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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keith Hankin who wrote (21539)	11/18/1998 3:10:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>> It seems to me that you are setting up a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation for NSCP. If we provide the feature you describe with a new tag, you would complain that it is proprietary and not usable since not supported by MSFT. But if we work through the standards organizations to establish a standard for implementing the feature, we are slowing down the process. What is the alternative? <<< You don't just turn it over and you don't just dictate outcomes. You communicate. With everybody involved, all the time. You accept your posture as leader, but being a good leader is different from dictating, and also different from sulking in the castle. You listen, you suggest, you solicit papers and publish them, you have conferences. Small conferences for the other leaders and activists interested in various areas of the technologies involved to have high-bandwidth conversations. Larger conferences where everyone can have a say, and for finding out about new ideas and people who should become part of the inner process (as activists, standards board members, consultants, writers, employees.) More than that. That is just a process, one that can and would be ignored by today's Netscape. It has to be very clear, coming from the top and percolating convincingly through the ranks, that such a communication process is primal, vital, central to all you do there. Open source is a start, but only a small one. But not just that. I have seen the same suggestions for Netscape features published year after year in newgroups, only to be completely ignored by anyone at Netscape with the power or inclination to make ideas visible. You must have a leader for this effort, a good one, with experience and the right inclinations. You will have to hire them, because you don't have anybody like that now. You should also hire some people to officially patrol the newsgroups and respond to people. Your company developer network (which I guess I still belong to) is far too tame, too unimaginative, and too controlled from the top. To that end you would have to resist the temptation to exclude good features or include bad ones for short-term financial gain. As soon as that kind of thing starts to happen, you kill the spirits of the best designers and innovators. The beast is then in charge. I have seen Netscape make this mistake repeatedly, causing some to complain that Netscape is 'just like Microsoft', something MSFT now uses in their defense in court. In this, Netscape would need to be better than you have ever been before. More ethical. More design oriented. More open. Netscapes existing process is so different from successful communications of other new technologies. Different, for instance, from the Linux process. Different from the C++ process. But all too similar to the Java process, not completely coincidentally. Where is your head evangelist? Certainly not Andresen or the other top guys. They would need years in therapy to get the right outlook on cooperative leadership. They would need to be poorer, too, probably, although Gates does a pretty good job. At this point, he actually seems hungrier than they do. Get away from the false dichotomy, then the solution is obvious. Then reset the organization to receive input and communicate gracefully, and at the same time start hunting for your Linus(es). Cheers, Chaz