Firefox 2 End Of Life
Mike Beltzner
mozilla.dev.planning)
Hi everyone,
On June 17th, 2008, we shipped Firefox 3 / Gecko 1.9. As per the
release roadmap (http://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseRoadmap) we're
approaching the end of the six months for which Firefox 2 / Gecko
1.8.1 support is planned. Support in this case means continuing to
develop the security and stability patches for those code-bases, as
well as issuing releases of Firefox and minor updates to the Firefox 2
product.
Before setting a final date for this "end of life" activity (sounds
drastic, doesn't it?) we wanted to get feedback on any requirements or
issues that would prevent us from making the upcoming Firefox
2.0.0.19 / Gecko 1.8.1.19 security and stability release our final
support release on that product/branch.
The following issues have already been considered and covered:
* ensuring that we're able to issue a major update offer to the latest
Firefox 3 release to all users (on platforms supported by Firefox 3)
even after we officially end the support lifecycle for Firefox 2 , and
thinking through the user experience there
* watching add-on compatibility numbers to ensure that the vast
majority of Firefox 2 add-ons still under development have been made
compatible with Firefox 3
* getting in touch with partners who bundle and distribute Firefox 2
to make them aware
* considering implications for web services integrated into the
product (ie: SafeBrowsing)
* ensuring that we don't offer major updates to people on unsupported
platforms
* we have not begun triage for 1.8.1.19 in earnest, so please nominate
any bugs that you feel should be included in this release, but realize
that our development resources are finite, so decisions will need to
be made :)
Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3, with more than 50%
accepting the first major upgrade offer back in late August. We're
looking
through Hendrix and other sources to understand why people didn't want
to upgrade and ensure that those bugs have been fixed - if you know of
any that would result in the product not working on a user's system,
please point it out. Please do not point out UI changes - those
objections are well understood.
If you can think of other reasons why we shouldn't move towards end of
life for Firefox 2 / Gecko 1.8.1, please let us know by replying (to dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
or following-up to mozilla.dev.planning)
cheers,
mike
Simon Paquet
> On June 17th, 2008, we shipped Firefox 3 / Gecko 1.9. As per the
> release roadmap (http://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseRoadmap) we're
> approaching the end of the six months for which Firefox 2 / Gecko
> 1.8.1 support is planned. Support in this case means continuing to
> develop the security and stability patches for those code-bases, as
> well as issuing releases of Firefox and minor updates to the
> Firefox 2 product.
>
> Before setting a final date for this "end of life" activity (sounds
> drastic, doesn't it?) we wanted to get feedback on any requirements
> or issues that would prevent us from making the upcoming Firefox
> 2.0.0.19 / Gecko 1.8.1.19 security and stability release our final
> support release on that product/branch.
Please see the discussion around John O'Duinn's post "Firefox2
desupport now only 3 months away" back in September here in this
newsgroup.
My biggest concern is that no other major mozilla.org Gecko consumer
(Thunderbird, Sunbird, SeaMonkey, Camino) has yet released a major
release based on Mozilla 1.9 code.
While one could argue that SeaMonkey, Sunbird and Camino are
niche-products and one mustn't wait for them to update, I'm
especially concerned about Thunderbird here.
Based on the current TB3 release planning, TB3 will be released 3-4
months after the Gecko 1.8 EOL, when TB2 is still the stable release.
Comments from my Chris Cooper and Mike Connor in the discussion
mentioned above removed my concerns at the time, but I can't find
anything in your post that addresses this.
See my original concerns:
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/msg/58159b24f4001abb
Mike's and Chris' answers:
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/msg/77b2e27865fb4719
http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.planning/msg/76fec4b026bf9d05
Cya
Simon
--
Thunderbird/Calendar Localization (L10n) Coordinator
Calendar website maintainer: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar
Calendar developer blog: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/calendar
Joshua Cranmer
> Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3, with more than 50%
> accepting the first major upgrade offer back in late August. We're looking
> through Hendrix and other sources to understand why people didn't want
> to upgrade and ensure that those bugs have been fixed - if you know of
> any that would result in the product not working on a user's system,
> please point it out. Please do not point out UI changes - those
> objections are well understood.
