[bengoodger]

Given the trend towards bundling and a changing internet population (away from savvier early adopters and towards people more inclined to stick with the defaults), Netscape was always going to have a really tough time competing. Microsoft changed the game in browser distribution and competing effectively meant that your product had to succeed in several areas, none of which Netscape did. A string of inept management and product decisions didn't help either.

I would interpret Joel's point as: Not shipping something for years and then shipping unstable crap is a bad idea. In this case, it ruined people's already shaky confidence in Netscape. Rewriting to improve code isn't always a bad thing - in this case it did end up paying off, just too late to benefit Netscape. Firefox probably wouldn't have happened if the switch of codebases hadn't been made. Netscape being out of the picture by this time was a good thing - since Netscape was institutionally incapable of shipping quality software it would just have screwed it up.