The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla

There's been a lot of noise about Mozilla's new rapid release leading to conflict with Enterprise users. Kethinov found an Ars article that points out that "Now that Mozilla has released Firefox 5, version 4, just three months old, is no longer supported. Enterprise customers aren't very pleased with this decision, and are claiming it makes their testing burden impossible. We're not convinced: we think Mozilla's decision is the right one for the Web itself.'"

Comments

Think of it as 4.0.2

[jonescb]

If the version number were 4.0.2 instead of 5.0 Enterprises wouldn't be getting their panties in a bunch over this.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Lunix Nutcase]

Except it's not just enterprises. Tons of average users are getting headaches over this as well when suddenly an unjustified version jump is making it so their plugins get disabled.

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Antimatter3009]

But the idea is to speed up the release cycle into what is almost a "rolling release" style. And, in fact, this is exactly what the Ars article is arguing is a good thing (which I agree with). I think if they're going to follow Chrome's release style, though, they need to get the rest of what makes it work for Chrome. By that I mean automatic, almost silent updates and an almost total disregard for the version number. Chrome still has versions, but they don't really mean anything significant. Firefox needs to stop calling this Firefox 5 and start calling it just Firefox. The version is no longer important. Similarly, extension support needs to stop being based on the version number and go to some other system. My initial thought would be to assume all extensions will work and allow the community of users to report broken extensions which can be automatically tallied and turned into a warning of some sort when you install. Think something like: "This extension has been reported to be incompatible with Firefox since dd/mm/yyyy."

Re:Think of it as 4.0.2

[Fantom42]

Right, as the article points out, the changelist for Firefox 5 is not much more expansive than the changelist for Firefox 3.6.

This may be true for this particular instance, but Firefox certainly isn't guaranteeing that going forward. What happens with Firefox 9 is released with a feature that breaks their enterprise, and Firefox 8 is suddenly no longer supported?

This whole attitude I hear parroted that "release numbers are irrelevant because they are just numbers" ignores a whole bunch of realities regarding how new features are introduced and developed to different classes of users. And in the case of Firefox, this new strategy sends a disturbing message to enterprise customers that new and potentially disruptive features will be introduced "when they are ready" and support for previous versions will be immediately dropped.

No, they aren't.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they aren't. EOLing something after 4 months and breaking tons of user plugins for no reason is not good for users or the Web itself. It's needlessly churn to rapidly inflate version numbers for no gain for anyone.

Mozillacide

[denis-The-menace]

We are witnessing "Mozillacide"

Damn "ordinary users", they don't need plugins that work.
Damn the enterprise, they are not the target market.

The version number is now Mozilla's priority.

Dear Mozilla

[JamesP]

This is the reason IE continues to stay strong in enterprise.

Yes, corporate users are small-minded, and you're incurring in the same error.

Fix, stabilize, make a 'corporate version'. You don't need many resources for that.

Basically, sell a way for them to use Mozilla.

You're making IT people that root for you look bad. And making the dolts that only know IE look good.

Soon it may not even matter.

[blind biker]

Firefox's usage share has been slowly declining since quite some time. They introduced the rather universally hated moron-bar, and paid no attention to the feedback. Then they introduced the unwelcome changes in the UI with Firefox 4, and paid no attention to the feedback. Now they decided to piss off the plugin authors and enterprise customers. In the end, they may become a niche browser, and even Google could decide that their money is better spent elsewhere, than on a bunch of idiots.

Re:A release every 6 weeks is really stupid

[the_raptor]

This is exactly my thinking. I don't care about the version numbers, as version systems are entirely arbitrary, but just the drive by Mozilla to subject us to new "features" (like removing established UI elements) constantly.

Browsers are old tech. Browsers are utilitarian. Non-technical people don't want a constantly evolving piece of basic software.

Mainstream browsers are not the place for "cool and cutting edge" development. I want a browser that focuses on security and standards compliance. New features outside that should be addons/plugins until they are so widely adopted, or self-evidently useful, that they get moved into the core of the browser. I call this the Blizzard model because that is the method they follow for World of Warcraft.

Mozilla seem to have adopted We-are-graphic-designers-and-so-know-better-than-you-plebs model that turned "Web 2.0" into a steaming pile of shit.