Netscape will continue to support its quirky open-source browser development program after the sale of the company to AOL, a Netscape executive said this morning.

The fate of Mozilla was briefly addressed in Tuesday morning's conference call between executives of Netscape, AOL, and Sun Microsystems.

Netcenter chief Mike Homer said that the company would continue the program, and that the volunteer Mozilla team has already contributed changes to the Netscape's core Communicator browser.

"Mozilla.org is a team of folks that we have that is responsible for interacting with the development community ... who provide us with all kinds of improvements and modifications and bug fixes to our source code for the next generation of the product," Homer said.

"Those things are now beginning to be integrated ... some of the first evidence of that being the raptor product that we have announced. And so that [program] will continue in the same way that it has."

Raptor is Netscape's code name for the new "layout engine" that will be included in the next version of the Communicator browser.

David Cassell, editor of the AOL Watch newsletter, was guarded about whether a consumer online service would continue to support the developer-focused Mozilla program.

"The big question hanging over all this is the open source [Mozilla project], which requires collating responses worldwide and retaining their good will," said Cassel.

In Tuesday morning's press conference, AOL CEO Steve Case called Netscape's software engineers an experienced development team with the ability to innovate rapidly.

"We are committed to maintaining continuity at Netscape, Case said. "Netscape will remain in separate headquarters, operating in Mountain View, California."

"Of course, we will continue to develop and promote Netscape's browser -- especially in context of [the Netcenter] portal," Case added.

Netscape launched the Mozilla project in April in an effort to infuse a then-lagging Navigator browser with the energies of volunteer programmers around the world. The project is overseen by a handful of Netscape employees, and is not an expensive operation.

Eric Raymond, an open-source-software advocate, said an AOL-owned Netscape would be crazy to drop Mozilla.