Other than a soon-to-be-released Thunderbird 1.0.1, there hasn't been a lot going on in terms of product updates. But there's been a lot going on behind the scenes with regards to the future of Firefox and the Mozilla Suite.
Death to SeaMonkey
A point of contention within the group of developers who work on Mozilla products is the value of the Mozilla Application Suite (SeaMonkey) in a Firefox world. As asserted by Neil Deakin, Firefox should be the focus of the Mozilla Foundation and that official support to further the Mozilla Suite should be stopped. He goes as far suggesting to start calling Firefox Mozilla 1.8 (the would-be next version of Mozilla Suite) to avoid confusion among the users.
While Firefox won't be renamed, Mozilla has made it official that Mozilla 1.7 will be the last official release backed by the Foundation, a logical - if overdue - response to their announcment made in 2003 that their focus would shift from SeaMonkey to Firefox. Included in the link is a proposition by people still interested in developing the Suite on their own. It will be supported in spirit by the Foundation, but that's about it.
The Future of Firefox
The other area of concern comes from one of Firefox's code reviewers, Mike Connor. He is concerned about the lack of progress being made on Firefox checkins. As written in his article, there are 6 people responsible for reviewing bug fixes for Firefox and checking in (i.e. - approving the changes and making them part of the program) the patches. However, due to various other commitments, he seems to be the only one, and he's concerned about Firefox making their deadlines for version 1.1, 1.5, and 2.0.
In response, chief Firefox developer Ben Goodger has written a detailed blog entry that says he has restructured the review process for Firefox bug submittals. There are new people who have been added to the reviewal team. He is intent on keeping Firefox headed forward and is confident that there will be timely 1.1, 1.5, and 2.0 releases of Firefox. He points to the detailed Firefox roadmap to show what's in store for those releases. He doesn't give target release dates, though, instead preferring that the code be released when deemed stable.
My Take...
While I haven't personally contributed any code to either product, I think Neil's point is well made and I totally agree with the Foundation's decision to pull the plug on the Suite. Until I dug through various blogs and translated code name after code name, I was confused about the relationship between Firefox and the Suite. I can understand his point about changing the name to Mozilla 1.8, but I don't ever see that happening. They've spent way too much time building an identity with Firefox... that name will stay.
I also agree with Mike (not just because of his name...). The guys who have been the chief reviewers all hold "real" jobs and/or go to school, so they aren't able to focus a lot of their time on furthering Firefox. Ben's decision to inject some new blood into the mix can only help.
So the future still looks bright in the land of the lizard. I know this is a long post, but hopefully it'll keep you from running from blog to blog to keep up with the goings-on in the Mozilla world. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the 1.1 release. It's is supposed to feature a revamped Gecko (rendering engine) that promises to make for an even faster browsing experience.