Talk:Spyglass, Inc.

Untitled
The removed paragraph did indeed violate NPOV policies. However, the current article does not inform enough on the Microsoft deal. Is it acceptable to reinsert as the following?;

"After first trying to license the Netscape Navigator browser Microsoft then tried to negotiate directly with the NCSA and finally went to Spyglass. The deal signed was for royalties paid on each copy sold and was extended to Dec 1998. The arrangement for the licence was that Spyglass would receive a base quarterly fee plus a royalty from Microsoft's revenues for the software.

Microsoft subsequently bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, and thus (making no direct revenues on IE) paid only the minimum quarterly fee. In 1997, Spyglass threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit, in response to which Microsoft settled for US $8 million."

replacing:

"The arrangement for the licence was that Spyglass would receive a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's revenues for the software. Microsoft subsequently bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, and thus (making no direct revenues on IE) paid only the minimum quarterly fee. In 1997, Spyglass threatened Microsoft with a contractual audit, in response to which Microsoft settled for US $8 million. [1]" --CalPaterson Thu 7 Jul


 * I've made basically these changes and the article now has a NPOV. I've also removed the disputed tag, because it appears it really wasn't that disputed; one guy just posted something with a POV.  Anyone disagrees, feel free to add it back and discuss here..  —Cleared as filed. 9 July 2005 04:44 (UTC)

The article currently states that Spyglass did not have a license for the NCSA source code. That cannot be true, as the Spyglass browser was based on the NCSA Mosaic code, at least initially. More specifically - and pertinently - it is my recollection (as a former NCSA employee) that Spyglass possessed, at the time of the Microsoft contract, exclusive rights to sublicense the NCSA Mosaic code to third parties. As both the Regents of UIUC and NCSA still exist as legal entities, I'm sure they have a record of this contract, should someone care to ask.

The fact that the IE copyright dialog began, for many iterations, with a UIUC/NCSA copyright notice (rather than a Spyglass copyright notice) would seem to support my memory of events.

It is true however that Microsoft sought to negotiate a license with NCSA prior to contracting with Spyglass.

What the cited article states is that Spyglass Mosaic (aka Enhanced Mosaic) was not built upon the NCSA code - not that they didn't have it. Given the conditions at the time, I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the article. Adjectives like 'full-featured' and 'stable' only came to be applied to Mosaic closer to the period when Netscape unveiled their product. The subsequent feature escalation between Netscape and NCSA left Spyglass "Enhanced Mosaic" ironically lacking in functionality for a time.

Jdmarshall (talk) 09:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

As a former Spyglass employee, I can confirm Jdmarshall's comments that Spyglass had the NCSA Mosaic source code (but did not ultimately use it). I have corrected the text to reflect this.

Jdmarshall is also correct in his comments that Spyglass had exclusive rights to sublicense NCSA's code, and reference to such can be found in the Spyglass's SEC filings. That is indeed the reason why Microsoft couldn't negotiate a deal with NCSA. The IE copyright dialog he mentions was more the result of political negotiation than an accurate reflection of the provenance of the source code, however, and the code given to Microsoft was actually the version created by Spyglass.

JLSeidman (talk) 18:12, 23 January 2011 (UTC)