Mozilla Announces Long Term Support Version of Firefox 249
mvar writes "After a meeting held last Monday regarding Mozilla Firefox Extended Support Release, the new version was announced yesterday in a post on Mozilla's official blog: 'We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities, and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform.'"
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a nice solution to the problem everyone has been complaining about.
I really see no complaints to this move.
(inb4 shill)
Enterprises Will Like This! (Score:4, Insightful)
Now if there was only a way to control/deploy this through group policy, then Firefox in the Enterprise will really take off.
-th3r3isnospoon
Who is paying? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who is paying for Mozilla products?
Do they have any paying customers in Europe or Asia?
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Did they fire Asa? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is still reactive damage control to foolish arrogance by Asa "we don't give a crap about enterprises" Dotzler.
That's what you get why you hire a fanboy to become the voice of your company.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
ESR's support is only for a year though, it seems? It might take institutions 2-3 months to decide it's worth upgrading to. A 2 year solution seems like a better, long term plan. In 2002-2009, having your web browser being a year out of date meant losing out on a lot of features and security fixes, but in the last 2 years innovations have really slowed down and I think 2 years support (as opposed to 1) would give institutions a lot more reason to stick to Firefox. Think of it - the many 4 year undergrad students (perhaps the less technically inclined student) would only have to experience one change in the web browser in their college career in school computer labs, etc. By changing this yearly, you're just adding another thing to the pile of the "annual make sure it all works together without crashing checklist".
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Er... Browsers are adding security improvements and features at a much much faster rate now than in the 2002-2009 timeframe. This is true at least for Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google.
In the specific case of Mozilla, it has about 60x more employees now than in 2002 (and 3x what it had in 2009). It would be _really_ odd if improvement rate were actually slower as a result, since the codebase was already quite mature in 2002.
Re:Enterprises Will Like This! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no commercial gain in so doing, it's built anyway -- so people may as well use it, it won't affect support particularly -- just move questions perhaps. So where is the harm in giving people freedom of choice? Is freedom of choice not intrinsic in the philosophy of open source software?
I suspect the only reason for limiting the ESR version is vanity and arrogance. FF's arrogant developers know fine well that the ESR version would quickly become the default version of FF out there. It is exactly what everyone wants, a stable version of the software without new, worthless, feature-bloat ever two weeks.
FF developers, why not just have balls to admit you fucked up? Give people a free choice between ESR or the rapid-deployment constant-flux FF versions. See which people prefer -- and then run with that, and concentrate more on that version.
Really, what is the fucking point on forcing your idiotic ideas on users who really want something else? That's why you are too cowardly to make ESR freely available. And we know it.
Re:Hope they are serious (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you would be hurting those regular users, since the ESR will almost certainly be less secure than the regular version; the longer into its year of life you get the more this will be true.
Re:Enterprises Will Like This! (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason for limiting the ESR version as much as they propose is almost certainly resource (people) limitations.
By the way, insults to the actual developers who work on code for software that you evidently like (or presumably you just wouldn't care about this issue), only discourage those developers from being interested in your opinion.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
How much less could you care?
How important is this topic to you?
Personally I couldn't care less, even if I tried. I have no interest.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
The LTS would include critical security fixes. It wouldn't include all minor security fixes or general architectural improvements that improve security-in-depth, because typically those have visible effects and the whole point of the LTS is to avoid such effects. Or put another way, "does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform" excludes a wide range of security improvements.
To be more specific, fixing an exploitable crash is LTS material. Adding JIT hardening or process separation or something like HTTP Strict Transport security or UI changes to improve the ability of users to make informed security decisions are all not LTS material.
Re:Enterprises Will Like This! (Score:4, Insightful)
a chrome ripoff
That. I wish I could buy a billboard in front of wherever Mozilla's people work and put up:
If we wanted Chrome, we'd use Chrome. Bring back Firefox.
Sincerely,
Everyone who used Firefox before the versions numbers went haywire
in MASSIVE text as a daily reminder of the old glory days.
Seriously, I shouldn't have to rearrange and twiddle with everything to get Firefox as much like 3.6 as possible every time I install it. What true UI improvements have we had since then? I can think of two: tabs that don't resize while I'm hovering on them, and tab groups. Why was the rest of it randomized?
Also, what's with the stupid launch defaults? I close Firefox when I want a clean slate, not a glorified minimize. "Restore my windows and tabs from last time" is antithetical to the whole idea of closing all the tabs! Can you imagine if Windows restored all your programs and junk from last time? People would come unglued.
Also, we live in an age of large LCD displays. I can spare a few pixels of screen space to keep the bookmarks and buttons I use all day long visible instead of burying them somewhere underneath gloss and shiny.
One last gripe: Tools > Add-ons should take me to Extensions, not the "Wonderful World of Stuff You Could Bloat Your Firefox With." I go to Add-ons to remove extensions other programs installed without asking far more often than I feel the urge to add bloviated toolbars. Speaking of which, can we finally make Firefox ask before allowing programs (like nearly every AV, Skype, whatever) to hang their useless (or worse, Google-search-invading) lampshade in Extensions?
Re:Good (Score:2, Insightful)
If my Time and Attendance web based software stops working because the browser decides to upgrade itself and my thousands of employees are unable to clock in and out, then yes, it is a life and death decision.
You little kiddies and your narrow POV from your mom's basement are amusing, I'll give you that.