Netscape browser reincarnated as Firefox

The Firefox Web browser rose from the ashes of
abandoned Netscape.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

AOL just ended its support for Netscape, the fabled browser that helped transform cyberspace from a fraternity of software geeks into a community of consumers who could point and click their way through news and entertainment.

Netscape as a company had the trajectory of a ballistic missile. Its public offering in 1995 set off the dot-com boom. But Microsoft Corp. fought its efforts to make browser software the new operating system of the digital economy, and not even a Justice Department antitrust investigation could save it.

In 1998, Netscape was acquired by AOL, another late-’90s star whose fortunes have faded.

But this is not a story about the death of Netscape, because 10 years ago, just before the AOL acquisition, the company’s leaders made a gutsy play. Led by former chief executive James Barksdale, technology guru Eric Hahn, marketing maven Mike Homer and co-founder Marc Andreessen, they decided to make their browser’s source code — the working core of the program — publicly available to be tweaked and improved.

And here’s the kicker — this born-again browser, which is today called Firefox, has captured about 16 percent of the U.S. browser market, stealing back its share from Microsoft’s once-impregnable Internet Explorer.

Microsoft declined to discuss how this reincarnation of Netscape has arisen to challenge its browser dominance.

But Mountain View software engineer Brendan Eich, an early Netscape employee and one of the technical architects of Firefox, explained how the decision to free the source code came about.

“By 1998, the writing was on the wall. Microsoft was driving their monster truck after us and they were about to pin us to the wall. The idea was to give the code away so it wouldn’t be lost,” said Eich, who continued to be paid by AOL to be one of the primary technical custodians of the free Netscape code.

The most famous open-source software — that is, a program whose operational core can be used and changed by anyone with the technical skill — is the Linux operating system that was developed by volunteers from the start.

The Netscape situation was different because a commercial firm developed it. After AOL bought Netscape, there were fears the new owner would back away from the open-source pledge. AOL’s then-Chairman Steve Case tried to assuage these concerns by pledging to “maintain the autonomy” of Mozilla.org, a nonprofit organization that Netscape had created to manage the open-source code.

For several years after 1999, the Netscape source code existed in limbo. AOL paid a core team of full-time engineers to coordinate and supplement the efforts of dozens of volunteer programmers who fixed or improved aspects of the Netscape browser.

“It was in a weird, half-alive, half-dead state,” said Mitchell Kapor, who helped develop the Lotus spreadsheet and became one of the tech pioneers muscled out by Microsoft.

In 2003, Kapor, by then an investor in and proponent of open-source software, helped persuade AOL to spin off Mozilla.org with a $2 million cash cushion to become fully independent.

After that 2003 spin-off, Mozilla.org, though a nonprofit entity, began to move at startup speed under the leadership of former Netscape attorney Mitchell Baker, who had helped prod the open-source decision in 1998.

The revised Netscape heir started to gain in popularity, partly because it premiered at a time when many Web developers and consumers were becoming disenchanted with Internet Explorer.

Eich said that traffic is now bringing Mozilla enough in advertising revenue to support about 150 paid staffers who keep improving Firefox.