There's one problem in your logic, Ed, about supporting the children (so they'll eat the father), and it's called open source. Galeon, Chimera and others are doing a good job in taking Gecko, improving it on the way and putting a nice interface around it. But their development of the Gecko engine flows back to the open source mozilla project. Thus helping the children is still helping mozilla and thus Netscape (AOL).
You're confused. Galeon and Chimera don't develop the gecko rendering engine, they only build their browsers from it. Now in the case of Chimera, it has branched from the Mozilla development tree, but the chances of Netscape/AOL using their developments seeds to build Netscape are are next to none.
While it is possible developers within these seperate projects work for Mozilla, which I think is the case for Chimera, these platforms aren't used to improve Mozilla in anyway by supporting them.
The seperate branch for Chimera is used for directly supporting just it though.
Thus, by using Chimera, Galeon or any of the other Open Source projects based on Mozilla, you're definitely not going to be helping AOL.
Apple is only using iChat to hopefully expand it's user base. Apple is also trying it's darndess to get away from MS and it's services. Realize though it dare not defy MS, because if MS pulled Office from OS X, Apple would be screwed. With all the trouble MS is in right now, it would be difficult for them to do that though. I think Apple is using this oppourtunity to lessen their dependence on MS, while MS can't do anything about it.
If Netscape made an Aquafied version of it's browser for OS X and it was slightly faster than Mozilla, I still probably wouldn't use it. The beauty of Mozilla is that it comes with no strings attached. When I start it my bookmarks don't tell me to go shopping or to AOL/Timer Warner related websites, a web commerce site doesn't load up as default and I have control over what I choose to view on the net. I can also choose whether I want to support it or not.
Unfortunately, this wouldn't be the case for all. Many would take visual enhancements over performance or politics any day.
If Mozilla ever started making a totally inferior product to lets say MS or AOL, I wouldn't torture myself just to keep using it.
IE is pretty and starts faster than Mozilla but without tabs, a location bar, inability to load pages as fast or correctly, no way to block popup adds, lack of a email client, lack of web standards and dozens of other features, it's just too unproductive for me.
When you start getting used to the subtle but extemely useful features of Mozilla, you don't know how you ever did without them.
**This was only my little chant for Mozilla because I know you're and IE user**
Apple doesn't need Netscape either to build a terrific browser. That's the beauty of Open Source. Apple certainly has the resources to use the Mozilla code and do it on it's own. iBrowse or whatever would certainly complete their collection of iApps.
Ed has chose to hand pick which Big Businesses he supports and doesn't. This makes his stance against AOL/Netscape and Mozilla very confusing.
I think if AOL or MS itself bought Apple, Ed would still support it. He only yanks support if he has a choice. Kind of a double standard.
