Following M16, we expect another round of performance and feature changes, and then another stability period.

During this time, mozilla.org is particularly interested in:

-- Memory use and performance improvements

-- Cleaning up the component identifier issues so that Mozilla code can be upgraded in the field.

-- Bugs which are blocking contributors from moving forward with their projects.

We're not yet sure when M17 will be released; it depends on how stable and performant the tree looks after the next round of changes. We're also not yet sure how the timing of M17 it will correlate with a Netscape beta2 release.

We received feedback at the time of nsbeta1 that it would be convenient if the Netscape betas coincided with a Mozilla milestone release. We're not yet convinced this is the right plan, especially if there is a need for an earlier milestone. And in the long run, it will be difficult or impossible to coordinate milestone releases with commercial schedules once there are a variety of products being built with Mozilla. But there was feedback to this effect, and so we'll consider it. We'll want to do a release when there's something new and useful in Mozilla and it's stable and performant enough to make a worthwhile milestone.