We’re pleased to announce that we have appointed Gary Kovacs as our new CEO. His first day will be November 8th.

Gary’s appointment as CEO comes as part of a planned leadership transition that we announced earlier this year.

For more information on Gary’s appointment, please see the following posts:

Welcome Gary Kovacs by Mitchell Baker

Introducing Gary by John Lilly

In November we will schedule a series of events around the world for community and others to have an opportunity to meet and talk with Gary.

Tomorrow at 10am PT we will be hosting a community Q&A with Mitchell Baker to talk about Gary’s appointment.  More details at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Ask_Mitchell

Background on Gary Kovacs

Gary Kovacs is the CEO of Mozilla Corporation with the responsibility for leading the overall direction of the organization and the Firefox Web browser.

Prior to joining Mozilla, Gary held senior leadership roles as Senior VP of Markets, Solutions & Products at Sybase (through its acquisition by SAP earlier this year), as General Manager and VP of Mobile & Devices at Adobe and as VP of Product Marketing at Macromedia (through its acquisition by Adobe).

Previously, he led the successful creation and growth of Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.

Prior to Zi Corporation, Gary spent 10 years at IBM in leadership positions in product management, sales, marketing and operations within the global software division.

He holds a bachelor of commerce and an MBA with distinction, from the  University of Calgary.

Once Gary officially starts in November he’ll be reachable at gkovacs@mozilla.com and on Twitter @mozillaGary

Today, Mitchell Baker was announced as the recipient of Frost & Sullivan’s 2010 Growth, Innovation and Leadership Award. Mitchell will be honored for her achievements at the annual GIL 2010 event in Silicon Valley on September 13, 2010.

The award honor was announced in a press release issued by Frost & Sullivan, excerpt below:

“Profiled in TIME Magazine among their top 100 Scientists and Thinkers, Mitchell Baker is the visionary behind the Mozilla Project and is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products.

Serving as general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999, Baker shaped the license under which Netscape’s source code was released. In 2003, she became president and founder of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. As Chairperson of Mozilla, Baker continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents.”

Please join in congratulating Mitchell on this achievement!

We are excited to announce that Mozilla won the American Business Awards Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year (with less than 2,500 employees) in the software category!

More than 2,700 entries from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration in more than 40 categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year and Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year.

We are so pleased to accept this award on behalf of the always innovative Mozilla Community!

Firefox 3.6 has been nominated for the People’s Choice Stevie Awards as the Favorite New Product (Software – New Version). Voting ends June 4^th. You can go here to cast your vote in one of two ways:

• Input the special Firefox 3.6 short code: M696H
• Under the Award Categories menu select “Favorite Software – New Version” and then click “Firefox 3.6”

After you vote, please complete the registration form with your name, e-mail address and telephone number. The Stevie Awards has a strict privacy policy and will not share your information.

Thanks to the amazing Mozilla community support, Firefox 3 won the People’s Choice Stevie Award in 2009. Please vote and help spread the word so we can try to win again in 2010!

Today, the Bugzilla Project released Bugzilla 3.6, which brings some innovative new enhancements for Bugzilla over previous versions – most notably Extensions. Bugzilla Extensions allow developers to write their own customizable extensions similar to Firefox Add-ons, enabling modifications to Bugzilla’s behavior and user interface.

Other new features include:

• General usability improvements
• Improved Quicksearch
• Simple “browse” interface
• SUCExec support
• Ability to send attachments by email
• Migration from other bug trackers

For complete details on all the new features, check out the Release Notes.

Last night the official Spread Firefox download counter reached one billion! That’s one billion times over the last five years that users have chosen a better Web experience.

This is a monumental event – Firefox has come a long way since its debut in November 2004, thanks to the amazing Firefox community. Volunteers from all over the world contribute to the coding, testing and spreading of Firefox to communities across the globe. Firefox 3.5 shipped in 75 languages – more than any other browser.

On Monday, www.onebillionplusyou.com will go live and act as a hub of information concerning the billionth download of Firefox. So stay tuned!