K-Meleon 1.0 has been released. K-Meleon is a standalone Gecko-based browser for Windows, designed to be light, fast and highly customisable. This first non-beta release is based on the Mozilla 1.8.0.5 code base (the same as Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5) and introduces many new features, including a find bar, autocomplete in the URL bar, site icon support, new preference panels and many other improvements and bug fixes. The K-Meleon 1.0 Release Notes have more details and a full K-Meleon 1.0 changelog is also available.

According to CNET News.com, Monday will see the Mozilla Foundation and Coverity jointly announce that Coverity tools are being used to scan Mozilla source code for defects. The report quotes Coverity chief technology officer Ben Chelf, who says that the Mozilla Foundation licensed Coverity Prevent, an application that analyses software code for bugs, early last year. The deal was not announced at the time because the Mozilla Foundation wanted to ensure the Coverity product actually got results before going public.

Although no official announcement has been made yet, the Mozilla Foundation has not attempted to hide its use of Coverity. Brendan Eich first discussed using Coverity to scan Mozilla source code in January 2005 and indicated that the Mozilla Foundation had made contact with the vendor in the fourth quarter of 2004. Coverity has been mentioned in hundreds of Bugzilla bug reports and a Bugzilla keyword has existed to tag bugs found with the company's tools since last year. Henrik Gemal wrote a weblog post about Mozilla's use of Coverity in May this year.

In January, the US Department of Homeland Security gave Coverity, Stanford University and Symantec $1.24 million to search for security bugs in dozens of open-source software projects, including Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird (News.com's report on the DHS open source security initiative has more details about the three-year programme). According to scan.coverity.com, 298 Firefox security bugs have been discovered and fixed as a result of the project since March 6th. It is not immediately clear how the Mozilla Foundation's own use of Coverity relates to the DHS initiative.

Mozilla-based programs and open source software in general are becoming increasingly accepted by UK universities and colleges, according to OSS Watch, a group that provides advice and guidance on free and open source software to UK educational institutions. The OSS Watch Survey 2006 reveals that 68% of the 114 institutions who responded to the survey have deployed Mozilla Firefox or the Mozilla Application Suite on at least some of their campus desktops (the exact term used by the survey was "Mozilla/Firefox browser", which most institutions would presumably infer to mean either Firefox or the Mozilla Application Suite).

The report notes that the 77% of higher education (degree and postgraduate) institutions and 64% of further education (post-16 secondary education) institutions that have deployed Mozilla/Firefox is a significant rise on the last survey in 2003, where these figures were just 44% and 32% respectively. Despite the rise in deployment, the report does note that very few institutions have installed Mozilla/Firefox on all desktops.

Nevertheless, other Mozilla-based products also fared well. 22% of institutions have Mozilla Thunderbird on their systems and 27% use Netscape (though some may be using versions that predate the first Mozilla-based release, Netscape 6). It appears, however, that Mozilla products are generally offered as alternatives rather than the default: every single university and college surveyed have Microsoft Internet Explorer installed on their systems. Microsoft Office also registered a 100% deployment rate.

As many of you know, we utilize Oregon State University's Open Source Lab for our hosting and support. They do a fantastic job of taking care of us here, as well as a number of other great projects including phpBB, Drupal, Gentoo, mozdev, the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation, and many others. The OSL is kicking off their 2006 Rackathon today to raise money in support of their efforts to provide great hosting support to the Open Source community. In lieu of our traditional mozillaZine donation drive, we ask that you donate directly to the Open Source Lab, which will help increase the capacity of OSL to not only help us here at mozillaZine, but all the other great projects hosted at the OSL.

NewsForge has just published an interview with Mike Schroepfer, the Mozilla Corporation's vice-president of engineering. Mike spoke to NewsForge's Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2006 conference in Portland, Oregon (north-western United States) last week. In the discussion, Mike talks about cooperation with Linux distributors that package Mozilla Firefox, security flaws, future JavaScript developments and the plans for Firefox 2.0 and 3.0.

In addition to the textual portion of the interview, NewsForge has also published a video of Mike answering some questions. Running to almost four minutes, the audio-visual segment of the discussion covers upcoming features in Firefox 2.0, user adoption of the open-source browser and future challenges. Mike also provides more details about the JavaScript upgrades. The video is in XviD format and weighs in at 2.09MB.

Blake Ross writes: "In honor of the 200 million milestone, we're pleased to announce The Fox Tales, which tells the stories of other famous underdogs who were challenged, ridiculed and doubted and invites you to contribute to our own underdog story — the Firefox story.

