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Mozilla Announces Long Term Support Version of Firefox

Posted by Unknown on from the can't-stop-until-version-73 dept.

mvar writes "After a meeting held last Monday regarding Mozilla Firefox Extended Support Release, the new version was announced yesterday in a post on Mozilla's official blog: 'We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities, and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform.'"

18 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a nice solution to the problem everyone has been complaining about.
    I really see no complaints to this move.

    (inb4 shill)

    1. Re:Good by freedumb2000 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I hope they will do the same for Thunderbird.

    2. Re:Good by deadsquid · · Score: 4, Informative

      The Thunderbird team is talking about an extended support released on their mailing list. There's more info on the Mozilla Wiki, but it is being planned.

      --
      Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
    3. Re:Good by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ESR's support is only for a year though, it seems? It might take institutions 2-3 months to decide it's worth upgrading to. A 2 year solution seems like a better, long term plan. In 2002-2009, having your web browser being a year out of date meant losing out on a lot of features and security fixes, but in the last 2 years innovations have really slowed down and I think 2 years support (as opposed to 1) would give institutions a lot more reason to stick to Firefox. Think of it - the many 4 year undergrad students (perhaps the less technically inclined student) would only have to experience one change in the web browser in their college career in school computer labs, etc. By changing this yearly, you're just adding another thing to the pile of the "annual make sure it all works together without crashing checklist".

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    4. Re:Good by BZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Er... Browsers are adding security improvements and features at a much much faster rate now than in the 2002-2009 timeframe. This is true at least for Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google.

      In the specific case of Mozilla, it has about 60x more employees now than in 2002 (and 3x what it had in 2009). It would be _really_ odd if improvement rate were actually slower as a result, since the codebase was already quite mature in 2002.

    5. Re:Good by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would assume LTS would include security fixes, but would be a feature freeze with only security updates (improvements)? Did I mis-read the blurb when it said "providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform"?
       
      Honestly I could care less about most new features, 99.99% of the time features add extra clutter and are better executed as plugins anyways.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    6. Re:Good by RoLi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly!

      In fact I think they only did the Firefox-LTS version because people got the idea to fork it, not because they really listen to their users. Maybe somebody could threaten to do a Thunderbird-fork...

      However, Thunderbird is not as profitable (important) as Firefox. Firefox brings in AFAIK 100 Million/year while Thunderbird probably brings close to nothing.

  2. Enterprises Will Like This! by americamatrix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This will be good news for Enterprises that want(ed) to deploy Firefox but didn't because of Mozilla's release schedule.

    Now if there was only a way to control/deploy this through group policy, then Firefox in the Enterprise will really take off.


    -th3r3isnospoon

    1. Re:Enterprises Will Like This! by acoustix · · Score: 4, Informative

      FrontMotion Firefox Community Edition has a MSI version that can be pushed out via GPO and also has adm/admx templates available.

      --
      "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
    2. Re:Enterprises Will Like This! by SteelZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      Now if there was only a way to control/deploy this through group policy, then Firefox in the Enterprise will really take off.

      Run "Firefox Setup.exe -ms" to do a silent install or if you must have a .msi, download it from these guys

    3. Re:Enterprises Will Like This! by deadsquid · · Score: 5, Informative

      It actually says "The ESR is specifically targeted at groups looking to deploy it within a managed environment. It is not intended for use by individuals, nor as a method to mitigate compatibility issues with addons or other software. Mozilla will strongly discourage public (re)distribution of Mozilla-branded versions of the ESR." Mozilla software will remain freely available. The ESR is not targeted at individuals, and the changes to addon compatibility (compatible by default) and updates (silent/background) in the next 18 weeks will hopefully address a lot of the issues people have with the regular release. In the end, it's up to the individual to choose, but the installers will be available to download if you really want them.

      --
      Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
    4. Re:Enterprises Will Like This! by bigrockpeltr · · Score: 5, Funny

      This year will be the year of Firefox in the Enterprise!

      --
      $ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
    5. Re:Enterprises Will Like This! by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Absolutely correct. However, I wonder why Mozilla is trying to prevent the ESR version from having widespread access.

      There's no commercial gain in so doing, it's built anyway -- so people may as well use it, it won't affect support particularly -- just move questions perhaps. So where is the harm in giving people freedom of choice? Is freedom of choice not intrinsic in the philosophy of open source software?

      I suspect the only reason for limiting the ESR version is vanity and arrogance. FF's arrogant developers know fine well that the ESR version would quickly become the default version of FF out there. It is exactly what everyone wants, a stable version of the software without new, worthless, feature-bloat ever two weeks.

      FF developers, why not just have balls to admit you fucked up? Give people a free choice between ESR or the rapid-deployment constant-flux FF versions. See which people prefer -- and then run with that, and concentrate more on that version.

      Really, what is the fucking point on forcing your idiotic ideas on users who really want something else? That's why you are too cowardly to make ESR freely available. And we know it.

  3. ESR? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm going to keep reading this as the Eric S. Raymond release.

  4. Did they fire Asa? by xenoc_1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is still reactive damage control to foolish arrogance by Asa "we don't give a crap about enterprises" Dotzler.
    That's what you get why you hire a fanboy to become the voice of your company.

    1. Re:Did they fire Asa? by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sadly no, the ADHD Kid is still jumping up and down and shrieking about how great it is that there are (at least) 4 major versions currently on the go. I only wish I were joking about that.

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  5. Re:Oh good. ANOTHER browser to support. by Lennie · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. It is only one version to support and you can run it next to the latest version of Firefox. I would think this is a good thing if it keeps the people that do not what all those changes on the same older version instead of, some users on 6, some users on 7, some users on 8.

    2. What you are looking for is called the "Add-on Compatibility Reporter":

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-compatibility-reporter/

    It was obviously meant for a different purpose, so with that name it makes it kind of hard to find.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  6. I kind of like Mozilla fumbling... by HBI · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My reasoning is as follows: I don't want to be using what the mass of the Internet is using in terms of browser. I want something with strong plugins and the ability to filter out dynamic code embedded in pages. That means Firefox.

    When it looked like Firefox was going to gain 50% share, I was worried. First, my browser gets targeted. Second, people would be motivated to detect and block those using the script and ad blocking plugins I use. The decline in FF market share is pretty good news to me.

    Keep at it, Asa!

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.