Mozilla Contemplating Five Week Release Cycle

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Mozilla Contemplating Five Week Release Cycle

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday September 20, 2011 @09:15AM from the faster-faster-faster dept.

MrSeb writes with an article in Extreme Tech about the ever quickening pace of Firefox development. Quoting the article: "Mozilla, not content with its monumental shift from four major builds in five years down to a new stable build every six weeks, is looking at outputting a new release every five weeks, or perhaps even less. Christian Legnitto, a project manager at Mozilla (and currently the 'release manager' of Firefox), announced the intention to shift to a shorter release cycle on Mozilla's planning mailing list. In response to one developer citing the success of the six-week release cycle, and asking whether it would be feasible to speed it up even further, Legnitto said: 'Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle.' There are still some pains to overcome, though, such as add-on maintenance, testing, and localization — and ultimately, as browsers become more like operating systems, do we really want something as important as Firefox receiving a new major version every 5 weeks?" In other news, it looks like Firefox is losing users faster than ever despite (because of?) the new rapid release cycle.

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Sigh... by MightyMartian · 2011-09-20 09:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

I've stopped using Firefox. I was a constant user of it since the Firebird days, but somewhere down the line the whole project has lost sight. I find Chrome a good deal faster and more agile. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a plugin developer, but as it stands, Firefox seems to be a project that has lost its way.

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1. Re:Sigh... by SiMac · 2011-09-20 12:59 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I've personally switched to Chrome everywhere, and looking at getting the entire office at work switched from Firefox to Chrome as well (the rapid release cycle of Firefox is nuts, its more rapid than even Chrome and the browser only gets worse with each new release anyway.)
  The Chrome release cycle is six weeks, the same as the current Firefox release cycle. The release cycles are effectively identical. The only difference is that, with Chrome, updates are mandatory. You can't disable auto-update, and you don't get a warning when it's going to happen. Where do people get this information?
Have they totally lost it, or what? by Animats · 2011-09-20 09:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

Have they totally lost it? It's not like the browser world is making sudden great progress. It's a mature technology. The big problem today is getting stuff fixed.
I'm doing some Firefox extension development, and I'm finding documentation from versions 1.5 to the current one, all out of sync.
1. Re:Have they totally lost it, or what? by Kalriath · 2011-09-20 10:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  And there's half of Open Source's problem. That "man" is even considered to be acceptable documentation. Hint: it's not. Look at the documentation available for MySQL for an example of what documentation should be. A one pager telling you all the command line parameters isn't going to cut it.
  
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2. Re:Have they totally lost it, or what? by evilviper · 2011-09-20 14:50 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You only think man pages are unacceptable because you've never seen a decent man page. Try ANY man pages from FreeBSD / OpenBSD. They're available via the web interface. Compare to some of the god-awful GNU man pages...
  
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  Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
System Admins Contemplating ditching FireFox by who_stole_my_kidneys · 2011-09-20 09:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sorry i have other things to do than repackage FF for deployment every 5 weeks.
1. Re:System Admins Contemplating ditching FireFox by 0123456 · 2011-09-20 09:32 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  What's wrong with auto update?
  If you don't use auto update, you're potentially using vulnerable browsers.
  If you do use auto update...seriously, what could break?
  At an absolute minimum, every new release seems to move UI entities around or delete them altogether and then you have 1,000 users asking you what happened to their web browser because the status bar went away and can you come and fix it for them.
  Mozilla seem to be committing suicide right now for no reason anyone can adequately explain.
2. Re:System Admins Contemplating ditching FireFox by Urban+Garlic · 2011-09-20 09:56 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  > If you do use auto update...seriously, what could break?
  FF5 broke my employer-mandated SSL VPN plug-in, which made me unable to telecommute.
  They had a fix deployed about five weeks later...
  
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  2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Forget versions if you're pumping them out this... by mackil · 2011-09-20 09:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

Since they're pumping out versions as fast as Chrome, why not do what Chrome does and make the version # irrelevant?

How many people know what version of Chrome they're running? I sure don't know. But Firefox trumpets the "new" Firefox on every release.

If you're going to do a rapid release schedule, you've made the version number meaningless to your average user.
Extensions... by Windwraith · 2011-09-20 09:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

Extensions stop working at random without any good reason and in record time. So many of us use Firefox over Chrome because of extensions.
This plan is just terrible.
"In response to one developer citing the success" by davewoods · 2011-09-20 09:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

Mozilla addons getting shafted because one guy wants faster releases? Sweet.
Re:Reason to use Firefox... by Tridus · 2011-09-20 09:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not when doing so continually breaks the things that the users you do have care about, no.
What FF user actually wants this model? Most of them don't. Releasing at the same speed as Chrome isn't going to win over Chrome users, but it will chase FF users off. That's what we're seeing here.

