Tape 80

Netscape Documentary
Tape 80 Conversations with Jim Barksdaie
Greg this is Jim Barksdale with Netscape Communications how are you /.2 oO
Well they say very politically active so everybody knew him and we went to school at
the University of Mississippi together in the early 60s and no we werent he was in
competitive fraternity and his wife and mywife we sorority sisters and they knew
each other actually better than we knew each other But then Ive been reacquainted
with him over the years when he was in the house and in the Senate various and
sundry things that weve done together We werent close friends or anything in college
by any means we were acquaintances He was by then think in law school and was
still in undergraduate school He thinks we were in the same class but have to remind
him we werent yeah that would make him lot younger than he is
Yes the one out here in Palo Alto yeah did that Well basically the fund-raiser was
organized by the technology network which Im co-chairman of which is group of
about 100 high tech company CEOs here in California as well as all over the country
uh who lot of companies who compete vigorously on other matters but cooperate on
issues that we think are vital to the industry and we invited him out and held fundraiser
for him actually for the Republican Re-Elect senatorial re-election campaign for
him personally Yeah leadership youre right you know more about that...thats right
And so that was the purpose of it and we were very proud of the attendance we got
and the efforts and he came out and gave wonderful address to the group and we got
to visit...well he talked some about several issues One of which was the efforts of in the
congress regarding Republican agenda but he also talked specifically about couple of
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issues that are very important to us out here in the valley one of which in encryption
legislation and another was uniform national standards for shareholder lawsuits as
well as some efforts were pushing for educational reform and improvement at the
Federal and the state level Thats correct thats correct Whats happened is is they
passed the legislation actually they over rode the Presidents veto think the only time
theyve successfully done that and then got it fixed at the Federal level only to find that
most of the suits then went from Federal court over to the state courts and basically
voided the efforts and the good work that the congress had done three years ago
pause Well his issue particularly related to
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...all of the relevant committee chairmen in the senate he has also been helpful in
speaking to Newt Gingrich in the House and others and think he understands the
issue Its fairly straightforward but it takes little while to understand it so...Ive got
about one more minute now so...were very encouraged about uniform national
standards and were somewhat encouraged about encryption Senator McKinney and
Carry of Nebraska have put together an effort revised version of the encryption bill
and then we do think were gonna make good progress on the UNS legislation this year
both in the house and the senate Thank you so much All right Greg good bye Oky
Doky 1.2 oS 2S
Dave Jim converse..
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Tape 80 Conversations with Jim Barksdale
JB The331 team
the 331 team...it was great Its great group of people
JB Arent they fun
JB Werent they wonderful yesterday when they had chance to talk and thank
each other at the cafeteria thing Jamies quite eloquent
Quite and more conservative than he appears...your impressions
JB Well like lot of ideas in business of whever its sort of the coming together of
multiple ideas from different directio On the one hand Microsoft had been
successful in making the client or the browser product free product category so
we knew we had to do something to stay competitive so we had been
wondering when and how more when to make our client product free and
then once we decided that then another stream of ideas that had been bubbling
over the last to nine months for sure it seems like to me from people like
Harry Conn our chief technology officer Frank Hecker one of our lead systems
engineers on the east coast whos sort of one of the idea generators around here
as well as people like Jamie...Zawinksi and then the product group Mark
Andreeson whos head of product development had been...all these people and
lot of it had been because they had been watching as well as Mike Homer over
in marketin The Web is such marvelous crucible for learning and one of the
things we have been learning is sort of the profound new concept of free
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Tape 80 Conversations with Jim Barksdale Of is
development open software development that has been trail blazed by products
like LINUX and some of the server products and others Many of which are very
specific to the web and others are general purpose like LINUX But and we had
been passing documents around through e-mail and our own groupware
products and think its demonstration of the power of electronic
communication because here were people literally
all over the world kind of
discussing back and forth and this idea was bubbling And then once we decided
to go with the free client in general somebody put me on to an article that was
on the web called the Bazaar in the CakIral by young man named Raymond
who articulated as well as anybody this whole idea of open development and
what he called ego-less programming And it seemed like such marvelous way
to leverage up the asses mean once it was free why not really kick it in to high
gear and make it everywhere and so we began talking about it on the Web And
everybody the developer community both professional developers
independent software vendors corporate developers...seemed so excited about
it and now two and half months later its just taking off like rocket ere
just really think its gonna change the way things are done So my role was my
role was sort of in the middle listening to various points of view and made
decision over weekend back in early January once we had decided to do the to
the free product And so sent out to what we call the executive committee
which is Homer CurryHaan and Andreeson and said think we ought to do
this And they all agreed and we did it Now lets see where it goes
iaw
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Tape 80 Conversations with Jim Barksdale
You made an interesting observation in the meeting yesterday you said it was the
largest release of intellectual property..
