Re: Netscape "Timebomb"?

[Paul Cowan <paul.cowan () WISHLIST COM AU>]

Hi all,

> I didn't take the time to fully go through the file and find
> out *exactly* what it does, but just search for "timebomb"
> and you'll see stuff listed that is relative to these settings.

Very interesting!

This is just a guess; however, from the comments contained in the source
code to which you posted a link, my guess would be that it's the expiration
time for the beta builds.

That is: version 4.0 beta (or whatever) stops working after midnight on the
17th of July (or whatever).

The main thing that made me think this was the following comment:
        /*
        ** Don't ever forget about this!!!
        **
        ** This is ALL superseeded by the setting in
/ns/modules/libpref/src/init/all.js
        ** lock for timebomb.use_timebomb
        
        ** Define TIMEBOMB_ON for beta builds.
        ** Undef TIMEBOMB_ON for release builds.
        */
        #define TIMEBOMB_ON
        /* #undef TIMEBOMB_ON  */
        /*
        ** After this date all hell breaks loose
        */

A bit of a vague description, but the rest of the code seems to bear that
out: after (timebomb warning days) before the beta expires, start popping up
'this is about to expire' dialog boxes; then, when it's passed, pop up a
'please download a new version' box, and stop working.

Cheers,

Paul