January

The first mozilla.org release arrived less than 48 hours into 2003 when a trio of Bugzilla updates were unleashed. A few days later, it was announced that Mozilla Calendar would be included in the default Mozilla builds, though this is yet to happen. Meanwhile, the commitment to the 1.0 branch was restated with the release of Mozilla 1.0.2. Unable to find a maintainer for the Classic Mac OS port, mozilla.org announced that the Mac OS 8.x and 9.x build would be removed from the tree. The month ended with MozillaZine assuring its readers that the standalone Phoenix browser had not died and that Chimera for Mac OS X was also alive and well.

February

The second month of the year brought a document outlining the progress and future plans of the Mozilla Application Suite and the release of Mozilla 1.3 Beta. Other releases included K-Meleon 0.7 Service Pack 1, Galeon 1.2.8 and 1.3.2 and Netscape 7.0.2. The Mozilla Developers Meeting in Europe 3.0 took place at FOSEDM 2003, development started on the GNOME Epiphany browser and mozilla.org turned five.

March

Trademark issues meant that Chimera had to be renamed to Camino in March, with the 0.7 release of the native Mac OS X browser following shortly after. mozilla.org Chief Lizard Wrangler Mitchell Baker published an article on browser innovation and development rumbled on with the release of Mozilla 1.3. Mozilla Calendar suffered a setback as OEone, the main backer of the Calendar project, decided to scale back their support. Towards the end of the month, the Minotaur project to build a standalone mail and newsgroups client was formally launched and the fifth anniversary of the Netscape source code release was celebrated as bug 200000 was filed in Bugzilla.

April

April began with the release of Mozilla 1.4 Alpha and the unveiling of a major Roadmap update. The revision heralded plans for a move towards standalone applications, with Phoenix and Thunderbird (another name for Minotaur) becoming the focus of future development. It also anointed 1.4 as the successor to the stable 1.0 branch, outlined changes to the module ownership system and authorised architectural changes to the code behind the Gecko rendering engine.

After months of discussion, mozilla.org announced that Phoenix and Minotaur were to be renamed to Firebird and Thunderbird respectively. This did not please supporters of the Firebird database project, who claimed that mozilla.org had stolen their name. As part of a campaign organised by the leaders of the Firebird database community and commercial backer IBPhoenix, supporters of the database flooded the MozillaZine Forums with messages and sent hundreds of emails to high-profile Mozilla developers. After twenty-four intense hours, IBPhoenix called for an end to the widespread attack and initiated a more focused campaign targeting just Mitchell Baker and Asa Dotzler. To get their side of the story, MozillaZine interviewed Ann Harrison, an administrator of the Firebird database project. A few days later, mozilla.org published a branding strategy, which stated that the standalone browser and mail projects should be referred to as Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird respectively. Meanwhile, the Firebird database project asked Jonathan Walther to mediate the dispute and Ann Harrison apologised to mozilla.org for the mass emailing campaign at his request. In a further statement issued at the end of the month, the Firebird database admins said that they may be satisfied if mozilla.org only ever used the name Mozilla Firebird and revealed that they were considering legal action.

In other news, Bugzilla 2.16.3 and 2.17.4 were released.

May

May saw Daniel Glazman outline his plans for the future of Composer and the releases of Mozilla 1.3.1 and Mozilla 1.4 Beta. The Firebird naming conflict continued, as Mitchell Baker contacted the leaders of the Firebird SQL Foundation. With many media outlets claiming that the publication of the Mozilla branding guidelines meant that mozilla.org was backing down from the name, MozillaZine interviewed Christopher Blizzard to get the Mozilla project's version of events. In a bizarre twist, the supposedly impartial mediator Jonathan Walther posted a series of messages to an LWN.net article about the interview, in which he revealed that he had actually supported the Firebird database group all along and accused the Mozilla project of "criminal negligence". Shortly after, Mozilla Firebird 0.6 was released, the first version of the software to use the new name.

June

Users of Mozilla-based GNOME browsers were spoilt for choice in June when Galeon 1.3.5, Galeon 1.2.11 and Epiphany 0.7.0 were released. Later in the month, Netscape 7.1 was launched and Mozilla 1.4 came out on the very same day. The 1.4 branch then superseded the 1.0 branch as the stable option for developers.

July

Changes were afoot in July, with Mike Potter resigning as head of the Calendar project and Mostafa Hosseini taking over. The Mozilla community was shocked when mozdev was taken out for a few days by a denial of service attack. Many people came forward with offers of help and information about the possible attackers and the exploits they used.

Tuesday 15th July 2003 will go down in history as a significant date for the Mozilla project. Two events occurred on that day: the non-profit Mozilla Foundation was created to continue development and America Online laid off or reassigned the members of the Netscape browser development team. The media giant agreed to transfer hardware and intellectual property to the new foundation and promised $2 million in donations over two years. However, there was much confusion over what exactly the changes would mean, leading to MozillaZine publishing an article about the impact of the developments on Mozilla's future.

In other news, a project to build a standalone version of Mozilla Calendar, dubbed Mozilla Sunbird, launched and Epiphany 0.8.0 was released. The Mozilla Foundation began accepting donations from the public, MozillaZine completed its move to a new server and the Mozilla Marketing project launched. Releases marked the days towards the end of the month, with Mozilla 1.5 Alpha, Mozilla Thunderbird 0.1 and Mozilla Firebird 0.6.1 all coming out in quick succession.

August

As part of its new focus on the end user, the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would soon begin selling Mozilla on CD and the famous about:mozilla Easter egg was updated to reflect the events of July. Meanwhile, Mozilla 1.5 Beta was released and the new Mozilla Links newsletter started accepting subscribers.

September

On Monday 1st September, MozillaZine celebrated five years online with a special fifth anniversary section. The second milestone of Mozilla Thunderbird was released and a roadmap for the standalone mail and newsgroups client was published. Meanwhile, version 1.0 of the Epiphany browser was launched and Daniel Glazman started a company to continue developing Composer — he was promptly hired by Lindows.com to develop a Composer-based editor tool. In other news, mozdev celebrated its third birthday and the Mozilla Foundation announced that it would soon be offering end user telephone support in partnership with DecisionOne.

October

In October, Camino project lead Mike Pinkerton proposed some changes to the Camino code review process to kickstart development and Mozilla 1.4.1, the latest update from the stable 1.4 branch, was issued. On the three month anniversary of its creation, the Mozilla Foundation launched a host of new end user services, including CD sales, telephone support and a beta of a new website . In addition, Mozilla 1.5, Mozilla Firebird 0.7 and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.3 were all simultaneously released that day.

More releases followed as the month continued, with first nightly build of the standalone Composer, new releases of Epiphany, Galeon and K-Meleon, Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1 (a Mac-only update) and Mozilla 1.6 Alpha all coming out. In a further exciting development, Lindows.com announced Nvu, its new Composer-based Web publishing application.

November

The penultimate month of the year brought Bugzilla 2.16.4 and 2.17.5 and the opening up of the Mozilla Firebird CVS partition. Other developments included version 0.8 of the Windows Mozilla-based K-Meleon browser, the launch of the redesigned mozilla.org website and the Mac-only release of Mozilla 1.5.1. In addition, MozillaZine reported on some of the organisations employing ex-Netscape Mozilla contributors.

December

There were several new releases in December, including Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4, Mozilla 1.6 Beta, K-Meleon 0.8.1 and K-Meleon 0.8.2. Meanwhile, the fourth European Mozilla developers meeting was announced (it takes place in February), the BugDay quality assurance events returned and a new Camino roadmap set March as the date for the browser's 0.8 release.