It looks like Mozilla will abandon one major project, the Mozilla Suite. The current version is 1.7. Mozilla Suite is an application that contains a web-browser, advanced e-mail and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and HTML editor. I use two of Mozilla’s products, the popular Firefox browser and the Thunderbird email client.
One thing that prevented me from getting the Suite was it reminded me of the browser wars of late 90’s between Microsoft and Netscape. The browser suites of the late 90’s were big and very obtrusive to personal computing. It just took over everything on my computer. I hated that.
When I was introduced to Mozilla, I just wanted the Firefox browser. Then, I said I can probably use Thunderbird. I tested it and I liked it, and I stuck with it. I never wanted anything else. That’s the reason why I didnt get Mozilla Suite.
I think most people fall in my category. Instead of wanting the whole package, I like the “a la carte” approach. I just pick the programs I want on my computer. I think Mozilla is smart to recognize the shift in people’s preferences. Firefox has been a huge sucess, but the Mozilla Suite hasn’t really taken off on the coattails of Firefox. I think development efforts are better served to products in demand.