I was just visiting the "news for nerds on stuff that matters" site
right now and I just read your post -- the *original* post, I believe --
in favor of GNU Public Licensing Netscape's client source. I was
pleasantly surprised to see a post from Netscape CTO Eric Hahn praising
your editorial as the one that set the decision's wheels in motion.
Congrats on snowballing this issue into a victory in getting Netscape to
open the code starting with Communicator 5.0:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/980122/ca_netscap_3.html
It took them four years, but Netscape finally did something right.
I remember part of the fun on the Web back in 1993 (!) was taking NCSA's
Mosaic source code, and modifying it in small ways to do interesting
things -- some friends of mine hacked it up so that two people could
tour the Web together (when one person went to a site in her browser,
the other browser would be "carried along"). Now it looks like legions
of Internet programmers will once again be able to do the same;
hopefully the results will be as fruitful as Linux and Apache have
been over the last few years...
Then, looking at your pages
http://slashdot.org/malda/aboutrob.shtml
I see you're just the kind of guy who would get a kick out of a virtual
community called "FoRK" (short for "Fantasies of Road Kill" :) whose
members are interested in state-of-the-art technology, its impacts on
society, cool URLs to visit, and (occasionally) the potential uses for a
scientifically-enhanced orgasm pill that could free the masses once and
for all from the Spice Girls -- check out the FAQ that I haven't
modified in, like, forever, so at least 10 current listmembers aren't on
it:
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/faq-fork.html
What does this virtual community do? Talk, mostly. See the archives:
http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/
There's this guy on the list named Rohit Khare who would have you
believe that FoRK stands for something different. Believe him if you
like; who am I to judge?
But think of this email as a golden ticket into the cabal, if you'd like
to join. After all, we don't let just anyone in. It only seems that way.
Meanwhile, keep up the good work, and I'll be reading Slash.Org from
time to time from my own cozy little home:
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/everyday.html
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
Only the untalented can afford to be humble.
-- Sylvia Miles