Mozilla Project
What is Mozilla?
Mozilla is not a web browser!
Mozilla is a framework for building web applications using web standards such as CSS, XML, RDF, etc.
Mozilla is a non-profit open-source web development project that develops the program code used in the Mozilla application suite.
The Mozilla Application Suite is a complete set of web applications (browser, chat client, news client, email client, etc.).
Mozilla believes that the Internet is a public resource that needs to be improved and protected.
Mozilla's Products
- Firefox- One of the most popular internet browsers today
- Thunderbird- An email and newsgroup client, characterized by being secure, fast, and easy to use
- SeaMonkey - - Integrates browsing, sending and receiving email, chat, and editing into one
- Bugzilla- Bug tracking tool
- Camino- A web browser for Mac
- Lightning & Sunbird- Calendar extensions and applications
- Composer- Web page editor
Products can be downloaded from the following address:http://www.mozilla.org
History of the Mozilla Project
In 1998, with the release of the Netscape browser's source code, the Mozilla project was created as an open-source community.
Within a year, new community members from around the world had added many new features to Netscape's next browser and enhanced its existing features, while the Mozilla project gradually grew. Members were no longer just working on Netscape's next browser; they began creating various browsers, development tools, and other projects.
In 2002, the first major version, Mozilla 1.0, was released. This suite made many improvements to the browser, email client, and other applications. However, not many people used it (more than 90% of internet users used Internet Explorer). The same year, Mozilla released the first version of Phoenix (later renamed Firefox).
In 2003, the Mozilla project created the Mozilla Foundation, an independent non-profit organization. The Mozilla Foundation continues to manage the day-to-day operations of the Mozilla project.
In 2004, Firefox 1.0 was released, which was a major success. Within no more than a year, Firefox downloads exceeded 100 million. Firefox's popularity helped put the choice back into the hands of users.
In 2008, Firefox reached a global market share of 20%.
In 2008, Mozilla celebrated its tenth anniversary. Over the decade, the community has shown that commercial companies can benefit from cooperation on open-source projects.
Mozilla Foundation
The Mozilla Foundation was founded in July 2003, located in Mountain View, California, USA.
The Mozilla Foundation, referred to as Mozilla (abbreviated as MF or MoFo), is a non-profit organization established to support and lead the open-source Mozilla project. The organization sets development management policies, operates key infrastructure, and manages trademarks and other intellectual property. It has a subsidiary called Mozilla Corporation, which employs some Mozilla developers and coordinates the releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.
The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a public benefit organization dedicated to providing diversity and innovation in the Internet field."
In its early stages, the Mozilla Foundation began to venture into broader areas than mozilla.org, taking on things that had previously been pushed to Netscape and Mozilla partners.
In the transition towards being "end-user oriented", the Mozilla Foundation signed contracts with several commercial companies to sell CDs containing Mozilla software and provide telephone support services. Among these actions, the Mozilla Foundation chose former Netscape suppliers.
The Mozilla Foundation became more confident in its intellectual property and introduced a new policy for the use of its trademarks.
The Mozilla Foundation also started new projects such as market expansion.
With the establishment of the Mozilla Corporation, the Mozilla Foundation transferred all software development and business-related activities to this new subsidiary.
The Mozilla Foundation now focuses only on governance and strategy matters; it also continues to manage some non-productized projects, such as Camino and SeaMonkey.
The Mozilla Foundation now owns the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property, and licenses them all to the Mozilla Corporation.
The Mozilla Foundation also controls the Mozilla source code repository and decides who can commit code to it.
Roadmap of the Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla decided to create a new development roadmap. The following are some key points from the new roadmap:
- Focus on standalone applications (FireFox browser, Thunderbird email/news application, and standalone designer)
- Make Firefox and Thunderbird Mozilla's primary products
- Maintain the SeaMonkey (now Mozilla browser) application suite for enterprises and organizations with large Mozilla deployments
- Use a one-year development cycle to maintain the Mozilla 1.4 branch as a "distributor/vendor" branch for organizational use
- Fix critical Gecko layout architecture bugs. All Mozilla applications benefit from these Gecko improvements.
- Do better. Do less, but do better!
Confusing Mozilla Names
The first Netscape browser used a code engine named Mozilla.Netscape 1.0It relied on a code engine namedMozilla 1.0to drive it. Netscape 2.0 uses Mozilla 2.0, Netscape 3.0 uses Mozilla 3.0, and Netscape 4.0 uses Mozilla 4.0.
In 1998, Netscape 4 released its source code - and established the development of Netscape 5 as an open source project.
This open source project to create Netscape 5 was called"The Mozilla Project". Oddly enough, the code engine of this Mozilla project was calledGecko。
Unfortunately, after the 4.0 release, developing the next-generation browser took Netscape more than three and a half years. This delay destroyed Netscape's viability as a reliable alternative to Microsoft's IE browser. Shortly after the Mozilla project started, Microsoft released IE 5.0, and before Netscape managed to release a working browser, Microsoft's IE 6.0 was ready.
Based onGecko M18 (Milestone 18)ofNetscape 6.0released in November 2000.
After Netscape 6.0 was released, the Mozilla project began developing a code engine namedGecko 1.0engineNetscape 7。
Netscape 6 and 7 were both built on Mozilla; Netscape and Mozilla were almost identical application suites.
Netscape 7claimed to use a code engine namedGecko 1.0code engine.
At that time, the Mozilla project was developing a new browser namedFirefox. In the past, Firefox was calledMozilla Firebird(and Mozilla Firebird was previously calledPhoenix, which claimed to beMozillaa new version of it).
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