Ситуация на данный момент такая
Версии ветки 1.7 будут поддерживаться Фондом Мозилла неопределённое время, после версии 1.7.6 возможно выйдут 1.7.7 и т.п. с мелкими исправлениями.
Фонд Мозилла прекращает дальнейшую разработку Mozilla Suite и Финал Mozilla Suite 1.8 выпущен не будет.
Однако, некоторая часть разработчиков Мозиллы намерена продолжать работу по Suite. Выйдет ли из этого что-то путёвое пока не ясно. Реальное решение о невыпуске 1.8 было принято только 1 марта, так что сейчас только начался процесс самоорганизации продолжателей дела Mozilla Suite - может всё заглохнет, а может расцветёт.
Поскольку дальнейшей разработкой будут заниматься не штатные сотрудники Фонда Мозилла, которая владеет правами на торговую марку Mozilla, - имя Mozilla (она же Mozilla Suite, она же Mozilla Application Suite) не может быть использовано. Пока решено использовать имя, бывшее до этого только рабочим - SeaMonkey. Вариант не самый удачный, поскольку имя не раскручено, - в очередной раз придётся всем объяснять, что SeaMonkey не с дуба свалилась, а та самая Mozilla. Не исключено, что вместо SeaMonkey будет выбрано другое имя - тема обсуждается, но уже сменили заголовки форумов на Мозиллазайн. Фонд Мозилла взял на себя обязательства предоставить разработчикам теперь уже SeaMonkey возможные ресурсы.
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Для истории, копирую два сообщения с mozillazine.org за 10 марта. Надеюсь, большая часть ссылок будет доступна и позже.
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Announcement of Future of Mozilla Application Suite Expected Soon The Mozilla Foundation is expected to make a formal announcement on the
future of the Mozilla Application Suite soon. Debate about the future
of the suite, often known as Mozilla 1.x or by its SeaMonkey codename,
has raged over the last few days following Saturday's publication of
the
minutes of the mozilla.org staff meeting held on Monday 28th February 2005 .
In reference to Mozilla 1.8 final, the minutes state that it was To be
discussed tomorrow (Tuesday 1st March) whether we do one. This led to
dozens of replies about the fate of the suite (netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey: 2005-02-28 - Summary of mozilla.org staff meeting) from a wide variety of contributors and onlookers. A
MozillaNews article about the future of the suite has also inspired debate.
Over at the
Mozilla developer wiki , a new
SeaMonkey home page has become the basis of the campaign to ensure the suite has a future. A
list of requirements for a 1.8 release has been drafted and
Alex Vincent is encouraging SeaMonkey backers to come forward with a number now listed on the
SeaMonkey:Supporters wiki page . However,
Neil Deakin is cynical about their chances of success :
Lots of QA people there. Lots of non-programmers. A small handful of
people who would do much of the real development work, all of which
already work on Gecko. But no management. Nobody with strong
leadership, nobody with the time to coordinate development and testing,
nobody with the project management skills needed. Oh, and I'll bet no
user interface designers either. Meanwhile,
Mike Connor feels that any community-driven Mozilla Application Suite project should be positioned as a new product to avoid it appearing to remain an official Mozilla Foundation application.
If you don't want to read all the linked material,
ZDNet Australia has a fairly well-rounded summary ,
though it gives equal billing to both the likely and more outlandish
proposals (for example, no-one seriously believes that Mozilla Firefox
will be spun out to a separate Firefox Foundation). As the article
notes, the
Mozilla Development Roadmap has stated that
development on the Mozilla Application Suite would eventually cease since early 2003, though
plans to retire the suite were put on hold (MozillaZine: Roadmap Update: Mozilla Application Suite will be Sustained)
in January last year. That said, the Roadmap has referred to 1.7 as
the SeaMonkey application suite's final stable branch since November.
There are currently active discussions in the
#seamonkey channel of irc.mozilla.org and the most recent development is a
draft letter to staff@mozilla.org from a group who wish to maintain the suite . We expect the Mozilla Foundation's official announcement within hours.
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Future of the Mozilla Application Suite: No Official Mozilla 1.8, Community Transition Plan Unveiled The Mozilla Foundation has published its
Mozilla Application Suite transition plan , ending days of
speculation about the future of the SeaMonkey project .
The announcement confirms that there will be no official Mozilla 1.8
release and offers an apology to all those who believed that there
would be. The 1.7.x line will be the last set of Mozilla Application
Suite products released and maintained by the Mozilla Foundation and
all future suite versions from the Foundation will be minor updates
only.
However, the Mozilla Foundation will offer
infrastructure support to a community effort to continue development of
the Mozilla Application Suite, probably under a different name. The
exact details still have to be worked out but will broadly follow the
plan outlined by Boris Zbarsky . We expect that more details will be posted on the
home page of the nascent SeaMonkey community effort over the next few days. Mozilla Foundation President
Mitchell Baker has posted
background details on the SeaMonkey community transition plan on her weblog.
Update: Asa Dotzler has posted
some further thoughts about the Mozilla Application Suite transition plan (adot's notblog*: mozilla product futures).
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