IE gained market share because it started getting preloaded into Windows 98.
Remember Microsoft saying to the court that IE was "an integral part of the operating system", being proved wrong, and even fasifying tapes in court?.
Also, Netscape made most of its money those days by sales of its Web SERVER software, not the browser, and Microsoft not only gave away the browser for free, but also started giving away web servers for free. Aka the "Suffocate Netscape" strategy admitted in Microsoft´s Maritz internal emails.
http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f212700/212767.htm
>utterly screwed up and delayed its Netscape 5 “Java” browser, and finally abandoned it, releasing the source code as a last ditch effort to stay alive (my opinion).
The decision to open source the netscape code and create Mozilla was made under Andressen. It was not a rebel effort of rogue employees. It was a corporate decision. I suggest you watch the PBS documentary titled "Code Rush" which highlights the corporate debate of wheter to open source or not, and the internal struggle to fulfill that move once it was decided.
The code was not Java, the Java-based browser was another story.
> These Netscape programmers were people like Jamie Zawinski, Eric Bina, Rob McCool… people like that… not Marc Andreessen.
You mean the Nescape browser was open sourced without Andreessen´s knowledge? news to me. I know quite a few of the Netscapers from those days... including people on the security (Dan Veditz) and embedding (Marcia Knous) teams who worked porting the Mozilla Gecko engine to Gateway´s internet appliance, based on Linux (around y2k).
FC