12 ms·

> however Mitchell is a huge reason (if not THE reason) why we have Firefox today – and, even if you don't currently use Firefox, a huge reason why we have the

by dig1 3y ago

> however Mitchell is a huge reason (if not THE reason) why we have Firefox today – and, even if you don't currently use Firefox, a huge reason why we have the web we have today. IMHO, this is far too stretched. Give me a single project or initiative she pushed successfully that became a part of "the web we have today".

gkoberger 3y ago
Mozilla was originally the Netscape browser, which was a paid browser. All browsers were paid at the time, until IE came along and was bundled for free with Windows. Firefox broke that chokehold, and make an open web possible. Mitchell was a lawyer at Netscape, and used those two things to (with others) spin Firefox off into a non-profit (controlling a for-profit). No, she didn't write any code, but she is directly responsible for forming a company that enabled Firefox to be free and open source.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  this kinda stuff is often way more important than any code of course!
  - Macha 3y ago
    Honestly, it sort of is. Someone who'd got it wrong would have opened the door for the kind of IP clawback we're seeing with the cloud tech startups wanting to pull people into their companion SaaS products.
    - EasyMark 3y ago
      and openai is definitely becoming less open every week
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "Firefox to be free and open source. " And die. And spending >$6.000.000.000 to do it. As a 30 years user, it's just so sad to see Firefox going down down down. No innovation, no progress since the introduction of tabs. At least the sell-customer-data-for-marketing-experiments phase is done. And at least it's not unusable slow like it was for some years, so the bare minimum works. And it somehow survived the XUL/extension debacle. But it's 2024 and I'm through my 10th vertical tab extension (Tab Center Reborn for now) since using FF. How is FF supposed to work with >20 tabs open? The only reason to use it for me is it's open source and not owned by M$ or Google. Would there be another open source browser with traction, I'd be gone in a second.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Firefox keeps getting better? Are there any major features or reason that chrome is better these days?
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      "Firefox keeps getting better?" In which way?
      - adolph 3y ago
        Its “appeal has become more selective”
    - neltnerb 3y ago
      Firefox definitely gets better, as much as it frustrates me sometimes. It's not hard to come up with examples, I've yet to see any other browser use persistent or temporary containers per tab and per site - just to name the most obvious.
    - PurpleRamen 3y ago
      It becomes better after it became worse. It's not that hard to make it better after you burned all the bridges who lifted your product into the sky. Though, at this point, there isn't much left anymore outside the core-abilities.
- pmontra 3y ago
  I never paid for Netscape and I used every single version of it. From the Wikipedia page [1] > The first few releases of the product were made available in "commercial" and "evaluation" versions; for example, version "1.0" and version "1.0N". The "N" evaluation versions were identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it. This distinction was formally dropped within a year of the initial release, and the full version of the browser continued to be made available for free online [...] Maybe the misunderstanding is because (from the same page) the original plan was to have a free version only for academic and non-profit organizations and make everybody else pay. That wouldn't have had a chance even ~30 years ago especially because building a browser was much easier than now. The features were so much more limited in 1995. No JavaScript, no CSS, the only one that mattered was loading and displaying text and images on the page without blocking until everything was downloaded. The Mosaic browser was blocking. Minutes staring at a white page waiting for something to appear... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > I never paid for Netscape and I used every single version of it. Businesses paid for it. It was free for non-commercial purposes.
