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> Are there examples of large open source projects that have had ground up rewrites? well, netscape navigator turned into firefox. it cost them dearly (in term
by stefs 10y ago
> Are there examples of large open source projects that have had ground up rewrites?
well, netscape navigator turned into firefox. it cost them dearly (in terms of market share), but there wasn't much of an alternative (joel spolsky might not agree on that).
- wtracy 10y agoArguably two major rewrites: one early in the life of the Mozilla project, when the FOSS community deemed the original Netscape code dump to be nearly unmaintainable, and the second during the creation of Firefox itself (although that was mostly a re-do of the browser chrome, while the core was left untouched).
- batbomb 10y agoIt was Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox.
- icebraining 10y agoThose were just name changes, the rewrites were Netscape → Mozilla Suite → Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox.