> it's a rip off of Netscape
It is and it isn't.
The last version of Netscape that used the old Netscape codebase was 4.7x
Mozilla was developed to generally be netscape-compatible and this included offering a similar suite of programs to the Netscape communicator suite, and also look and feel.
But the Mozilla developers did not use the old Netscape code to do this. They developed everything from scratch (which is in part why it has taken so long to get Mozilla to this version -- about four years, I think it's been, since I started using it as my main browser.
All current versions of Netscape are based on Mozilla code, as is Firefox, so perhaps the ripping-off is in the other direction, though it's not exactly a rip-off because the source code is published for the express purpose of allowing other developers to use it as a solid foundation upon which to develop their own ideas.
