Freeware Pioneers

Paquin Promotes Netscape Freeware

Jamie Beckett, Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle

April 9, 1998

NAME: Tom Paquin

FREEWARE CREATED: Overseeing release of Netscape source code

WHAT IT DOES: Internet browser

FREEWARE WEB SITE: http://www.mozilla.org/

Tom Paquin got to take part in one revolution as an original employee at Netscape.

Now he may get to be part of another. A little over a week ago, the Mountain View firm became the first commercial software enterprise to publish the entire source code of its primary product for free. Paquin, as head of the Internet company's Mozilla project, is in charge of guiding the sharing of its Netscape Communicator source code.

Netscape's move could change the way commercial software is developed and sold by showing there's an alternative to the current approach, where most companies jealously guard source code.

``If we can get every developer who's interested in Netscape to contribute to Netscape, we're going to have the best product that makes the most people happy,'' says Paquin.

Like many earlier freeware advocates, Paquin is passionate about the power of information.

``I love the fact that barriers are being broken down and taboos are being destroyed,'' he says. ``Communication and sharing information have broken down most of the tyrannies of the world.''

If enough independent programmers download the Navigator code and improve upon it, Netscape might be able to develop new Internet applications more quickly than Microsoft.

Paquin was a math and physics whiz who got interested in computers as a boy. An Army brat, he spent much of his youth in Stuttgart, Germany. His parents wanted him to go to MIT, but he feared becoming what he calls ``a power nerd.'' He chose the University of Colorado instead, because of his interest in the outdoors and skiing.

At 37, Paquin still looks like a jock. He keeps in shape by going to a rock-climbing gym and playing roller hockey at lunchtime -- a popular Netscape pastime.

He's a voracious reader who maintains an extensive books Web page with reviews of hundreds of works he's read -- from Albert Camus' ``The Stranger'' to Hunter Thompson's ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.'' He and his wife live in Los Altos Hills and have two children, with a third on the way.

Paquin joined Netscape in 1994 as employee No. 7 -- he was engineering manager -- after working at IBM and Silicon Graphics. He's still enthusiastic about how Netscape's browser helped popularize the Internet.

``The technology had been invented. But it was pushed along and made popular by Netscape,'' he says. ``I'll probably carry that (excitement) with me forever.''

©1999 San Francisco Chronicle