In January of 1998, Netscape — in a last-ditch effort to retaliate against Microsoft’s domination of the browser market with its Internet Explorer browser — took to the strategy of open sourcing the source code for their flagship product, Netscape Navigator. And so the Mozilla Project was born, which has since brought the world the Firefox web browser, and the Thunderbird email client (as well a handful of other things).

And only now, at the end of December 2009, Firefox 3.5 — the latest release of the software open sourced twelve years ago — has at long last eked out ahead of any single version of rival Internet Explorer.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Version Market Share

It’s been a long road, Mozilla; congratulations on this hard-earned milestone.