Axe falls at AOL

Everyone knew it was coming when they signed the deal with Microsoft, but today AOL finally killed Netscape, and fired nearly everyone they paid to work on Mozilla. Find more info on MozillaZine.

There’s no way that this isn’t bad news, especially for the many talented and hard-working folks who are now jobless because they built a browser too good for Bill to keep ignoring. We owe them all a great debt.

But there’s a silver lining. Mozilla will go on. Mozilla will go on specifically and only because it is open source. AOL and MS can conspire all they want, but the Lizard belongs to everyone, and they can’t do a damn thing about it.

This is why Gates and Ballmer call Linux a cancer and finance piss-ant lawsuit factories to try to destroy Linux and wish a Sarlacc-like end for all free software: because they don’t control it, they can’t control it, and they know it.

Today is a bad day, but a good object lesson in why free software is essentially and manifestly superior to closed, proprietary software. One day, I think, Microsoft is going to regret teaching us this lesson so often and so well.

Filed under: technology