5 ms·

Mozilla Executive: We're Not Interested In Enterprise Level Users

54 points by adeelarshad82 15y ago

wccrawford 15y ago
Part of the problem is how enterprise-y companies do things. Taking 3 months to roll out a new browser is ridiculous. But then, so is designing your website to only work on the most popular browser, and they do that, too. Fix the latter and you can probably fix the former at the same time.
- arethuza 15y ago
  "Taking 3 months to roll out a new browser is ridiculous." Unless you have pretty poor infrastructure, actually rolling out a new version should be trivial, it's the testing to confirm that the new version doesn't break anything vital that will take the time.
  - chriserin 15y ago
    In my experience, there are few departments that have automated tests that could assist in shortening the testing cycle. If there is a bug with a new version of firefox then it will take 3 months to fix it because of the long development and deployment cycles exacerbated by a heavy bureaucracy.
- eitally 15y ago
  Yeah, in an ideal world.... This is a really ignorant statement, though. Just one of my teams has a tracking spreadsheet for >100 web apps they support. A fair number of those are "legacy" -- created by folks who are no longer with the company, or which are no longer the standard way of performing a task -- but are unkillable for one reason or another. Besides homegrown stuff, certain versions of expensive commercial software only support specific browsers and versions of browsers. If you have to test, AND you have to setup GPOs for users at the app-level because of browser incompatibilities, it is completely understandable why the internal upgrade cycle can take longer than the vendor's upgrade cycle. You should spend some time in enterprise IT and see what it's like on the other side of the fence.
  - pohl 15y ago
    That problem could be easily solved by having multiple browsers installed so that a user could chose one that works with a broken, legacy web app. IT departments could roll out two different browsers in a tick-tock manner.
    - cageface 15y ago
      If you think it's easy to teach users to intelligently choose among several different browsers for each of several web apps you've never worked in corporate IT before.
      - rayvega 15y ago
        Users have already been taught to choose among different desktop apps. How? By clicking on installed shortcut links on their desktop. The same can be done with internal web apps. Treat these legacy web apps just like desktop apps in that launching them requires clicking an icon specifically for that web app somewhere on their machine that opens the web app in the appropriate browser. Those browsers (like IE6) could be locked down to only work for certain URLs. For everything else, the user would then just need to use a more modern web browser such as Firefox 5.0. An ambitious startup could find many other (and probably better) ways to solve this problem. The issue with legacy web apps that run only on IE6 always struck me as a potential business opportunity for any startup interested in targeting the enterprise space. With Firefox's recent shift to an accelerated release cycle, it has made this problem even more pronounce.
iwwr 15y ago
Can someone more knowledgeable describe why each new FF version breaks existing extensions? Can't FF have a more stable extension architecture? Edit: though the idea that enterprise is useless may be dangerous. Each new FF user is worth maybe pennies or nothing at all in revenue to Mozilla, while enterprise 'seats' can get a nice premium.
- ch0wn 15y ago
  In my experience, most extensions work just fine after an update without modifications even if they are marked as incompatible. The addon authors simply tend to set the version compatibility rather conservatively.
- windsurfer 15y ago
  The issue is usually the extension creator's fault. It's left up the developer to say what versions your extension is compatible with - and usually that's left to just the current version.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    Sounds like Mozilla's fault to me.
  - mbrubeck 15y ago
    For add-ons hosted by Mozilla, this is no longer left up to the developer. Mozilla will automatically scan add-ons for compatibility with new versions and update their metadata: http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibility-rapid-releases/ http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibili...
    - windsurfer 15y ago
      Oh that's so cool. It's been a while since I've worked on themes and extensions, so this is awesome news :D
- owenmarshall 15y ago
JohnLavoie 15y ago
The entire notion of 'certifying' a browser is ridiculous anyway. This is how IT organization get 'stuck' still having IE 6 as the approved browser. With all of the work going into web standards, agile processes, and automated testing, why is certification such a huge labor-intensive ordeal anymore?
- chadgeidel 15y ago
  Because every organization has a "web app" that they bought and installed years ago that simply doesn't work in newer browsers.
raganwald 15y ago
I sympathize with both sides of the argument. Large organizations really do need a longer support and deployment cycle. If they adopt version ___ of a product, they need some assurance that it will be supported for a certain window of time. On the other hand, if you let "The Enterprise" dictate your development strategy, you will find yourself making faster horses rather than electric roadsters. This might be a good opportunity for a business to sell support contracts with guaranteed life cycles for EOL'd versions of Firefox. That way, an enterprise shop could pick a version knowing that it will be supported for a year or two years or whatever they negotiate.
- adamc 15y ago
