Firefox 3 out of beta by summer

Release Candidate 1 was just launched. This is the level after Beta and before full launch. It's anticipated that this version will be the final product that goes public without further modifications. We should have complete launch within a month.

Bradley Baker May 19 2008 | 01:11PM #

@Bradley, is the Release Candidate (thanks for passing along the judgment alert, Bradley Tinney) enough to close your prediction, or are you looking for Firefox 3 to be announced at the top-level page?

Eric Hill May 19 2008 | 04:05PM #

I would say that it's not enough to close it.

When I wrote the prediction suggestion I wasn't aware of this level between beta and full release. My understanding is that this is basically Mozilla saying "We THINK this is the final version, but just in case, bang on it a bit. If there are any showstoppers we'll try to get them fixed up. Once you've banged on it for a couple of weeks we'll declare it done and release exactly this." The idea is that, absent something really unexpected, the development is done and people can safely build add-ons without worrying about a change destroying their work. This is what will be released, but that release won't happen for another 2-3 weeks.

It should still be very safe money paying off well before June 21st.

That said, technically this is an official non-beta release and fulfills the definition in the prediction text. I'd still go with trying to interpret the final sentence of the prediction and say that this isn't an official product release, and therefore does not yet close the prediction (despite the fact that I've bet a bunch on this closing positively and certainly wouldn't mind getting the payout now rather than 3 weeks from now :) ).

Bradley Baker May 20 2008 | 03:07AM #

I don't think they will release the product until the major plug-ins are out of beta and ready for primetime which at this point I'm betting will not happen by June 21st.

Marc Williams May 23 2008 | 10:43PM #

OK, Bradley, now you know how hard this can be sometimes. ;)

Eric Hill May 24 2008 | 02:17AM #

From http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/faq

When is Download Day?
Download Day will coincide with the general availability of Firefox 3. The clock will start ticking when Firefox 3 goes out the door! We don’t have a definitive date for Firefox 3 yet, but it should be in June.

So the question is ... will it be before June 21st?

David Kuan May 29 2008 | 01:52PM #

I've been so gun shy lately with prediction events taking longer than I would have expected, I can't help wonder if @Marc is right.

Eric Hill May 29 2008 | 03:51PM #

Mozilla's announced it's definitely coming out in June. Only question is when.

Given the prediction was set 4 months out with 2 betas plus an RC between then and now, I'd say we're doing just fine.

Who WAS the brilliant mind who set the date so well? :)

Bradley Baker May 29 2008 | 06:07PM #

RC2 was released yesterday, June 4. One would think the final release would be imminent.

Eric Hill Jun 05 2008 | 08:04PM #

Feature preview of Firefox 3:

http://people.mozilla.com/~beltzner/overview-of-firefox3.swf

He says "a couple of weeks in June" being posted on June 6. It's going to be really close for that June 21st deadline.

Bradley Tinney Jun 08 2008 | 10:55PM #

It is out of beta right now!
My Ubuntu just loaded the Firefox 3.0

Frantisek malina Jun 10 2008 | 02:05PM #

@Franktisek, I believe what you got was Firefox 3.0 RC2

David Kuan Jun 10 2008 | 03:03PM #

@Bradley T, I would think the video (for feature preview of Firefox 3) was made days prior to the posting on June 6.

Excerpt from http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2478

"During the team’s weekly conference call today, Mozilla lead developer and phenomenologist Mike Beltzner said the RC2 code will freeze on Wednesday, May 28th, be sent out to build on May 29th and likely made available during the first week of June.

Firefox 3 is currently scheduled to ship during the second week of June. Although Beltzner acknowledged that cleaning up the remaining bugs will delay the final ship date by five days, he claimed that other groups within Mozilla gave his team a ”green light” to ship the final code in the second week of June anyway so there is little material impact on the web brower’s actual ship date."

David Kuan Jun 10 2008 | 03:38PM #

RC3 was just released. Only changes were to the OS X version.

Bradley Baker Jun 11 2008 | 02:49PM #

Looks like official release is imminent before June 21st. Easy money now.

David Kuan Jun 11 2008 | 04:47PM #

Mozilla announced today that the date is June 17 assuming nothing goes wrong. This seems like a done deal, frankly.

Eric Hill Jun 12 2008 | 03:25AM #

Thunderdome