Netscape browser left with skeleton staff

By Matthew Broersma, ZDNet.co.uk, 17 July, 2003 13:28

Daily Newsletters

Topics

NEWS

AOL Time Warner has left its Netscape subsidiary with almost no resources, according to a source close to the company, and will soon cease to employ the venerable browser project's remaining staff. The cutbacks at Netscape are more severe than had been indicated by AOL, which said on Wednesday it was laying off 50 employees involved in Web-browser development at Netscape. In addition to the layoffs, AOL has moved all but a handful of Netscape's staff onto other projects, sources said. The changes have left only a skeleton crew to manage the transition of Netscape's browser-development activities to a non-profit organisation called the Mozilla Foundation. According to a Tuesday email from AOL staff member Dan Veditz, later posted on a public Web forum, the Netscape application developers who were not laid off were transferred to a messaging client project called AOL Communicator. Veditz said that the team working on Gecko, the engine behind the Netscape and Mozilla browsers, had been "dismantled", and the evangelism team "cut in half and dispersed". A source close to the company claimed that there were fewer than six remaining staffers working on the browser project. "They are doing a few last things with the Gecko engine and they will be onto other things soon," he said. The restructuring marks the latest setback for AOL subsidiary Netscape Communications, which has fought an increasingly lopsided battle with Microsoft for browser market share. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is currently used by more than 90 percent of Web surfers, according to site visitor statistics published by Google. Netscape suffered the latest blow at the hands of its parent last month, in a sweeping deal with Microsoft guaranteeing that AOL would offer Internet Explorer as the default browser to subscribers to its proprietary online service for the next seven years. At the same time, Microsoft is stopping development of IE as a stand-alone product, leaving users of operating systems such as Unix, Linux and Mac OS reliant on Mozilla and other browsers for Web access. The loose Mozilla.org group, which had overseen the open-source development efforts of the Mozilla browser upon which the Netscape browser was based, is transforming itself into a nonprofit foundation, funded in large part by a $2m (£1.25m) donation from AOL and $300,000 from Lotus founder Mitch Kapor. Mitchell Baker, who will be president of the new Mozilla Foundation, said the group would use part of its seed funding to hire "a core group of people", which would include project managers and "key technical contributors", for the open-source project. AOL's purchase of Netscape, when announced in November 1998, was valued at about $4.2bn. By the time shareholders approved the deal the following March, a run-up in the price of AOL stock had inflated the price tag to nearly $9bn. The Mozilla open-source browser project has travelled a bumpy road over the past year. Its long-awaited first full release was followed by a snub from Apple, which passed over Mozilla in favour of another open-source technology for its Safari Web browser. Not long afterwards, the project switched direction -- choosing to base future versions on Web standards rather than on code specific to operating systems -- in an effort to shrink the size of the program. The last major release before the change in direction was distributed to the developer community late in June. In addition to AOL, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems continue to support the Mozilla project, which could help their own push towards the use of open-source software as a replacement for Microsoft products. CNET News.com's Evan Hansen contributed to this report.

ZDNet UK's Developer News Section delivers the latest headlines together with the best UK jobs, right to your browser. Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.

Post your comment

In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.

You can also log in with Facebook. Log in or create your ZDNet UK account below

By signing up for this service, you indicate that you agree to our Terms and Conditions and have read and understood our Privacy Policy. Questions about membership? Find the answers in the Community FAQ

ZDNet UK Live

Nice to see that Turing's idea of a general purpose computer doing once-hardware-powered tasks in software is now universal ;-) Mary

2 hours ago by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe on Software with everything

seriously now. I've only bothered to read a small bit of the comments. do me and the rest of the world a favour. stop saying it does not work or...

6 hours ago by Jason Burchell via Facebook on Music industry negotiating over 24-bit downloads

Read about it and weep, John Donahoe ... In addition to Visa’s V.me, there is now MasterCard’s PayPass digital wallet soon to arrive; another...

10 hours ago by Philip Charles Cohen via Facebook on PayPal takes phone-based payments to the high street

Leslie Satenstein : Where have you ever seen Mozilla even mention this? Firefox is the most popular browser in the GNU/Linux OS, so I don't see...

11 hours ago by apexwm on Firefox rapid release improves Fedora Linux

SHleG: Do you remember building a clockwork scorpion kit (I'm pretty sure I have a photo of it somewhere) — I think it was called something like...

12 hours ago by songmaster on Software with everything

Good I love Yahoo! Their search engine is getting better than Google as of late. I find more of what I want on the first page, and usually within...

13 hours ago by Chris Wortman via Facebook on Linux Mint 13 ramps up for KDE release

openhgs has made the point for Windows 8 multiple monitors without realising it! With Windows 7 you have to switch the mouse and so your focus...

14 hours ago by PatrickG on Windows 8 could speed multi-monitor uptake

Mozilla has threatened to stop supporting Linux. I guess that UBUNTU is going with another browser. I indicated that if Mozilla stops supporting...

16 hours ago by Leslie Satenstein via Facebook on Firefox rapid release improves Fedora Linux

Much as I abhor Microsoft's licensing practices, this is almost certainly down to purchasing IT equipment via 3rd party consultants - you get the...

16 hours ago by Andy Bolstridge via Facebook on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT

@openhgs Windows users have had multiple desktops since Linus started writing Linux. They just haven't shipped as standard because not enough...

1 day ago by Jack Schofield on Windows 8 could speed multi-monitor uptake

@Phil at Cloud4 What, Microsoft gets £1,200 per PC and £1,622 per server? Gosh, I'm amazed....

1 day ago by Jack Schofield on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT

You guys have no idea what is going on at Autonomy. Autonomy could have been a much more profitable organization. The sales operations at Autonomy...

1 day ago by craigsc on HP cuts 27,000 staff as Autonomy chief Lynch leaves

How does this impact on dual or multi booting? Seems to me to more or less prohibit this, from Windows 8 anyway. Will Grub 2 recognise Windows 8,...

1 day ago by Moley on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround

I don't understand why there cannot be a slight pause during the boot process so the user can press a key. Many operating systems do this, even if...

1 day ago by apexwm on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround

You can now buy the Xi3 modular computer in the UK at http://www.ocdistribution.com . This can be bought with the Tand3m software, pricing and...

2 days ago by Gavin Goodman on CES 2012: Xi3 microSERV3R

I agree: Mike Lynch can clearly build a business and manage strategy. I suspect the exit of Mike is more likely the end of a planned handover...

2 days ago by Phil at Cloud4 on HP cuts 27,000 staff as Autonomy chief Lynch leaves

This is unbeleivable government wastage with only one winner... Microsoft 1 - Tax payer Nil!

2 days ago by Phil at Cloud4 on 6 million wasted licences and £1,200 PCs: welcome to government IT

So what do you do when you can't boot into windows? Why can't I just hold Shift while I power up instead of having to boot into windows and click a...

2 days ago by Mispam on Windows 8 start-up speed forces USB boot workaround

I've also seen that Mac OS X for Intel machines is supposed to run in VirtualBox, which would also be a nice solution. I've never tried it though.

2 days ago by apexwm on xTreme Triple Booting: Linux, Mac & Windows

What I wonder is why when companies are caught bang to rights in not providing contracted services, people bend over to smear the customers? Surely...

2 days ago by dave heasman on Virgin throttles broadband for high-speed customers

Featured white papers

Latest jobs