O'Reilly Network Weekly
Open Source Roundtable
Sponsored by IBM developerWorks
Where's that Lizard?!
08/04/2000
Last week, the Web Standards Project posted an open letter to
Netscape, criticizing the project's delays and accusing it of
ceding the browser market to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. WSP, which
enthusiastically supported Netscape's gesture of open-sourcing the
browser and the Mozilla project's goal of a standards-compliant browser,
is disappointed that development has taken two years to develop the
browser.
Mozilla advocates reacted strongly to the accusations, and have gone
to lengths to point out all that's been accomplished with the Mozilla
project.
O'Reilly Network brought together Tim Bray, a member of the Web
Standards Project's Steering Committee, and David Boswell, head of
Mozilla development at Alphanumerica, to explain their relative
positions.
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Tim Bray
CEO of Antarctica
Systems
Member of the Web
Standards Project's steering committee
Co-editor of XML standard
"Right at the moment, the biggest problem in the browser space is that
there's only one out there, in the minds of a distressing number of
people. We profoundly believe that the most important thing the Internet
needs is a move towards a standards-based approach to doing business.
And we just don't see how that's going to happen if there's only one
browser out there ... We have been supportive in the past of the Mozilla
project and I think we still are. But no matter how wonderful it is, its
absence is part of the big standards problem rght now on the Web."
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David Boswell
Head of Mozilla Development at Alphanumerica
Organizer of Second
Mozilla Developers Meeting
"It's funny, one of the things that originally was started to be the
biggest time saver has turned out to be, at least from the outside, what
attracts the most criticism as being the biggest delay, and that is XUL,
the XML-based user-interface language. Originally that was started to
cut time dramatically for creating front-ends on Mozilla and/or Netscape
on different platforms."
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