/1I 2309
Look internet software has revolutionized the way people build products and use
computer software in businesses governments and as individuals it just hamean
you go back two or three years ago everybody were building these very special off PC
based clients for heavy sort of applications in businesses and consumer had very
restricted sort of proprietary networks that were led to only one type of content Well
now all thats changed so once every body has now agreed to the open client model
now lets make it really open where everybody gets to contribute to it because if thats
true you now have tens of thousands of developers around the world adding features
looking at other peoples code making sure its tight and as fast mean can envision
college computer science classes being challenged to see if you can make the Navigator
run twice as fast and they contribute that
bck to the source free and all kind of things
like that get to bubbling this could be huge ecause it will change the way people one
develop products and two it will makeEuniversal client the Netscape Navigator
Netscape Communicator products the most robust user friendly featured products you
can imagine doing all kinds of things that are sort of
desied
for what people and
individuals and groups of people want it to do for theiAnd think its just very
auspicious occasion But its like everything we have to wait and see and the proof of
the puddins in the eatin lets just see what happens
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Is managing distributed intelligence...a different kind of challenge
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Ever since Ive been in business to one degree or another for thirty-three years my job
changes every day mean just because you work ant one company doesnt mean ou
do the same thing every day
Bu%jrtainl
as management challenge some of the
things Ive seen and weve participated in at Netscape are ideas we pushed for or had
pushed on us is one of the most eclectic or ever changing sort of management
opportunities Ive ever seen or can imagine Because not only are you dealing with new
models of how people work together within business but how the business works
with its customers clients and partners in electronic medium that really didnt exist
before So were learning lot and weve made mistakes anybody but weve
certainly hit some out of the park that have been just thrilling
Do you see the linking of innovation and business more and more because of the free
flow of ideas
This is like water flowing its gonna go where its gonna go Its gonna seek its level.
But weve removed many of the friction that retards the flow of water The frictions of
business the normal delays in getting products to market the normal delays or
inabilities of people of collaborate on things even though they may not work for the
same department or the ame division or even the same company and so were right in
the middle of all that think our products open internet software products are the
kinds of catalyst tha these marvelous ideas together and where god ideas come
together certainly capital will follow for those things that are in need of capital that can
make somebody some money somewhere Certainly weve been marvelously
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advantaged in participating in that and many others have been4s like tell our
folks here when we put something up on the website or some new change if people
hit on it you know real quick like they can do within an hour youll know
not its product and we call it product if they hit on it If they dont hit on it we call
it market research and we go on to the next thing and its marvelous way of so much
more quickly finding out whether the markets are and whats of interest to people for
the products that lend themselves to it But cant think of more profound period of
time or more innovative period of time in business history than the current period
were in right as we get ready to cross the millennium the ability of bringing of
bringing ideas together that coalesce and form and create new ideas and certainly new
business opportunities and other kinds of participation in the arts participation in
literature and moving all intellectual property forward as well as just better ways to
communicate so its exciting as anything Ive ever seen
Do you think company like Microsoft. .one more question. .seems so monolithic and
powerful. .is there chance that the shift brought about potentially by 331 will shake
the ground little bit
its certainly my hope that the enormous amount of new people that no one
company could afford to have working on any product now contributing to the
Netscape Navigator Communicator will make significant difference in the
improvement of the product how that works against any competitor remains to be
seen but it does demonstrate value that Netscape has in its origin which is we are
company which is product of the web Were not an older company that believes in
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Tape 80 Conversations with Jim Barksdale
works out Time will tell certainly when we decided to do it it was least in the
back of our minds that this would be great competitive opportunity for us but its not
one that others cant duplicate think it would be fine if Microsoft wants to put the
