Konqueror began to pretend to be “like Gecko” to get the good pages, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; FreeBSD) (KHTML, like Gecko). For more information, read: Andersen, Aaron (September 3, 2008) – History of the browser user-agent string – WebAIM
My guess someone read this and didn’t end up changing the example code.
The User-Agent header is part of the RFC7231, which is an improved version of the RFC1945, where it states: The User-Agent request-header field contains information about the user agent originating the request. This is for statistical purposes, the tracing of protocol violations, and automated recognition of user agents for the sake of tailoring responses to … Read more
It is a long and sad story. In summary: Mozilla browser gets released, with User-Agent Mozilla/1.0 (Win3.1). It is publicly renamed to Netscape, but in its User-Agent it keeps its original name . Internet Explorer is released. It spoofs Netscape by starting its User-Agent with Mozilla/ because web servers were routinely browser sniffing and serving … Read more