Mozila Firefox download
Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx[3] and popularly abbreviated FF,[4] started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite. Firefox has replaced the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. However, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD,[5] OS/2, Solaris, SkyOS, BeOS and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.[6] Firefox's source code is freely available under the terms of the Mozilla tri-license as free and open source software. The current stable release of Firefox is version 2.0.0.3, released on March 20, 2007.[7] Firefox uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong cryptography when using the HTTPS protocol.[26] It uses a sandbox security model[27] and the developers use a "bug bounty" scheme, for finding fixes for some security[28] and feature additions. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.[29] Because Firefox has fewer and less severe publicly known unpatched security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.[30][31][32][33] The Washington Post reports that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.[34] A 2006 Symantec study showed that Firefox had surpassed other browsers, including Internet Explorer, in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September; these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in IE and other browsers.[35] Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities, as counted by security researchers.[36] As of April 17, 2007, Firefox 2 has three security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "not critical" by Secunia.[37] Internet Explorer has seven security vulnerabilities unpatched, the most severe of which was rated "moderately critical" by Secunia.[38] (Note that the number of "Secunia Advisories" listed for each doesn't reflect on the actual number of vulnerabilities reported for each. Advisory SA23282 for Mozilla Firefox 2.0.x contains multiple vulnerabilities.) Firefox is free/open source software, and is tri-licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), GNU General Public License (GPL), and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). These licenses permit anyone to view, modify and/or redistribute the source code, and several publicly released applications have been built on it; for example, Netscape, Flock and Songbird make use of code from Firefox. The official end-user builds of Firefox distributed from mozilla.com are licensed under the Mozilla EULA.[2] Several elements do not fall under the scope of the tri-license and have their use restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name and artwork, and the proprietary Talkback crash reporter. Because of this and the clickwrap agreement included in the Windows version, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) consider these builds proprietary software.[39] In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL,[40] which the FSF criticizes for being weak copyleft; the license permits, in limited ways, proprietary derivative works. Additionally, code under the MPL cannot legally be linked with code under the GPL or the LGPL.[41][42] To address these concerns, Mozilla re-licensed Firefox under the tri-license scheme of MPL, GPL, and LGPL. Since the re-licensing, developers have been free to choose the license under which they will receive the code, to suit their intended use: GPL or LGPL linking and derivative works when one of those licenses is chosen, or MPL use (including the possibility of proprietary derivative works) if they choose the MPL.[40] The name "Mozilla Firefox" is a registered trademark; along with the official Firefox logo, it may only be used under certain terms and conditions. Anyone may redistribute the official binaries in unmodified form and use the Firefox name and branding for such distribution, but restrictions are placed on distributions which modify the underlying source code.[43] To allow distributions of the code without using the official branding, the Firefox source code contains a "branding switch". This switch allows the code to be compiled without the official logo and name, for example to produce a derivative work unencumbered by restrictions on the Firefox trademark. In the unbranded compilation the trademarked logo and name are replaced with a freely distributable generic globe logo and the name of the release series from which the modified version was derived. The name "Deer Park" is used for derivatives of Firefox 1.5 and "Bon Echo" for derivatives of Firefox 2.0. Outside of certain exceptions made for "community editions", distributing modified versions of Firefox under the "Firefox" name requires explicit approval from Mozilla for the changes made to the underlying code, and requires the use of all of the official branding. For example, it is not permissible to use the name "Firefox" without also using the official logo. The Debian project notably fell afoul of this, by using the name "Mozilla Firefox" but not the official logo, in a modified distribution (because of restrictions on its use, the Debian Free Software Guidelines did not permit Debian to use the logo). Although Debian claimed to have reached a prior agreement which would have allowed this, they were told in 2006 by a representative of the Mozilla Foundation that this was not acceptable, and asked to either comply with the published trademark guidelines or cease using the "Firefox" name in their distribution.[44] Ultimately, Debian switched to branding their modified version of Firefox as Iceweaselabout link: