Code Rush
2000 · Film · documentary · 56 min
Directed by David Winton
Life on the edge in Silicon Valley - home of high tech, high anxiety, and high stakes. Take a revealing look at Netscape Communications engineers as they set out boldly and brazenly to save their company. A virtual panorama of human drama and techno-thrills, Code Rush puts you at the center of the high-intensity clash of science, engineering, and commerce.
24 positive8 neutralfrom 32 commenters
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35 comments on Hacker News
If your interested in this era, also check out the Code Rush documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
Coders at Work has an interview with a pretty comprehensive backstory of his time in the tech industry. If you want to get more of his vibe, he's also in the documentary Code Rush.
But wouldn't failure to achieve independent reproduction falsify the open claim?
Similar to you publish the source for Oracle (the database), but nobody can build a binary from it because it needs magic compliers or test suites that aren't open source?
Heck when the browser was open-sourced, there was an explicit test where the source was given to some dude who didn't work for Netscape to verify that he could actually make a working binary. It's a scene in the movie "Code Rush".
Despite JWZ's animosity towards HN, his contributions towards open source and his influence on modern web browsers can't be overstated. In a thread about the history of Mozilla, it's worth reviewing his documentary on the open sourcing of Netscape, Code Rush:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush
One of my favorite documentaries covers this moment inside Netscape.
Code Rush https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
Project Code Rush
Code Rush is a documentary following the lives of a group of Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley. It covers Netscape's last year as an independent company, from their announcement of the Mozilla open source project until their acquisition by AOL. It particularly focuses on the last minute rush to make the Mozilla source code ready for release by the deadline of March 31 1998, and the impact on the engineers' lives and families as they attempt to save the company from ruin.
Some Hacker Movies that are not mentioned yet that (kind of) match your description:
The Net, Matrix, Code Rush (a documentary)
Code Rush is one of my go-to's when I need inspiration. I was in tech when it came out and it really inspired me how much a group of dedicated programmers could do. https://archive.org/details/CodeRush_616
Same for Triumph Of The Nerds and its follow-up, Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History Of The Internet. Fascinating to hear what went on in the back rooms and halls of the people creating the Internet and Web. https://archive.org/details/nerds-2.0.1-a-brief-history-of-the-internet-1998
Hackers Definitely some unrealistic Hollywood effects but, it's fun and is a good representation of how tech in the 90's felt.
Antitrust It's fun to see the obvious digs at Bill Gates. John "Maddog" Hall consulted on this film which is why you see things like Gnome on all the screens. I got to talk to him in the hall at a conference once right after Antitrust came out. Really interesting guy.
Sneakers: One of my all-time favorites. The premise wasn't super-realistic (guy figures out a back door to all encryption and murder ensues) but the technology of the time was otherwise pretty accurately represented, and the acting is superb.
You'll notice that all of these came out over 20 years ago. I haven't seen much since that captures the feeling of what being in technology felt like to me. People still had that sense from the 60's and 70's that technology could be used to make the world better. People really did want to use technology for more than making money off of ads and personal data.
It's just a shame that field combination is the normal deinterlacing paradigm for modern encodes of SD media, so it's hard to get digital copies that will make full use of a setup like that since the only interlaced encodes are generally like 15+ year old terrible-looking DiVX ;-) rips. I think most people don't even realize what's getting thrown away since it's been so long since they saw interlaced media on a CRT and have probably never compared them side by side to a 30FPS Handbrake-deinterlaced DVDrip.
For a non-infringing example of what I mean, check out my personal 60FPS HEVC encode of the Netscape "Code Rush" PBS documentary that was released freely online in 2008 as an interlaced MOV: https://mega.nz/file/QhtHzBZD#Z8eUnBgmk3lsjRgKQsiSaGD_gAnRgNY6FCk2rzrSisM
“Code Rush” was a fun documentary about the (end of the) Netscape era.
Agreed. The "even a mom can do it" is broken on so many levels. There's a documentary about the developers of Mozilla, and one of them makes a comment while golfing (I think) in response to this cliche. He says, "My mother writes optimizing compilers." Can't remember the film or the person, but they were wearing launch t-shirts that read "zaro boogs" (zero bugs) still sticks in my head.
