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Mozilla source code release

Mozilla source code release

Image creditMozilla (vectorized by Hilst)
CC BY 3.0 ↗

Mozilla source code release

Year
1998
Creator
Netscape Communications engineers and managers, including Frank Hecker, Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin
Company
Netscape Communications / mozilla.org
Location
Mountain View, California

Description

In January 1998 Netscape said that it would publish the source code of Communicator, its browser suite. Netscape released the code on March 31, 1998, with the code name Mozilla, whose dinosaur logo is shown here.

Importance

Mozilla started as the internal code name of Netscape Navigator, the browser that competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer. On February 3, 1998, soon after the Netscape announcement, a strategy session in Palo Alto chose the label open source. The Mozilla project later made the Firefox browser, and Firefox 1.0 came out in 2004.

Interesting fact

Netscape debated for months whether to give its browser away free, but it decided to release the source code in 24 hours.

Sources

  1. Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla (Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin with Susan Walton), in Open Sources ↗O'Reilly Media · 1999-01
  2. History of the Mozilla Project ↗Mozilla
  3. History of the Open Source Initiative ↗Open Source Initiative