The campaign started two weeks ago with the goal of getting 2,500 people to donate $30 or more to the marketing fund within 10 days, with the aim of placing a full-page ad in The New York Times.
Within three days, it had raised $100,000--enough to pay for at least one ad--and the campaign has now closed with a quarter of a million dollars in the kitty. The additional money will be used for other launch-related expenses, including paying the Mozilla Foundation's public-relations company, according to the Spread Firefox Web site.
David Hallowell, a spokesman for Mozilla, said the campaign's achievement indicates an enthusiastic interest in Firefox.
"The success of the donation campaign shows the passion that's out there for Firefox," he said. "It's a product the open-source community can be truly proud of, and they're willing to dig deep in their pockets to spread the word."
Following the early success of Firefox, Mozilla has now raised the stakes on its next target. It initially aimed for 10 million downloads of Firefox 1.0 within 100 days but has now slashed the time to 10 days, according to Hallowell.
"The original target of 10 million downloads in 100 days is too easy, and I've got no doubt that we can surpass that," Hallowell said.
The preview release of Firefox has already attracted a lot of interest. It beat its initial goal of 1 million downloads within six days and passed the 5 million download mark two weeks ago. Since then, it has passed the 7 million download mark.
Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.
