Whatever Did Happen to Netscape?

Well for those born in the 1990s, strangely Netscape is just something maybe mentioned in the footnotes of history.  However for those that have lived through the development of the web technology, Netscape was a humongous company, with corporate headquarters that seemed bigger than Apple's.

 As everyone that lived through the era, Netscape lost to Microsoft because Microsoft implanted their competitive web browser Internet Explorer with their operating system Windows.  Netscape did three notable things amongst many:

1. Formed a joint venture with Sun Microsystems called iPlanet, where server products like Netscape's web server, directory server, and certificate server were developed, sold, and marketed.
2. Sold the company and name brand to AOL (America Online)
3. Formed Mozilla Foundation, and placed most of their source code into the public domain managed by that organization, which lives on as Firefox.

As Microsoft lost their anti-trust case with the U.S. Department of Justice, companies that suffered from monopolistic practices no longer needed to make their case, and only needed to make the case for how much damages.  AOL-TimeWarner settled Netscape case with Microsoft for $720 million, announced a long term deal to use Internet Explorer, not their own Netscape as the browser for AOL online subscription service, and also coincidentally shortly after the announcement, AOL-TimeWarner laid-off the entire Netscape browser team.  They then proceeded to profit off the Netscape brand identity to sell online connectivity services as an ISP.

Currently, Netscape Directory Server (a LDAP server), is now with Red Hat, who have released this as  open source in 2005:  FDS (Fedora Directory Server) - http://directory.fedoraproject.org/.  

The Netscape Certificate Management System (PKI Certificate Authority server) is very popular and is used by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force, is now with Red Hat since 2004: http://www.redhat.com/certificate_system/.