they decided to release it for free over the net without compensating U. of Ill. with royalties. They settled out of court for millions, which is similar to saying, "We're wrong, we just don't want any legal judgements against use for being wrong, so here's a bunch of money to go away."
nostrademons 19y ago
Netscape was sued for trademark infringement, not any copyright/patent violations. The original company name was "Mosaic Communications Corp", and NCSA had trademarked "Mosaic". They changed their name as part of the settlement. The original Netscape used some Mosaic code with permission (as did Spyglass/IE), but Mosaic was open-source, so this was not a problem.
- NSX2 19y ago
  Not true; I don't know what search results you guys are getting but if you cared to look it up, here's an example: "Netscape has buzz but also faces perils. The University of Illinois is alleging that Clark and Andreessen have stolen the intellectual property for the browser and the Mosaic name, and is threatening to sue." http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/... and Copyrighted by the University of Illinois, Mosaic could be downloaded for free by individuals and by companies wishing to use the Internet for internal communications. However, the NCSA did not want to become a help desk for commercial applications, so in August 1994, the University of Illinois assigned future commercial rights for licensing NCSA Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., a local company created by NCSA alumni to commercialize NCSA technology. The goal was for university researchers to continue developing longer-term technology and standards to be incorporated into browsers, while Spyglass would help license the technology to companies addressing immediate customer needs such as support, speed, and security. Spyglass began widely licensing Mosaic to computer companies including IBM, DEC, AT&T, NEC, and Firefox Inc., who was working to integrate Mosaic standards into Novell networking software for the personal computer.[8] Watching Mosaic from the Bay Area, Silicon Graphics CEO Jim Clark, a veteran of the UNIX standards wars, understood how much money could be won if a company could take control of the standards of this new Internet tool. So Clark left his company and set out to destroy Mosaic and replace its government-backed standards. He met with Marc Andreesen, a member of the Mosaic team who had been hired at a Bay Area Internet security firm called Enterprise Integration Technologies. Out of that meeting in April 1994 was born Mosaic Communications Corporation (later to be called Netscape). With Clark putting up the capital, Andreesen recruited five other Mosaic team members from NCSA to design what they called in-house Mozilla, the Mosaic-Killer. In six months, Clark's team had created a powerful browser, which the team called Netscape. It had easy-to-navigate features and loaded graphic images faster than NCSA's Mosaic. But Netscape did something else--it included the ability to display text formatting that did not even exist in the HTML standards embedded in the NCSA Mosaic browser. This meant that Web pages designed to work with Netscape would not be readable by all the other Mosaic-based browsers. This would encourage people to use Netscape browsers and, as Netscape developed them, would encourage Web designers to pay Netscape for the server software that developed Web pages using their modified standards. It was in this later market of selling Web design tools costing from $1,500 to $50,000 where Netscape intended to make their money.[9] And then Clark and Andreesen compounded their fracturing of the NCSA standard by giving their version away over the Internet. The University of Illinois had demanded that Clark's company pay for a license before selling their version. Clark later said that he refused because the university was demanding an ongoing per-copy royalty: "I didn't tell them, but we had intended to allow people to download it, and they were going to charge me. The amount varied, but nothing is innocuous when you're talking tens of millions of people."[10] The point of the licenses by Illinois had been, along with collecting a little revenue, to control the standards and make sure that the only free version available was the official NCSA standard. http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/future/breakdown.html http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/future/breakdown.html Oh and btw, it's not an "accusation" if it's been well documented through legal channels. Tell me, are you one of those people who believe that Bill Gates is a super-mega genius just because his company spend who knows how many millions in PR trying to convince you of this notion? Anyway, I'm not getting paid to win this debate and since I could care less whether or not I can convince anybody on this board of a historical, well-documented event, feel free to post as many post-comments as you'd like. Far as I'm concerned this is done.

by NSX2 19y ago

wallflower 19y ago

Marc deserves credit for proposing IMG. http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht... "I'd like to propose a new, optional HTML tag: IMG Required argument is SRC="url". This names a bitmap or pixmap file for the browser to attempt to pull over the network and interpret as an image, to be embedded in the text at the point of the tag's occurrence."

brlewis 19y ago

When you make accusations you should not go on recollection. Mosaic was open source from its earliest days. Marc was not just one of many students working on it, he was the most prominent developer on the project. That's my recollection, but it's also what I find when I look for sources to cite: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0262.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0262.ht...

