Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What would peace look like?

Author:Chuck Shotton
Posted:12/2/1998; 6:12:36 AM
Topic:What would peace look like?
Msg #:678 (In response to 677)
Prev/Next:677 / 679

As much as it pains some people to hear it, "peace" in the browser wars would probably mean that everyone acknowledges that basic browsing services, HTML rendering, page parsing, scripting, and network services are all part of the core O/S. Frankly, what Microsoft is doing with its Web browser is the logical culmination of any standards driven process.

Specifically, as standards become ubiquitous, there is an expectation by users that those standards will be present in the core operating system and won't require a bunch of cobbled-together add-ons to work. We've seen this happen dozens of times before. It wasn't so long ago that TCP/IP didn't ship on Macs or Windows machines. Novell was king of the NOS. But users demanded ubiquitous networking services and O/S vendors had a ready collection of mature standards to incorporate into the O/S. So we now have a TCP/IP based set of internetworking tools that ship on every desktop computer at no additional cost.

Now we've seen HTTP, HTML, XML, Java, and all the other Web related standards reach the same level of maturity that TCP/IP was at. It only makes sense to see those core infrastructure protocols and standards implemented in the O/S. Frankly, Netscape was stupid to build a business around what was certainly destined to be commodity software components. Anyone who has been in this business very long can tell you that once something becomes standardized and everyone depends on its presence, it becomes part of the core O/S. There's nothing unique, novel, or particularly spectacular about Netscape's products as compared to those shipped by O/S vendors. So why is it that they (or the DOJ) should have any expectation of special treatment with respect to what is now mature, commoditized software?

As painful as it may be to hear it, "peace" would be for Netscape to go away (at least in its current incarnation) and for all O/S vendors to ship APIs to and conforming implementations of the core Web-related standards. Let everyone move on to building cool applications on top of these standards, including Netscape.

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