Is Mozilla into vaporware now (Firefox 3)??!!

I saw the Reuters headline "Mozilla says Firefox 3 ready for prime-time" and immediately started up my copy of Firefox (I have IE as my main browser and have Safari as well), expecting it to automatically download the new version the same way Firefox always does with updates. I waited, but nothing happened. I waited some more and nothing happened. I directly visited the Mozilla/Firefox web site, but all I see is the download button for Firefox 2. So, I go back and read the article a little more carefully and it turns out that Firefox 3 is only available for pre-release. We may get a true release of Firefox 3 in June. In short, Firefox 3 is clearly not ready for prime-time.

Reading the article:

The program's creators told Reuters on Thursday that the privately-held company's trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development.

...

Engineers at Mozilla are still putting the finishing touches on the software and hope to release the final version of Firefox 3 by the end of June...

In the old days they had a word for this: vaporware. Sure, the software does actually exist in some form, but a false claim is being made about what is available for general use right now.

Now to be fair, it is possible that the Firefox team gave Reuters the absolute straight facts and that it was journalistic "license" that lead to the misleading title and lead paragraph:

A new version of Mozilla's popular Firefox Web browser is ready for download with improved security and memory use as the tiny company takes a stab at Microsoft Corp's dominant Internet Explorer.

To be clear, there is no Firefox 3 release ready for prime-time available at this point.

To be fair to Reuters, they are a mainstream media news wire with little traditional expertise in the nuances of the software industry, so it was up to the Firefox team to have been more clear about what was really available today.

-- Jack Krupansky