I'm recounting this second-hand, but I recall there being a problem with
printing support when one of the admins at my school tested FF 3.
Mike Beltzner
> Please see the discussion around John O'Duinn's post "Firefox2
> desupport now only 3 months away" back in September here in this
> newsgroup.
>
> My biggest concern is that no other major mozilla.org Gecko consumer
> (Thunderbird, Sunbird, SeaMonkey, Camino) has yet released a major
> release based on Mozilla 1.9 code.
As with that previous discussion, right now our focus is understanding
the impact on Firefox. Your points are quite valid, though, as Firefox
is often tied to Gecko, and we should be careful when examining what
actions we should take once Firefox 2 reaches end of life to ensure
that we don't starve consumers still relying on Gecko 1.8.1.
> While one could argue that SeaMonkey, Sunbird and Camino are
> niche-products and one mustn't wait for them to update, I'm
> especially concerned about Thunderbird here.
>
> Based on the current TB3 release planning, TB3 will be released 3-4
> months after the Gecko 1.8 EOL, when TB2 is still the stable release.
Do we have similar targets for Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird,
InstantBird, Miro, etc?
> Comments from my Chris Cooper and Mike Connor in the discussion
> mentioned above removed my concerns at the time, but I can't find
> anything in your post that addresses this.
Indeed - I should have mentioned that we'd registered the impact of
decommissioning Gecko 1.8.1 infrastructure (in terms of test machines
and emphasis on security issues) on other consumers. As Coop and
mconnor stated, historically we've continued to support the platform
even after the product has reached end of life (see Gecko 1.8) - it's
just a matter of understanding what parts of the infrastructure will
no longer be needed once Firefox 2 is out of the picture.
cheers,
mike
Philip Chee
> If you can think of other reasons why we shouldn't move towards end of
> life for Firefox 2 / Gecko 1.8.1, please let us know by replying (to dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> or following-up to mozilla.dev.planning)
I am concerned with Gecko 1.8.1 getting EOLed when both SeaMonkey 2.0
and Thunderbird 3.0 not likely to be out until at least 2009/Q1. Under
optimum conditions Gecko 1.8.1 should not e EOLed until six months after
SeaMonkey 2.0+Thunderbird 3.0 are released, but I understand the
resource constraints on having to backport security and stability fixes.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]There's no future in time travel.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Philip Chee
On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:35:56 +0000, Neil wrote:
> Mike Beltzner wrote:
>
>> Before setting a final date for this "end of life" activity (sounds
>> drastic, doesn't it?) we wanted to get feedback on any requirements
>> or issues that would prevent us from making the upcoming Firefox
>> 2.0.0.19 / Gecko 1.8.1.19 security and stability release our final
>> support release on that product/branch.
>
> Aren't there other Mozilla products (and projects) whose latest release
> is still off the 1.8.1 branch?
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]The 486SX: Intel's test of your gullibility
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Mike Beltzner
been registered! As has been discussed before, it's not like we're
going to lock the CVS trees and walk away, and I don't think all
development will stop ... but the active development of Firefox
releases based on that platform and the milestone-based development
cycles would probably stop.
So EOL doesn't mean "everyone stop coding and doing reviews", more
that "we don't have a team doing weekly triage on blockers and
milestone releases".
With that in mind - still concerned?
cheers,
mike
> _______________________________________________
> dev-planning mailing list
> dev-pl...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-planning
Samuel Sidler
> Yup, keep reading in the thread and you'll see that concern has
> indeed been registered! As has been discussed before, it's not like
> we're going to lock the CVS trees and walk away, and I don't think
> all development will stop ... but the active development of Firefox
> releases based on that platform and the milestone-based development
> cycles would probably stop.
The triage and release team that currently works on Firefox and
Thunderbird 2.0.0.x releases will continue to triage requests for
Thunderbird 2.0.0.x and maintain its releases until six months after
the release of Thunderbird 3.
Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
bugs will likely be ignored/minused. We'll only be considering bugs
that affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x.
That being said, I know Gecko 1.8.0 is still maintained by Linux
distros and we could hand over most of the branch to willing and
capable parties as we did in that case.
