Netscape Documentary Li

Tape 25 Scott Interview

The other side of the tape Netscape 25 continues the interview starting at the point where

he handed off the work to Pink and he went to sleep

handed it off to Pink and went to sleep right There in my special bed that pulled

laughs And then put these boxes in the

way so that that nobody could bother me Its

-C
very dark especially since fixed laigIiter behind obscures his statement .. that makes it

be much much better put in these ear-plugs buy em by the box you know Ive got

four You know about ear-plugs Then uh you cant hear your phone You cant hear

anything and people come and bother you and then theyre afraid to talk to Much
you

better much betterto combat uh disturbance with fear than anything

re you really up for 40 hours

Yeah for 40 hours had a-I had hour nap at one point while was looking for

mebody else to check in And then it was specifically the case that somebody had to

come and wake up4o had hours of sleep in that 40 hour period but thats really how

long was up Dave asks how that could be done Oh you could do it-
you could do it.\
Its not pleasant uh but youd be surprised how much you could punish your body and

live Uh and uh this isnt even-this isnt even really that serious mean if you were

you know being hunted by you know if this was like The Fugitive and youre being

hunted by Tommy Lee Jones Youd be up for 40 hours and youd be complaining you

be unhappy but you wouldnt be saying Oh Im going to sleep now So its

Is thins analo ous9

Uh in this case Im dont know if its quite Tommy Lee Jones level but um definitely

wanted to get that stuff checked in and it was fraction of the work that
very significant

had to be done So was worth it Another hours Dave him

says theyll follow
it

-r
doing what hes doing Sure It sounds incredibly bonng to me.- Varmit which will

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

show you right here which uh is called uh tool front end Here it is right here tool .4

front end And this tool allows us to ar-arbitrarily compile strange things right here which

are matched up with uh my uh file

mappings which say that if it ends with dot XPS as

you see right here please use tool front end However this tool did not come with

development environment Some guy wrote it his names Tim Roney Never

worked here worked at Apple published this thing we tried to talk to him he said Ill

get back to you about whether you can ship it or not He never got back to us so we

cant ship it It is now used to build this crucial part of our application the strings library

that has all the

messages in it and stuff We cant build it with his tool we cant ship his

tool to you so now have to figure out way to build this without using his tool And

theoretically we believe this is possible just like we know that its possible to approach

the speed of light or something uh on that order but we dont have y-4hat can do it

and uh so what Im doing right now is the incredibly boring task of fithng out how to

make us get exactly the same thing that we have now but without usjng any tools Its my

last bug When complete this bug will be allowed to rest

44
Well come back later..

did lot of growing in Akron so Cleveland and Akron people always about
up fight

something called the Blossom Music Center Cleveland will

say oh its ours Akron

will
say Oh no its ours And uh you know Cleveland has their own airport Weve

got Akron-Canton airport which is barely large enough to take paper airplane from

Theyve got Cleveland-Hopkins International which is barely large enough to take

balsa-wood aircraft off from

Where did you live in Michigan

Uh let me show you the standard map of Michigan Oh look have it

right here This is

Detroit and this is Ann Arbor and live and live right
right there there right in the

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

middle want to live over here somewhere near Ann Arbor where they have computers

and its closer in time to where we are but uh live right there in West Lake got nice

you can afford house there like it but uh the there is here you get the newspaper and

the computing section like that like to read that You read the business section they

talk about computers and uh what people are doing whats Sun doing whats uh

Netscape doing whats Microsoft doing There you get the business section you know

what theyre talking about Cars Cars They have separate car section every day They

have car section How much car news can you read They have more cars than

sports It doesnt make any sense So

The macroshift from going back to the land of big machines

Ttow just what youre heading for totally totally believe that the-the focus of industry

uh changing or blurring in favor of this very much more cottage approach Because at

home Im totally plugged in you know I-I have my special phone on so Im like

connected to um everybody whos at work and urn it-its so much cheaper to have me at