    - pmontra 3y ago
      My internet connected computers were owned by a business. They were desktops inside my company's building. However I dug more and I found this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape > Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998 so either I don't remember well (maybe my company had actually bought some licenses) or nobody was paying no matter what. I remember everybody else and I downloaded Navigator from Netscape's site without having to go through any authorization process.
      - wvenable 3y ago
- dig1 3y ago
  > Mozilla was originally the Netscape browser, which was a paid browser. All browsers were paid at the time, until IE came along and was bundled for free with Windows. Firefox broke that chokehold, and make an open web possible. AFAIK The Mozilla project (initially started by JWZ) started when Netscape made its browser open source. The reason for this was the loss of market share due to free IE. Firefox came a few years later as a spin-off from the Mozilla Application Suite. Mozilla/Firefox's popularity correlated with Linux's because we needed a good open-source web browser on Linux (and BSD), not because she saw some opportunity to make an open web possible. > No, she didn't write any code, but she is directly responsible for forming a company that enabled Firefox to be free and open source. Unlike Brendan's role (excluding javascript), she had a small part, but I would not call it significant.
  - sydbarrett74 3y ago
    IE didn't gain share because it was free (Netscape was, as well). It gained share because, with Windows 95 OSR 2.5, it because integrated into the operating system and no longer had to be downloaded separately.
    - VancouverMan 3y ago
      While being bundled made it easier to start using IE, that didn't guarantee that people would try it, and it didn't guarantee that they'd continue to use it on an ongoing basis after that. It may not be as obvious now, but at the time, IE often offered a better experience for both users and web developers. IE tended to be faster and stabler than its competitors, and releases like IE3 and IE5 offered a number of innovative features and technologies. IE coming with Windows clearly didn't prevent a large number of users from switching to Firefox once Firefox started offering a better experience, and then to Chrome once it started generally offering a better experience than both Firefox and IE did.
      - int_19h 3y ago
        IE had better CSS support, as well, and JS scripting was more powerful (ironic, given that JS was originally a Netscape thing). I would say that the turning point was when HTML 4 adopted a lot of things based on the way IE did them rather than Netscape (e.g. <div> + CSS rather than <layer> etc). By IE5, if you were on Windows, you pretty much had to be a die-hard Netscape fan to keep using it.
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  Netscape always had free editions. It was simply closed-source until 1998. Baker may be a savvy lawyer, but that doesn't make her a good technologist.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  You’re omitting something crucial though. Between the commercial Netscape and the open-source Firefox, there was the open-source Mozilla browser. Firefox wasn’t the Mozilla organisation’s first free and open-source browser. Firefox was the cut-back reboot of the open-source Mozilla browser. So clearly Mitchell’s work to create a spin-off for Firefox wasn’t necessary for them to have an open-source browser. Besides which – forming a spin-off company seems like super basic stuff for a lawyer? Why are you describing it as if it’s some crucial innovation?
asadotzler 3y ago
Mitchell gave us Firefox, literally. When AOL canned Mitchell as the tip of the layoffs that would be the end of Netscape, she, almost singlehandedly, made the Mozilla Foundation happen which gave my project, then m/b but soon renamed Phoenix and then renamed Firefox, a chance at life. Take her away, and when Ben, Blake, myself, dbaron and a couple others were laid off from AOL-Netscape, that would have been game fucking over for Gecko and what became Firefox. It's really that simple.