-Sam
Zack Weinberg
> Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3, with more than
> 50% accepting the first major upgrade offer back in late August.
> We're looking through Hendrix and other sources to understand why
> people didn't want to upgrade and ensure that those bugs have been
> fixed - if you know of any that would result in the product not
> working on a user's system, please point it out. Please do not point
> out UI changes - those objections are well understood.
I've heard two issues over and over again:-
- the places fsync problem and related urlbar performance problems
(gone in 3.1, one hopes)
- must have a particular extension
Regarding the second, you said you were "watching add-on compatibility
numbers to ensure that the vast majority of Firefox 2 add-ons *still
under development* have been made compatible with Firefox 3". Well, in
the majority of cases where I've had that come up, the extension in
question was *not* still under development, but was clearly still
heavily used (just looking at the trail of comments on AMO begging for
an upgrade).
I think it might be worthwhile to devote some of our attention to
popular but unmaintained extensions. We could, for instance, have
some sort of "adoption agency" on AMO which lists unmaintained
extensions and encourages third-party developers to take them over.
(The Debian package adoption procedure might be a model.) It might
even be worth spending internal developer effort on updating extensions
where the fix looks to be easy.
zw
Boris Zbarsky
> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
> bugs will likely be ignored/minused.
Won't this affect Seamonkey?
Ignoring I can understand (with the assumption that someone on the
Seamonkey team will be given the bits to do triage). Minusing doesn't
seem right.
-Boris
L. David Baron
> I think it might be worthwhile to devote some of our attention to
> popular but unmaintained extensions. We could, for instance, have
> some sort of "adoption agency" on AMO which lists unmaintained
> extensions and encourages third-party developers to take them over.
> (The Debian package adoption procedure might be a model.) It might
> even be worth spending internal developer effort on updating extensions
> where the fix looks to be easy.
This would only be possible for open-source extensions. (I don't
think AMO has metadata to indicate which extensions are open-source,
so figuring out which these are can involve a bit of digging.)
-David
--
L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/
Mozilla Corporation http://www.mozilla.com/
Robert Kaiser
> On 29-Oct-08, at 9:26 AM, Simon Paquet wrote:
>> Based on the current TB3 release planning, TB3 will be released 3-4
>> months after the Gecko 1.8 EOL, when TB2 is still the stable release.
>
> Do we have similar targets for Seamonkey, Camino, Sunbird, InstantBird,
> Miro, etc?
As Simon has already mentioned, we're planning on a similar target for
SeaMonkey 2 as for Thunderbird 3.
Robert Kaiser
David E. Ross
> Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3
Over the period of 7-20 October 2008, I logged the UA strings of 2097
visits to an eclectic mix of 20 of my Web pages. Bots and crawlers
accounted for 39% of those visits. Recognizable browsers accounted for
61%.
Of the 420 visits by some Gecko browser, 401 allowed me to identify the
Gecko version. rv:1.9 appeared in 75% of those 401; rv:1.8 appeared in
25%.
While this might seem to strengthen the argument in favor of ending
support for Gecko 1.8.x -- 3/4 (not merely 2/3) using Gecko 1.9.x -- 25%
of the Gecko users (including SeaMonkey and Camino users, both of which
appeared in my log) should not be ignored.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Go to Mozdev at <http://www.mozdev.org/> for quick access to
extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and other
Mozilla-related applications. You can access Mozdev much
more quickly than you can Mozilla Add-Ons.
Philip Chee
> Yup, keep reading in the thread and you'll see that concern has indeed
> been registered! As has been discussed before, it's not like we're
> going to lock the CVS trees and walk away, and I don't think all
> development will stop ... but the active development of Firefox
> releases based on that platform and the milestone-based development
> cycles would probably stop.
Yes. I'm not concerned with active development. Just security and
stability backports. *And* fixing any regressions that break SeaMonkey
1.1.x.
> With that in mind - still concerned?