"Last time we gave away 50 custom-made gold coins to commemorate the milestone. This time we're giving away 25 limited edition Firefox watches (courtesy of branders.com) to the best and most unusual stories of spreading Firefox. We'll also be giving away memorabilia from our fellow underdogs, such as original Beatles concert tickets (from back when, you know, 'guitar music is on the way out'), as well as gear from the Mozilla Store.

"Special thanks to HostMySite.com for graciously donating a dedicated server to power the site."

Update: Blake asked us to also note the contribution of "Designs.pro, a division of CyberPlanet, Ltd., for their extraordinary assistance in launching the site."

On Monday, the Mozilla Firefox download counter crossed over the 200 million download threshold. Spread Firefox has a post about the Firefox 200 million download milestone with a celebratory graphic.

An update to SeaMonkey has been released to fix the Windows Media Player plugin issue introduced in SeaMonkey 1.0.3. Like Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6, SeaMonkey 1.0.4 contains just a single bug fix to resolve this regression accidentally introduced in the previous version. See our article on the release of Firefox 1.5.0.6 for more details about the regression, its cause and the fix.

As usual, builds are available from the SeaMonkey Releases page and more information can be found in the SeaMonkey 1.0.4 Release Notes.

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 is now available for download. Hot on the heels of last week's Firefox 1.5.0.5 release, this update fixes a Windows Media Player plugin regression introduced in version 1.5.0.5.

Firefox 1.5.0.5 included a fix for bug 181860, which unintentionally blocked the Microsoft Media Services (MMS) protocol used by some Windows Media content. This regression was reported as bug 346167 after the release of 1.5.0.5 and led to today's rapid release of 1.5.0.6. We understand that there are no other major changes in Firefox 1.5.0.6 and no new security bugs have been fixed.

According to the Mozilla Developer News weblog post about Firefox 1.5.0.6, users will be offered the upgrade through the Firefox software update system over the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. However, the impatient can download the release now from the Mozilla Firefox product page. See the Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 Release Notes for more information.

The Mozilla Corporation and RealNetworks have entered into a multi-year agreement under which RealNetworks will distribute Mozilla Firefox with its products. During the installation of RealPlayer, users will be given the option to also install Firefox. In the near future, Firefox will also be an installation option with Real's Rhapsody music download service and RealArcade gaming platform. The public relations material issued by RealNetworks and the Mozilla Corporation does not say how much, if any, money changed hands as part of the arrangement.

In a related deal, RealNetworks has also extended its existing two-year agreement with Google and will continue offering the Google Toolbar with RealPlayer. Like Firefox, Google's browser add-on will also soon be distributed with Rhapsody and RealArcade.

An early pioneer of Internet audio and video, RealNetworks claims that two million copies of its software are downloaded every day. However, the company has come into controversy in the past for its business practices. Critics have accused the firm of overloading its products with advertising and bundled software and invading the privacy of users. Some customers have complained that the company makes the free version of RealPlayer too hard to find in comparison to the non-free premium edition and that the software takes over their systems once installed, grabbing file associations and running constantly in the background. While many now agree that the practices of RealNetworks are not as dubious as they once were, the company still has a very negative image in some quarters of the Internet.

For this reason, many of the users at Slashdot have posted comments of protest to the popular geek site's article about the Mozilla-RealNetworks partnership, with some predicting that it will harm the reputation of Firefox and accusing the Mozilla Corporation of selling out.

Version 1.0.3 of SeaMonkey, the community-driven replacement for the Mozilla Application Suite, is now available for download. This release includes security and stability improvements and fixes a bug introduced in SeaMonkey 1.0.2 that sometimes stopped the Location Bar from working when switching tabs. In terms of some of the issues addressed, this update can be considered to be equivalent to Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.5.

Various builds are available from the SeaMonkey Releases page. Refer to the SeaMonkey 1.0.3 Release Notes for more information and consult the SeaMonkey 1.0.3 section of the known security vulnerabilities page for details of the security fixes in this release.

Rachel Werner writes: "Mozilla is now recruiting for the Firefox User Panel, which is an initiative to learn more about how end-users interact with the Web. Firefox User Panel members will complete a series of short online surveys on a variety of Web-related topics, with the aggregate results made available to the Mozilla community.

"To create a diverse user panel, Mozilla is looking to reach people from all walks of life and skill sets — from students to retirees, novice users to power users, Firefox users but also people who use Internet Explorer or other browsers."