home than it is to have me here even though Im drawing the same salary because at

home they dont have to

pay for the lights here Im paying for everything I-I-I fly

and
everything it-and it-and ititheap

saassŁbW1ine where youve got thousands of workers required to produce single

automobile Its can write fraction of this program myself

significant Six guys$p

of the right guys and gals uh you know weve got lot of-a lot of women here urn ca
write the
program And it doesnt matter what they look like or what their education is or

where they are $j people can put together program that

everybody in the world wants

to use And they can do it out of their houses Why wouldnt that win Of course its

going to win Its so much cheaper Its so much faster Its so much better Its got to

win Theres-theres no question about it in my mind

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

Why do you come to the office

The primary reason is reputation want to make sure that have enough face time with

everybody since-like Im one uh four people in this

company who do this all the other

ones are founders laughs Im the only guy whos like just normal human being So

want to make sure get plenty of face time so that people never Well gosh what
say

does Scott do for us want to make sure that Im now so that at meetings Its little bit

harder to conduct meeting we dont have you know video conferencing or anything

like that So try to get plenty of face time and-and show up at meetings so that people

think oh this guys doing lot of work And intentionally try to get lots of stuff done

when Im at home and maybe back off just little when Im here to make it seem much

more attractive to have me working at home But uh thats why thats how gotta

balance it

The funny about I-I mean when do E-Mail and stuff but most
thing typing type my the

time Im looking for lines to delete Thats- thats why they pay me the big bugs sol can

delete stuff But if you-if you want me to type can just type message right now

Now how come hes on fire Youre being productive again it doesnt matter if hes

productive Yeah so See-see this is an intern this is what interns do laughter Now

this is
very critical portion of uh testing Netscape under fetch Tony fetch Everyone

talks at once So-so-so that we could call ASOC and-if we-if we give him did we give

him an official a- ASOC number uh Scott He had it last summer ASOC four You

dont have numbers He had it last summer Therell all ASOC Thats because its more

humiliating Dan Yes yes Okay so theyre all ASOC Thats why we shaved our heads

Yeah there
you go This is-this is
wig here Only their heads No Todd lets not
go

there Laughter and people talking at once No

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

on always play this character

No no this the end of the game were trying to everyone talks at once just here for

moral support Did you sign the composer stuff Moral Well you gotta be careful with

that word Everyone talks at once Like we-like we-like we really beat the sh-we beat the

shit out of it Laughter We also

got the so were in pretty good shape Uh think

the like ten everyone talks at once Am hot Am hot am-I am designed for

frigid waters am built to swim in the arctic This is

my spirit animal Am hot Am

hot laughter Im dying am like giant All right already well get hose from the

bathroom for you Get back in and type Laughter Get back in and type Youre the

critical path Scott And my nihinTLaihter Im the critical path-Im moving

toTPLaughter.Soyoucantgetliberatedeveryonetthjatoncebutwereso

doomed this morning were so doomed You know its like Michael was saying Oh
Mac is out its out Right you know cause were like totally toasting flaming all over

the place As usual Mac comes in at the

very last minute At the very last minute After

the last minute fire drill Were good what can we say We like the pressure Everyone

talks at once Less than thirty six minutes Thirty five minutes and counting get the

donuts everyone talks at once There was someone up at counter that said
you know

how-how far can we get the donuts and people

actually laughter talking at once Hey

man free the hostages Free the hostages look the big number is six hundred and

four its gonna run again and but- Four minutes

fifty Basically it will be lower in four

minutes Wait second is this through Its almost four oclock No we

right can

actually force it to run We can force to run from

Dave focuses on the screen to show forcing run

can do that have the technology Here you go Okay You gotta log in to inferno

Inferno Okay and then let me sit Let me do this Cant do this What the hell is

inferno Dave sets up shot Kill Kill Youre asking me Okay uh Then you run it

i-_-

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

again Right uh You want CD there type all path No its no hope uh Okay so

now Ive got twenty minute twelve itll-its

gonna break the tree right now What does it

say right now It says six it

says six five four But know theres bunch of stuff

thats come off of that since Yeah You just signed load Steve signed ten Six by nine

