InformationWeek

April 20, 1998

Netscape Releases The Source

Communicator 5.0 source release provides many opportunities for developers--but few new features show up in this prerelease

By Jason Levitt

t's not often that you get handed the source code to one of the most popular commercial software products, but that's exactly what Netscape Communications did for the Internet developer community on March 31 when it released the source code to Communicator 5.0 on www.mozilla.org . Though the source code represents an unprecedented opportunity for developers to quickly add their own enhancements to the fut ure Communicator release, or swipe components to fill in the missing pieces of their own projects, it's also a crapshoot that may or may not pay off for Netscape. But whether or not Netscape realizes more profits, more features, a more robust browser, and better platform distribution than before, the source code is still worth looking at for companies that want tighter integration between their client and server tools and Communicator

The 60-Mbyte cross-platform source code release, written in C and C++, which Netscape released for Mac OS, Linux, and Win32 platforms, is an alpha-quality release intended for developers to get their feet wet with the code. Only days after its release, binaries were compiled for the Linux, Mac OS, and Windows platforms. The resulting binaries revealed the many pieces missing from the source code as well as the general stability of the code--it's not very stable, so use it with caution. Missing from the release is source code for the Messenger, Collabra, and Calendar com ponents, as well as a Java virtual machine and the cryptography code used by the security mechanisms. The plethora of missing features, combined with the easy access to the source code, underscore the caution that should be taken with developer code--this Communicator is not for everyday use. Also, since anyone can create binaries, be careful about running binaries you download off the Internet.

Netscape will ultimately come out with a binary release of Communicator 5.0 but hasn't announced a date yet. The vendor will continue to release 4.x updates, such as Communicator 4.05, which came out after the 5.0 source-code release. Based on the quality of the Communicator 5.0 source release, and Netscape's desire to incorporate the best open-source developer additions into 5.0, I don't expect a Netscape Communicator 5.0 binary to become available until midsummer.

What's New
The most interesting new feature available in Communicator 5.0's source-code release is a group of information-ac

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