When what to my wondering eyes should appear … but the death knell for Netscape, after all these years of serving as (in a way) the foundation of what we know as the Web. (You disagree? Pppft. PC World called it the No. 1 best tech product of all time. Yeah, I knew you’d see it my way.)

The funny thing is … I always hated Netscape. When I had the choice, I always used IE over Netscape. It acted funny, and the buttons were dumb. I look back now and I realize that was a huge misjudgment, and I feel a little bad about it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Netscape has come and gone. A founding member of the Internet is dead — or will be, after February 1. Sure, you can still use the last versions of it, and run the security risks. (And if you look in the right places, you can get it all the way back to version 0.9 — with a version 1.11 for Linux kernel 1.2! No joke!) Or you can theme up Firefox to look like the good old days, but it won’t be the same.

Things like that never are. These days are the good old days. Enjoy it while it’s happening, because somebody, someday, is going to be writing a note on a blog somewhere, mentioning the end of support for your favorite program.

Which is another good reason to use open source programs: With free software, there is still one final stab at immortality — a fork. 😀