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Mozilla Announces Enterprise User Working Group
Lennie sends this quote from an announcement at the Mozilla blog:
"Recently there has been a lot of discussion about enterprises and rapid releases. Online life is evolving faster than ever and it's imperative that Mozilla deliver improvements to the Web and to Firefox more quickly to reflect this. This has created challenges for IT departments that have to deliver lots of mission-critical applications through Firefox. Mozilla is fundamentally about people and we care about our users wherever they are. To this end, we are re-establishing a Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group as a place for enterprise developers, IT staff and Firefox developers to discuss the challenges, ideas and best practices for deploying Firefox in the enterprise."
Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours
is Asa Dotzler part of this workgroup?
In true Mozilla fashion, I'm sure that will mean "We'll pretend to listen while we continue to do whatever we want"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This was the story in 2007 when they first tried this: New Mozilla working group aims to simplify enterprise Firefox deployment
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
I'll follow and contribute as much as I can, hoping that something changes, but having the cold expectation that nothing will. On the windows side, FF essentially needs three things:
1. MSI for deployment.
2. GPO management.
3. Mozilla branding and support for the above, so I can automatically update the browser.
That's the peanut butter and jelly for enterprise. I can get the first two from other people, why not you guys? Why it has taken this long to get to this point is beyond me. Seriously, the 'battles' between chrome, opera, and firefox are like watching soccer moms fight to the death over the last tickle me elmo at a Walmart when there's a toy store next door with aisles full of the same toy, cheaper. Seriously, do you guys want to keep scratching with each other over grandma's machine, or do you guys want people like me to push your product to 50 machines at once, and let 50 people *see and use* your browser, learn for themselves that it's better, and take it home with them?
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
o stop supporting enterprise deployments (by rapid release, no bug fixes only)
o start an enterprise working group
o profit! (charge for support)
1) Throw the MCSEs a bone: give them their MSIs and GPOs. Alternatively, bless FrontMotion's MSI and GPO projects as the "official" ways to get these things for businesses that need them.
2) From time to time (but no more frequently than once every two years), tag a release as Long-Term Support. This is exactly what it says on the tin: this release gets official support from Mozilla, including security fixes, until the next Long-Term Support release.
3) Support for a non-LTS release is not dropped until there have been at least two major releases since then. Under the current situation, that means FF5 support would not be dropped until the release of FF7, which in turn would not be dropped until the release of FF9.
I realize that long-term or even mid-term support is not sexy. Techies always want to live on the bleeding edge. But not every person or business is willing, or even able, to do that. They also need to be taken care of.