Mozilla Roadmap Plan Changed Again

Mozilla 1.0 Set Back to Q4 2001

Mike Angelo -- 26 May 2001 (c)

For the third time in as many months, the Lizard wranglers have pushed back the anticipated Mozilla release date in their Mozilla tree management diagram. The newest Mozilla tree management diagram shows Mozilla 1.0 release now is set for early Q4 -- 15 October 2001. Please see Figure 1 and Table 1, below.

The previous Mozilla tree management diagram (April 2001) showed a late Q3 anticipated Mozilla 1.0 release. Please see Figure 2 and Table 1, below. For more information about the April roadmap and development plan revisions, please see our article Mozilla 1.0 Pushed Back to Q3 2001.

In March, the Mozilla Organization folks added Milestone 0.8.1 in between the Milestone 0.8 release and the then 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.

Please see our article Mozilla 1.0 Release Pushed Back -- Milestone 0.8.1 Inserted into Development Roadmap Schedule for more information about the March revisions.

The Mozilla browser-suite is built on top of the cross-platform (XP) and open source Mozilla applications programming framework. It is the basic, prototype, Mozilla-based, browser-suite application upon which other browsers, such as Netscape 6 are built.

Currently, Mozilla pre-1.0 Milestone and daily development builds are available for the BSD, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Sun, and several UNIX platforms. Source code is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla builds.

The newest tree management diagram indicates at least four 0.9.x Milestone releases before Mozilla 1.0 ships. In Table 1, we added the 0.9.1, 0.9.2, 0.9.3, and 0.9.4 releases, projected on a 5-week release cycle basis, which is the current release-scheduling plan.

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

As indicated in Table 1, that makes 15 October 2001 the earliest Mozilla 1.0 final release date if all goes well and it is ready. If not, look for a Mozilla 0.9.5 release at that time rather than Mozilla 1.0.

Table 1. Mozilla Development Roadmap Milestone Schedule May 2001 Revision -- Estimated
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	20-Apr-2001	23-May-2001	25-May-2001	1-Jun-2001	?
Mozilla 0.9.2	?	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	3-Aug-2001	5-Sep-2001	7-Sep-2001	5-Sep-2001	?
Mozilla 0.9.5 or 1.0	7-Sep-2001	10-Oct-2001	12-Oct-2001	15-Oct-2001	?

(Note: Up through and including Mozilla 0.9, Milestone releases were scheduled for the Monday following the scheduled Friday branching. However, the 23 April scheduled release was missed by some two weeks due to a large number of release-stopping bugs. In anticipation of this sort of situation occurring again, the May roadmap table revision indicates the Milestone release date of Friday, 1 June rather than Monday, 28 May. On the other hand, the text explaining the release date change states the anticipated release date to be "6-Jun-2000" (sic) -- "Therefore, the mozilla0.9.1 ideal release date has been moved to 6-Jun-2000. (sic) We hope this is a more accurate prediction, even if it's less ideal." (Mozilla Development Roadmap, mozilla.org, May 10, 2001) So, for the time being our roadmap table will use the 1 June 2001 date rather than the 6 June 2000 (sic) date. Also, the remaining projected release dates continue to use the Monday following the scheduled Friday branching date. We will try to get this clarified as soon as possible.)

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

Figure 2. April 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 eight months, the proposed Mozilla 1.0 release has been pushed back some five or six months.

In part the Mozilla 1.0 release has been pushed back because many new features have been added to the Mozilla browser suite. 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.

There has been lots of rewriting too. For example the image library was rewritten for Mozilla 0.9. The disk cache subsystem is being rewritten also. The level 1 cache rewrite was included in Mozilla 0.9. The game plan is to try to include the level 2 cache rewrite in Mozilla 0.9.1. For more information about what's new and improved in 0.9, please see our article, The Snail Moves: Mozilla Milestone 0.9 Browser-Suite Released.

Look for even more new additions and improvements in Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 Incidentally, Mozilla 0.9.1 should have been branched yesterday. However, at publication time it has not been branched yet. Check the MozillaQuest Magazine front page (mozillaquest.com) regularly for news about Mozilla's progress to 1.0.

Stay Tuned.

Webmaster´s Note: Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 was released June 7, 2001. Please see our story, Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 Browser-Suite Released, for download links and the details.