I am reassured, mostly.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Philip Chee
> On Oct 29, 2008, at 10:20 AM, Mike Beltzner wrote:
>
>> Yup, keep reading in the thread and you'll see that concern has
>> indeed been registered! As has been discussed before, it's not like
>> we're going to lock the CVS trees and walk away, and I don't think
>> all development will stop ... but the active development of Firefox
>> releases based on that platform and the milestone-based development
>> cycles would probably stop.
>
> The triage and release team that currently works on Firefox and
> Thunderbird 2.0.0.x releases will continue to triage requests for
> Thunderbird 2.0.0.x and maintain its releases until six months after
> the release of Thunderbird 3.
>
> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
> bugs will likely be ignored/minused. We'll only be considering bugs
> that affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x.
Oh *now* I'm *not* reassured. I suspect the Camino people won't be either.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]A 100% right of return both ways.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Philip Chee
> I think it might be worthwhile to devote some of our attention to
> popular but unmaintained extensions. We could, for instance, have
> some sort of "adoption agency" on AMO which lists unmaintained
> extensions and encourages third-party developers to take them over.
> (The Debian package adoption procedure might be a model.) It might
> even be worth spending internal developer effort on updating extensions
> where the fix looks to be easy.
Mozdev recently set up a formal takeover procedure for orphaned projects
(after an orphaned project turned out not to be orphaned after all, just
pinning for the fjords). Perhaps you could talk to David Boswell or some
of the other board memebers about details.
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ].signature: Permission denied.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Mike Beltzner
>> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
>> bugs will likely be ignored/minused. We'll only be considering bugs
>> that affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x.
>
> Oh *now* I'm *not* reassured. I suspect the Camino people won't be
> either.
I'll wait until you get to the point where Sam clarifies and says that
by "ignored" he meant "we won't be doing milestone release triage
style stuff on it", not "we won't help with patches and reviews as
always."
We've been through this before with the Gecko 1.8 end of life, and
everyone survived. Don't panic. What we're primarily talking about is
stopping the 6-8 week milestone release cycles.
cheers,
mike
Philip Chee
> On 30-Oct-08, at 12:21 AM, Philip Chee wrote:
>
>>> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
>>> bugs will likely be ignored/minused. We'll only be considering bugs
>>> that affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x.
>>
>> Oh *now* I'm *not* reassured. I suspect the Camino people won't be
>> either.
>
> I'll wait until you get to the point where Sam clarifies and says that
> by "ignored" he meant "we won't be doing milestone release triage
> style stuff on it", not "we won't help with patches and reviews as
> always."
So How does this jibe with the last word in this sentence?:
>>> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and
>>> stability bugs will likely be ignored/minused.
Also I don't see any clarifications by Sam in the newsgroup. Something
plugging up the mail/news gateway?
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
[ ]It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
* TagZilla 0.066.6
Robert Kaiser
> Note that this will mean that browser-specific security and stability
> bugs will likely be ignored/minused. We'll only be considering bugs that
> affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x.
So that means that SeaMonkey 1.x (and Camino) will intentionally be made
insecure and punished for never releasing their xpfe-based stuff on top
of Gecko 1.9?
Robert Kaiser
Mike Beltzner
I clarify Sam's words for Phil.
cheers,
mike
Robert Kaiser
Robert Kaiser
> No, and straw men aren't appreciated. Please read on in the thread for where
> I clarify Sam's words for Phil.
Thanks, I just wanted to get that clarified a bit more, as Sam's post
sounded very much like anything browser-specific being ignored and
dropped completely (which I felt was probably not the intention but the
sound of it).
Robert Kaiser
Mike Beltzner
No worries. Sam's hatred for Camino is well documented. ;)
cheers,
mike
volker...@ucpros.com
> (please reply-to / follow-up to: dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org /
> mozilla.dev.planning)
>
> If you can think of other reasons why we shouldn't move towards end of
> life for Firefox 2 / Gecko 1.8.1, please let us know by replying (to dev-plann...@lists.mozilla.org
> or following-up to mozilla.dev.planning)
>
> cheers,
> mike
Mike,
Firefox 3 (even the latest release I tested) has serious printing
issues
that have prevented our organization from migrating.
Character spacing is way off on the printout, dpending on the font
used on a webpage (like courier) characters become even non-readable.
We have web based applications that generate invoices, packing lists,
etc.
