No More Mozilla Suite Releases from Mozilla Foundation

[tedster]

The Firefox browser is apparently the way forward for Mozilla Org - they've announced they will not be developing any future versions of the Mozilla browser suite itself. But hey, it IS open source, right? Someone else can pick up the standard if it seems worth doing.

The Mozilla Browser, originally an offshoot from AOL's Netscape and the spark that helped to coin the term "open source," will no longer benefit from new releases from its Mozilla Foundation masters.

[internetnews.com...]

[coopster]

Interesting. As the Fx-user base grows, it grows even larger. I mean, if I'm a Mozilla user and I can no longer get an updated Mozilla client, my next choice may be Fx. Certainly pushes the % of user base up a bit...

[RammsteinNicCage]

Does that mean that they're also going to stop... Thunderbird, I believe that is the name of their email program...?

Jennifer

[tedster]

Here's another article from betanews that makes it clear that Thunderbird is alive and well [betanews.com].

[Hester]

It was always the intention to stop Mozilla once Firefox got going. In fact they announced a "final release" version once, but that was surpassed. New versions continued to appear for some reason.

So will Mozilla 1.8 be the last version?

[tedster]

The Mozilla Browser's current trunk is done under the code name of "Seamonkey" which is now at version 1.7.5. The Mozilla Foundation plans on releasing version 1.7.6 in the next few weeks, which will be the last official release for the application.

[encyclo]

I feel it's rather a shame to drop the Mozilla suite so quickly. I prefer Firefox myself, but if you want an integrated solution with email and web browsing and if you don't need all the Firefox extensions, then the suite is a faster and less resource-hungry alternative to the Firefox/Thunderbird combination. Even when installed as a stand-alone browser, Mozilla 1.7 outperforms Firefox 1.0 - surprising since the 1.0 to 1.4 releases were considered slow. My wife uses Mozilla 1.7 exclusively and would be worse off if forced to switch to Firefox and Thunderbird.

However, all is not lost as there is already a regroupment of developers who are aiming to continue the suite development under the code name Seamonkey:

[wiki.mozilla.org...]

The Mozilla Suite got a bad reputation during the long development process from Netscape 4. It is being jettisoned just as it has matured into a very solid solution. I hope it survives, even if Firefox will take all the limelight.

[Hester]

I thought 1.8 would be the final version, as that has been released in alpha already.

[tedster]

The Mozilla Foundation recognized, however, that some contributors have devoted a significant amount of time to improving version 1.8 and apologized for the miscommunication. "There is no doubt that the series of 1.8 alpha and beta releases have caused some confusion about whether there would be a 1.8 product."

"This has been a error on our part. These contributors have reason to be unhappy with us. We can only apologize, at the same time recognizing that apologies only go so far and can't fix the error."

Beta News Article [betanews.com]

[Hester]

Well I thought Netscape 7 was the last release of that browser and I was proved wrong. So here's to Mozilla 2.0!