  It isn't just large organizations that may be inconvenienced by rapid releases of major versions -- when I adopted FF5, a bunch of plugins stopped working. If that happens every 3-6 months, I'll probably stop using FF for daily work (Chrome is arguably better anyway). Of course, I'd still have to test in FF -- but that's a minor issue.
- cosgroveb 15y ago
  Maybe a system like Ubuntu's is needed here? Every two years or so designate a version as "LTS" and continue to support that branch with bugfixes for several years. I suppose that's not quite as Agile...
Maro 15y ago
One the one hand, you can't really blame FF. Chrome is killing them with their quick release cycles, so they felt they needed to respond. On the other hand, what options do enterprises have? Assuming they're currently using FF, they probably don't want to go back to IE. Chrome is out of the question for the same reason we're having this discussion, frequent releases. So, what's left? Safari on Windows? And too much is broken on Opera. So, I don't really think FF has much to fear in terms of losing existing enterprise customers. It may stall adoption on the enterprise market, but if it brings them back in the consumer market, and it's a net gain, then it was a good move. After all, Mozilla's customers like Google are buying eyeballs wholesale, irrespective of them being enterprise or consumer users.
- bad_user 15y ago
  what options do enterprises have? Change their policies? Just let Firefox freaking update itself, after all, Mozilla is more trustworthy than an IT department of debatable competency. And what on earth are they doing in those internal apps that makes them incompatible between Firefox 3 and Firefox 5 ? I do have an intranet app of reasonable complexity that was created using IExplorer 6 and the original Mozilla browser. It still works today, the same as it was working when I made it. That's what standards are for.
  - pilif 15y ago
    what though, if by total accident, that one webapp worked on FF 3.6 due to a bug in that borwser version? That one webapp that some guy once created to make his life easier, that's not documented anywhere any more and that's now being used to do all accounting over even though nobody knows about it. Now imagine you as the IT guy update Firefox from 3.6 to 4 and now that app breaks and with it the accounting department stops working. Nobody will appreciate your "but... I didn't know that app was there" which is totally not the correct answer to "why the hell did you just break the accounting department?" I have seen this happen. Maybe not at this scale, but it definitely did happen. No wonder IT people are scared of updating: If you don't do anything, everything will keep working, but you might piss off some web developers who you don't know. If you DO update, you may risk breaking some home-grown solution you didn't know about and you will be held responsible for all the damage caused. Yes. That app shouldn't exist. Yes, it should be documented, yes it should not have bugs. But it might exist, it might not be documented and it might have bugs. You. Just. Don't. Know. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not one of these guys, mainly because I have not been burnt by this yet (and probably never will - 10 people company and I still know about everything that's going on), but I can certainly understand them.
vessenes 15y ago
To my mind, this is mostly a culture clash. In no way is it "Enterprise Users" that FF is worried about; it's Enterprise IT guys. Spoken as a startup executive who also wears the IT hat at times -- those guys can be fascist bastards. I don't really want to help them either. Well, I guess I'll erase this post when I do my next Group Policy-based startup. Until then, I stand by my statement. Long ago, IT was there to help users work with something they couldn't understand. Now IT has sort of turned into that abusive controlling parent who too often says "you can't do this, because I don't like it." Standard disclaimers apply: you are not like this, you are a great IT person. That said, I think there is absolutely no chance that the Firefox team will, after significant internal effort to speed up and become more agile, slow down to please IT groups. Organizations that are also learning to speed up will get benefits from FF or Chrome, others won't. I do agree that plugin development issues are a serious pain point. I anticipate that they'll work out some better system (maybe a version API contract that tells a plugin what they can consume?).
- owenmarshall 15y ago
  I think this new development process will actually be a benefit for plugin authors. Each new version will come with fewer big changes, meaning that plugins may just keep working across different versions. Of course, that benefit can only be realized if plugins are no longer tied to a version. A good solution is definitely needed here.
  - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
    That makes no sense. If you move a product from A to B where A is compatible with a plug-in and B isn't, it doesn't matter whether you do it in one step or 10 steps, it's still going to break at some point. The positive for developers is that the smaller number of changes might make it easier to identify what's caused the problem and means that any particular release is less likely to cause a problem, the downside is that you have to retest it far more often and you have far more releases that might break something. Overall it feels slightly (though not massively) worse for developers as the total overhead of basic test, release and so on increases.
eitally 15y ago
The consumerization of IT goes both ways: people get the latest & greatest at home and want to bring it to work, but they often are trained to use interesting tech at work -- and become comfortable with it -- so they tend to use the same at home. If Mozilla doesn't change their tune, Google & Apple will eat their lunch.
G_Morgan 15y ago
