AOL has decided to put an end to Netscape, the web browser that kicked off the dot com boom in the 90’s, the one that was going to rule the world.
Actually, the software won’t disappear from the computers of the five people still using it. The company just plans to stop all development of the program as of February 1.
I haven’t used (or cared about) Netscape for many years so the only reason this story caught my attention is that our IT department still includes it on every computer distributed to our schools.
However, they refuse to include Firefox in our “standard” software, while still hanging on to this piece of ancient history.
I think it has something to do with open source software being unsupported and, by implication, unreliable.
Maybe after February 1 we can revisit the issue.
Very indicative of the disconnect between campus computing and what people are actually using. Definitely sounds like it may be time to revisit the standard installation image package (if that’s what they use) during the next round of drive re-imaging. Its unfortunate that some IT shops are still resistant to staying current with what users actually want to use; instead, there remains the mentality of making these decisions for the users. Such thinking has its place in moderation (in terms of security, reliability, and support issues), but it’d be interesting to determine what reasoning exists behind your IT department’s choice to continue including Netscape. From a training perspective, it’s difficult to have a browser on campus computers that likely no other person has had to use in the last few years.