GoKawiilAfter Netscape, the speed of software sped up beyond what anyone could have imagined. Thanks to a documentary crew and a ghost writer, we have a full view of the whole thing.
Five minutes to launch.
Jamie Zawinski is in the car, but he’s late. Not that big of a deal usually, he was always late. But Zawinski was supposed to be in his chair in five minutes. Instead he was in the passenger seat of a car, still a few minutes from the office.
Three minutes to launch.
The Netscape PR department gathers around a conference call to the media announcing the imminent release of Netscape’s code to the public. They stress the significance of the launch, one of the largest open source projects of its kind. The goal was simple. Use the power of the open source community to take on their competition, notably Microsoft.
Zawinski jumps out of the car and heads into the office. His long trenchcoat wafts behind him. His hair is blue, and half uncut, which Netscape co-founder Jim Clark would later mention gave him the distinction of “having both the longest and shortest hair at the company.” He walks briskly. He doesn’t run though.
One minute to launch.
A crowd has gathered in Zawinski’s cubicle before he even arrives. He throws his stuff down, sits at his terminal, and gets to work. After typing a few commands, everybody pauses for a second. “Wait, this is bad,” he says suddenly. For a moment, panic hangs in the air. But he recalibrates and types a bit more. Just a small problem.
A minute later, and it is done. At 10 AM on March 31, 1998, Netscape officially goes open source. The Mozilla project had launched.
Jamie Zawinski stands among his peers, moments after Netscape is open sourced
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