Timeline

Note: An effort to revisit these milestones and get community members to help us tell the history of Mozilla is going on during the 15th anniversary. Check out the history blog posts etherpad for more details.

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.

Major Milestones

Date	Event w/ link	Image	Comments
March 31, 1998	Netscape Communicator source code is posted on the Internet via mozilla.org	A scene from Code Rush	Blog post
October 28, 1998	New development roadmap is posted that announces major rewrite of old Communicator code	Roadmap page on www.mozilla.org	Blog post
March 17, 1999	America Online Inc. Completes Acquisition of Netscape Communications Corporation	Need image	Blog post
November 14, 2000	Netscape 6 is released and is the first Netscape product based on open source code	T-shirt from Netscape 6 launch	Blog post
September 23, 2002	Phoenix 0.1 is released, the first version of a browser that will be renamed to Firebird and then Firefox	Screenshot of Phoenix	Blog post
July 15, 2003	The Mozilla Foundation is born with start-up support from America Online and Mitch Kapor	Mozilla Foundation logo	Blog post
June 9, 2004	Firefox downloads surge after US government warns of security exploits in Internet Explorer	Netscape, Firefox and IE market share graph	Blog post
September 14, 2004	Bug bounty milestone	Mozilla Security team t-shirt
December 15th, 2004	Community sponsored advertisement for Firefox appears in the New York Times	New York Times ad
August 3, 2005	The Mozilla Corporation is created as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation	Mozilla Corporation workmark
August 12, 2006	Students make a crop circle of the Firefox logo in a field in Oregon	Aerial view of Firefox crop circle
February 13, 2007	The first draft of the Mozilla Manifesto is posted	Internet by the people, for the people t-shirt
December 28, 2007	AOL announces end of Navigator releases and recommends users switch to Firefox	Firefox t-shirt
July 2, 2008	Mozilla sets a Guinness World Record for number of Firefox 3 downloads in one day	Tristan Nitot receives official certificate of world record
July 30, 2008	A landslide at the Mozilla Summit in Whistler blocks the road back to Vancouver	I Survived The Summit poster
January 28, 2010	First release of Firefox for a mobile device launched for the Nokia N900	Pocketfox, winner of Firefox Goes Mobile design challenge
July 9, 2010	Several hundred Mozillians take a group photo on top of a mountain at Summit in Whistler	Group photo on top of a mountain in Whistler
March 22, 2011	Firefox 4 launches and Mozilla starts move to a rapid release model with new versions every few weeks	Firefox 4 'Happy and Snappy' t-shirt
July 25, 2011	[1-25-false 'Booting to web' forum post announces the start of the Boot to Gecko project	File:July 25, 2011 Original Boot to Gecko logo
January 18, 2012	Mozilla takes part in blackout to rally action against the Stop Online Privacy Act	Screenshot of SOPA page on www.mozilla.org
February 7, 2012	The creation of the Mozilla Antarctica community site brings Mozilla to all seven continents	Photo of Firefox logo at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica
July 6, 2012	The Thunderbird email program transitions to a community supported model of releases	Thunderbird logo

Community Milestones

• March 2013 - 1 Million Dollars paid out in bounties over the life of the bounty program to members of the security research that have helped in making Firefox and Mozilla websites and services more secure.
• December 15, 2010 - Security Bug Bounty Program extended to Mozilla Websites and Services.
• July 1, 2010 - Security Bug Bounties increased to $3000 to encourage additional participation.
• July 31, 2009 - 1,000,000,000th Firefox download
• July 2, 2008 - Mozilla Sets New Guinness World Record with Firefox 3 Downloads
• 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
• December 16, 2004 - NY Times publishes a two page ad promoting Firefox 1.0. Ad was funded through donations made by thousands of Mozilla contributors and supporters.
• November 9, 2004 Firefox 1.0 released in 28 languages.
• September 14, 2004 - Bug Bounty program established to reward security researchers for discovering security 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
• June 23, 2004 - Major Security Exploit in Microsoft's Internet Explorer results in US CERT and other computer security agencies recommending that internet users download and use other browsers to access the web. Downloads of pre-release versions of Firefox ramp from 20,000 per day to over 250,000 per day. Firefox begins to expand market share growth marking the first time a software development organization was able to take back market share from Microsoft and Internet Explorer.
• February 17, 2004 - Mozilla Europe is founded to spur Mozilla’s community, mindshare and marketshare in Europe.
• February 2004 - Firebird is renamed to Firefox and 0.8 version is released. It includes support for 29 languages, and becomes a hit with the web developer community. Downloads begin to accelerate.
• October 15, 2003 - First Offical release of Mozilla Software Supported by the Foundation. Mozilla 1.5, Firebird 0.7, and Thunderbird 0.3 are made available for download at the website for free and for sale or subscription on CD's at store.mozilla.org.
• October 1, 2003 - First Mozilla Foundation Office Opened at 1350C Villa Street in Mt. View, CA
• 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
• May 31, 2003 - Microsoft announces end of development and innovation for standalone versions of Internet Explorer on Windows and Mac. IE development team disbanded. Internet Explorer market share estimated at more than 95%.
• 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 25, 2000 - Code Rush documentary is released
• April 7, 2000 - First Mozilla Developer Day is hosted at Netscape
• March 17, 1999 - America Online Inc. Completes Acquisition of 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.