That are printed via webbrowser to a PDF (Acrobat). Same problem with
direct
print to a laser printer however.
Firefox 2 printing works perfectly (so does IE ;-)) Firefox 3 is a
disaster.
So I would urge to not discontinue support for Firefox 2 until the
Firefox 3
printing issues are resolved.
thanks
Volker
Boris Zbarsky
> Firefox 3 (even the latest release I tested) has serious printing
> issues
> that have prevented our organization from migrating.
I assume you reported this bug as soon as you discovered it, right? Can
you please point me to the bug report?
-Boris
Gervase Markham
> This would only be possible for open-source extensions. (I don't
> think AMO has metadata to indicate which extensions are open-source,
> so figuring out which these are can involve a bit of digging.)
Right. I seem to remember I filed a bug saying a.m.o. should track this
metadata, but it didn't get accepted :-(
Gerv
Gijs Kruitbosch
David McRitchie
> On June 17th, 2008, we shipped Firefox 3 / Gecko 1.9. As per the
> release roadmap (http://wiki.mozilla.org/ReleaseRoadmap) we're
> approaching the end of the six months for which Firefox 2 / Gecko
> 1.8.1 support is planned. Support in this case means continuing to
> develop the security and stability patches for those code-bases, as
> well as issuing releases of Firefox and minor updates to the Firefox 2
> product.
>
> * ensuring that we don't offer major updates to people on unsupported
> platforms
>
> If you can think of other reasons why we shouldn't move towards end of
> or following-up to mozilla.dev.planning)
Those on Windows 9x will not be able to upgrade to Firefox 3. I've seen
several computers reconfigured by some of my friends with Firefox 2
for seniors or as a starter computer, not your mainstream crowd
But it provides a platform that is familiar to those that can provide help.
Don't know if that is much of a reason for Mozilla. It going to be done
whether there are security updates or not.
Gervase Markham
> Those on Windows 9x will not be able to upgrade to Firefox 3.
If you are still running Windows 9x on a computer connected to the
Internet, an out-of-date browser is the least of your problems. I'm
pretty sure it's no longer safe, given that there haven't been security
updates for some time now.
Gerv
Samuel Sidler
> Those on Windows 9x will not be able to upgrade to Firefox 3. I've
> seen
> several computers reconfigured by some of my friends with Firefox
> 2 for seniors or as a starter computer, not your mainstream crowd
> But it provides a platform that is familiar to those that can
> provide help.
> Don't know if that is much of a reason for Mozilla. It going to
> be done
> whether there are security updates or not.
All users on Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, and NT4 will not be able to
upgrade. That's true. We can't support all OSes forever, nor do we
want to. :)
We won't be offering Firefox 3 to these users on mozilla.com and
definitely won't be sending them a major update. Doing so would
automatically upgrade them to a version of Firefox they couldn't use...
It's sad to drop support for old OSes, but the most recent end of life
for any of those was July 11, 2006 for Windows 98 and ME [1]. It's
time to let them go...
(And, as Gerv said, they have many other security risks beyond the
browser.)
-Sam
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupport.mspx
Samuel Sidler
> So I would urge to not discontinue support for Firefox 2 until the
> Firefox 3 printing issues are resolved.
As Boris said, I hope you filed a bug for this. If so, please link to
it so we can evaluate if it's as serious as you're saying. Without
specific bugs, there's not much we can do...
-Sam
Samuel Sidler
> On 30-Oct-08, at 10:38 AM, Robert Kaiser wrote:
>
> No worries. Sam's hatred for Camino is well documented. ;)
It's good thing Mike's in town this week. Wrath shall be felt...
In any case, I should clarify:
* Current branch drivers [1] will handle mailnews bugs and target
them (and find owners) for upcoming Thunderbird 2.0.0.x releases.
* Security bugs that do not affect Thunderbird 2.0.0.x will not be
targeted or managed.
* If bugs unrelated to Thunderbird 2.0.0.x get appropriate reviews,
branch drivers will triage the approval requests appropriately, just
as they do now.
