Well, it looks like Mozilla have got their record…

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day — an impressive feat indeed!

Please be patient while the good people of Guinness review our World Record attempt. This might take a few days so please check back here. And, a huge thanks for all of your support!

Looking on the map; France, Spain and the UK managed around 300,000 downloads each, Germany nearly 700,000, China came in with just 175k somewhat surprisingly and Russia even less at 110k (more copies were downloaded from Holland). Amazingly Iran recorded 260,000 (what gives there then? Anyone got any clues?) along with Italy at a similar figure and the USA dwarfed all others with a massive total of over 2.5million.

I guess the counts are indicative rather than completely accurate but it’s an interesting map and think it’s pretty awesome that more than 8million copies of Firefox 3 got delivered, for free, in just 24hrs. Congratulation to Mozilla and to the Open Source community. Now we should all go and get hammered on Wine which, after approx. 15 years, was finally released as a 1.0 product on the 17th June.

PS - The Mozilla counter is still counting BTW so I wonder how long before it reaches 10m? Tomorrow morning perhaps…

[Update: Yep. It's 06:18 here in the UK and their counter is already over 10m by a hundred thousand or so]

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As most of you will no by now, Firefox 3 is very close to making it’s full release. Next Tuesday in fact.

If you visit the link above, or click the badge in the left hand column, you can “pledge” to download it on the day. The Pledge Reads:

I pledge to get Firefox 3 during Download Day to set the Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours.

I’ve been using FF3 for sometime now and it’s pretty bloody good. Faster, uses less memory and (apart from the Beta 5 release that used to just disappear at the most inconvenient times!) rock solid too! It has some really neat new features such as the “intelligent” address bar, the bookmark start, tagged bookmarks and many more. [Update: I caught this newspick on Groklaw. Here's a Field Guide to FF3 and explanations of many of the new features]

Go on, make the 17th June the biggest download day ever. We’ll be promoting it to visitors on our stand at the Surrey Expo in Camberley.

PS: One thing I noticed on the map of pledges is that France is ahead of the UK by over 10,000 pleadges! Come on England, we might not be in the Euro 2008 Football tournament, but surely we can beat the French at getting Firefox???

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Announced yesterday, The Mozilla Foundation has launched a new subsidiary called Mozilla Messaging. It will focus on the Internet Massaging and Communications space.

Here’s a FAQ with some useful information. I was particularly interested to see who is on the board. Marten Mickos (of MySQL) is a pretty “big” name…

This is a very attractive little snippet:

# In some ways we’re re-launching Thunderbird — it’s a project that has huge latent potential, and we’re there to catalyze community driven progress in the Internet communications space. The world of electronic communications is buzzing, with older technologies like email still crucial to our online experience, but complemented by other technologies like instant messaging, social networking, voice over IP, and mobile devices.

I am a user of Thunderbird and the Lightning extension (which will be rolled into TB-3) and am very happy with it’s performance and feature set. Reading the quote above, adding IM and VOIP would really make it a killer desktop app.

Oh yes. I am not one of those who believe everything is going to be “web based” applications either. Call me old fashioned if you want but I still like proper “desktop” applications and local storage. I have a gmail account, but I access it using IMAP and Thunderbird. I rarely use web based email, it just doesn’t “feel right” somehow…

Good luck to Mozilla Messaging. I follow the mailing lists with interest and will help with any input that I can give.

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Glyn Moody’s blog is a source - no a font - no a fountain - of information and commentary regarding all things Open (& Source).

In the last day or so he’s posted three articles (among several others) that have really grabbed my attention:

First this one: I would not have believed it had I not gone to Tesco’s web site and verified it myself.

Tesco may not be a name that means much outside the UK, but the fact that this huge retailer is selling GNU/Linux-based systems - some for as little as £140 (without a screen) - is pretty significant.

PRETTY SIGNIFICANT? It’s nothing short of amazing in my book. I can understand how Dell and Lenovo can do it. But Tesco? They must have a very strong conviction in Linux to sell it to what I imagine to be their “typical” customer. I notice they are supplying the LTS (Long Term Support) version of Ubuntu (6.06) so I wonder if they have a support arrangement directly with Canonical? Does anyone know anything more about this?

Then this on the EU vs. Microsoft case:

I worry that there’s some wiggle room here - just what exactly is “the open source business model”? - but given the soundness of its thrashing, maybe Microsoft really has given up fighting the EU. Let’s hope.

I love a damn good thrashing don’t you? (Bit of an English Public School joke in there somewhere). I tried to get the detail on this yesterday via Groklaw but PJ’s analysis seemed a little dour. But maybe that’s just because of the stupid IP/Patenting laws in the USA.

And then to cap it all this from Mozilla:

It’s also doing rather well on just about every other metric, as Mitchell’s post “Beyond Sustainability” explains. Recommended reading.

Which I hadn’t seen. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Mitchell’s post is indeed great reading. Mozilla is a true powerhouse in the Open Source ecosystem, and seems for the most part, to be successfully juggling the twin balls of making money and keeping a strong public community behind it. Some of the statistics are incredible… Go and have a read.

And stick Glyn’s blog on your RSS feed reader while you’re there.

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