There is little doubt that one of the most publicised Open Source projects doing the rounds at the moment is Mozilla Firefox. From the roots of the Netscape browser, the Mozilla project has spent some considerable time and effort in redeveloping, modularising and improving the components from the Netscape Communicator suite. Ever since the sources were made available, the project has made a number of successful wins that have spawned among others, Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird.
With the eventual release of Firefox; the little browser that could, the public perception of Firefox has not been typical of an Open Source project. When projects such the GIMP, OpenOffice.org and Apache hit version one, there was not the sheer level of fanfare spawned from the Firefox camp and echoed around the international press. This was undoubtedly due to the efforts of SpreadFirefox.com, the cross platform nature of Firefox, and its abilities to block Internet nasties such as spyware and popup ads. Combined with the easy to install nature of Firefox and its lean athletic figure, Firefox seems destined for success, whether you read the New York Times or not.
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