Glad to see this. If Mozilla started chasing corporate then it would be necessary for me to switch browser. I've stuck with them through the misconceptions about memory from people who don't understand how memory management works. I've put up with slightly worse performance and standards support for enabling features I actually use like ad block. However I would never tolerate kowtowing to the mishmash of nonsense that is corporate IT. I don't use IE for exactly this reason. The simple truth is that if corporations need consistent behaviour they should not be using web apps to begin with.
hugh4life 15y ago
While I prefer Firefox to Chrome for my own personal usage, I think businesses would be better served by Chrome.
- sciurus 15y ago
  Why?
- tedmielczarek 15y ago
  So they could be left with the exact same rapid release cycle? I fail to understand your point.
djhworld 15y ago
Enterprises don't have time to be modern or forward thinking, they're too busy wrapped up in management process and business bullshit to concern themselves with upgrading the software on their corporate network. I know this because I work as an enterprise developer in a large enterprise company. I can't wait until I die :)
angdis 15y ago
The exec is right. Why should mozilla "slow down" to accommodate enterprises who churn out absurdly brittle applications and who change them literally only when a crisis forces them to do so. It is the internal enterprise apps that need to "get with the program."
skrebbel 15y ago
This article made me realize that to enterprises, what SaaS really sells is not the ease of (or lack of) deployment, but the disability for IT departments like these to control deployment at all.
Produce 15y ago
I saw an interesting point in a scientific paper recently which I, admittedly, only got to read the abstract of (scientific journals are littered with paywalls). It basically stated that the corporation is a form of social technology which has failed society. When looking at the reality of the situation, in particular, how slowly they move and how much they tend to halt progress, I tend to agree with the sentiment. Just look at IE6 - the web would be a very different place if certain people weren't so obsessed with making money (by always taking the path of least risk) and making everyone else pay for the fact. EDIT: This paper - http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract
mmuro 15y ago
Why should Mozilla be held responsible for whether an enterprise business cannot update their own applications? This is not a Mozilla problem.
jolan 15y ago
These corporations aren't paying for Firefox so why should they expect understanding or support?
- st0p 15y ago
  These corporations aren't paying for IE either (comes for free with Windows), but IE has some form of support with security patches.
meow 15y ago
The question is not whether Mozilla should cater to enterprise users. The question is should Mozilla cater to internal enterprise applications which don't get updated very often and are easy to break.
zem 15y ago
now is the time for a third party organisation to step up and support designated firefox 3.6 or 4.0 releases. it might not be feasible for a company to do just this, but someone already in the business of supporting open source software could conceivably add firefox on to their product list.
- wmf 15y ago
  And rather than pay for FF 3.6, enterprises will keep using IE 6 for free.
programminggeek 15y ago
You know, enterprise software is a funny thing. Every time a new version of say Firefox comes out, I get a bunch of emails at work saying that whatever version of SAP doesn't support it so please don't upgrade or face great peril. Then there are older legacy products like Lotus Notes Domino web access that is the biggest pile of garbage when run outside of IE that I've ever seen. Heck, inside of IE it's still terrible. Web software was supposed to make large scale software updates better, but thanks to "enterprise software" the whole thing is actually worse inside of enterprises. Go figure.
m0nastic 15y ago
So I work for an "enterprise company", and if you install Firefox on your computer, it will be automatically removed within an hour, and an email will be sent to your manager. (Unfortunately, the same thing happens if you try to install IE 7 or later). I'm not sure this is a market that they want to be in.
- 7952 15y ago
  So they give you enough admin rights to install an app? Security theatre i think.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Or some legacy app requires admin rights just to work, so instead of locking down they scan for badness every hour. Of course, that won't help against something really bad.
pronoiac 15y ago
The faster release cycles didn't bother me until I realized that with Google's new support announcement [1], that Firefox versions would officially only get about six months of support on Google Apps. And that I have no idea how Ubuntu's handling quicker releases. [1] http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-su...
- bugmenot 15y ago
  Canonical's Jason Warner said Ubuntu will move to the latest stable version of Firefox if security updates for whatever version they are currently shipping stop [1]. [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/432360/ http://lwn.net/Articles/432360/
cdcarter 15y ago
The real problem here isn't the release cycle, it's the support cycle. Many open source apps that are used in enterprise settings (servers, mostly) get this right, and mark dedicated supported versions, for customers who can't or won't yet upgrade. Mozilla could start doing this, and all of a sudden they'd be both accessible, but still able to do their release cycle as planned.
rwar 15y ago
It'd be nice for Firefox to adopt a LTS version. That way security updates can be guaranteed and IT guys can work on making sure LTS versions work.

