[MUD-Dev] Clients based on Netscape 5?

[Chris Gray]

[Greg Munt:]

:> Netscape has announced that Communicator Standard Edition 5.0 source code
:> will be freely available for modification and redistribution.

:If this happens, could we see mud clients based on NS5? Or am I wandering
:in the dark, as usual?

I find it interesting that just before I saw the announcement yesterday,
I had been reading an editorial in the ACM Communications that said that
if Netscape wants to continue to be able to compete with giants like
Microsoft, they have to do something very inovative, like they did by
giving away their browser. I guess they were listening!

First off, I think the Netscape sources are going to be a bit hard to
handle for the average hacker - they are going to be huge. So, most hackers
will not do anything really useful with them. In order to base a MUD on
Netscape, (other than as Java or JavaScript stuff), you would have to
greatly extend either HTML or HTTP (or both!). Some changes could get
incorporated into the "standards", but I doubt that a whole mess of things
would be added just because some hacker wanted them for a MUD.

I'm old fashioned enough to wonder what useful things *could* be added to
something that is already overbloated with features! However, I'm also
willing to wait and see - it could be interesting. This could mark a
major change in the way software is done, or it could simply mark the
death of Netscape as a company (with the original sources out there, the
browser itself should survive for a long time).

--
Chris Gray   cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA