Mozilla Contemplating Five Week Release Cycle

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.

Comments

Sigh...

[MightyMartian]

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.

Have they totally lost it, or what?

[Animats]

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.

Re:Have they totally lost it, or what?

[evilviper]

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...

System Admins Contemplating ditching FireFox

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

Sorry i have other things to do than repackage FF for deployment every 5 weeks.

Forget versions if you're pumping them out this...

[mackil]

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...

[Windwraith]

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"

[davewoods]

Mozilla addons getting shafted because one guy wants faster releases? Sweet.

Live demo of the definition of insanity

[Tridus]

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.

Re:Live demo of the definition of insanity

[Darinbob]

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.

We're Doing 5 Blades!

[DoomHamster]

Mozilla should just cut out the race to 5 blades and call nightlies full releases.

Re:Incredible

[dAzED1]

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.

Re:the bottom of this particular slipper slope

[MightyMartian]

Question: "What version of Firefox are you running?"

Answer: "I dunno, is it AM or PM?"

---

Question: "I hear they're replacing the Planck length as the smallest measurement. What are they replacing it with?"

Answer: "Mozilla release cycles."

Re:Incredible

[shish]

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

Headline is misleading

[kripkenstein]

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 ;)