what a year it's been
What an amazing year it's been! (reposted from Spread Firefox.)
On November 9th, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was released to the world (in 17 languages and on 5 platforms) and Spread Firefox, and the rest of the Mozilla community celebrated with parties all around the globe.
After the parties and fun, we dove into the task of getting Firefox 1.0 into the hands and onto the machines of millions of new users. In just one month, our grassroots community spread Firefox to more than 10 million users and we celebrated Firefox and our amazing community with two full pages in the New York Times.
You all didn't let up. The pundits said that we couldn't sustain, and you all answered by spreading Firefox to 25 million people in the first 99 days!
Here we are, a year later, with more than 100 million downloads and we're still charging just as strong as we were at the beginning of the year with between 7 and 9 million downloads a month and the experts saying that we've achieved 10% of the browser market!
You all have accomplished so much to get us where we are. You've proved that grassroots organizing on the web is a force to be reckoned with and that great products, supported by a dedicated community of volunteers can take on even the biggest software company in the world.
Thanks to your efforts, we're in an awesome position as we get set for the launch of Firefox 1.5. Firefox 1.5 will build all all of the great work we've done in getting this far but we're going to take it to a whole new level in the year upcoming. We're going to ship a awesome new Firefox in more than 40 languages and we're going to take Spread Firefox international as well. We're going to offer Firefox users some amazing and innovative new features that make the web easier -- and we're going to build out our Spread Firefox features to make your work here easier and more productive.
Whate an amazing year it's been. And what an amazing year we have ahead.
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
And a big thanks to you and all the Firefox / Mozilla developers! Congratulations to you all!
Posted by: Chuck | November 9, 2005 5:31 PM
This is awesome. Thanks community and Asa. :)
Posted by: Leo | November 9, 2005 6:00 PM
Ca serait vraiment bien si mozilla.org deviendrait international aussi ;).
Translation : i would really nice if mozilla.org would become international. I would really would like to know how to help more. (I am just triaging bugs for now.)
Posted by: Gabriel | November 9, 2005 6:52 PM
I wish all the best ad my gratitude to Asa and firfox team. Web cudn't wat it has today without firefox.
May god bless Mozilla foundation to achieve new hieghts in forthccoming years.
Take back the web (from IE)
Cheers for Firefox.
Posted by: Jisan | November 9, 2005 9:33 PM
Congrats Firefox team.
Thanks to all involved in devloping and bringing it to the community. The publicity is also amazing and I am sure that this will be the #1.
Posted by: Chandu | November 9, 2005 10:53 PM
Thanks to Asa and everyone who's contributed to Firefox. A great browser that everyone is proud of using. Go Firefox!
Posted by: Sunny Boy | November 9, 2005 11:08 PM
Thanks a lot to everyone involved for all the hard work to realize and spread such an awesome software!!
Dex
Posted by: dex_sf | November 9, 2005 11:24 PM
Congrats and don't rest on Firefox's laurels! ;-)
Posted by: funTomas | November 9, 2005 11:32 PM
Any bets on how long it will take to get to Firefox 2.0 ;)
Congrats to Mozilla Devs and everybody else that helped get Firefox to the soon to be 1.5
Posted by: James | November 10, 2005 1:25 AM
From mozilla.org you can see international affiliates Mozilla Europe, Japan, and China! The 100+ million downloads does not include those whom have upgraded, they are genuine new downloads I'm pretty sure, and with usage now over 10%, users is estimated at over 120+ million!
Well done to everyone whom has and is contributing, come a hell of a long way with great achievements. These are exciting times, 2006 will be bigger and better on many levels as Asa's said. Great stuff!
Posted by: Kris Silver | November 10, 2005 5:02 AM
Congratulations to the Firefox team!!! Firefox is a huge success for the open-source community and here's hoping that this success will expand to Linux and other open-source projects!
Posted by: Phil | November 10, 2005 5:50 AM
when are you guys gonna reset your download counter and demand that extensions keep up with the FF version updates?
Posted by: Billy | November 10, 2005 6:06 AM
1.5rc2 is comming up on:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5rc2/
Posted by: Daniel | November 10, 2005 7:04 AM
Congratulations to you and the whole Firefox team and to the hundreds of programmers, thousands of testers, and the millions of users!
Posted by: David Longe | November 10, 2005 7:59 AM
Hi, Asa! Hi, guys! I just wanted to inform you about the latest Firefox numbers from "Xiti Monitor" in France:
http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement12.asp
Posted by: ADAXL | November 10, 2005 8:18 AM
When was firefox 0.1 btw?
Posted by: AkaXakA | November 10, 2005 10:03 AM
You've proved that grassroots organizing on the web is a force to be reckoned with and that great products, supported by a dedicated community of volunteers can take on even the biggest software company in the world.
...Wishful Thinking...
Posted by: Ryan | November 10, 2005 10:33 AM
There wasn't one. It was called Phoenix back then :D
Posted by: Joe Anderson | November 10, 2005 10:55 AM
You've proved that grassroots organizing on the web is a force to be reckoned with and that great products, supported by a dedicated community of volunteers can take on even the biggest software company in the world.
...Wishful Thinking...
Posted by: Ryan on November 10, 2005 10:33 AM
If it was not for Firefox, do you really think that M$ would be releasing IE7 a year ahead with many of the features copied from Firefox ....
It is a shame that IE7 will not be W3C but at least M$ is making a start to bring its IE6 into fixing some of the major bugs .... and finally doing something about making IE more secured ....
Of course, the other 49% of the window users are forced to use IE6 and with the released of Firefox 1.5, it will be interesting to see if in Nov 2006, the Firefox world share will be in the 18%-20% range ...
You are now seeing more and more web sites that are being converted from IE ONLY to W3C (works for all browsers).
personally, I'm looking forward to Firefox 3.0 in Nov 2007
later, Richard
Posted by: Richard Martin | November 10, 2005 11:23 AM
If it was not for Firefox, do you really think that M$ would be releasing IE7 a year ahead with many of the features copied from Firefox ....
LOL
Posted by: Ty | November 10, 2005 11:50 AM
Big congrats to mozilla for making such wonderful things!
Also Asa, you have need to reconstruct your last paragraph.. ;P
"Firefox 1.5 will build all all" [?????] of the great work we've done in getting this far but we're going to take it to a whole new level in the "year upcoming" [upcoming year]. We're going to ship "a awesome"[an awesome] new Firefox..
Just bugs me..
Posted by: yakster | November 10, 2005 12:01 PM