h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the *early* days of the www/http, there was the Lynx browser and only text. Mosaic (the original NCSA Mosaic, not Mozilla/Netscape from Mosaic Communications/Netscape Communications) was the breakthrough that allowed the web to have graphics in the first place. This Mosaic browser was written by Marc Andreesen. And Marc Andreesen went on to found Mosaic Communications which quickly became Netscape Communications. Their business was an improved version of the Mosaic graphic browser, Mosaic on steroids, hence "Mozilla". I think that's a bit closer to the history.

The first browser I used was Netscape 1.2 as I recall. That was only about 5 years ago.

Actually the 'Mozilla' moniker came from the fact that Netscape 1 was competing with Mosaic, it was trying to be a 'Mosiac Killer' or 'Mozilla' for short.

GAThrawn

PS I'm actually writing this from a prerelease version of Mozilla (the M16 milestone release).

Same effect really. Note that Netscape's browser does not reference that at all; they rewrote from the ground up. Microsoft's IE still references the NCSA and Mosaic which is licensed through Spyglass. Mozilla would still be an appropriate moniker, except it didn't work.