Mozilla is committing to releasing new Firefox versions every six weeks. Mozilla released Firefox 5 this week. With this release, Mozilla states that Firefox 4 is End-of-Life and will not receive any additional security updates. In a comment thread posted on to a Mike Kaply's blog article discussing these new Firefox policies, Asa Dotzler from Mozilla stated:
... Enterprise has never been (and I’ll argue, shouldn’t be) a focus of
ours. Until we run out of people who don’t have sysadmins and enterprise
deployment teams looking out for them, I can’t imagine why we’d focus
at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about.
In a later comment, he added:
... A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making
many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited
resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have
enterprise support systems already taking care of them.
Asa then confirmed that every new Firefox release will put the previous one into End-of-Life:
As for John’s concern, “By the time I validate Firefox 5, what
guarantee would I have that Firefox 5 won’t go EOL when Firefox 6 is
released?”
He has the opposite of guarantees that won’t happen. He has my
promise that it will happen. Firefox 6 will be the EOL of Firefox 5. And
Firefox 7 will be the EOL for Firefox 6.
He added:
“You’re basically saying you don’t care about corporations.”
Yes, I’m basically saying that I don’t care about making Firefox enterprise friendly.
Kev Needham, Channel Manager at Mozilla later stated to PC Mag:
The Web and Web browsers continue to evolve rapidly. Mozilla's focus is on providing users with the best Web experience possible, and Firefox needs to evolve at the pace the Web's users and developers expect. By releasing small, focused updates more often, we are able to deliver improved security and stability even as we introduce new features, which is better for our users, and for the Web.We recognize that this shift may not be compatible with a large organization's IT Policy and understand that it is challenging to organizations that have effort-intensive certification polices. However, our development process is geared toward delivering products that support the Web as it is today, while innovating and building future Web capabilities. Tying Firefox product development to an organizational process we do not control would make it difficult for us to continue to innovate for our users and the betterment of the Web.
Your feedback needed for E-Business Suite certifications
Mozilla's new support policy has significant implications for enterprise users of Firefox with Oracle E-Business Suite. We are reviewing the implications for our certification and support policies for Firefox now. It would be very helpful if you could let me know about your organisation's plans for Firefox in light of this new information.
Please feel free to drop me a private email, or post a comment here if that's appropriate.
