[OFFTOPIC] Old versions of Netscape Source?

Colin Plumb (colin@nyx.net)
Sun, 25 Jan 1998 23:50:09 -0700 (MST)

As someone who's been involved in publishing source code, I suggest that
you not press this issue. It really is a lot of work to disentangle
source code not designed to be distributed from the development environment,
document the build process, and so on.

Unix weenies are spoiled - the text-based Unix tools for distributing
sources have been developed over years of source distribution. There
are tools like metaconfig and autoconf to help with portability, and
everybody knows what a Makefile is.

Windows and Macintosh tools are much harder to untangle this way.
I know; The PGP 5.5 source code had grown intertwined with bits
of Eudora, InstallShield, etc. that couldn't legally be published.

Netscape is probably in a worse position, with all the third-party
code they've licensed.

It would be nice, but the value of starting another development branch is
dubious and it does have a significant cost. I think it's probably better
all around to find ways to prune the Communicator 5 code.

-- 
	-Colin