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

Re: What would peace look like?

Author:Bryant Durrell
Posted:12/2/1998; 9:05:41 AM
Topic:What would peace look like?
Msg #:692 (In response to 676)
Prev/Next:691 / 693

An often true cliche: innovation arises from competition. It's not always true, but it is a lot of the time. We wouldn't have all the interesting features in Mozilla if Microsoft and Netscape hadn't been pushing each other. If there's no competition, innovation isn't as important.

Unless, of course, you're innovating for the sake of innovating. This is not a profit motive, so you'll see it less in the corporate model. It's more common in the open source model. (This is *not* a rant about how open source is better, it's an observation.) And even in open source, competition drives people... it's just a different form of competition. Ego is a powerful motivator. perl developed so many features between perl 4 and perl 5 because the developers badly wanted to stay on the top of the Web scripting world. It feels good to be on top.

Not that they totally succeeded, but that's another topic...

I kind of like Mozilla for the wild-eyed geeks. It might work, but only if the Mozilla bunch has access to the key APIs Dave mentioned elsewhere today. If HTTP is built into the OS -- as it should be -- then the Mozilla team shouldn't have to reinvent that wheel... and if HTML rendering is built into the OS -- as it should be -- there absolutely unquestionably must be hooks so that I can write a better renderer if need be.

(There's a tangent here -- when people say the browser should be built into the OS, do they really mean that the renderer and the HTTP protocol should be built in? There's a lot to a browser besides those two components.)

Anyhow, if you have a Mozilla that's able to play on a level field, then there's a spur for the commercial browser to innovate.

Another thing to consider -- is there money in browsers above and beyond the usual branding bonus? When I click on About Navigator, I see logos from RSA, Bitstream, Marimba, INSO, SGI, Visigenic, Object Design, Netcast, and Full Circle, plus a mention from Sun. So here's a question: who's paying who? It's often not as clear as one might think.

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