EDIT: Pretty sure it was "Code Rush", 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush
Not parent, but I thought it were a TV stream that filmed Cloudflare teams solving problems. Similar to the documentary[1] "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks" where they show the life of interns developing an actual product at Fog Creek, the first paying customer, bug fixes, etc.
I appreciated that one, as I did "Code Rush"[3], an embedded documentary following people at Netscape in 1998, even shows the moment Jamie Zawinski bringing the source code and uploading it, or moments where they needed Apple to greenlight using proprietary code, trying to reach Steve Jobs, and ending up implementing it.
Another one I liked was "Downloaded", a documentary about Napster with the main people (Sean Fanning, Sean Parker, Ron Conway, etc.)[4]
PS: Since you're here, I was unable to log to my CloudFlare account for more than a week, reset my password an everything, but always couldn't log in until a couple of days ago. I would have wanted to see a video on the background of the issue and how it was resolved : )
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NRL7YsXjSg
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Geeks
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
[4]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2033981/
> Does anyone can tell anything positive about her?
She's the reason Mozilla exists today as an independent, non-profit organization.
On March 31, 1998 Netscape allowed the Mozilla code base to be open sourced under the Mozilla Project. [1][2] This was the result of an intensive year-long effort to
(1) remove proprietary source code that couldn't be open-sourced,
(2) release the source code under a brand new license called the Mozilla Public License. This license was written principally by Mitchell Baker whose formal education is in law, with input from ESR, Linus Torvalds, VA Research, etc. [3]
On July 14, 2003 AOL (which had acquired Netscape earlier) closed down the Netscape division and laid off almost everyone there, including Mitchell Baker. That very day Mitch Kapor [4] stepped in with funding and advice to help Baker and a core team of total 10 employees set up the Mozilla Foundation in an office in Mountain View that is today occupied by the Khan Academy. [5]
Wikipedia [6] has a good summary of her career.
The documentary Code Rush is required viewing, IMHO, to capture some of the excitement of that era. [7][8] Bonus points for spotting JWZ. :-)
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/netscape-sets-source-code-free/
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/03/31/mozilla-turns-twenty/
[3] https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch11.html
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Kapor
[5] https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2003/07/mozilla-org-announces-launch-of-the-mozilla-foundation-to-lead-open-source-browser-efforts/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
“Speeding the net” was decent. Mostly about Netscape and their battle for supremacy in the browser market with Microsoft. Also on that topic, the movie “code rush” was decent. I believe it’s on YouTube.
Of interest, eBay started as a site to distribute information about the then Ebola outbreak.
Thanks for this blast from the past. I bought the book in 1997 as a sophomore student at university. My favorite book at the time. Leafing through the PDF after all these years I came across some gems I hadn't appreciated back then:
On page 161 the author mentions in passing that Eric Schmidt had been working on BerkNet. THE Eric Schmidt. The Google Eric Schmidt.
Earlier the book mentions that Bill Joy was able to hire a developer with money they got from DARPA. That developer was Michael Toy and later Sam Leffler. There's a movie called Code Rush about the open-sourcing of Netscape's source code in 1998 (which begat Mozilla and Firefox) and Michael Toy was the project lead for the open source effort back then. Sam Leffler later developed TIFF.
I really recommend the 2000 documentary Code Rush[1] about Netscape's open sourcing of the browser and acquisition by AOL. It doesn't give any major insights into the industry, but does give a glimpse of what the culture was like back then.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y
It was Netscape in 1999 he got flown out. Documented in Code Rush, which is an awesome documentary for anyone interested in the history of the Web:
https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y?t=3037
"Code Rush" is a film documentary (now public domain) covering Netscape's engineering team around the time they were open sourcing Mozilla.
It provides a nice view into engineering practices and valley/start-up culture at the time - a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same.
https://archive.org/details/CodeRush
Code Rush. Documentary about Netscape: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush
I've seen it mentioned a few times on HN, and would highly recommend 'Code Rush' which is missing from this list; it's a great documentary which covers Netscape (and more broadly the general bay area culture) around the time that Microsoft came to dominate with Internet Explorer, and Mozilla was being prepared for release as an open source project.
