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Firefox smashes funding target

Published: 22 Oct 2004 17:35 BST

Firefox hoped to raise enough money from donations to pay for an ad in The New York Times. Now it has more than enough.

The campaign started on Tuesday with the goal of getting 2,500 people to donate $30 or more to the marketing fund within ten days, with the aim of placing a full page ad in The New York Times. Any leftover money would be used fund other Mozilla projects.

Bart Decrem, the marketing contact for the Mozilla Foundation, told ZDNet UK on Friday that when he had last checked the organisation had already raised more than $100,000 -- which Dacrem says would be enough to pay for a couple of Firefox ads in The New York Times.

"We've definitely funded the ad and then some," said Decrem. "It's so impressive -- the excitement around this, and the numbers. People are coming out of nowhere to join in."

The SpreadFirefox campaign still has seven days of the original campaign to go.

The full page ad will debut around the launch of Firefox 1.0 on 9 November. Each supporter will get their name in the advert itself -- with Community Champion status being awarded to anyone who signs up 10 or more extra names.

Already available in a preview version, the Firefox browser passed the five million download mark on Monday, and smashed its initial download goal of one million downloads four weeks ago.

At the time of writing, Firefox had an 95 percent approval rating from ZDNet UK readers. You can download it and rate it yourself here.