54 points by adeelarshad82 15y ago

Part of the problem is how enterprise-y companies do things. Taking 3 months to roll out a new browser is ridiculous. But then, so is designing your website to only work on the most popular browser, and they do that, too. Fix the latter and you can probably fix the former at the same time.

arethuza 15y ago
"Taking 3 months to roll out a new browser is ridiculous." Unless you have pretty poor infrastructure, actually rolling out a new version should be trivial, it's the testing to confirm that the new version doesn't break anything vital that will take the time.
- chriserin 15y ago
  In my experience, there are few departments that have automated tests that could assist in shortening the testing cycle. If there is a bug with a new version of firefox then it will take 3 months to fix it because of the long development and deployment cycles exacerbated by a heavy bureaucracy.
eitally 15y ago
Yeah, in an ideal world.... This is a really ignorant statement, though. Just one of my teams has a tracking spreadsheet for >100 web apps they support. A fair number of those are "legacy" -- created by folks who are no longer with the company, or which are no longer the standard way of performing a task -- but are unkillable for one reason or another. Besides homegrown stuff, certain versions of expensive commercial software only support specific browsers and versions of browsers. If you have to test, AND you have to setup GPOs for users at the app-level because of browser incompatibilities, it is completely understandable why the internal upgrade cycle can take longer than the vendor's upgrade cycle. You should spend some time in enterprise IT and see what it's like on the other side of the fence.
- pohl 15y ago
  That problem could be easily solved by having multiple browsers installed so that a user could chose one that works with a broken, legacy web app. IT departments could roll out two different browsers in a tick-tock manner.
  - cageface 15y ago
    If you think it's easy to teach users to intelligently choose among several different browsers for each of several web apps you've never worked in corporate IT before.
    - rayvega 15y ago
      Users have already been taught to choose among different desktop apps. How? By clicking on installed shortcut links on their desktop. The same can be done with internal web apps. Treat these legacy web apps just like desktop apps in that launching them requires clicking an icon specifically for that web app somewhere on their machine that opens the web app in the appropriate browser. Those browsers (like IE6) could be locked down to only work for certain URLs. For everything else, the user would then just need to use a more modern web browser such as Firefox 5.0. An ambitious startup could find many other (and probably better) ways to solve this problem. The issue with legacy web apps that run only on IE6 always struck me as a potential business opportunity for any startup interested in targeting the enterprise space. With Firefox's recent shift to an accelerated release cycle, it has made this problem even more pronounce.

