Feb 1st was supposed to the end of Netscape Navigator support. In their infinite wisdom AOL has decided to stay Netscape's execution by one month to March 1st. AOL/Netscape development director Tom Drapeau made the announcement in a blog post.

Mozilla, Flock and AOL are working together to provide tools to ease the migration of existing Netscape browser users to our recommended Flock and Firefox alternatives. Both Flock and Firefox are built on the same Mozilla Firefox codebase.

There will be an update made available for Netscape 9 users through the established Netscape browser update feature that will streamline the process of choosing from these two great browser alternatives.

Frankly, I don't really understand why AOL felt the need to extend the suffering of Netscape users. I suppose AOL got enough backlash for only providing 30 days notice, that they had to extend support. Additionally it really makes you wonder how many Netscape 9 users are actually still out there that need support.

Unlike Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird has never been a particularly successfully project.

Both Firefox and Thunderbird were split out from the Mozilla Suite (which was based on the monolithic Netscape Navigator codebase) at the same time. Firefox picked up momentum, Thunderbird didn't.

The reasons why one project has flourished and the other floundered are many and varied.

In September of 2007, Mozilla tried to kick start Thunderbird by spinning it off into its own division. Some four months later they apparently now have some direction and plan. David Ascher who leads the Mozilla Thunderbird group now posted a lengthy discussion on what Thunderbird needs to do to prosper. Ascher is  proposing a]public milestone build of Thunderbird 3 in 2008 to get the ball moving.

The reasons why people don't choose to use Thunderbird are varied,
but two primary reasons appear to be: the lack of a built-in calendar
integration (compared to Outlook for example), or a search experience
that doesn't match that offered by competitors (gmail and Mail.app for
example).

From my point of view the Calendar issue is long standing, well known and a major issue. Mozilla's Sunbird effort is supposed to be a stand alone open source calendar that could be used. There is a Mozilla Lightning effort that was originally intended to be Sunbird implementation for Thunderbird - but it has been under development for so long it makes you wonder how actively it's actually being developed. It will be interesting to see if Ascher can overcome years of Netscape Mail baggage and Thunderbird mis-steps and get this project on track.

From the wacky names we call products file..

Red Hat's Fedora Linux community has settled on a name for their next distribution release. Instead of it being an executive decision of some sort, Fedora opened up the process in a voting contest with the winner being - Sulphur.

Fedora 8 had the code name Werewolf  and Fedora 7 was codenamed Moonshine.

While Sulphur might seem like an odd name, the list that Fedora developers got to vote on had a few names that were definitely a whole lot weirder. Here's the final vote count:

 62 | Sulphur
          54 | Bathysphere
          43 | Chupacabra
          39 | Mayonnaise
          32 | Dragicorn
          29 | Woodwose
          23 | Tourette
          13 | Asperger
          13 | Barmanou
          10 | Chingachgook
           6 | Kingsport Town
           5 | Marfan

Yes I know that this blog isn't powered by the open source blogging software Wordpress :( Though millions of other blogs are.  Apparently those millions of users are worth some money, a good sum of money in fact.

Automattic, the vendor behind Wordpress has just scored  $29.5 million in Series B venture funding. According to Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg in 2007 alone Wordpress.com (the free hosting platform for Wordpress blogs) attracted 1.8 million new users that created 25 million posts resulting in some 3.2 billion pageviews.

The New York Times, the flagship of media, is joining our existing investors Polaris, True, and Radar in expanding their minority stake in the company. Automattic is now positioned to execute on our vision of a better web not just in blogging, but expanding our investment in anti-spam, identity, wikis, forums, and more — small, open source pieces, loosely joined with the same approach and philosophy that has brought us this far.

It's a big move for a company that isn't yet 3 years old but has grown up so incredibly fast.

In a big win for the GPLv3 license, Trolltech is now set make its Qt toolset available as GPLv3. Trolltech announced the move at the KDE 4 launch party which was recently held at the Googleplex. The general idea is that since Qt is now GPLv3, KDE (which is based on Qt) can now become a GPLv3 licensed Linux desktop.

It's a strange day indeed to see how far things have come in the last ten years. KDE was the first 'real' Linux Desktop in my opinion. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) opposed it in the beginning specifically because of Qt's licensing terms. The FSF then went on to back the GNOME Linux Desktop which has always been GPL compliant.

Fast forward to 2008 and FSF head Richard Stallman is singing the praises of Trolltech.

"I am very pleased that Trolltech has decided to make Qt available under GPL v3," commented Richard Stallman, author of the GPL and president of The Free Software Foundation. "This will allow parts of KDE to adopt GPL v3, too. Even better, Trolltech has made provisions for a smooth migration to future GPL versions if it approves of them."

Perhaps more importantly than the historical irony here is the fact that yet another key piece of open source infrastructure is now GPLv3. While initially it looked like there would be some hesitation towards GPLv3, it now would appear that there is significant forward momentum for GPLv3.

While IBM is huge Open Source backer, when it comes to a legacy piece of their own proprietary code, Open Source apparently isn't an option.

OS/2 backers have sent a petition to IBM (actually their second such petition in the last few years) to get OS/2 open sourced. IBM isn't biting.

As stated in our response to your September 2005 letter we have considered the positioning of OS/2 and open source several times in the past, and for a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons we have decided to not pursue any OS/2 open source projects.

IBM has service offerings that continue to be available for customers who need ongoing support for OS/2, although IBM has no plans for product enhancements.

Though it may seems like a long time since OS/2 was a viable option, it really hasn't been that long.  It was only two years ago that IBM officially (and finally) pulled OS/2 from the market. At the time IBM noted that they would continue standard support until December 31 2006 and, beyond that as a separate Service Extension fee-based offering.

