Re: Mosaic dead?

David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Tue, 31 Jan 1995 09:57:17 +0800

>Since Spyglass has already licensed 16 million copies, and will put out
>another 30 million through Windows 95 next year, I'd say that the rumors of
>Mosaic's death are highly exaggerated.
>
>>>...Microsoft was eager for the Spyglass deal because the young
>>>company controls the patents to Mosaic, the original software that

I suspect that the error here is between patent and copyright. You
can't patent Mosaic. You can patent the idea of a WWW browser in theory,
but I bet you can't in practise.
Spyglass, as far as I know, does hold the Mosaic copyright or some
rights. Copyright over Mosaic has no effect on Netscape, which was entirely
rewritten - ie has no Mosaic code in it.
Cheers
David Cake