Chronology of Important Events

1998

January 22nd: Netscape Communications Corporation announces its intention to release the source code of Netscape Communicator 5.0 as open-source.
February 23rd: mozilla.org created.
March 31st: Netscape releases the source code to Netscape Communicator 5.0.
September 1st: MozillaZine goes live, with Chris Nelson at the helm.
September 3rd: mozilla.org starts providing precompiled nightly builds.
September 5th: Talkback feature launched.
September 17th: MozillaZine relocates to www.mozillazine.org.
October 26th: MozillaZine breaks the news that future development will be focused on the NGLayout rendering engine. This marks the beginning of an effort that eventually leads to the majority of the old Communicator code being rewritten.
November 14th: MozillaZine merges with MozBin, bringing Jason Kersey on board. At the same time, MozillaZine takes on a look similar to the one it has today.
November 20th: Polls launched.
November 23rd: MozillaZine wins its first award.
November 24th: America Online agrees to purchase Netscape Communications Corporation.

1999

January 2nd: MozillaZine member accounts launched.
March 12th: Sun Microsystems begins contributing to the Mozilla project.
March 21st: The first Mozilla milestone, M3, is released.
April 2nd: MozillaZine reports on the resignation of Jamie "JWZ" Zawinski from Netscape and the Mozilla project.
May 12th: MozillaZine hosts the second contest to find a throbber for Mozilla.
May 24th: Steve Morrison joins the site as the ChromeZone is launched.
September 15th: MozillaZine's IRC channel, #mozillazine, launches.
October 23rd: New Modern theme revealed.
November 23rd: French and Japanese MozillaZine translations launch.
December 6th: Chinese translation of MozillaZine begins.

2000

January 12th: Mike Shaver leaves Netscape.
March 21st: MozillaZine sponsors the Mozilla Awards
April 5th: Netscape 6 Preview Release 1 unleashed.
April 25th: First Bug Day on #mozillazine.
May 3rd: Build Bar launches.
June 22nd: Second Classic skin in Mozilla nightly builds.
June 29th: It is confirmed that the first non-beta release of Mozilla will be called Mozilla 1.0.
July 12th: German translation of MozillaZine goes live.
August 23rd: The new Modern 2.0 theme begins landing.
November 6th: In an editorial, MozillaZine founder Chris Nelson blasts standards advocates for their harsh treatment of Netscape. A blistering response to Jeffrey Zeldman of the Web Standards Project follows the next day. Chris Nelson phases out his involvement with the day-to-day running of MozillaZine.
November 14th: Netscape 6 released.

2001

February 6th: First set of Independent Status Reports arrive.
April 2nd: Third major revision of the Modern theme revealed.
August 8th: Netscape 6.1 released.
September 17th: Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker announces that, despite being laid off from Netscape, she will continue to head mozilla.org.
September 19th: Relicensing of the Mozilla codebase begins. The eventual aim is for almost all of the Mozilla code to be tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License, General Public License and Lesser General Public License.
Otober 25th: Mozilla Calendar project announced.
December 1st: MozillaZine Talkback Forums launched.
December 14th: Bandwidth limitations cause MozillaZine to run on a reduced service for several weeks. Many readers donate funds to the site.

2002

April 12th: MozillaZine Weblogs launch.
May 17th: MozillaZine's newest admin is revealed to be Alex Bishop.
June 5th: After four years, Mozilla 1.0 is finally released.
July 24th: MozillaZine reports on a Chimera release for the first time.
August 29th: Netscape reaches version 7.0.
September 5th: Nightly builds of the standalone Phoenix browser available.
November 5th: New MozillaZine Forums open.
December 31st: MozillaZine publishes its first annual Review of the Year.

2003

February 16th: MozillaZine asks its readers to pay the site's hosting fees. Much to our surprise, you do.
March 3rd: Due to trademark issues, the Chimera browser for Mac OS X is renamed Camino.
March 24th: The Minotaur project to build a standalone Mozilla-based mail and newsgroups client is officially launched.
March 31st: On the fifth anniversary of the release of the source code, bug 200000 is filed in Bugzilla.
April 2nd: MozillaZine breaks the news of Mozilla's new Roadmap, which centers around standalone applications.
April 14th: It is announced that Phoenix and Minotaur will be renamed Firebird and Thunderbird, sparking off the Firebird naming conflict with the Firebird database community.
April 27th: Due to bandwidth issues, the MozillaZine Forums are temporarily taken offline.
June 30th: Netscape 7.1 released.
June 30th: Mozilla 1.4 released. It is intended to replace Mozilla 1.0 as the stable development branch.
July 15th: mozilla.org launches the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
July 15th: America Online closes the Netscape browser division, laying off or reassigning the remaining Netscape employees.
July 17th: MozillaZine reports on the start of the Mozilla Sunbird standalone calendar project.
July 21st: MozillaZine moves to a new, dedicated server.
September 1st: MozillaZine celebrates five years at the heart of the Mozilla community.