4 ms·

> What were Mozilla's odds when they took on IE and Microsoft? Pretty good given they had the backing of Netscape. (Even if AOL messed them around at the time.

> What were Mozilla's odds when they took on IE and Microsoft? Pretty good given they had the backing of Netscape. (Even if AOL messed them around at the time.) I recall that Mozilla 1.0's value proposition to naive users at the time was "No popups" - even in 2002, adblock-like behaviour was a selling point. (The value proposition to geeks was vastly different and more elaborate, but "Mozilla blocks popups" was radical enough to make it into web comics.)

curt15 10y ago
The EU, with its (ineffectual and many years too late) forced browser ballot, would probably disagree though.
BrendanEich 10y ago
Where were you in 2002 (when Mozilla 1.0 came out, four years after mozilla.org was founded, two years before Firefox 1.0)? The conventional wisdom then was the same as the comment up two from yours in this thread -- that we had zero chance against IE, which had monopolized the browser market. No one had ever beaten Microsoft then in any market it had taken over. It would help if you were on the record way back then, as opposed to now, about how good our odds were. Because everyone from VCs to bigcos (IBM, Sun) to many of our own people saw very long odds against us retaking any browser market share, let alone enough to restart browser competition. Lots of people leave comments years later about how stuff I did was easy. I expect the same will go for Brave's success. I'll do my best to make history repeat.
- ekiru 10y ago
  I think he was working on the start page for Mozilla 1.0 in 2002. The credits page [0] for the 1.5 start page lists him among the contributors to 1.0's. I couldn't find any remarks from him in 2002 about Mozilla's chances, but in 2001 he said "I think not. In a world of free browsers, the flavour of the month can change like that." [1] in response to a mailing list message saying that Mozilla would not be viable competition on Windows due to bugs, which is somewhat less optimistic than the "pretty good" odds in hindsight, but it's much more so than "very long odds against us retaking any browser market share". [0]: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.5/credits.html http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.5/credits.html [1]: http://marc.info/?l=mozilla-ui&m=100168107415632&q=raw http://marc.info/?l=mozilla-ui&m=100168107415632&q=raw
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    I was working on the documentation for 1.0 http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/ Specifically I co-wrote the 1.0 FAQ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/ I also wrote (and Gerv hacked right down) the page explaining Open Source/Free Software (while trying to keep both camps happy) http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html I'd basically been a volunteer tester and bug reporter through 2000 and 2001. Mozilla wasn't a good browser then, it was rubbish and it crashed even more than IE5. But it was important to keep testing it and crashing it and sending in the talkback crash dumps and so on.
    - BrendanEich 10y ago
      Thanks, sorry I didn't remember you or check about:credits. Now the part you didn't answer: did you lay good odds at the time? Not putting you down at all if you did not. If you had, my hat would be off to you -- and you should try predicting other stuff, and betting large if you are accurate! Again, the notion of Mozilla succeeding in any restart-the-browser gambit was considered long odds by all pundits and almost everyone involved in Mozilla at the time. Phoenix (née mozilla/browser) was a pirate ship in 2002.
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        I must say I didn't quite :-) I figured it was an uphill battle, but I did figure we were in with a chance. That even with a big fat Netscaped Mozilla, it was not hopeless.
BrendanEich 10y ago
Rob Helmer on twitter reminded me to make the separate point that Netscape was a hindrance over time, not a help. At first, it endowed hundreds employees with CVS commit access, while volunteers -- some of whom were much better hackers -- had to submit patches and beg for reviews to get access. As time passed and we rewrote the old codebase to do XUL-based apps (a multiyear mission, by definition), Netscape management suffered via a series of misadventures culminating in Netscape 6 in Y2K, a terrible release decision, made against mozilla.org and grass-roots engineer advice. After that, AOL replaced the VP in charge and repeated the process in 2001, with another VP decapitation that fall. However, we at mozilla.org who were inside Netscape/AOL by then had the evidence from Netscape 6 to show new management that Mozilla was the better way to develop and test code, and (as important) to recruit talent. We leveled the CVS access playing field after Netscape 6, forcing Netscape to put new-hires on the same footing as volunteers and people who came fresh from Red Hat or other companies to hack the code. I've given some of the history here in other podcasts, as well as in this one. Bottom line is Netscape, while it paid lots of the contributors (all, on day one), was in short order a problem. Money does not equate to success; it has downsides. Too much money, with a crappy agenda and bad hiring legacy (and the code those people wrote, and the design costs they sunk), can and does hurt. Money from Netscape and then AOL indeed helped pay the top engineers with whom I worked to rebuild the code starting in October 1998, and I'm grateful for that. Money from Netscape/AOL did not help Mozilla gain market share or build product -- we did that in spite of Netscape, it was a total hindrance on us doing products intended for end users. We created and distributed our own binaries at first for QA builds to testers who did not or could not compile, as I said in this 'cast. Netscape was offended by our success, and this (in part) drove Dave Hyatt to quit and go work for Apple in 2001. I could go on but I'll save it for "the book".
- davidgerard 10y ago
  I was just on the volunteer documentation side for 1.0 (working under Gerv), but I do recall how very annoying the corporation could be. Was the basic fact of paying devs better than not, though?
  - BrendanEich 10y ago

curt15 10y ago

The EU, with its (ineffectual and many years too late) forced browser ballot, would probably disagree though.