Ti swear to God mean those things are like Everyone talks at once Well do

it this page is easier to see because its got uh the stuff nearer the top Everyone talks at

once and shot is set up Its like cleated up my-I cleared up my stash of half drink you

know like Diet Pepsis here couple hours Its like drink them til
ago just theyre not

theyre not

Relive those dramatic moments

Well reliving those moments from Wednesday night that seeped into the wee hours of

Thursday morning uh it uh it was looking pretty ragged because we had lots of

problems specific to the Mac build and to the UNIX build as well because were trying to

build whats called Mas medium which is not like the navigator but the composer

build And on the Mac we had just all sorts of other things that had to be done like we

had to excise all the

third-party application frame-work code and excuse me other uh

third-party uh modules And uh-uh and just lots of files to sign and nothing was getting

done and we waited That night we found probably other third-party

three things that we

didnt even know about yet on files that were supposedly sanitized and was like making

fr-fiends
calls of mine um-uh that night to try to get clearance from them to use it and

uh-uh Scott and urn Steve and Paul and Mike and Cathy were all working there

until the wee hours And we just looked dim we just looked totally dim and Ijust

after the assignments were uh

figured all
assignments were out on Thursday uh

Thursday morning just stayed at home Thursday figured the best thing to do was get

out of the engineers way right so uh got out of their way and just uh managed remote-

control from home read mail and panicked about Tinderbox and uh got some sleep uh

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

Tara did the same thing It was funny by the-we-Tara and both shuffled out of here like

about thr-after three and you told me like the next day when cam-talked to
you was it like

what was it three thirty you woke up that morning you couldnt sleep

Were you monitoring it from home

Um was on the phone lot urn basically was monitoring the-the-um-the page what

was happening wer-wer-what kind of progress we were making and basically was

calling lot of people Whats happened with the organization is that um as weve moved

through different projects and different urn-urn phases weve vulcanized

ts some

degree theres all-theres Java group and the security who are all under management now

and-and they have responsibilities and they werent showing up at our rneetings so they

werent-they werent aware of the rules and Tara was explaining lot of it-to lot of

people over and over again the-the uh the rules of-of-of what the-what they should be

doing and-and uh and-and try and make sure everything was covered So uh-uh making

sure that-that uh-uh that they had-that-that they knew what it meant to sign files for

example and so forth

Measuring Progress

The sophisticated as the software create are the tools end of statement obscured
you by

another voice And lot of times we find that we actually have to create the tools

ourselves Many times we start with a-with foundation of another tool and build

something on top of it like with CBS we built

many tools right on top of that including

um Bonsai Tinderbox The Hostage List we built other clients on top of CBS specific

to platforms that did not exist weve those tools ourselvesAnd uh-uh
just written we

also here much we do know your own

as as possible at Netscape to eat
try you dog

food we try to do everything web-based to make it

cross-platform um and we to
try go

the simple route uh which is you know use uh Pearl and tickle scripts and you know

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

just really universal tools and build scripts and other things on top of them into
very very

useful things

Yeah the most important is to be able to light up the targets for people In other words if

you dont know-everybodys got the goal and everybody really badly wants to make the

goal and so if you can light up the pathway to seeing how close were getting to the goal

and you-youre much more likely to make it i-i-if youre wandering around in the dark you

might actually get there but if-if-if

you can-if
you can have beacon which-which-which

both Tinderbox and-and Hostage List are show the state of-its the
they-they-they you

control walk up and see

center for-so that anybody can the state of the world they dont

have to ask somebody They can just find out

Is the Web fundamentally evolving

A-a-a-actually what it is is that it builds on itself

so urn its just tool like
any

other tool And you know you-you-you-urn The interesting is that while
part

this look
may like single tool as you click on various links there actually

linked to other tools So theyre not-theyre not one Its just-i-its quite organic

of the-one of the traditional

very-one goals of software development is-is code

reuse and um generally its really hard to get to work it doesnt happen mean

its like you know its really important that you build your stuff to be reusable and

