You could also read some of the history of what happened to Netscape there after [here](https://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html). Illuminating and relevant. So a while back now (2014) perforce finally opensourced the old windows client p4win. I've been giving them shit^H^H^H^H[honest feedback](https://www.tilander.org/aurora2/p4win_for_the_win/index.html) for years about them [pulling a Netscape](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/) with their p4v client. I've also been one of the voices who quietly been encouraging them to open source the p4win client since it was pretty much abandonded in favor of p4v development.

Setting up a new perforce server from scratch is pretty easy, or so it seems at first glance. Indeed it’s pretty easy, you just have to download p4d and run it. However, chances are that you will then have it setup incorrectly and it’s very hard to change a perforce setup once deployed. There also tons of best practices that you will miss out on. I believe the easy of use for initial setup of the server is more intended for trying things out, but not for running in production.