A Fool’s Wisdom

I met up with friend, former colleague, and current Flocker Richard Phan to watch the hour documentary Code Rush last night.

Code Rush tells the story of Netscape in 1998 thorough the first quarter of 1999 trying to recover their business after the attacks of the now convicted monopolist Microsoft and to open source the Netscape browser.

Without these actions, we probably won’t have Firefox, I might not be open source employed, and the open source landscape might be very different.

Code Rush gives me a rush!

It is a well done PBS documentary produced and directed by David Winton. In the film, Jamie Zawinski, Michael Toy, Scott Collins, Tara Hernandez, Jim Roskind, Stuart Parmenter, Brendan Eich, Jim Barksdale, and Ellen Ullman are inspirational and all, of course, play themselves.

My copy is recorded from one of the times it aired on PBS. I have watched it numerous times. Unfortunately, like the Mozilla Digital Memory Bank you probably won’t be able to find a copy.

Like any recording of history, it only tells a few of the many people’s stories. People who’s story is missing include Frank Hecker, Mitchell Baker, Mike Shaver, Marc Andreessen, and Terry Weissman. Who else’s Netscape story from that time inspires you?

I don’t think there is an company creating open source software with a greater heritage than Mozilla. Nor do I think there is a greater company that continues to demonstrate that trust is well deserved.

To anyone that has contributed to Netscape, Firefox, JavaScript, Thunderbird, Bugzilla, Tinderbox, Bonsai, Camino, Flock, Songbird, Joost, AllPeers, Nvu, Komodo, and numerous other products, I thank you!

You contribute just from using Firefox, the browser responsible for a better web!