NSX2 19y ago
Actually your "source" doesn't cite anything other than that he worked on the project; I never debated that. As to whether or not he was the "most prominent developer" on the project, well, according to history as written by rich successful people, Bill Gates was the most "prominent developer" of the PC, Larry Ellison was the most "prominent developer" of the database, and Larry Wynn was the most "prominent developer" of casinos which have nothing to do with mob connections, and Donald Trump is the most "prominent developer" of mega-luxury buildings he had no hand in developing other than lending his name to. Seriously have you never been in a work situation where your boss took credit for your work and claimed he was the most "prominent developer" of something YOU did? I can't be the only one who appreciates Dilbert ...
- brlewis 19y ago
  First, a little context. You're the one challenging the general consensus of Marc's involvement with Mosaic, so the burden of proof is on you to show that he was merely one of many students involved with the project. I'm merely casting doubt on your assertion. Second, the email I cited was written in 1993, before the WWW was anything big. If, as you claim, Marc was one of many students, then he was improperly crediting the work as that of himself and one other. Someone else from NCSA would have spoken up on the www-talk list to set things straight. If you want to change your story from him being one of many students to him being the boss who took credit for his underlings' work, please be explicit about it. Also, please cite a source.
  - NSX2 19y ago
    Seriously, what the hell are you talking about? You're putting words in my mouth to create straw man arguements. I never challenged the "general consensus" of Marks involvement with Mosaic - I even explicitly stated this in a prior post if you bothered to read. Second, one email signed by two students doesn't mean anything. He never says anything in the email you cited other than he and another person are looking for feedback. For all you know his professor could have given him and that other guy that task as an asignment. Nowhere in the email does it say anything to the effect of, "Oh and BTW, I'm the guy who wrote all the code for this." Third, for all you know there could have been plenty of responses to the effect that you said. One out of context email doesn't "prove" anything, especially if it was written by the guy in question. Not to mention if he had the balls to run off with his professor's work, I'm sure he was smart enough to leave a paper trail, or in this case, an email trail. Give me your personal email - I'll send you a pre-dated email "proving" that I invented YouTube.. There you go - I just sent you an email, nobody on the internet is contesting my email, so according to your logic, this is "proof" that I invented YouTube. Third of all, I'm not "changing my story" - since I doubt you've ever been in an academic environment where somebody took your stuff and ran with it, I was trying to cite something that was more likely in terms of people taking credit for other people's work - something I thought you could better relate to. "Also, please cite a source" - if you bothered to check my other posting I cited 2, and if you google "Lawsuit", "Netscape", "University of Illinoise" you can find plenty of evidence to this effect. I just did and plenty of stuff comes up relating to this. If you're too lazy to find any info on this yourself, well I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. They got sued, the lawsuit involved theft of intellectual property, copywrite infringement and license violations, which would suggest that it was not 100% open-source - it was available conditional to the license, which Netscape clearly violated when they decided to release it for free over the net without compensating U. of Ill. with royalties. They settled out of court for millions, which is similar to saying, "We're wrong, we just don't want any legal judgements against use for being wrong, so here's a bunch of money to go away."

nostrademons 19y ago

Netscape was sued for trademark infringement, not any copyright/patent violations. The original company name was "Mosaic Communications Corp", and NCSA had trademarked "Mosaic". They changed their name as part of the settlement. The original Netscape used some Mosaic code with permission (as did Spyglass/IE), but Mosaic was open-source, so this was not a problem.

NSX2 19y ago
Not true; I don't know what search results you guys are getting but if you cared to look it up, here's an example: "Netscape has buzz but also faces perils. The University of Illinois is alleging that Clark and Andreessen have stolen the intellectual property for the browser and the Mosaic name, and is threatening to sue." http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/... and Copyrighted by the University of Illinois, Mosaic could be downloaded for free by individuals and by companies wishing to use the Internet for internal communications. However, the NCSA did not want to become a help desk for commercial applications, so in August 1994, the University of Illinois assigned future commercial rights for licensing NCSA Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., a local company created by NCSA alumni to commercialize NCSA technology. The goal was for university researchers to continue developing longer-term technology and standards to be incorporated into browsers, while Spyglass would help license the technology to companies addressing immediate customer needs such as support, speed, and security. Spyglass began widely licensing Mosaic to computer companies including IBM, DEC, AT&T, NEC, and Firefox Inc., who was working to integrate Mosaic standards into Novell networking software for the personal computer.[8] Watching Mosaic from the Bay Area, Silicon Graphics CEO Jim Clark, a veteran of the UNIX standards wars, understood how much money could be won if a company could take control of the standards of this new Internet tool. So Clark left his company and set out to destroy Mosaic and replace its government-backed standards. He met with Marc Andreesen, a member of the Mosaic team who had been hired at a Bay Area Internet security firm called Enterprise Integration Technologies. Out of that meeting in April 1994 was born Mosaic Communications Corporation (later to be called Netscape). With Clark putting up the capital, Andreesen recruited five other Mosaic team members from NCSA to design what they called in-house Mozilla, the Mosaic-Killer. In six months, Clark's team had created a powerful browser, which the team called Netscape. It had easy-to-navigate features and loaded graphic images faster than NCSA's Mosaic. But Netscape did something else--it included the ability to display text formatting that did not even exist in the HTML standards embedded in the NCSA Mosaic browser. This meant that Web pages designed to work with Netscape would not be readable by all the other Mosaic-based browsers. This would encourage people to use Netscape browsers and, as Netscape developed them, would encourage Web designers to pay Netscape for the server software that developed Web pages using their modified standards. It was in this later market of selling Web design tools costing from $1,500 to $50,000 where Netscape intended to make their money.[9] And then Clark and Andreesen compounded their fracturing of the NCSA standard by giving their version away over the Internet. The University of Illinois had demanded that Clark's company pay for a license before selling their version. Clark later said that he refused because the university was demanding an ongoing per-copy royalty: "I didn't tell them, but we had intended to allow people to download it, and they were going to charge me. The amount varied, but nothing is innocuous when you're talking tens of millions of people."[10] The point of the licenses by Illinois had been, along with collecting a little revenue, to control the standards and make sure that the only free version available was the official NCSA standard. http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/future/breakdown.html http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/future/breakdown.html Oh and btw, it's not an "accusation" if it's been well documented through legal channels. Tell me, are you one of those people who believe that Bill Gates is a super-mega genius just because his company spend who knows how many millions in PR trying to convince you of this notion? Anyway, I'm not getting paid to win this debate and since I could care less whether or not I can convince anybody on this board of a historical, well-documented event, feel free to post as many post-comments as you'd like. Far as I'm concerned this is done.