On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Michael Perry wrote:
www.cnet.com says that the deal has been struck and now netscape and aol have joined with sun. I remember years of frustration with aol over not making versions of its online software for OS/2 and NT specifically. CIS made OS/2 versions for quite some time.
I personally am not surprised. I do not share in the "open source" marketing division's naive hope in a corporate entity like Netscape or Sun. The ed on /. did say it all, I think. Netscape is a company out to make money. They embraced open source as a strategic way to make more money in an era where a huge monopoly existed. They are embracing AOL for the same reason. In the end, open source will have been a tool for Netscape, and open source marketing advocates like ESR will soon find out what the corporate world is really like - uninterested in concepts like "giving away your source & products for free" - no matter how well-wrapped the concept is. Coming out of the 80's internet/telecom/bbs world, I share a deeply ingrained hatred for AOL. They have always stood for the opposite of an open, non-proprietary world. If they could, they would be the next Microsoft, and this acquisition of Netscape is their first step in doing so, banking on the current vulnerabilities of Microsoft. Hopefully this will be a reality check for the free software movement - that Microsoft is not the problem, but all the huge corporations like Microsoft. </rant> - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e