There's a really nicely annotated version on waxy.org
http://waxy.org/2009/07/code_rush_in_the_creative_commons/
if you haven't watched code rush yet, the annotations are really a fantastic addition to it and i'd suggest starting there instead.
edit/comment: the annotations are mostly useful, if like me, you want to rewind to some particular scene when showing part of the film to a friend. i found them pretty useful, but, ymmv :)
Are there any other good documentaries about the dot-com bubble era that people here would recommend? I've only seen Startup.com:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/
As a younger person who lives thousands of miles away from Silicon Valley, I'd love to see more video from that time. I read tons about it, but reading and seeing are different things. AS the end of Code Rush, the investment banker who talks about how in a couple years physical banks might not be around and how the GAP shouldn't be renovating its store but rather invest more money in its website said so much about the kind of mania that took place at the time. I'd love to see more.
If you liked that documentary, here's more: http://www.clickmovement.org/coderush
Comes with lots of extra footage: http://clickmovement.org/code_rush_footage_nods
Although Netscape was already pretty large by the time, Code Rush is a great SV tech documentary about the initial release of Mozilla; it's also now under creative commons and is available on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig
If anyone, Netscape made Firefox.
This. There's an actual documentary about it: "Code Rush" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig
Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room
March of the Penguins (2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_the_Penguins
Code Rush (2000) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush
Losers and Winners (2006) http://www.losers-and-winners.net/index_en.htm Documentary about the dismantling of a German coking plant, the most modern in the world, by Chinese workers in 2003, who shipped the plant to China and built several clones of it there. The plant was sold to China for a minor sum when the steel price was at an all time low and politicians believed the price would stay there. The steel price has since skyrocketed.
Weltmarktführer (2004) http://www.weltmarktfuehrer-derfilm.de/ Excellent documentary about the rise and fall of IT-startup Biodata and its founder Tan Siekmann during the dotcom boom and bust, alas only available in German.
Pretty cool free documentary titled Code Rush that films Netscape engineers during the Mozilla source code release.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u404SLJj7ig
Code Rush documentary from PBS. Details 98-99 when Netscape released their source.
Seconded on both. I also enjoyed The Social Network.
On documentaries, I highly recommend Code Rush, a story of Netscape. It's actually in full here (scroll down to The Film): http://clickmovement.org/coderush
V.Good article by Po Bronson ~ http://www.pobronson.com who chronicled Silicon Valley through the 90's you might remember him from films like "Code Rush" ~ http://waxy.org/2008/06/code_rush/
They're in room 108 West Village H on thursdays at 11:35 (440 Huntington Ave. 02115). It's the really really big building with the glass across the street from the Museum of Fine Arts.
Unfortunately, the speaker this week doesn't look like he'll be coming this week. We're showing the documentary Code Rush instead (http://acm.ccs.neu.edu/?q=node/661).
On the documentary side of things (all of which are available free/legally online):
1. "Code Rush", documentary about Netscape open sourcing Mozilla.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/coderush/videos/1/
2. "Revolution OS" was a pretty interesting documentary on Linux and the free software movement.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7707585592627775409&ei=xYF-ScDeJZPCqAOfkJizBA
3. "Freedom Downtime", a documentary about Kevin Mitnick. There's also "Track Down", but that's more of a fictional portrayal loosely based on him.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6746139755329108302&ei=fIF-SceYCKS2qAO52Py1BA
Also, Code Rush is a pretty good documentary about Netscape's open sourcing of Mozilla back in '98
http://www.viddler.com/explore/coderush/videos/1/
Startup.com was lame, it moved slow and had no point. I never did care at the end that their website blew up considering they never really explain why it blew up.
E-Dreams conversely was a better documentary in the same vein but harder to find. It talked about the rise and collapse of Kozmos.
Aadvark is lame. It's just a bunch of kids being hyper that they're working in New York with fancy schmancy big screen LCDs.
PBS also did a lot of features back in the 90's. Code Rush as someone mentioned and Revolution OS are both good to take a look.
In Search of the Valley http://www.stage4.co.uk/film/dvd_offer.php is also worth a look. The filmmakers examined why Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley and talked with quite a few well known people.
Code Rush, that documentary about Netscape right before it was sold to AOL. Thats a nice one.