by dig1 3y ago

gkoberger 3y ago

Mozilla was originally the Netscape browser, which was a paid browser. All browsers were paid at the time, until IE came along and was bundled for free with Windows. Firefox broke that chokehold, and make an open web possible. Mitchell was a lawyer at Netscape, and used those two things to (with others) spin Firefox off into a non-profit (controlling a for-profit). No, she didn't write any code, but she is directly responsible for forming a company that enabled Firefox to be free and open source.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sitzkrieg 3y ago
this kinda stuff is often way more important than any code of course!
- Macha 3y ago
  Honestly, it sort of is. Someone who'd got it wrong would have opened the door for the kind of IP clawback we're seeing with the cloud tech startups wanting to pull people into their companion SaaS products.
  - EasyMark 3y ago
    and openai is definitely becoming less open every week
KingOfCoders 3y ago
"Firefox to be free and open source. " And die. And spending >$6.000.000.000 to do it. As a 30 years user, it's just so sad to see Firefox going down down down. No innovation, no progress since the introduction of tabs. At least the sell-customer-data-for-marketing-experiments phase is done. And at least it's not unusable slow like it was for some years, so the bare minimum works. And it somehow survived the XUL/extension debacle. But it's 2024 and I'm through my 10th vertical tab extension (Tab Center Reborn for now) since using FF. How is FF supposed to work with >20 tabs open? The only reason to use it for me is it's open source and not owned by M$ or Google. Would there be another open source browser with traction, I'd be gone in a second.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Firefox keeps getting better? Are there any major features or reason that chrome is better these days?
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    "Firefox keeps getting better?" In which way?
    - adolph 3y ago
      Its “appeal has become more selective”
  - neltnerb 3y ago
    Firefox definitely gets better, as much as it frustrates me sometimes. It's not hard to come up with examples, I've yet to see any other browser use persistent or temporary containers per tab and per site - just to name the most obvious.
  - PurpleRamen 3y ago
    It becomes better after it became worse. It's not that hard to make it better after you burned all the bridges who lifted your product into the sky. Though, at this point, there isn't much left anymore outside the core-abilities.
pmontra 3y ago
I never paid for Netscape and I used every single version of it. From the Wikipedia page [1] > The first few releases of the product were made available in "commercial" and "evaluation" versions; for example, version "1.0" and version "1.0N". The "N" evaluation versions were identical to the commercial versions; the letter was intended as a reminder to people to pay for the browser once they felt they had tried it long enough and were satisfied with it. This distinction was formally dropped within a year of the initial release, and the full version of the browser continued to be made available for free online [...] Maybe the misunderstanding is because (from the same page) the original plan was to have a free version only for academic and non-profit organizations and make everybody else pay. That wouldn't have had a chance even ~30 years ago especially because building a browser was much easier than now. The features were so much more limited in 1995. No JavaScript, no CSS, the only one that mattered was loading and displaying text and images on the page without blocking until everything was downloaded. The Mosaic browser was blocking. Minutes staring at a white page waiting for something to appear... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator
- wvenable 3y ago
  > I never paid for Netscape and I used every single version of it. Businesses paid for it. It was free for non-commercial purposes.
  - pmontra 3y ago
    My internet connected computers were owned by a business. They were desktops inside my company's building. However I dug more and I found this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape > Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998 so either I don't remember well (maybe my company had actually bought some licenses) or nobody was paying no matter what. I remember everybody else and I downloaded Navigator from Netscape's site without having to go through any authorization process.
    - wvenable 3y ago
dig1 3y ago
> Mozilla was originally the Netscape browser, which was a paid browser. All browsers were paid at the time, until IE came along and was bundled for free with Windows. Firefox broke that chokehold, and make an open web possible. AFAIK The Mozilla project (initially started by JWZ) started when Netscape made its browser open source. The reason for this was the loss of market share due to free IE. Firefox came a few years later as a spin-off from the Mozilla Application Suite. Mozilla/Firefox's popularity correlated with Linux's because we needed a good open-source web browser on Linux (and BSD), not because she saw some opportunity to make an open web possible. > No, she didn't write any code, but she is directly responsible for forming a company that enabled Firefox to be free and open source. Unlike Brendan's role (excluding javascript), she had a small part, but I would not call it significant.
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  IE didn't gain share because it was free (Netscape was, as well). It gained share because, with Windows 95 OSR 2.5, it because integrated into the operating system and no longer had to be downloaded separately.
  - VancouverMan 3y ago
    While being bundled made it easier to start using IE, that didn't guarantee that people would try it, and it didn't guarantee that they'd continue to use it on an ongoing basis after that. It may not be as obvious now, but at the time, IE often offered a better experience for both users and web developers. IE tended to be faster and stabler than its competitors, and releases like IE3 and IE5 offered a number of innovative features and technologies. IE coming with Windows clearly didn't prevent a large number of users from switching to Firefox once Firefox started offering a better experience, and then to Chrome once it started generally offering a better experience than both Firefox and IE did.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      IE had better CSS support, as well, and JS scripting was more powerful (ironic, given that JS was originally a Netscape thing). I would say that the turning point was when HTML 4 adopted a lot of things based on the way IE did them rather than Netscape (e.g. <div> + CSS rather than <layer> etc). By IE5, if you were on Windows, you pretty much had to be a die-hard Netscape fan to keep using it.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
Netscape always had free editions. It was simply closed-source until 1998. Baker may be a savvy lawyer, but that doesn't make her a good technologist.
JimDabell 3y ago
You’re omitting something crucial though. Between the commercial Netscape and the open-source Firefox, there was the open-source Mozilla browser. Firefox wasn’t the Mozilla organisation’s first free and open-source browser. Firefox was the cut-back reboot of the open-source Mozilla browser. So clearly Mitchell’s work to create a spin-off for Firefox wasn’t necessary for them to have an open-source browser. Besides which – forming a spin-off company seems like super basic stuff for a lawyer? Why are you describing it as if it’s some crucial innovation?

asadotzler 3y ago

Mitchell gave us Firefox, literally. When AOL canned Mitchell as the tip of the layoffs that would be the end of Netscape, she, almost singlehandedly, made the Mozilla Foundation happen which gave my project, then m/b but soon renamed Phoenix and then renamed Firefox, a chance at life. Take her away, and when Ben, Blake, myself, dbaron and a couple others were laid off from AOL-Netscape, that would have been game fucking over for Gecko and what became Firefox. It's really that simple.