And with his departure, engineer Jamie Zawinski is raising questions about the future of Mozilla, which was intended to bring new life to Netscape's embattled browser, Navigator.
"You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of 'open source,' and have everything magically work out," Zawinski wrote in a lengthy post-mortem posted on the Web after his resignation Wednesday. "Software is hard. The issues aren't that simple."
Mozilla.org was created as a tactic in the "browser war" between Netscape (Nasdaq:NSCP) and Microsoft Corp., (Nasdaq:MSFT) with its competing Internet Explorer software.
Microsoft effectively ended Netscape's browser revenues by making Internet Explorer a free product.
Survival tactic
So in order to ensure Navigator's survival, Netscape decided to move the product to an "open-source" model, releasing the software source code to the public, and enabling anyone in the developer community to make his or her own improvements.
"By putting control of the Web browser into the hands of anyone who cared to step up to the task, we would ensure that those people would keep it going out of their own self-interest," wrote Zawinski, who was one of the first to put the project into motion.
But according to Zawinski, the Mozilla project was a non-starter.
Possibly because of complications with releasing commercial code to the public, the number of outside developers involved in the browser never topped about 30 -- one-third the number of full-time Mozilla developers from Netscape.
To Zawinski, the fact that Mozilla has produced no completed software -- after a full year in existence -- is the best proof that the project has failed in its mission.
Fatal delay
"In my humble but correct opinion, we should have shipped Netscape Navigator 5.0 no later than six months after the source code was released," Zawinski wrote. "But we (the mozilla.org group) couldn't figure out a way to make that happen."
The Navigator source code was first released March 31, 1998. Netscape was acquired by AOL (NYSE:AOL) last month.
Netscape, for its part, insists that the Mozilla process is on track toward releasing Navigator 5.0 in the first half of this year.
The company points out that the next version of Navigator is intended to leapfrog Internet Explorer 5.0, released last month, by including the next-generation browser engine known as "Gecko."
Gecko is intended to improve the browser's speed and standards support, in software a fraction the size of what it replaces. (Gecko fits on a floppy disk, while the browser engines now being used in Communicator and Internet Explorer are around 8MB.)
"The quality and standards support are going to be very high in this release, because there are so many people looking at it," said Chris Saito, Netscape's director of client product marketing, in an earlier interview with ZDNN. "The Internet is really a part of this project, in making sure we support the standards in the best possible way."
'21st-century' browser
Gecko has been a major factor in keeping the next version of Communicator 5.0 until this spring.
Originally, the plan was to continue refining the current software until the next release, but Gecko received such a warm welcome that the company decided to scrap its old engine and go ahead with its "21st-century" browser.
Industry analysts generally say the move to open source was a good idea, and has been a success at giving developers a direct interest in the Navigator product.
"The benefit is to increase [Communicator's] functionality and lower investment in Netscape's own resources," said Michael Sullivan-Trainor, vice president of Internet with International Data Corp., in an earlier interview with ZDNN. "It's also a way to generate a level of commitment and interest. When you combine that with the new distribution channel to users through America Online, it's pretty impressive."
Whether or not the open-source incarnation of Communicator has been fatally delayed, the Mozilla project has already made a positive impact, even by Zawinski's account.
Foremost among these: Netscape, as the first established company to adopt an open-source strategy, gave the movement a new sense of legitimacy. Established corporations such as IBM and Sun Microsystems have since followed Netscape's lead and taken part in open-source projects.
Open-source helped
The publicity around Mozilla is also credited with raising interest in Linux, an open-source operating system which some believe could compete with Microsoft's Windows software.
"We showed the world how to operate a large software project out in the open," Zawinski wrote. "Whatever else happened ... we transitioned from a secretive and proprietary development model to a very public one. We showed that it can be done."