in fact it
never happens With the web its very different Because the appli

because there is an address for an that service and

application performs parameters

are part of the address that you use to perform service in the form of the URL
urn these applications are all inter-linkable And so if
you look at Tinderbox

youll see that its not just Tinderbox its the CBS query tools and its the

repository viewer and its the CBS dill tool and its the- and all these actually

happen- many of them happen by different people at different times So if we look

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

at the Hostage List right now we can see that uh-uh the files that are listed there

are-
you can actually see the contents of the files Well its another tool that was

developed some time ago happens to have well-known address but whered

the service
you get it
engine that you can use it

And these are the ones that were using internally but in corporate internets uh

other people are doing the same thing and out of the web that same sort of thing

happens all the time mean Ive noticed al-actually lot more the last uh year or

so uh disparate services Actually using each others

Partnerships

Yeah partnerships being able to click on link and do query on an engine thats

actually run by somebody else

For example Amazon Yahoo and Amazon are in bed together Theyre very-you

know the-you do you do search on Yahoo theres a-theres button for

Amazon to find books related to the subject youve just searched for which is

really great you know it-and the interesting thing is that technology is such that it

allows their businesses to work together mean they-in the-norman-normally

when you hear partnering in software relationships you run because they never

work because you have two different cultures and you-you have to those
integrate

cultures to make partnerships So like if IBM wants to do with itll

project

work but its-its painful But with the web because the address is the application

you dont need-the partnering becomes much-much more easy

think its-its not necessarily were

utopian that trying to get it towards were just

trying to get it towards useful and make the most use out of the resources you have

mean the way the internet was founded was an inter-net network you know

building together uh computers uh making them share data making them

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

conmrnnicate making the lives-lives easier for the scientists who set that up And

uh it
just sort of got out of hand uh you know Ill
say it uh Ive said it before

and Ifl
say it
again uh you know really think this web thing is
gonna catch on

laughs

Well the 3-31 release in my opinion is Im sorry the 3-31 release in

my

opinion is uh-um uh i-its Netscapes attempt to actually harness developers

right we-what were trying to do is get more people on our team and right there is

no way for people to participate on our team except to buy software Theres alot

of very talented
people out there And some of the bpftyvar lb Qtjjere 15

free mean CBS the tool that we use to check in that weve been talking about

thats new
a-a piece of free software right it-its like tool and you know do

process and thats the best tool for managing engineering that exists flat
process

out Just the best And the reason its the best is that developers want to add

features And no-actually no-they want-they want- they say itll be so much

better if can have this feature and in the real-in the outside world what they have

to do in non-free world what they have to do is convince some marketing person

to tell the engineers that this is the right thing to do And in the free software world

what they do is they go do it And then then they give back And we
they-and it

want to wa-if we can-thats bet were making were

present the betting that if we

can get to that world were gonna win igger And the world will win bigger

because well build better software

mean ourselves we have like ideas for you know uh hundreds if not

possibly thousands of features some that minor

keep dropping some that are

that keep dropping off of versions weve done in the

past uh and we can finally

uh get some of things in But the really beautiful thing think about engaging the

web in doing this is that well-well the other thinds working on the
get problems

and theyll think of other things that none of us inside the walls thought of
Netscape

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Tape 25 Scott Interview

before Uh theyll think of other uh uh technologies other synergy-synergies

that can happen with other products and thats whats really exciting The other

exciting thing about it is that think you know like say lot of times you

know nobodys ever pulled this loony stunt with proprietary piece of software

this large and went to the open-source model And thats like

This is an experiment right

Big experiment yeah

We dont really know whats gonna happen

Thats fun or the other f-word Thats lot of fun Its fun and its scary right

Other times Ive known whats gonna happen but this one dont know whats

gonna happen
2-5

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