kossico told us that in the aftermath of Netscape's big news, News.com has a special feature about Free Software. Features RealAudio for RMS and more juicy Netscape tidbits.

Tracy Reed writes "Netscape's decision to support free software by making Netscape free and releasing the source was apparently heavily influenced by a paper written by Eric S Raymond titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar. He is going to Netscape's headquarters to meet with top people in Netscape and the industry to help them define their freeware strategy. They realize that the freeware approach is the only way to topple Microsoft's stranglehold on the industry." Guys like Raymond really go this rolling, now let's hope that he can help make it work.

Leonard Richardson writes "Just when you thought all the Netscape hoopla had died down, along comes Internet Outlook with an article on the subject. The major source is a telephone interview with Tim O'Reilly, who also speaks out on Linux and the value of free software in general. Compare ORA's recent press release" .

Brian Jones wrote in to tell us that netscape has mirrored their new developers news group here, but this time on a non-SSL usenet server. This is a good idea- requiring the SSL usenet earlier was sort of impolite considering the whole "open" concept they were trying to advocate.

KPBong wrote in to give us this article over at ZDNet. You can read John Dvorak (definately one of the cooler columnists- his columns are always chock full of juicy stuff) spouts off his opinions on the Netscape Source Code Hoopla. He doesn't really give it a fair shake though.

Simon Janes sent us this link where you can read one journalists view on Free Software, and giving out the source code for your apps. I agree 100% that free code is an excellent learning tool, but Linux and soon Netscape will prove that the source code will not only teach you, but guide you to the next level.

RedHat has announced that future versions of their very popular Linux Distribution will include Netscape's Navigator web browser. It's a lot to think about, what with the DOJ/MS issues with browser bundling, and the recent netscape bombshell. One thing is for certain though, having Netscape preinstalled for RedHat users is very nice for the newbies that Linux is winning over every day courtesy of all the positive press it's been getting.

Another area where Microsoft has been throwing its weight around is streaming net content. Its NetMeeting and NetShow apps are direct competition with RealAudio's main products. Streaming data, along with Push represents some of the biggest buzzwords that are going to affect the future of the net, and RealAudio is taking a step towards doing to Right Thing(tm) by opening up a programmers API to the internal organs of their software. This is a nice step in the right direction, but how about following Netscape's lead and releasing the source code under some form of the GPL?

Netscape was the second major company (after Sun) to go crazy with Java. According to this story though they are now one of the first to back out. Escalating development costs and the huge number of platforms are the reasons. The real question is now what the Free Software guys are going to do about it. If Java is more than a web widget maker, then it will be back.

With browsers only representing 13 percent of revenues, Netscape is moving towards becoming a content company: technology does matter, but only to the extent that it does not impede the flow of content. Software revenues will come from the server side of business, but Netscape will maintain a strong presence in the browser market to ensure that industry standards are maintained. Marc also has an interesting perspective on the future of Java. To find out more, follow this link at upside.com

Yet another ground breaking announcement this week. After the exciting news from the Govt about our favorite court case and the publicity bonanza for netscape doing "right thing" by handing out the source Navigator, Linus blows them all away with the latest kernel patch. Analysts are stunned. "Grab it" they say. And we listen.

Sengan Baring-Gould sent me This Article talking about Netscape, it's roll now that it's code is free, and the business behind it. Not much for the code jockey nerd, but very interesting from the perspective of the web in general.

I just wanted to explain yesterday to ya'll quick a second. For 4-5 hours yesterday Slashdot was a bit under the weather. I'm not exactly sure why it died, except to say that we got linked from somewhere fairly sizable since we were getting several times the usual number of hits. Probably due to my Netscape Editorial or something. Anyway, I guess that means that the time to start thinking about hardware upgrades has moved up a bit.

With Yesterday's bombshell announcement, the world spun into action. Chris Thompson registered and started up Openscape.org to provide web pages and mailing lists for people interested in hacking apart the soon-to-be-available Netscape Source code. Send him email or visit the (still very bare bones) site for information.

Wow did I ever call it. Netscape announced this morning that they are going to GPL communicator 5. Check out this link and this one for more information on one of the biggest events in recent software history. Now let's hope the Free Software folks can prove that this is the future of software! Thanks to Phaedrus and James Baker for sending in the first of many links on the subject.

Diederik Meijer sent us this story where you can see more screenshots from the upcoming Netscape Navigators 5.0. Some interesting comments and a bit more information about the Aurora side panel widget. Personally, I'm begining to think that the Aurora thing is extremely gimmicky and is just going to add to that immense download size and load time. Just have to wait and see I guess.

Lessig, the court appoi nted lawyer to the DOJ-MS case, who has come under serious fire from Microsoft for an alleged email to a Netscape employee saying that installing IE was akin to selling his soul, made a sworn statement saying that he had no personal bias or prejudice. No sure how believable that is, but the US Courts have already said that they will not be removing him from the case, much to Mr. Bill's dismay.

Diederik Meijer sent us this link over at Mac OS Rumors that talks about Netscape v5. Most notable of the new stuff is something the article is referring to as "Aurora" - which is basically an explorer style pane that Navigator includes. I thought Aurora was the codename for Navigator 5, not just the pane, but I am probably wrong.

The response to Slashdot's first editorial has been pretty feisty. I recieved email from an engineer at Netscape (who requested anonymity) in response to the editorial. He raises a number of very important issues that relate to this controversial idea. He admitted that the idea of releasing the Netscape Source Code has been discussed internally. Follow allong and I'll discuss a few more issues that haven't been hit on yet.

Dan Marks sent us this news.com story where you can read about Netscape's layoff. I guess a company that lost as much money as they did last quarter can't afford to keep its staff around. Is this the begining of the end? I think somebody at Netscape ought to read this weeks editorial before it's to late *grin*