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-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Incredible by Microlith · 2011-09-20 09:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm amazed at how hateful and petty people are towards Mozilla over this. Google gets a pass though.
I guess the notion of "release early, release often" is dead?
1. Re:Incredible by dAzED1 · 2011-09-20 09:52 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No, google doesn't get a pass. A number of us weren't using chrome for reasons just like this - do you see a lot of enterprises pushing out chrome? Nope. If FF does the same thing as chrome, why use FF? The market needs versioned (6-9+ months minumum) browser other than IE. Guess that's going to have to be Opera instead of FF now.
2. Re:Incredible by shish · 2011-09-20 10:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I'm amazed at how hateful and petty people are towards Mozilla over this. Google gets a pass though
  Google don't break compatibility with every release
  
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  I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Live demo of the definition of insanity by Tridus · 2011-09-20 09:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

Did Mozilla go hire some MBAs or something? That's the only rational explanation for this idiocy.
The userbase has rejected rapid release. They hate it. Users are leaving the browser faster then ever before ever since it started.
So Mozilla's response is... even faster releases? Is it possible to miss the point any more then this? People don't care about this shit, they just want a good browser.

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-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
1. Re:Live demo of the definition of insanity by Darinbob · 2011-09-20 12:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The Mozilla devs don't care about this shit either, they just want to check in code without worrying about customer support on older versions. Ie, they want their lives to be easier by cutting the customer out of the picture.
You know what is funny? by MyLongNickName · 2011-09-20 09:37 · Score: 3, Insightful

Chrome scares my from a privacy standpoint. Firefox wants updated between every keystroke. IE is my new browser of choice.

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We're Doing 5 Blades! by DoomHamster · 2011-09-20 09:40 · Score: 4, Funny

Mozilla should just cut out the race to 5 blades and call nightlies full releases.
Re:the bottom of this particular slipper slope by MightyMartian · 2011-09-20 09:57 · Score: 5, Funny

Question: "What version of Firefox are you running?"
Answer: "I dunno, is it AM or PM?"
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Question: "I hear they're replacing the Planck length as the smallest measurement. What are they replacing it with?"
Answer: "Mozilla release cycles."

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The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Headline is misleading by kripkenstein · 2011-09-20 14:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Did Mozilla go hire some MBAs or something? That's the only rational explanation for this idiocy.
The userbase has rejected rapid release. They hate it. Users are leaving the browser faster then ever before ever since it started.
So Mozilla's response is... even faster releases?
Hi, I am a Firefox dev. The answer to your question is no: The answer is not faster releases. We are not currently planning to do faster releases, despite the Slashdot headline.

What is the link then? Someone - not sure if a Mozilla developer or not - posted the suggestion to make it faster. Since Firefox's development is open, anyone can post whatever they want whenever they want. There was some debate, most of it negative - as you would expect. Then someone posted it to Slashdot, where it was picked up.

So, no faster releases. What actually is the Mozilla response to the current situation: To fix the problems. We are working to make updates silent and break less addons. We've also made it so third parties can't install addons without your permission. All of this is in response to user feedback. Hopefully some of that stuff will be posted to Slashdot too ;)
1. Re:Headline is misleading by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-20 21:05 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  We are working to make updates silent and break less addons
  And from a business perspective, that's even worse. I get to spend hours trying to figure out why 10,000 workstations are suddenly flaking out on me, and then finally explain to my boss that it was because a "silent update" went out completely untested and unproven.
  If you guys really don't want any Enterprise use of FF, just say so up front so we can start looking elsewhere, instead of holding onto a few final shreds of hope.
  We don't want massive changes to the function of the software all the time, it's a nightmare. Removing Major versions removes our ability to maintain a known stable release series and only perform bugfix/security patches. We now have to assume that any update, no matter how minor, could involve major component changes, and thus has to be put completely through the entire testing, approval, scheduling, and deployment cycle. That costs us time and money, and with the new release cycle we can barely get one version deployed by the time the next is out. So we're left with the choice of asking management to double our payroll budget for IT, or putting our asses on the line for releasing "untested" software into a production environment. That's not a good choice, so we're already looking elsewhere for alternatives since Mozilla is proving itself to be largely unreliable.