SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey is a free, open source, and cross-platform Internet suite that is the continuation of the former Mozilla Application Suite. SeaMonkey is community-driven, in contrast to the Mozilla suite, whose stable 1.7 branch remains governed by the Mozilla Foundation. The new project-leading group is the SeaMonkey Council.

History

On March 10, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced that they would not release any further official versions of the suite beyond 1.7.x, since they are now focused on the standalone applications Firefox and Thunderbird. However, the foundation emphasized that they would still provide infrastructure for community members who wished to continue development. In effect, this means that the suite will still continue to be developed, but now by the SeaMonkey Council instead of the Mozilla Foundation. SeaMonkey 1.0 was released on January 30, 2006.

Release history

Parts of this table are based on the release notes of SeaMonkey and the roadmap.

Old Version	Current Version	Future Version

Branch	Version	Release date	Significant changes
1.8	1.0 Alpha	September 15 2005
	1.0 Beta	December 19 2005
	1.0	January 30 2006	Official Version 1.0 release.
	1.0.1	April 13 2006	Security updates and native support for Intel-based Macintosh computers, via Universal Binary.
	1.0.2	June 1 2006	Stability improvement and security fixes.
1.8.1	1.1 Alpha	2006	Major feature work
1.9/Trunk	1.5 Alpha	2007	Major backend changes (using XULRunner)

Naming

To avoid confusing organizations that still want to use the original Mozilla Suite, the new product needed a new name. After initial speculation by members of the community, a July 2, 2005 announcement confirmed that SeaMonkey would officially became the name of the Internet suite superseding the Mozilla Suite.

"Seamonkey" was formerly used by the Mozilla Foundation as the code name of the Mozilla Suite itself. The SeaMonkey Council is in the process of trademarking the name, with help from the Mozilla Foundation. It will also use a separate numbering scheme, with the first release being called SeaMonkey 1.0. Despite having a different name and version number, SeaMonkey 1.0 is based on the same code as Mozilla 1.8.

The choice of "SeaMonkey" as the official name of the follow-up project has drawn criticism from some long-time users and testers of the Mozilla Suite, as many would have preferred the continued use of the name "Mozilla" or "Mozilla Suite". However, the Mozilla Foundation has stated that the name change was necessary in order to differentiate the new independent project from official projects and products of the foundation.

People

The SeaMonkey Council, which is the team responsible for project and release management, currently consists of the following people:

Christian Biesinger
Robert Kaiser
Ian Neal
Neil Rashbrook
Christopher Thomas

References

Mozilla Foundation (March 10, 2005). Mozilla Application Suite - Transition Plan. Retrieved March 10, 2005.
MozillaZine (June 6, 2005). Community Mozilla Application Suite Project Not Renamed Yet. Retrieved June 6, 2005.
Adot's Notblog (June 6, 2005). It's not a renaming and it's not official. Retrieved June 20, 2005.
SeaMonkey Council (July 2, 2005). SeaMonkey Project Continues Internet Suite. Retrieved July 3, 2005.

External links

Mozilla | Internet suites | Free web browsers | Gopher Clients