» Topic:  Firefox squashes bug swarm before 2.0

» Added by:  John E. Dunn

» Date:  18.8.2006

  Version 2.0, code named Bon Echo, had been due on Sept. 26 but will now make its debut on Oct. 24. The test schedule has also been adjusted, with the second beta now appearing a week late on Aug. 23.

The delay has been put down to a small swarm of bugs that still have to be ironed out, totaling 87, according to the project’s latest bug list. The new version will have a raft of new features to keep up with those coming in rivals Opera and Internet Explorer 7, including antiphishing security, a spell checker, integrated RSS news feed handling, and tabbed browsing.

Apart from its growing popularity as a rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s ability to get out bug-free software on time has the broader significance of being a status project for the world of open-source software. That is it suffering minor delays is embarrassing, though not deeply so.

Two weeks ago, it emerged that Firefox was being run through the "Vulnerability Discovery and Remediation, Open-Source Hardening Project", a bug and security hunting system co-developed by Coverity, that is supposed to reduce major security holes before public release.

Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/