Marc Andressen, cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation, gave the keynote speech at C|Net's Web.Builder conference today. His speech focused on the future success of open source software, specifically Linux, Apache, and Mozilla. Real Audio is available.

Zach Beane writes "Macromedia has made the Flash specification publicly available." Good-let's hope we continue to see more of this, and that the release of Communicator by Netscape was only the first step by companies of this sort.

Peter de Vries has sent us an editorial on why he believes that Microsoft will decline in the future. Interesting stuff.

The purchase of Firefly by Microsoft may cause some major problems for Netscape. Firefly was in midst of developing a privacy component for Netscape's eCommerce server, something on which Netscape was wagering a large portion of their future revenue on.

Adam Arrowood writes "I found it surprising how hard the usually totally anti-microsoft Robert Cringely comes down on the Andressen's Netscape/Linus chatter. Check out the let-down at: here

Jorgen writes "Netscape stocks are up considerably and Andreesen's statement about Linux as the new server platform is mentioned in this news.com article I find the mentioning of "Stocks up" and "Linux" in the same article quite interesting." I don't know much about finances, but I like to see any company supporting Open Source have rising stock- even I know that this is a Good Thing(tm).

Carlos Morgado wrote in to send us this link to a Caldera test pitting NT against Linux running Netscape's FastTrack web server. Results seem to show that Linux scales much more reliably than NT.

Jacob Berkman writes "There is a new tarball of the Mozilla source on their ftp server,and soon the mirrors. Improvements (I hear) are it is easier to build on win95, and all of the FE (mac/win/unix) source is included. Not many external patches, just Netscape's people's patches." Download it from one of the many sites on the mirror list.

Jim Knoble has written us an editorial on the recent situation involving the OpenGroup and their new cost structure related to X11 6.4. I'd say if Netscape was the biggest Open Source success of the year, this situation may very well be the biggest failure. Fortunately XF86 will remain free, and will very likely define the future of X. Anyway check the link below and read Jim's take on the situation.

Andy Tai wrote in to give us this link where you can read a news.com article where they talk about the future of Sun. We all know that Sun is in for rough times ahead. I personally want to see them follow Netscape's lead, but maybe they have other tricks up their sleeve.

Marc Andressen has confirmed that Netscape will port its SuiteSpot server to Linux. Andressen, as previously reported, said he thinks the combination will make Linux a top-tier Unix.

Skinny DuBaud of News.com is running an article that chronicles much of the excitment about the GPLing of Communicator. Good reading for all.

Paul Vallée wrote in with a link to this link where TechWeb writers whine about the Alpha status of the Netscape Source. Most of the complaints mentioned strike me as amazingly unfair- what do people expect of newly released source code? 2.1.* kernels often don't compile and that's a code base that is shared amongst thousands, why on earth would anyone expect a code base that basically never left one building would be prime time ready? Sorry if I sound a bit hostile, but I can't fathom how someone could think this way. Many of you have compiled it, it took some work, and of course there are bugs, but that's what Alpha code is. Update Check out this article where techweb sorta puts its foot in its mouth.

This is the first of a series of articles investigating the interplay between Open Source Software and commercial vendors. The common thread will be to find out how authors have earned a living from writing and servicing GPL/Open Source Software.

The series kicks off with Michael Tiemann, one of the founders of Cygnus Solutions, and author of the C++ component of GCC. Cygnus is one of the pioneers in commercial support for open-source software. It sells support and customization services for the gnu programming tools (gcc, gdb, ld, etc). Initially, the Free Software Foundation applauded this, but more recently, RMS feels that by also selling proprietary software Cygnus has betrayed the principle of free software.

In this interview, Michael discusses what it takes to set up a business based on open source software, what Cygnus hopes to add to GCC, and why they took the decision to sell closed source software.

George Russell. posted his predictions for the future to c.o.l.a. and sent a copy of it here as well. Hit the link below to read his predictions- I think he's pretty much right on with most of his guesses.

Allright I have a whole slew of announcements worth making related to the site, so I'm just going to get them out in a bundle. First off, the variable width thing is now working pretty well. Hopefulyl everybody likes it. Next, we've been having server problems- I'm not sure if its Mysql, Mod_perl, or one of my scripts, it just seems that occasionally the database connections slip up. Quite wierd. Hit the link below to read a bunch more notes.

MH311 (Mike Hamrick) writes "Yesterday, Marc Andreessen made some pretty bold statements to the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group. He said that the combination of Netscape source code and Linux operating system could eventually unseat Windows. Read more at techweb"

Netcraft's April Survey shows Apache is still moving up. It grew 1.06% in market share and now tops a million installations on the net (including 3 of mine). MS went up .12% and Netscape dropping .16% this month as well. Thanks to Mike Prettejohn for sending this to us.

Tim Newsome writes "Communicator 4.05 for Linux is out. Grab it from one of Netscape's FTP sites. Major things I noticed it that all the frame stuff (cut 'n paste, keyboard scrolling) works again." Hooray! Those bugs were driving me insane.

Chris Wedgwood wrote in and told us to check out this site. He says " This is the home of the Mozilla Crypto Group, a project to put full-strength cryptographic functionality back into Mozilla, the free release of Netscape's 'Communicator'."