Firefox 13 due out by Mid 2012 as Mozilla continues to ramp up development

Firefox has been on a mission in recent times, bringing us from Firefox 4 to Firefox 6 in quick succession and it would appear Firefox wants to more than double the version number within the next 9 months. As you may have already seen we are officially at version 6 but the Firefox 7 Beta is out and the Firefox 8 Aurora is out as well. Since Firefox 4 Mozilla has overhauled its whole development process taking a more “Chromesque” style of releasing lots of new versions every year instead of only about one version a year like before.

“Mission drives Mozilla. People sometimes forget that we’re a non-profit, that our only job is to make the Web a better place. Rapid release advances our mission in important ways. We get features and improvements to users faster. We get new APIs and standards out to web developers faster. We are delivering on the promise of the web at web speed. The open web is the most amazing, universal communication and distribution platform ever built. To win, the web needs to be agile and responsive. To help it, we need to be agile and responsive, too. That’s why rapid release matters.”
Explained director of Firefox Engineering Johnathan Nightingale.

The official launch plan looks something like this:

Firefox 7 – September 2011
Firefox 8 – November 2011
Firefox 9 – December 2011
Firefox 10 – January 2012
Firefox 11 – March 2012
Firefox 12 – April 2012
Firefox 13 – June 2012

By the look of the launch plan if these trends are to continue could we possibly see a Firefox 20 within 18 months?

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