* The community can take over this branch, just as has been done
for Gecko 1.8.0 (currently managed by Linux vendors)
I hope that helps clear things up... I didn't mean to have my hate on
for SeaMonkey or Camino or any other Gecko 1.8.1 consumer. I <3
everyone!
-Sam
Volker Soffel
This bug is filed on bugzilla, more than once, I might add:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=442570
The PDF in above bug report is similar to what we get when printing
from Firefox 3 to
PDF file (using Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF printer driver under Windows) and
also when printing directly to our
printer (Dell Color Laser with PCL printer driver).
Firefox2, and IE7 both work fine in the same constellation.
the bug is also described here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=459748
and here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409123
and here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452374
and probably a few more if you search
best regards
Volker
At 06:02 PM 11/3/2008, you wrote:
>On Oct 30, 2008, at 8:26 AM, volker...@ucpros.com wrote:
>
>>So I would urge to not discontinue support for Firefox 2 until the
>>Firefox 3 printing issues are resolved.
>
Robert Kaiser
> * The community can take over this branch, just as has been done for
> Gecko 1.8.0 (currently managed by Linux vendors)
I hope Linux vendors will help us there once again as I'm sure the
SeaMonkey and Camino communities are not able to maintain a
Gecko/Platform branch.
Robert Kaiser
Mike Beltzner
The Firefox and Gecko communities are part of the Mozilla Community,
Robert. One big happy family, despite the occasional squabble where
Firefox puts rocks in SeaMonkey's schoolbag, or however you want to
carry that particular metaphor. :) I know there are examples of
people backporting maintenance patches to unsupported branches when
asked nicely, and in many cases those patches are ripe for backporting
with a little help and love to make them fit into the older trees.
Prioritization is a bitch, but we're an underresourced community which
needs to focus on the things which will help us continue to grow our
leverage within the wider web community, so in the larger picture I
believe resolutely that this end of life policy helps the community
more than hinders. Let it be known that we're not trying to inflict
pain on the family, we're just trying to be pragmatic about the
resources to hand.
cheers,
mike
Robert Kaiser
> Prioritization is a bitch, but we're an underresourced community which
> needs to focus on the things which will help us continue to grow our
> leverage within the wider web community, so in the larger picture I
> believe resolutely that this end of life policy helps the community more
> than hinders. Let it be known that we're not trying to inflict pain on
> the family, we're just trying to be pragmatic about the resources to hand.
I know, and believe me, I'd be very happy to kill off 1.8.1 for
SeaMonkey, as this also means xpfe for us. I don't see any animosity
between the Mozilla subprojects there, really, I just want to care that
we can ship security updates for our old product line long enough to
make the transition to the new toolkit backends in the 1.9.1 take over
the role as the stable series. With that, we'll be pulling on the same
rope as Firefox even more than in the past.
Robert Kaiser
Gijs Kruitbosch
> On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:48:42 -0400, Mike Beltzner <belt...@mozilla.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Presently 2/3rds of our users are using Firefox 3, with more than 50%
>> accepting the first major upgrade offer back in late August. We're
>> looking
>> through Hendrix and other sources to understand why people didn't want
>> to upgrade and ensure that those bugs have been fixed - if you know of
>> any that would result in the product not working on a user's system,
>> please point it out.
>
> Not sure if this what you're asking for, but regression bug
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=341959
> is what keeps me using older Firefox and Seamonkey....
>
> Rob
Quick look says that should be fixed in 3.0.5 (patch has approval for that
release, anyway).
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=373701
~ Gijs
Jason Spiro
L. David Baron <dbaron <at> dbaron.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 2008-10-29 10:33 -0700, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> > I think it might be worthwhile to devote some of our attention to
> > popular but unmaintained extensions. We could, for instance, have
> > some sort of "adoption agency" on AMO which lists unmaintained
> > extensions and encourages third-party developers to take them over.
> > (The Debian package adoption procedure might be a model.) It might
> > even be worth spending internal developer effort on updating extensions
> > where the fix looks to be easy.
>
> think AMO has metadata to indicate which extensions are open-source,
> so figuring out which these are can involve a bit of digging.)
David, there is a bug for what you want. It is entitled "make licensing
information available about add-ons":
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=446361