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Message from discussion Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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Asa Dotzler  
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 More options Feb 5 2010, 9:00 pm
Newsgroups: mozilla.dev.planning
From: Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:00:46 -0800
Local: Fri, Feb 5 2010 9:00 pm
Subject: Re: Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 support in Gecko 1.9.3
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On 2/5/2010 5:20 PM, JimR63701 wrote:

> On Feb 4, 11:16 pm, Josh Aas<josh...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> The approximately 25% of our Mac OS X users still on 10.4 would
>> continue to be supported by Firefox 3.6 until that product reaches end
>> of service, which won't be until several months after the next major
>> version of Firefox is delivered (built on Gecko 1.9.3) later this
>> year. Past data shows that we do not lose appreciable market share
>> when we stop supporting a Mac OS X version. We are often one of the
>> last vendors to continue supporting older Mac OS X releases, and I
>> suspect that by the time this becomes an issue Apple may themselves
>> have stopped issuing security updates for Mac OS X 10.4.
>> We are planning to make the decision to remove 10.4 support final and
>> remove the code from the tree. If you have any strong objections
>> please let us know now.

> I would object, since I am using an older PowerPC PowerBook under
> 10.4, and even 3.6 seems a bit slow or buggy to me. I am still in
> process of checking if some add-ons are part of this, but since I
> prefer ad-blocking and script-blocking, etc., if Firefox drops 10.4
> support, I will have to look elsewhere instead of staying with
> FIrefox, as I cannot afford a new(er) 'Book at this point in time. In
> case somebody missed it, money is not flowing like water for the
> majority of us out here (though that might not apply to all, I'm
> sure).

Since this decision won't be made because a few users visiting this
forum are still bound to 10.4, this kind of advocacy doesn't help much.
  If you can add more precise usage data to this discussion than what
Josh offered in the initial post, please do. If you know of other kinds
of data that represents large numbers of Mac or Firefox users that
hasn't already been mentioned, please add that.

> I'd rather stay with Firefox, but if support for Tiger (which doesn't
> require me to buy a GHz CPU-ed G4 or above) is dropped, you'll find me
> on the other side of your imposed digital divide. Sorry to see that
> this is being considered, since with Firefox being available for my
> 'Book and also for the (newer) Wintel box I have to use at work, I
> have been able to maintain similarity of commands between the two
> platforms with Firefox.

Obviously some users will always be left behind when we unsupport a
platform.

I (and I'm sure others here) recognize that tens or even hundreds of
thousands of users will be left behind in a year or so if we stop
support for 10.4. We understand that. If we tried to support 100% of
operating systems out there, the project would collapse.

That means we have to pick our target versions carefully. Do you have
some suggestion about what that cut-off should be that goes further than
"not the platform I'm on" ?

- A


 
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