• dubois
  • The Old Codger
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  • From: Austin, Texas
  • Registered: 2010-09-03
  • Posts: 2,193

Topic: Firefox extended support will mitigate rapid release challenges

Ryan Paul in a recent ars technica article said

Mozilla has announced plans to offer an annual Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox for enterprises and other adopters that don't want to keep up with the browser's new rapid release cycle. Each ESR will receive regular security patches, but will not be updated with new functionality until the next ESR becomes available.

I think this is something that they have needed to do for some time -- a business model will not only simplify the ITs job by releasing them from constantly updating the companies browsers but help solidify Mozilla's position in the marketplace by giving them the appearance of stability.  Paul goes on to say

Mozilla had to come up with an alternate update model in order to accommodate the immediate needs of enterprise Firefox users. The ESR concept addresses the testing and certification problem by giving large-scale Firefox adopters a more stable target. They get a version that will remain consistent for a whole year, but will still get back-ported security updates. The model is similar to that of Ubuntu's long-term support releases, which Canonical issues every two years with a five-year support guarantee.

Firefox 10, which is scheduled for release at the end of January, will be the first version with ESR status. A new ESR will be issued every single year, with each individual ESR receiving official support until the next ESR is made available, plus a twelve-week grace period designed for transition time between versions.

Alongside this plan, Mozilla intends to phase out official support for Firefox 3.6 in April. The 3.6 release was issued in 2010 before the transition to the rapid release cycle and aggressive automatic updates. According to statistics from StatCounter, Firefox 3.6 currently represents 4.45 percent of the global browser market. Mozilla will prompt users to upgrade when 3.6 finally gets put out to pasture later this year.

Read the entire article here  http://arstechnica.com/business/news/20 … lenges.ars


EDIT -- here  http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/79534  is a second article on the same subject by Alan Schimel of Network World who takes a very different tack, even ending his piece by saying

Mozilla does not have unlimited resources. I think they should pick one release cycle, one browser product and make it the best.  If it were me I would pick the rapid release product to put my resources behind.  In the browser wars I think the hare beats the tortoise every time.

But let me throw another thought out there that I will follow up on in a later post.  Mozilla needs a horse in the mobile OS space. The future is a mobile future.  Safari has iOS. Chrome has Android and Microsoft has IE.  Mozilla should work with HP and become the sponsor of an open source WebOS with a tightly integrated Firefox browser at its heart. Get some dollars from HP and some special marketing privilege and go stake their claim.  To me that is much more exciting than being an enterprise browser maker.

Last edited by dubois (2012-01-11 02:24:05)

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