iwwr 15y ago

Can someone more knowledgeable describe why each new FF version breaks existing extensions? Can't FF have a more stable extension architecture? Edit: though the idea that enterprise is useless may be dangerous. Each new FF user is worth maybe pennies or nothing at all in revenue to Mozilla, while enterprise 'seats' can get a nice premium.

ch0wn 15y ago
In my experience, most extensions work just fine after an update without modifications even if they are marked as incompatible. The addon authors simply tend to set the version compatibility rather conservatively.
windsurfer 15y ago
The issue is usually the extension creator's fault. It's left up the developer to say what versions your extension is compatible with - and usually that's left to just the current version.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Sounds like Mozilla's fault to me.
- mbrubeck 15y ago
  For add-ons hosted by Mozilla, this is no longer left up to the developer. Mozilla will automatically scan add-ons for compatibility with new versions and update their metadata: http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibility-rapid-releases/ http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibili...
  - windsurfer 15y ago
    Oh that's so cool. It's been a while since I've worked on themes and extensions, so this is awesome news :D
owenmarshall 15y ago

JohnLavoie 15y ago

The entire notion of 'certifying' a browser is ridiculous anyway. This is how IT organization get 'stuck' still having IE 6 as the approved browser. With all of the work going into web standards, agile processes, and automated testing, why is certification such a huge labor-intensive ordeal anymore?

chadgeidel 15y ago
Because every organization has a "web app" that they bought and installed years ago that simply doesn't work in newer browsers.

raganwald 15y ago

I sympathize with both sides of the argument. Large organizations really do need a longer support and deployment cycle. If they adopt version ___ of a product, they need some assurance that it will be supported for a certain window of time. On the other hand, if you let "The Enterprise" dictate your development strategy, you will find yourself making faster horses rather than electric roadsters. This might be a good opportunity for a business to sell support contracts with guaranteed life cycles for EOL'd versions of Firefox. That way, an enterprise shop could pick a version knowing that it will be supported for a year or two years or whatever they negotiate.

adamc 15y ago
It isn't just large organizations that may be inconvenienced by rapid releases of major versions -- when I adopted FF5, a bunch of plugins stopped working. If that happens every 3-6 months, I'll probably stop using FF for daily work (Chrome is arguably better anyway). Of course, I'd still have to test in FF -- but that's a minor issue.
cosgroveb 15y ago
Maybe a system like Ubuntu's is needed here? Every two years or so designate a version as "LTS" and continue to support that branch with bugfixes for several years. I suppose that's not quite as Agile...

Maro 15y ago

One the one hand, you can't really blame FF. Chrome is killing them with their quick release cycles, so they felt they needed to respond. On the other hand, what options do enterprises have? Assuming they're currently using FF, they probably don't want to go back to IE. Chrome is out of the question for the same reason we're having this discussion, frequent releases. So, what's left? Safari on Windows? And too much is broken on Opera. So, I don't really think FF has much to fear in terms of losing existing enterprise customers. It may stall adoption on the enterprise market, but if it brings them back in the consumer market, and it's a net gain, then it was a good move. After all, Mozilla's customers like Google are buying eyeballs wholesale, irrespective of them being enterprise or consumer users.

