:52:00
In my opinion we needed to
:52:01
think of source code not just as something
that was used in creating our products,
:52:06
but as something that was a product in its own right.
:52:09
Something that customers might use, other people might use.
:52:13
I then looked at what the business models might be
:52:16
if we released source code for our products.
:52:20
How would we license them?
:52:22
How do we sell products in this environment?
:52:28
Then I looked at the competition, particularly Microsoft.
:52:32
What would they be likely to do
if we released source code?
:52:35
Was there some way they could
use our source code against us?
:52:38
I used Eric's paper as an example of
how distributed development could work,
:52:44
how a company could develop software not
just using their own people,
:52:48
but also working with people on the Internet.
:52:53
And that's why I included a reference to
Eric's paper in my paper.
:52:58
Once my paper was circulated,
:53:00
the people who read my paper would naturally enough
:53:02
find a reference to Eric's paper
and read that as well.
:53:06
[ And who was involved in
making that happen at Netscape? ]
:53:10
Primarily the person who made the
actual decision was Jim Barksdale.
:53:15
And this turned out to be important later.
:53:18
That our big win, the big score
:53:21
that gave us mainstream
visibility and credibility with investors
:53:26
came not because of bottom up evangelism
from a bunch of engineers,
:53:30
but because one strategist at the top
:53:34
saw the potential power of this method and
:53:37
then essentially imposed that vision
on everyone underneath him.
:53:42
When I completed the paper,
I first gave a copy to Mark Andreessen,
:53:46
who was co-founder of Netscape and
was at the time one of,
:53:50
on the senior management team at Netscape.
:53:53
Mark then gave a copy of the paper to several
other people within Netscape management,
:53:57
including Jim Barksdale.