1998: Netscape announce release of its Navigator as Free Software

On 1998 Netscape announced its proposal to release one of the most important product on the Enterprise as Free Software.
Text of the announcement can be checked on next link:

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/

The announcement is a declaration of the next Netscape Communicator version (5.0) to be released as free software, by the end quarter of 1998. What expected Netscape with this action?

As Jim Barksdale affirms: "We can ignite the creative energies of the entire Net community and fuel unprecedented levels of innovation in the browser market." From his point of view, it has benefits for three parts involved, the Community, Netscape, as well as Netscape's customers: "Our customers can benefit from world-class technology advancements; the development community gains access to a whole new market opportunity; and Netscape’s core businesses benefit from the proliferation of the market-leading client software".

It is, somehow, a very aggressive movement, with a high consideration on the Community developers on the net, taking into account that distribution will be under one of the most popular license, the GPL. Next paragraph asserts:
"The company will handle free source distribution with a license which allows source code modification and redistribution and provides for free availability of source code versions, building on the heritage of the GNU Public License (GPL), familiar to developers on the Net."  

Behind this decision there is also the Enterprise reality in terms of business: "Netscape has successfully shifted its business over the past year toward enterprise software sales and to revenues from its Web site business, and away from standalone client revenues. In the third quarter of 1997, standalone client revenues represented approximately 18 percent of Netscape’s revenue, with the rest coming from enterprise software, services and the Web site.

Preliminary results for the fourth quarter of 1997, which Netscape announced January 5, show standalone client revenues decreased to approximately 13 percent in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter of 1996 by comparison, standalone client revenue represented approximately 45 percent of Netscape’s revenue."

So, in a period of two years, Netscape had changed its business toward the enterprise software sales, the services and its Web site, meanwhile, the business quota related to standalone users had decreased dramatically. For this reason, this movement also implies changing the strategy to try to consolidate the Trademark for standalone users, although it is cost-less, with a very different strategy compared to its competitors, mainly Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

 The time line from Netscape announcement to Firefox first public release was as follows:  

1998: the Mozilla project is created as Netscape released the browser suite source code. In a year, new community members had already contributed, either adding new functionality, or enhancing existing one.
The Mozilla project become bigger and Community members got involved and expanded the original mission, creating a variety of browsers, tools, and different projects.  

2002: Mozilla 1.0 was released, with many improvements to the browser, email client and other applications in the tool suite. The major issue was that nobody used it, as 90% of Internet users were browsing with Internet Explorer.
The somehow unknown Phoenix browser (later known as Firefox) was released from the Mozilla community with one specific goal: provide the better browsing experience to the widest possible set of people.  

2003: Mozilla project created Mozilla Foundation, for promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet, focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird to demonstrate it.  

2004: Firefox 1.0 is released. It became a big success, as in less than a year, it was downloaded over 100 million times. So, the Mozilla Foundation is a clear example that commercial companies can benefit by collaborating in open source projects.
Obviously, Netscape achieved its goal, as Community developed a very successful navigator from its source code.

References:  
Netscape moves to Free Software:
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/01/22/january-22-1998-the-beginning-of-mozilla/ 
History of the Mozilla Project:
http://www.mozilla.org/about/history.html