source code of Windows 98 up on the Web and let
To me
busi7swis
more like sports model where
compete am But certainly thing
that maybe take advantage of the rules more than 01
post-meeting discussions introductions
What were gonna do is QAstyle for cover story about Netscape where Netscapes
heading After this were gonna go down theyve got the photo session set up and
shoot couple photographs and youll be done photo shoot discussions
Were really interested in the direction Netscapes going weve been following the
company very closely for long time and its been huge boon obviously to lots of
start up companies in the valley and so its concern to us So one of the first questions
wanted to ask you in how is your perception of the company changed since 1995
JB Well you know weve evolved with our products and with our customers like
any company we probably have benefited more from things weve learned from
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customers and from the internet and from their uses of our products than maybe
any company think we have obviously learned lot from our competitors
were now in think very good position with our products and our markets
think we need to do more to make customers and partners and prospects belier
understand our company because they still regard us as browser company..
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..the Net that would be really cool All we have to do then is have one server
not lots of changes on the Net just one server that our product talks to and all of
sudden the whole net got better and richer for the person who had
downloaded our products So its long way long introduction but think
what 5.0 means to me is the product that best enables people to harness the
power of the Net Even the first order of business for each release has to be get
the time to do the first ten million upgrades as minimum as possible OK it
means we want it downloaded as soon as possible so that it makes the net work
better for them even before any of the content sites changes
OK thats 5.0 and were gonna shoot for the end of the year Theres an open
issue now which is what happens to the Nova mail client how do we get that to hook
up with 5.0 And the basic idea here is theres few alternatives One is we can just do
what weve called mail-vert And you guys remember Rat-vert well the flip side of
that would be mail-vert which is jut the communicator and every thing but mail
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stripped out But it would still have layout engine and so forth message
composition window Were not gonna do that even though that makes sense on paper
cause when we looked at it we thought thats not gonna be great product Thats
gonna be heavy weight slow its gonna add lot of bloat to somebody who wants to
rim rat-vert and mail-vert and were not gonna do crummy products around here So
were not gonna do mail-vert Next idea is well why dont we just kind of get he source
out the and continuously merge continuously integrate with whats going on the Net
The reason that wont work is thats gonna slow the Nova people down lot And Ive
already said were counting on them the companys counting on them to deliver in the
third calendar quarter and Im not willing to risk slowing them down in order to satisfy
that objective So that one doesnt work So what we are gonna try and do and all the
details are still PBD but the basic idea is were gonna take the Nova mail client and
snap shot it periodically as we develop it but one direction not by die take it put it on
the net not with the layout engine and net lib and all the other stuff in Nova just the
mail client Were gonna ask small number of people here mean really small and
interested parties on the Net to begin grafting that on top of 5.0 and putting in the new
database that it needs So that by the time we get to 5.0 shipping the 5.0 brower
shipping we dont have like this huge merge hell to go through Theyve already done
lot of the work in concert with us to make sure that the nova Mail client is running on
top of 5.0 and so that were poised to ship 5.0 communicator by the end of the year
Thats the basic test And if you guys have lots of questions on that we can take some of
them at the end but think thats the best approach And the reason thats important
again is what we dont want is to ship great browser at the end of the year and then
IZ24 Zipo
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.k7àSqaie
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not have mail client for people to upgrade Because lot of folks will want will
demand will require mail client as part of an upgrade pack Not just corporate
customers but end users
The last thing want to talk about in terms of the product road map is not product
but technology and thats Rafter Rafter as you know is the code name for the new
layout engine that were doing in At one time we thought or we hoped that the 5.0
product
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they have come killer progress to date Were gonna demo it at the next all hands But
the thing rocks and theyre gonna start putting their source code out on the net starting
April 15 So thats the story with Raptor and want everybody behind their work The