BrendanEich 10y ago

Where were you in 2002 (when Mozilla 1.0 came out, four years after mozilla.org was founded, two years before Firefox 1.0)? The conventional wisdom then was the same as the comment up two from yours in this thread -- that we had zero chance against IE, which had monopolized the browser market. No one had ever beaten Microsoft then in any market it had taken over. It would help if you were on the record way back then, as opposed to now, about how good our odds were. Because everyone from VCs to bigcos (IBM, Sun) to many of our own people saw very long odds against us retaking any browser market share, let alone enough to restart browser competition. Lots of people leave comments years later about how stuff I did was easy. I expect the same will go for Brave's success. I'll do my best to make history repeat.

ekiru 10y ago
I think he was working on the start page for Mozilla 1.0 in 2002. The credits page [0] for the 1.5 start page lists him among the contributors to 1.0's. I couldn't find any remarks from him in 2002 about Mozilla's chances, but in 2001 he said "I think not. In a world of free browsers, the flavour of the month can change like that." [1] in response to a mailing list message saying that Mozilla would not be viable competition on Windows due to bugs, which is somewhat less optimistic than the "pretty good" odds in hindsight, but it's much more so than "very long odds against us retaking any browser market share". [0]: http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.5/credits.html http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.5/credits.html [1]: http://marc.info/?l=mozilla-ui&m=100168107415632&q=raw http://marc.info/?l=mozilla-ui&m=100168107415632&q=raw
- davidgerard 10y ago
  I was working on the documentation for 1.0 http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/ Specifically I co-wrote the 1.0 FAQ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/ http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/ I also wrote (and Gerv hacked right down) the page explaining Open Source/Free Software (while trying to keep both camps happy) http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html http://www-archive.mozilla.org/start/1.0/opensource.html I'd basically been a volunteer tester and bug reporter through 2000 and 2001. Mozilla wasn't a good browser then, it was rubbish and it crashed even more than IE5. But it was important to keep testing it and crashing it and sending in the talkback crash dumps and so on.
  - BrendanEich 10y ago
    Thanks, sorry I didn't remember you or check about:credits. Now the part you didn't answer: did you lay good odds at the time? Not putting you down at all if you did not. If you had, my hat would be off to you -- and you should try predicting other stuff, and betting large if you are accurate! Again, the notion of Mozilla succeeding in any restart-the-browser gambit was considered long odds by all pundits and almost everyone involved in Mozilla at the time. Phoenix (née mozilla/browser) was a pirate ship in 2002.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      I must say I didn't quite :-) I figured it was an uphill battle, but I did figure we were in with a chance. That even with a big fat Netscaped Mozilla, it was not hopeless.

BrendanEich 10y ago

Rob Helmer on twitter reminded me to make the separate point that Netscape was a hindrance over time, not a help. At first, it endowed hundreds employees with CVS commit access, while volunteers -- some of whom were much better hackers -- had to submit patches and beg for reviews to get access. As time passed and we rewrote the old codebase to do XUL-based apps (a multiyear mission, by definition), Netscape management suffered via a series of misadventures culminating in Netscape 6 in Y2K, a terrible release decision, made against mozilla.org and grass-roots engineer advice. After that, AOL replaced the VP in charge and repeated the process in 2001, with another VP decapitation that fall. However, we at mozilla.org who were inside Netscape/AOL by then had the evidence from Netscape 6 to show new management that Mozilla was the better way to develop and test code, and (as important) to recruit talent. We leveled the CVS access playing field after Netscape 6, forcing Netscape to put new-hires on the same footing as volunteers and people who came fresh from Red Hat or other companies to hack the code. I've given some of the history here in other podcasts, as well as in this one. Bottom line is Netscape, while it paid lots of the contributors (all, on day one), was in short order a problem. Money does not equate to success; it has downsides. Too much money, with a crappy agenda and bad hiring legacy (and the code those people wrote, and the design costs they sunk), can and does hurt. Money from Netscape and then AOL indeed helped pay the top engineers with whom I worked to rebuild the code starting in October 1998, and I'm grateful for that. Money from Netscape/AOL did not help Mozilla gain market share or build product -- we did that in spite of Netscape, it was a total hindrance on us doing products intended for end users. We created and distributed our own binaries at first for QA builds to testers who did not or could not compile, as I said in this 'cast. Netscape was offended by our success, and this (in part) drove Dave Hyatt to quit and go work for Apple in 2001. I could go on but I'll save it for "the book".

davidgerard 10y ago
I was just on the volunteer documentation side for 1.0 (working under Gerv), but I do recall how very annoying the corporation could be. Was the basic fact of paying devs better than not, though?
- BrendanEich 10y ago