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Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Uproar, Beats IE Drum
CWmike writes "A Microsoft executive late Thursday used the furor over Mozilla's decision to curtail support for Firefox 4 to plead the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise. 'I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we'd like the opportunity to win back your business,' Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft, said in a post on his personal blog. 'We've got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you're currently facing.' Bixhorn addressed his open letter to the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM's CIO, John Walicki, who, along with others, had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support. In a comment appended to a blog maintained by Michael Kaply, a consultant who specializes in customizing Firefox, Walicki called Mozilla's decision to end security support for Firefox 4 a 'kick in the stomach.'"
Hardly surprising; businesses like some stability in their apps. You don't want stagnation, but you don't want to have to test and deploy entirely new releases every 3 months just to maintain a supported environment either.
I'm not sure Microsoft need to be worried about that particular market anyway because, as much as I hate to say it, IE is really the only browser that's suitable for use in a large Windows environment. It has ludicrously granular control available via Group Policy and updates can be deployed via WSUS without needing any user interaction or elevated rights. Firefox doesn't even offer an MSI installer, let alone any practical way to manage settings or control updates across multiple machines (but then Chrome, Opera and Safari are similarly lacking so they're hardly alone in that regard).
Part of the reason that I'm pissed off by this version a week crap is that plugins that should work no longer do, simply because they expect a version number. Google Toolbar doesn't work because of that. That's a serious WTF moment.
Perhaps Firefox should take a page out of Ubuntu's playbook, and offer a special LTS (Long Term Support) release that will receive back-ported security fixes for the next two or three years. That will give the IT departments and embedded systems manufacturers the long term stability they want, while general users and browser enthusiasts can continue to update their browser every three months.
Or they can do nothing, and continue to lose marketshare to Internet Explorer and Google Chrome when IT departments start adding Firefox to their unapproved/unsupported software lists. Their call, I guess.
The Mozilla foundation needs to understand that their recent bad decisions have consequences.
I use Firefox, and have for quite a while. I've gone from a strong supporter and proselytizer to... less enthusiastic. It's still my first choice of browser, but just barely.
It was the Awesomebar debacle, and their refusal to include an option to turn it off, that first made me suspect they were headed in the wrong direction. Removing the status bar was a bad idea, and then this ridiculous botchup with versioning... sigh.
They have positives. They have the best plug-in architecture, and they aren't including patented/copyrighted codecs in the browser, which is good (although they should allow a direct interface to the underlying OS codecs, not simply forbid them from playing). Still, I was contemplating shifting over to Opera. Now, today, we learn that Opera is probably going to go to hell in the next few months.
At this point, I'm hoping that somebody will fork Firefox back at the 3.6 version, and take it from there. It needs to go in a direction the users want, and stop trying to force the users into a direction the designers want. If you stop listening to your users, they will leave. It's beginning to happen with Firefox.
It really makes me wonder whether these large companies have an IT department.
Surely they can replace FF4.0 by FF5.0 without exposing their net to Chinese hackers.
Apparently you've never worked in big IT, where software must be thoroughly tested before being rolled out. Image you're the guy that convinced your company to roll out FF as a replacement for IE and them that it was fully compatible with all their corporate websites. Before you've even fully tested and started deploying it, Mozilla EOLs that version number. Kinda sets you back to square one and you look stupid for having suggested it in the first place.
Mozilla screwed themselves on this. FF5 is hardly different than FF4, yet yhey bumped the major rev number trying to convince people they are innovating and ended pissed off the corporate customers who want stability. Fedora still hasn't learned this lesson with their 6 month cycle and a hearty fuck you if you don't keep up because you can only safely upgrade from 1-2 versions behind. The corporate world wants stability and good manageability damn it. They don't want a constantly moving target with questionable long term support.
No, the change is NOT only a number. Mozilla has stated that every major version change breaks ABI compatibility.
That probably doesn't matter to you (it certainly doesn't to me) but if a company distributes Firefox extensions for their employees, they're going to have an upgrade headache on their hands.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."