Mozilla ends Mozilla Browser Suite Development Cycle

The Mozilla Foundation this week changed development course with their Mozilla Suite Application, announcing that it no longer plans to release a final version of Mozilla Suite 1.8 despite earlier betas of this new update. Instead, they have decided to end suite development with the current Version 1.7 line and instead focus on its very popular standalone Firefox browser and Thunderbird E-Mail client.

This may mean ending development of its application suite (an open-source combination of a Web browser, e-mail client, and Web-authoring tool). However, they have vowed to continue providing infrastructure support to those in the community who would like to continue developing it and update it. The Mozilla suite had been code-named “SeaMonkey” right since its inception, and there seems a good chance of the Suite now being christened by that name. This name-change was probably necessitated to indicate that the Mozilla suite is not anymore going to be officially made/supported by mozilla.org or Mozilla Foundation.

This eventual deprecation of the Mozilla trunk is not actually a shock, considering that it was supposed to happen all along. The Firefox roadmaps clearly showed this. Those developing third party applications based around Mozilla, may not be much affected, as their base blocks of XUL interface and the gecko rendering engine, are alive and kicking in Firefox and Thunderbird!

This post was submitted by prathapml on the India Discussion Forum