- Angst about Firefox 2 lacking a reason to exist without Places,
especially vis a vis IE7, is misplaced, if you will pardon the pun.
There are tons of good reasons to do a strong Firefox 2 upgrade to 1.5
this year, well before IE7 comes out -- some of these have already been
listed in this thread by others.

- Local storage based on the http://www.whatwg.org/ proposal should be
in Firefox 2.  It wasn't planned early, but it looks like it will fit
easily, and the reward is big while Firefox can differentiate itself
against IE6.  Again, Firefox 2 has a place in the stream of releases we
will make over the next few years in order to compete and to advance the
state of the open web.  Making Firefox 2 all about Places is a mistake.

- There are other platform pieces being uplifted into Firefox 2, about
which shaver has led the planning.  I'll let him jump in here.

While we should not be over-focused on IE7, the idea of sandwiching IE7
between continuously improving Firefox releases still wins over trying
to do one "big-bang", "matching" release.

More than any competitive strategy, it is vitally important that we
continuously improve the product and the platform soon and regularly.
Right now Firefox has >50% usage on "web 2.0"-ish sites.  That market
share is pure leverage, which we should use to (a) keep improving user
and content author experiences; (b) keep the competition on *their* toes
-- which we are doing!

Avoiding all-or-nothing thinking, and big-bang mythical-man-month
last-minute-fix moves, are also Good Things (tm).  Taking the time
needed to get Places right, adjusting the Firefox 2 bill of materials,
keeping on schedule, all shows mature judgment and realism.  Huzzah to
all that -- we need more of it.

/be