[1966] in Release_7.7_team
Netscape futures?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (t. belton)
Tue Oct 26 13:43:57 1999
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:43:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: "t. belton" <tbelton@MIT.EDU>
To: jhawk@mit.edu
cc: web-agents@mit.edu, release-team@mit.edu
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.96L.991026133403.28468J-100000@iphigenia.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I thought I HAD sent you comments on some of this, but maybe not. Anyway,
here are my thoughts. I'm cc'ing this to some people who may have input on
this discussion - which I DO think is important.
>>> "I suppose you could certainly claim I had been remiss in reporting
this sort of bug [i.e. one in Netscape which is beyond our control]. I
have received the general impression that it is not worth reporting
'well-known' Netscape bugs [internally] because, even should Netscape fix
them if we reported them to them, we don't bother to report them to
Netscape."
In general I confirm this impression, although it's useful sometimes to
see how many of our users are encountering the problem.
I don't pass Netscape bugs along to Netscape because 1) they almost always
know about them already, and 2) I don't believe they'll fix them any
faster because of my report, if at all. In general I am highly suspicious
of Netscape's will to repair their product (see below).
>>> "Fundamentally, I think we should explore a commercial support
relationship with Netscape given the dominance it has in our environment,
but I suppose that is truly irrelevant to this discussion."
No, it's far from irrelevant. I agree that there should be a better
solution than what we have now, that we are too often in the position of
saying to people "Netscape just don't work good," but I don't know if
getting cozier with Netscape is an answer, because I don't believe
Netscape will do squat about it anyway.
Frankly, an MIT-home-grown browser (possibly using the open source version
of the Netscape code) would be my ideal, but no one will invest that time
and effort, I don't think. That, to my mind, is the only way some of these
bugs/interface issues will actually get FIXED to our satisfaction.
I question the value of a commercial support relationship with Netscape
because I'm not sure we would get much for our money except maybe
Netscape's acknowledgement that "yes, that's a bug and we're working on
it," which we can get for free as is.
Any thoughts from the gallery?
-Todd
