Timeline

In 1998 mozilla.org was created as a place to host the open source version of Netscape Communicator. Today this site is the center of a world-wide movement that is creating the Firefox browser as well as a wide range of other innovative projects.

Community Milestones

• July 31, 2009 - 1,000,000,000th Firefox download
• March 31, 2008 - The Mozilla project celebrates its 10th anniversary
• February 19, 2008 - Mozilla Messaging, the new mail focused subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, begins operations
• December 28, 2007 - AOL announces that there will be no further releases of Netscape Navigator and recommends that Navigator users switch to Firefox
• December 4, 2006 - The World Economic Forum selects Mozilla as one of the Technology Pioneers for 2007
• October 19, 2005 - Firefox surpasses 100 million downloads just before its 1st anniversary
• August 3, 2005 - The Mozilla Corporation is created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation
• July 2, 2005 - The community led SeaMonkey project takes over development of former Mozilla Application Suite code
• March 4, 2005 - Mozilla China is founded to tap into China’s thriving Firefox community
• September 14, 2004 - Mozilla establishes the Bug Bounty program to reward contributors for discovering bugs and helping continually improve Mozilla's products
• August 18, 2004 - Mozilla Japan is founded to create a foothold in Asia and foster the growing community in Japan
• February 17, 2004 - Mozilla Europe is founded to spur Mozilla’s community, mindshare and marketshare in Europe
• July 15, 2003 - The Mozilla Foundation is born with a $2 million start-up support from America Online's Netscape division; Mitch Kapor pledges support and heads up the board of directors
• April 2, 2003 - A new roadmap is posted that details the switch from developing an integrated suite to developing Firefox and Thunderbird as separate applications
• September 19, 2001 - Mozilla relicensing begins, more than 6000 NPL files are relicensed under an MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-licence
• April 7, 2000 - First Mozilla Developer Day is hosted at Netscape
• March 18, 1999 - America Online acquires Netscape Communications Corporation
• October 26, 1998 - mozilla.org posts product roadmap that includes next browser release based on Gecko and a cross platform user interface
• March 31, 1998 - Netscape Communicator source code is posted on the Internet via mozilla.org
• February 23, 1998 - The mozilla.org project is launched by Netscape

Major Software Releases

• June 30, 2009 - Firefox 3.5 released
• June 17, 2008 - Firefox 3.0 is released
• April 18, 2007 - Thunderbird 2.0 is released as a major update to the free, open source email client
• January 18, 2007 - SeaMonkey 1.1 is made available
• October 24, 2006 - Mozilla releases Firefox 2.0
• January 30, 2006 - SeaMonkey 1.0 is released
• January 12, 2006 - Thunderbird 1.5 is made available
• November 29, 2005 - Mozilla releases Firefox 1.5
• December 7, 2004 - Mozilla rolls out Thunderbird 1.0 providing users with an alternative, free email client
• November 9, 2004 - Mozilla Firefox 1.0 goes live, allowing users to experience the Web in a whole new way
• June 17, 2004 - Mozilla 1.7 is launched with many improvements to speed and standards support
• June 30, 2003 - Mozilla 1.4 is released with popup blocking, junkmail filtering, and many improvements
• September 23, 2002 - Phoenix 0.1 is released, the first official version of a stand-alone browser that will later be renamed to Firefox
• June 5, 2002 - Mozilla 1.0 is released - the browser which is the precursor to today’s wildly popular Firefox Web browser
• November 14, 2000 - Netscape 6 is released and is the first official Netscape product based on open source code

For more detailed timeline information, read through the MozillaZine News Archive.