More Mozilla Roadmap & Development Plan Changes

Mozilla 1.0 Pushed Back to Q3 2001

Mike Angelo -- 24 April 2001 (c)

Mozilla Organization Adds More Milestones to its Development Roadmap and Product Release Schedule

The latest Mozilla tree management diagram shows plans for several, additional, pre-1.0, Mozilla browser-suite releases. That pushes the Mozilla 1.0 expected shipping date to the end of Q3 2001 at the earliest. Please see Figure 1.

Last month, the Mozilla Organization folks added Milestone 0.8.1 in between the recent Milestone 0.8 release and the upcoming Milestone 0.9 release. Milestone 0.8.1 replaced, and pushed-back, the Mozilla 0.9 release date in the Roadmap schedule.

That in turn, pushed back the Mozilla 1.0 release date to May 2001 at the earliest. However, it now looks as though the Mozilla 1.0 release is not going to happen until perhaps September 2001.

The Mozilla browser-suite is the basic, prototype, Mozilla-based application upon which other browsers, such as Netscape 6 and the upcoming new NeoPlanet browser, are built.

Figure 1. New Mozilla tree management diagram. (From mozilla development roadmap, The Mozilla Organization. Link in Resources section at end of this article.)

This new tree management diagram indicates at least three 0.9.x Milestone releases before Mozilla 1.0 ships. In Table 1, we added our estimated timelines for the 0.9.1, 0.9.2, 0.9.3, and 1.0 releases to project Milestone and final Mozilla event and release dates. These estimates are based upon a 5-week release cycle, which is the current release-scheduling plan.

As indicated in Table 1, that makes 6 September 2001 the earliest, Mozilla 1.0, final release date if all goes well. If not, look for a Mozilla 0.9.4 release at that time rather than Mozilla 1.0.

Table 1. Mozilla Development Roadmap Milestone Schedule
April 2001 Revision -- Estimated Dates

Milestone
Start
Freeze
Branch
Scheduled Release
Actual Release

Mozilla 0.8
3-Jan-2001
7-Feb-2001
9-Feb-2001
12-Feb-2001
15-Feb-2001

Mozilla 0.8.1
9-Feb-2001
14-Mar-2001
16-Mar-2001
19-Mar-2001
26-Mar-2001

Mozilla 0.9
16-Mar-2001
18-Apr-2001
20-Apr-2001
23-Apr-2001
7-May-2001

Mozilla 0.9.1
?
23-May-2001
25-May-2001
28-May-2001
?

Mozilla 0.9.2
25-May-2001
27-Jun-2001
29-Jun-2001
2-Jul-2001
?

Mozilla 0.9.3
29-Jun-2001
1-Aug-2001
3-Aug-2001
6-Aug-2001
?

Mozilla 0.9.4 or 1.0
3-Aug-2001
5-Sep-2001
7-Sep-2001
5-Sep-2001
?

Figure 2 shows the previous (March) Mozilla tree management diagram and Table 2 shows the March 2001 revision of the Mozilla Development Roadmap.

Figure 2. March 2001 Mozilla tree management diagram. (From mozilla development roadmap, The Mozilla Organization. Link in Resources section at end of this article.)

Table 2. Mozilla Development Roadmap Milestone Schedule
March 2001 Revision

Milestone
Start
Freeze
Branch
Release

Mozilla 0.8
3-Jan-2001
7-Feb-2001
9-Feb-2001
12-Feb-2001

Mozilla 0.8.1
9-Feb-2001
14-Mar-2001
16-Mar-2001
19-Mar-2001

Mozilla 0.9
16-Mar-2001
18-Apr-2001
20-Apr-2001
23-Apr-2001

Mozilla 0.9.1 (or 1.0?)
20-Apr-2001
23-May-2001
25-May-2001
28-May-2001

The 25 September 2000 Mozilla Roadmap had set early Q2 2001 for the Mozilla 1.0 release. Therefore, over the some past seven months, the proposed Mozilla 1.0 release has been pushed back some four or five months.

In part the Mozilla 1.0 release has been pushed back because many new features have been added to the Mozilla browser suite. There is lots of performance improvement work being done and lots of rewriting too.

For example a Hierarchical History, Theme Uninstall, and Gopher Support were added in Mozilla 0.8.1. Also, lots of under-the-hood changes were made to ChatZilla, the Mozilla-based IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client in Mozilla 0.8.1. For more information about what's new and improved in 0.8.1, please see our article, Lizard On The Move: Mozilla Milestone 0.8.1 Browser-Suite Released. (Link below.)

Look for even more new additions and improvements in Mozilla Milestone 0.9. Incidentally, Mozilla 0.9 should have been released yesterday. However, at publication time it has not even been branched yet. As you can see in Tables 1 and 2, the Roadmap schedule called for Milestone 0.9 to have been branched this past Friday (April 20, 2001).

Stay Tuned.

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