There has been lots of controversy over the last days when a story of the release of Firefox 3 Beta 1 made it on Digg which lead to redirection of users coming from Digg to a page explaining why this was not true and not a good idea to make public. Three reasons were mentioned in this article.
The version that was uploaded to the public ftp was not the release version because it was not thoroughly tested, not all tests that are required for a beta test had been completed and finally because the build was not properly mirrored yet.
It is however still possible to download the version that had been uploaded and if you are keen on testing Firefox you should go ahead and try it out. The link is provided in the article of the Firefox developers.
You could be asking why they are uploading unfinished versions on a public ftp. The response to that was that they would upload every version on a public ftp. They should probably rethink this approach if they are unhappy with websites linking to those releases early.
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Well, why would it be a good idea to change the whole uploading each version approach. Thats half the point of being an open source project. If it isn’t free to download at each stage, whos going to be writing code for it, apart from the few in house staff.
Its not that they don’t want people downloading it. They encourage that for testing purposes, its just that they don’t want people downloading it now, because theres been hype built up, just to have to redownload it at some other point for the actual beta release. (and then again when it is *actually* a release version).