[Mageia-dev] FireFox ESR <= we should totally go for this wrt stable releases

Fri Jan 13 12:37:01 CET 2012

Le vendredi 13 janvier 2012 à 11:21 +0000, Claire Robinson a écrit :
+> On 13/01/12 09:36, nicolas vigier wrote:
+> > On Fri, 13 Jan 2012, Sander Lepik wrote:
+> >
+> >> 13.01.2012 03:20, Maarten Vanraes kirjutas:
+> >>> see https://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2012/01/10/delivering-a-mozilla-firefox-
+> >>> extended-support-release/
+> >>> see https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/9/9d/Esr-release-overview.png
+> >>>
+> >>> ESR is a 1y extended supported release...
+> >>>
+> >>> looking at the image we'd be having supported versions for our 9month release
+> >>> schedule every time... we should totally use this release and not go towards
+> >>> FF11 for our release.
+> >>>
+> >>> We've been complaining about the too quick release schedule... this is our
+> >>> chance!
+> >>>
+> >>> ( i think if the FF maintainer wishes, he could also do backports of the
+> >>> regular releases... )
+> >>>
+> >>> i'm hoping everyone agrees? including FF maintainer?
+> >> I don't agree. But i'm not the maintainer.
+> >>
+> >> Why not?
+> >> * Since fx10 all non-binary extensions are compatible by default (so our
+> >> main problem goes away).
+> >> * fx10 in 6 months is dead old for users POV. Many unhappy users. Lower
+> >> popularity for Mageia. (Ubuntu AFAIK is going with fast schedule).
+> >> * We will miss too many new and cool features.
+> >> * When we release
+> >
+> > We could say the same about any other software. Firefox was an exception
+> > on updates policy because there was no other choice. But there's no
+> > reason to keep it as an exception when they provide a supported version.
+> >
+> 
+> With 12 months support more often than not it would need updating in the 
+> lifespan of the Mageia 9 month release anyway.
+> 
+> Firefox is one of those programs that people like to be bang up to date 
+> with. 
+
+All softwares are one of those programs. The only one that some non
+technical users do not want to be updated are those that they do not
+know, like glibc, python, perl. But still, there is people that want it
+up to date, so firefox is nothing special. 
+
+> It is 'bragging rights' to ship with the latest and something 
+> reviewers always give version numbers of along with libreoffice, kde, gnome.
+
+Sure, and we neither update libreoffice, kde, gnome or the linux kernel.
+Some people do ( kde is upated by Fedora, as well as the linux kernel ).
+So that's a consistency issue, about what we promise to users. 
+
+Stability is just that, stuff that do not have interface changes every 6
+weeks, stuff that do not have slight mistranslation everytime string
+change, stuff that do not risk breaking software after every updates.
+
+> I understand the arguments to go with the 12 months support but I think 
+> for the reasons above we should stick with the normal release cycle or 
+> maybe even offer both?
+
+Offering both would mean to double our workload of supporting firefox,
+and have no advantages by using the long supported release. 
+
+And that's rather useless from my point of view, if the goal is to
+reduce the workload. There is already enough work to support the
+distribution.
+
+
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+