good news is that 5.02 has lot of HTML improvements the Mariner work is already
getting lot of fan mail on the Net and were gonna enjoy those benefits even before
Rafter ships OK if go much longer then guess could have future as college
professor or something so...let me just do two more things where to go from here and
what it all means
Where to go from here need your killer ideas for eyeball hours You know like lot of
things sometimes managements the last to get it right people do the right thing even
before management figured out its the right thing mean go to URLs and related sites
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with\hnBacr4aie
and all that that was before we had an eyeball hours strategy and smart people here
did the right thing anyway need everybody to think about what are the outside the
box ideas or the innovative ideas for 5.0 or for other little projects that might help
advance our cause as newly defined And what Id like you do with those ideas besides
you know banter them about is send them to me in e-mail and send them to Jim
Hammerly everybody know Jim in the back Jims gonna be putting together
basically 5.0 product plan Not of course with all the stuff out on the Net but all the
great ideas we have so we can crystalize that and start to converge on the thing thatll
ship at the end of the year
Second thing is there are lot of ongoing TBDs about how this is all going to work
mean all this e-mail you know between Jim and Lloyd and others about how to mange
the tree with the Public Net and so forth Look went to Staceys
there was no book on this OK we have to figure it out WE have to roll up our sleeves
and figure it out And were gonna do bunch of that next week next month next
quarter want to allude to the fact that some of that figuring out let me put in this way
expect that as we figure that out were gonna figure out that were not optimally
organized and that means were gonna re org so that were little more effectively
organized to get this stuff done So just ask of you change is good dont be shocked if
we do some re-orgs in the next month or two or three think itll be for the best And if
you have ideas for how we might be better organized to get this stuff done let me
know one example of that is is there way for us to be more effectively organized to
do maintenance engineer and sustaining engineer escalations to do platforms to tier
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1/Bafkdate
them in different way other ideas and other opportunities So Im gonna net this all
out and then were gonna go in to QA Ive got points am signed up for the small
team idea believe in it thats why were doing Nova as small team rather than the
whole grommet thing Thats why 5.0s gonna be small Im committed to it And if you
like it then this is gonna be lot of fun Third We have got really impressive new
product pipeline Weve got 4.1 in Q2 4.5 in Q3 5.0 in Q4 mean if Im lunatic
nobodys told me yet but believe that thatll happen and that all of this is happi
at time when Microsoft is bogging down trying to get their big bloated operatin
system out the door and dont know about you but havent heard whole lot of like
ultra compelling things coming in 1E5 So we have really strong product pipeline and
think in 99 it gets even better Fourth In 99 our technology base will be stronger than
was year ago For the first time think in the history of CPD well start the year with
the technology base stronger and healthier than it was one year before And theres no
rocket science to that its the Net helping..
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...well get people to come use ours Especially if were focused on making it compelling
for end users And when you think of it in that way feel really strongly were gonna
succeed were gonna succeed cause weve got us which is the team thats made all
these great things happen so far Weve got the Net working with us which is not just
Sun marketing Tag line its Im preaching to the choir its real and its gonna be even
bigger and better than we thought Weve got the nets best brand weve got 68 million 2a 2900
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users and weve got company that likes and is willing to do new things and try new
things And so if you take that and you put it against the fact that its still early days on
the Net put it together and conclude that theres lot of exciting stuff coming later
this year and 99 and this group is gonna succeed All right enough sermons and
speeches...heres what Id like to do
lets do QAsession want to ask my staff to come up and help me with the
questions and want to ask the engineering principals to come up and help with
questions and well just do that til you guys get fired and decide you want something
new for the wardrobe
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What Im gonna do in all the all hands going forward is Im gonna ask the engineering
principals to do that too say this not as more as promise than threat hope but
it occurs to me that its appropriate that we have our most senior technical people here
as well as our most senior management people here to field questions from the group
All right. .Im sorry is there hand held mike we can use for questions
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