Enterprise IT unhappy with Firefox 4's quick demise

[pomroy]

Sorry for posting news into a support forum, but this seems very relevant.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... 2011-06-23
shortened - (http://bit.ly/m6nA1t)

"Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours," said Asa Dotzler, director of Firefox, in a comment appended to a follow-up blog post by Kaply. "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."

If Firefox is going to release a major version update every six weeks, poor Draconpern will be working practically around the clock to keep these MSI packages updated, and those of us who use them will be working non-stop testing business applications on them. This quote alone is making me seriously reconsider Firefox's worthiness in my business environment, and I've been a loyal user since it was called "Netscape Navigator".

Tom

[nefadmin]

Wow....just, wow. The conversation going on in that thread is unbelievable. Asa Dotzler is a complete asshole; if he is the main person behind the direction of FF, I feel like I should stop using it just out of principle.

[jpa]

Firefox ignoring the Enterprise is the reason FrontMotion Firefox exists. It's especially why FM Community Edition exists. Hopefully enough people use the packager service for DraconPern to maintain enough interest in keeping up with the changes.

[pomroy]

Just to be nit-picky, it seems technically correct to move the 4.0.1.2 MSIs into the "Older Versions" section. My reading of Firefox's new policy is that 4.x is already abandoned, it has security holes that are not going to be patched, ever. The 3.6.x series is "still alive" but 4.x is now for historical purposes only.