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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 keep on doing what YOU want, while ignoring what the USERS want.
Year after year, your popularity goes downhill. Do you even stop to think about that?
Somehow you've been frittering away over $500,000 every DAY for the last several years, and for what?
Your deliberate self-destruction is annoying and pathetic.
Yeap. Let it be a lesson to any software development team: every time you write a line of code, or add a feature, or remove a feature, ask yourself: "Does this feature clearly make the product better?"
If you answer no to that question too often (or if an unbiased observer would answer no), then you'll just be pushing things around haphazardly, like Google (and more likely you'll be making things worse).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Good!
Maybe they'll start by removing "Hello," and "Pocket," and push notifications, and all the other garbage they keep bundling in that doesn't belong in a web browser. Who is asking for these features? If I want a damn videoconferencing client, I can install Skype or Gotomeeting, I don't want or need that shit bloating up my web browser.
What slays me is that we've been down this road before, with Navigator morphing into Communicator and trying so hard to do so much that it collapsed and died. Maybe the people at Mozilla weren't born yet when that disaster took place? It's the only excuse I can see for why this bit of history repeats itself.
Yes you are that old. Constant and continuous improvement is what drives innovation. Not a three year release cycle.