Mozilla CTO Sees an Upside to the Browser Wars - Page 2

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Overall though, while some have argued that Google Chrome might be a competitive threat to Mozilla, Eich is positive on the new entrant.

"It's great that it's open source and it's great to have another competitive browser out there, it just ups the ante in the space, it all helps to roll the Web forward," Eich commented.

Here comes Firefox 4

On the topic of rolling the Web forward, Mozilla has been at work on its Mozilla 2 platform (currently Firefox is based on the Mozilla 1.9.x platform). Mozilla 2 will be a break from the current development line of Firefox, which is why Eich views the Mozilla 2 effort currently as more of a research and development initiative.

"Almost anything on the Web has to released early and often, you can't have these big bang integrations the Windows Vistas, those tend to be train wrecks and we don't have any such plans for Mozilla 2," Eich said. "So it's a grab bag that I spawned two years ago."

Among the items included in the Mozilla 2 efforts are JavaScript virtual machine enhancements, static analysis for re-writing Mozilla code, doing various safety checks and cleaning up APIs. Mozilla is not waiting around for Mozilla 2 to be fully baked they're instead now releasing Firefox at a faster rate.

"We're working on Firefox 3.1 now and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a Firefox 3.2, other browsers seems to be releasing often Safari certainly is," Eich said. "Whatever the numbers are the pace of browser releases has definitely picked up and that means that there will probably be a Mozilla 2 and Firefox 4, but we'll keep rolling with what we can as soon as we can."