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Firefox Adopts a 6-8 Week Variable Release Schedule (mozilla.org)
AmiMoJo writes: Four years ago Mozilla moved to a fixed-schedule release model, otherwise known as the Train Model, in which we released Firefox every six weeks to get features and updates to users faster. Now Mozilla is moving to a variable 6-8 week cycle, with the same number of releases per year but some flexibility to 'respond to emerging user and market needs' and allow time for holidays. The new release schedule looks like this:
- 2016-01-26 – Firefox 44
- 2016-03-08 – Firefox 45, ESR 45 (6 weeks cycle)
- 2016-04-19 – Firefox 46 (6 weeks cycle)
- 2016-06-07 – Firefox 47 (7 weeks cycle)
- 2016-08-02 – Firefox 48 (8 weeks cycle)
- 2016-09-13 – Firefox 49 (6 weeks cycle)
- 2016-11-08 – Firefox 50 (8 weeks cycle)
- 2016-12-13 – Firefox 50.0.1 (5 week cycle, release for critical fixes as needed)
- 2017-01-24 – Firefox 51 (6 weeks from prior release)
You don't think they're figuring out what features they're going to build into a release when they start the 6-8 week cycle for that release, do you? I suspect that, like any other sane engineering organizations, they have a large backlog of features and issues to pick from for each release.
Sounds like you want Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR). ESR releases receive a major update only once every 10 months, but still receive the same bugfix and security patches as the regular releases. Also, when you do get updated to a new ESR version, you know that it's one that's already been supported as a regular release for 2 months, so there's very little chance of surprise problems.
The current version is Firefox ESR 38, which was released as ESR on 11 August last year. The next one is ESR 45, coming on 31 May, which will last all the way until 21 March next year.
Hope that helps you.