Comment by rendx

When a company repeatedly demonstrates a pattern of embracing, extending, and extinguishing standards (see: Java, Kerberos, HTML), it’s fair to view any technical move with suspicion - even if the particular proposal seems technically sound. It’s easy to retroactively view Netscape’s resistance as petty, but the power imbalance was real, and the fear of Microsoft co-opting the standard wasn’t paranoia.

Some companies make abuse a business model. I don't see how anyone can defend a position where they only look at isolated actions of a company and not their overall strategic positioning. There are boundaries. Ethical boundaries. If you never experience the consequences of your actions, if nobody ever objects to your behavior, you will not stop. Especially not a distributed organism of a company, which has no inherent ethical boundaries; its boundaries are those that affect business, so you need to teach them in business. If your business model is based on treating your own employees like slaves, it is you who is cancer, not the other.

Calling that “kid-like behavior” is misguided on two levels. First, as noted, Netscape’s actions were arguably rational in context - pushing back against a powerful incumbent trying to steer an open standard toward a proprietary implementation.

Second, the phrase itself leans on a dismissive and inaccurate stereotype. Kids aren’t inherently irrational or overly emotional; in fact, there’s substantial research showing that young people behave quite logically given their environment. Framing behavior this way isn’t just lazy; it reinforces the kind of condescension that later gets labeled as “adverse childhood experiences” in therapy, assuming someone even gets the chance to unpack and not replicate it.

On both levels, it is DARVO.