Back in 1998 while the web was still young (in the residential sense, it was used by Universities worldwide for years prior) a small browser company called Netscape Communications released a freeware (for individual usage) browser and then announced with the help of Frank Hecker – that they were going to release the source code for it.
Mozilla then became known as the Mozilla Project with an initial $2 million seed funding, and began life as Firebird and had to change it’s name due to it also being the name of an open source SQL engine project. The name was changed again to Fire Phoenix before the name Firefox being chosen.
Fast forward 10 years and while the Mozilla Application Suite may have been retired (or renamed to SeaMonkey) Mozilla the initial internal codename for Netscape has released Firefox it’s flagship browser. Version 1.0 hit the FTP servers in September 2004 and became an instant hit.
Here’s to another 10 years of Mozilla and more great releases of Firefox.