How much IBM still makes from those OS/2 service contracts is unknown.

IBM since 1999 however has puts its bets on Linux and on its own AIX Unix OS. If an open source OS/2 were to emerge who is to say that developers could improve it and make a third choice?

Time sure does fly. Today is the official 10th anniversary of the Mozilla Project.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (January 22, 1998) -- Netscape Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: NSCP) today announced bold plans to make the source code for the next generation of its highly popular Netscape Communicator client software available for free licensing on the Internet. The company plans to post the source code beginning with the first Netscape Communicator 5.0 developer release, expected by the end of the first quarter of 1998.

Ten years later Netscape no longer exists but its spawn Mozilla is thriving.

Ten years later Mozilla is on the upswing, sitting on the verge of new release in the form of Firefox 3 and is one again on the upswing challenging Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Mozilla itself is still figuring out how to celebrate the milestone and according to Chief Lizard Wrangler (though no longer CEO) Mitchell Baker, the general idea is to have a year long celebration.

I really do mean a year to celebrate. Not one day, not even the actual date the code was released. That's an important date and we'll certainly celebrate it. But the code release was one part of what was a much larger effort 10 years ago, and is a much larger story today. 1998 saw some great accomplishments, and we'll celebrate them this year. The project has seen great accomplishments all through this first decade, and we should celebrate these as well.

Happy Birthday Mozilla! You've been kicked around a whole lot in your ten year lifespan but somehow you've managed to stick it out and survive.

There was allot of hype a month ago in the blog world surrounding the announcement of Movable Type going open source.

At the time Anil Dash wrote:

As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose.

That was back on December 12 of 2007. It's now a month later and guess what?

There is still isn't a stable Open Source (that is licensed under an OSI approved license) version of Movable Type that is fit for public consumption.  Movable Type is still pushing users who want 'free' to use their personal version - which is not Open Source.

The Truth is laid bare on Movable Type's own download page which states:

Movable Type Open Source Project

There is not yet a stable release of the Open Source version of Movable Type. MTOS is currently under going testing with the community to collect feedback and ensure the quality of the product as a whole. In the meantime, unstable and untested nightly builds are available for download.

So either Movable Type's download page verbiage is inaccurate - or Anil was a little ahead of himself.

I have to admit that I've never been much of a SimCity fan though of course I know plenty of people that were addicted to that game at one point or another. The latest twist in SimCity land isn't a new mod or expansion back but is the open sourcing of the SimCity source code itself..not the latest/greatest version mind you..but an older version.

Due to copyright issues the open source version of SimCity isn't called SimCity either - instead it's called Micropolis - and it's being released under the GPL.

The developer that is releasing the open source version of SimCity, Don Hopkins has also made it available as a game for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort.

"Micropolis" is the name of the current GPL open source code version of OLPC SimCity. That was the original working title of Will Wright's city simulation game. Since Micropolis is licensed under the GPL, anyone can do anything they want with it that conforms with the GPL, except they can't call it "SimCity" (and a few other limitations to protect EA's trademarks).

Micropolis is a dreadfully basic game and so far as i can tell it's based on something that i might have considered to be 'abandonware'. Then again it was and is a fun game and who knows maybe someone  will be able to expand it under the GPL into something more than it is.

It looks like Daniel Robbins - the guy that founded the Gentoo Linux distribution - may soon be on his way back to Gentoo. Robbins left Gentoo a few years back, did a brief stint at Microsoft for a time and for the most part has remained at arm's length from Gentoo.

The Gentoo Foundation has had some 'legal' issues lately so Robbins has offered to step in and restore confidence and leadership for the Foundation.

If the current trustees accept this offer, they are basically handing the leadership of the Foundation over to me and the trustees that I will choose. If I return as President, I will preserve the not-for-profit aspect of Gentoo. Beyond this, you can expect everything to be very, very different than how things are today.

This could be a VERY good ting for Gentoo which has stumbled a bit lately. Overall Gentoo is a fantastic distribution that is very different from the  Red Hat, Novell or Debian in alot of ways. Lately Sabayon Linux which is based on Gentoo has picked up some momentum - so it looked for a time that it could be like the Ubuntu / Debian situation (where Ubuntu is based on Debian; Debian faltered a bit and Ubuntu picked up massive share). It will be interesting to see how Robbins offer is perceived in the community and if Gentoo will emerge (pun intended) a more successful distribution.

Some interesting leadership shifts in the Linux distro space. Over at Fedora Max Spevack whom i've spoken with numerous times since he became the Fedora Project Leader is stepping down at the end of the month.Paul Frields who is no stranger to the Fedora Community will be taking over.

It's a big change for Red Hat..but not as big I suppose as Matthew Szulik leaving. Just like Szulik though Spevack will be staying on with Red Hat just in a different capacity.

While Paul will be taking over for me as the Fedora Project Leader in February, I will still be involved in Fedora. I am going to be spending a lot of time over the next month or two helping Paul transition into the job, especially during the several-week period that we are in right now when Paul is still finishing up his old job and before he joins Red Hat.

So I am not going anywhere -- I will still be answering emails that I get related to Fedora, following the general Fedora happenings, and working (as always) behind the scenes in Red Hat to make sure that Fedora is getting the support it needs. In fact, there are a couple of things that I want to work on (especially related to the way Fedora's budget is determined and managed) that will be done entirely behind the closed doors of Red Hat, but the results of which will hopefully make Paul's life a little bit easier down the road.

It's not clear yet if Paul will have a different mandate than Max did - though change is inevitable especially when it comes to Linux leadership.