>> > Has anybody else seen this and are they thinking what I am?
>> >
>> > <URL:http://home.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html>
>
>gee - this may pursuade even *cough* me to *ack* use Netrape.  if it takes
>less than three days to compile, anyway...

Note that the press release says "building on the heritage of [the GPL]."
Which is to say, it probably won't get GPL'd, but rather Netscape PL'd.

Every line of code you contribute to it that makes it `uname -ms`
compatible will automatically belong to them (thank you very much for the
work) which they'll then re-incorporate into their professional edition and
sell it to your IS manager for $30/head.

I rather like Netscape, partly because I don't trust MS or Internet
Exploiter.  This I find to be a downright inspired move on the part of
Netscape since they know we'll make it `uname -ms` compatible just to have
a decent graphcial browser that doesn't rely on the compat subsystem or (in
the case of ARM and m68k) a current version that runs at all.  We'll do it,
even though we know that they're the ones that are going to ultimately
profit from our endeavors.

You may think that this is more severe "Netrape" (or at least more
literal), but the joke may be on them.  UNIX/UNIX-like is a wonderful
operating system: stable, multi-platform, vaguely standard.  The 'vaguely'
is it's weakest point.  Between {Free,Net,Open}BSD, Linux, and the several
varieties of commercial UNIXes out there, none of them are 100% compatible
with the others and it would take an Act of Valen to pull them together.
And they're about to release Netscape into this world? (Not to mention the
MacOS and MS worlds?)

Keeping them in sync may prove more costly than they realize.  Indeed, it
may be like hearding cats.

jf

--
John Franklin
franklin@blacksburg.net