bad_user 15y ago
what options do enterprises have? Change their policies? Just let Firefox freaking update itself, after all, Mozilla is more trustworthy than an IT department of debatable competency. And what on earth are they doing in those internal apps that makes them incompatible between Firefox 3 and Firefox 5 ? I do have an intranet app of reasonable complexity that was created using IExplorer 6 and the original Mozilla browser. It still works today, the same as it was working when I made it. That's what standards are for.
- pilif 15y ago
  what though, if by total accident, that one webapp worked on FF 3.6 due to a bug in that borwser version? That one webapp that some guy once created to make his life easier, that's not documented anywhere any more and that's now being used to do all accounting over even though nobody knows about it. Now imagine you as the IT guy update Firefox from 3.6 to 4 and now that app breaks and with it the accounting department stops working. Nobody will appreciate your "but... I didn't know that app was there" which is totally not the correct answer to "why the hell did you just break the accounting department?" I have seen this happen. Maybe not at this scale, but it definitely did happen. No wonder IT people are scared of updating: If you don't do anything, everything will keep working, but you might piss off some web developers who you don't know. If you DO update, you may risk breaking some home-grown solution you didn't know about and you will be held responsible for all the damage caused. Yes. That app shouldn't exist. Yes, it should be documented, yes it should not have bugs. But it might exist, it might not be documented and it might have bugs. You. Just. Don't. Know. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not one of these guys, mainly because I have not been burnt by this yet (and probably never will - 10 people company and I still know about everything that's going on), but I can certainly understand them.

vessenes 15y ago

To my mind, this is mostly a culture clash. In no way is it "Enterprise Users" that FF is worried about; it's Enterprise IT guys. Spoken as a startup executive who also wears the IT hat at times -- those guys can be fascist bastards. I don't really want to help them either. Well, I guess I'll erase this post when I do my next Group Policy-based startup. Until then, I stand by my statement. Long ago, IT was there to help users work with something they couldn't understand. Now IT has sort of turned into that abusive controlling parent who too often says "you can't do this, because I don't like it." Standard disclaimers apply: you are not like this, you are a great IT person. That said, I think there is absolutely no chance that the Firefox team will, after significant internal effort to speed up and become more agile, slow down to please IT groups. Organizations that are also learning to speed up will get benefits from FF or Chrome, others won't. I do agree that plugin development issues are a serious pain point. I anticipate that they'll work out some better system (maybe a version API contract that tells a plugin what they can consume?).

owenmarshall 15y ago
I think this new development process will actually be a benefit for plugin authors. Each new version will come with fewer big changes, meaning that plugins may just keep working across different versions. Of course, that benefit can only be realized if plugins are no longer tied to a version. A good solution is definitely needed here.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  That makes no sense. If you move a product from A to B where A is compatible with a plug-in and B isn't, it doesn't matter whether you do it in one step or 10 steps, it's still going to break at some point. The positive for developers is that the smaller number of changes might make it easier to identify what's caused the problem and means that any particular release is less likely to cause a problem, the downside is that you have to retest it far more often and you have far more releases that might break something. Overall it feels slightly (though not massively) worse for developers as the total overhead of basic test, release and so on increases.

eitally 15y ago

The consumerization of IT goes both ways: people get the latest & greatest at home and want to bring it to work, but they often are trained to use interesting tech at work -- and become comfortable with it -- so they tend to use the same at home. If Mozilla doesn't change their tune, Google & Apple will eat their lunch.

G_Morgan 15y ago

Glad to see this. If Mozilla started chasing corporate then it would be necessary for me to switch browser. I've stuck with them through the misconceptions about memory from people who don't understand how memory management works. I've put up with slightly worse performance and standards support for enabling features I actually use like ad block. However I would never tolerate kowtowing to the mishmash of nonsense that is corporate IT. I don't use IE for exactly this reason. The simple truth is that if corporations need consistent behaviour they should not be using web apps to begin with.

hugh4life 15y ago

While I prefer Firefox to Chrome for my own personal usage, I think businesses would be better served by Chrome.

sciurus 15y ago
Why?
tedmielczarek 15y ago
So they could be left with the exact same rapid release cycle? I fail to understand your point.

