Firefox has won the Open Source Application of the Year in the .Net Awards sponsored by .Net Magazine.
OPEN SOURCE APPLICATION OF THE YEAR: FIREFOX
Runners-up: Ruby on Rails, WordPress, Drupal, OpenOffice
The open source revolution has changed the face of software. In fact, open source technologies underpin much of the internet, from the Linux operating system that’s cornered the server market through to the Apache webserver and the myriad of programming languages that developers can choose to work with. Open source is massive – but it can sometimes be almost invisible.
That’s why it’s gratifying to see this year’s Open Source Award go to a project with much higher end-user visibility: Firefox.
Tristan Nitot, president and founder of Mozilla Europe, spoke to .net about what Firefox’s backer, Mozilla, has been up to for the last year and what’s in store for 2008: “Mozilla is an incredible ride,” he says. “We passed 400 million downloads and have more than 120 million active users worldwide.” The Mozilla Foundation is itself also growing and now has a total of 120 staff across the globe.
Firefox became the browser with buzz, not only because of its ease of use, but also its rock-solid technology and support for web standards. Nitot says there’s plenty more work to do: “Our biggest challenge is to ship Firefox 3,” he says. “That’s the big thing for 2008.”
Posted by asa at 1:53 PM
