The "Big Bang"
- March 2005:
- IRC and news discussions had led to staff discussing the suite's
future, and get stirred up even more due to
recent
staff meeting minutes that make clear that Mozilla Foundation wants to cease
suite development, some developers don't like that
- March 10, 10am PST:
- After discussion with some strong supporters on IRC, Boris Zbarsky ("bz")
posts an open
letter to mozilla.org staff
- "We are assuming that the Mozilla Foundation does not in fact plan to
have a Mozilla Suite release based on Gecko 1.8"
- "In brief, we propose a development model similar
to that which Camino has right now."
- "Any release based on this development effort [...] is not branded as
the "Mozilla Suite"."
- March 10 - almost 1pm PST (!):
- Transition
plan published by mozilla.org
- Mozilla 1.7.x "will be the last set of Seamonkey products released and
maintained by the Mozilla Foundation"
- "The Mozilla Foundation will provide infrastructure support [...] for
community members who wish to continue to develop Seamonkey."
- Pointing to bz's letter: "We support this plan
and will work with interested parties to figure out strategy."
- "The dedication to the product, the initiative of the developers and
the proposal of the transition plan as a solution are all hallmarks of
the Mozilla community. We support this effort completely."
- While press and public see the end of Mozilla suite as main point,
the core SeaMonkey developer community sees support for new project
as the most important message
- Following weeks:
- signers of bz's letter and other supporters work together, mainly on
IRC, to organize the new project and get it
started
- Neil, biesi, IanN, CTho and KaiRo
agree to take part in the new project's steering comitee, later dubbed the
"SeaMonkey
Council".
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