djhworld 15y ago

Enterprises don't have time to be modern or forward thinking, they're too busy wrapped up in management process and business bullshit to concern themselves with upgrading the software on their corporate network. I know this because I work as an enterprise developer in a large enterprise company. I can't wait until I die :)

angdis 15y ago

The exec is right. Why should mozilla "slow down" to accommodate enterprises who churn out absurdly brittle applications and who change them literally only when a crisis forces them to do so. It is the internal enterprise apps that need to "get with the program."

skrebbel 15y ago

This article made me realize that to enterprises, what SaaS really sells is not the ease of (or lack of) deployment, but the disability for IT departments like these to control deployment at all.

Produce 15y ago

I saw an interesting point in a scientific paper recently which I, admittedly, only got to read the abstract of (scientific journals are littered with paywalls). It basically stated that the corporation is a form of social technology which has failed society. When looking at the reality of the situation, in particular, how slowly they move and how much they tend to halt progress, I tend to agree with the sentiment. Just look at IE6 - the web would be a very different place if certain people weren't so obsessed with making money (by always taking the path of least risk) and making everyone else pay for the fact. EDIT: This paper - http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract

mmuro 15y ago

Why should Mozilla be held responsible for whether an enterprise business cannot update their own applications? This is not a Mozilla problem.

jolan 15y ago

These corporations aren't paying for Firefox so why should they expect understanding or support?

st0p 15y ago
These corporations aren't paying for IE either (comes for free with Windows), but IE has some form of support with security patches.

meow 15y ago

The question is not whether Mozilla should cater to enterprise users. The question is should Mozilla cater to internal enterprise applications which don't get updated very often and are easy to break.

zem 15y ago

now is the time for a third party organisation to step up and support designated firefox 3.6 or 4.0 releases. it might not be feasible for a company to do just this, but someone already in the business of supporting open source software could conceivably add firefox on to their product list.

wmf 15y ago
And rather than pay for FF 3.6, enterprises will keep using IE 6 for free.

programminggeek 15y ago

You know, enterprise software is a funny thing. Every time a new version of say Firefox comes out, I get a bunch of emails at work saying that whatever version of SAP doesn't support it so please don't upgrade or face great peril. Then there are older legacy products like Lotus Notes Domino web access that is the biggest pile of garbage when run outside of IE that I've ever seen. Heck, inside of IE it's still terrible. Web software was supposed to make large scale software updates better, but thanks to "enterprise software" the whole thing is actually worse inside of enterprises. Go figure.

m0nastic 15y ago

So I work for an "enterprise company", and if you install Firefox on your computer, it will be automatically removed within an hour, and an email will be sent to your manager. (Unfortunately, the same thing happens if you try to install IE 7 or later). I'm not sure this is a market that they want to be in.

7952 15y ago
So they give you enough admin rights to install an app? Security theatre i think.
- wmf 15y ago
  Or some legacy app requires admin rights just to work, so instead of locking down they scan for badness every hour. Of course, that won't help against something really bad.

pronoiac 15y ago

The faster release cycles didn't bother me until I realized that with Google's new support announcement [1], that Firefox versions would officially only get about six months of support on Google Apps. And that I have no idea how Ubuntu's handling quicker releases. [1] http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-modern-browsers.html http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-su...

bugmenot 15y ago
Canonical's Jason Warner said Ubuntu will move to the latest stable version of Firefox if security updates for whatever version they are currently shipping stop [1]. [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/432360/ http://lwn.net/Articles/432360/

cdcarter 15y ago

The real problem here isn't the release cycle, it's the support cycle. Many open source apps that are used in enterprise settings (servers, mostly) get this right, and mark dedicated supported versions, for customers who can't or won't yet upgrade. Mozilla could start doing this, and all of a sudden they'd be both accessible, but still able to do their release cycle as planned.

rwar 15y ago

It'd be nice for Firefox to adopt a LTS version. That way security updates can be guaranteed and IT guys can work on making sure LTS versions work.