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Mozilla changes tune on Enterprise

Written by James Delahunty @ 29 Jun 2011 8:35 User comments (5)

Mozilla changes tune on Enterprise Mozilla blog goes into damage control.
After the release of the latest Firefox web browser last week, questions had been raised about the new rapid release schedule for the web browser, and the negative consequences it had for business users. In a blog comment, Mozilla executive Asa Dotzle surprised business users in the tone used to reply to concerns about the schedule.

"Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours. 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," Dotzle stated.

Both Google and Microsoft picked up on the comment and posted their commitments to commercial customers and their concerns. Mozilla waited a few days and then finally decided to attempt to patch things up with business users.



"The Mozilla Community has focused our efforts on the needs of the individual user, and prioritized the product roadmap and features accordingly. However, as is the case with many technologies, loyal Firefox users and their IT departments have sought to bring Firefox into their places of work." the blog entry reads.

"A key challenge for enterprises is that they need to certify their websites, apps and add-ons each time Firefox is updated. This can take weeks or months. Security is also paramount, enterprises need access to a version that includes all known security fixes. We are exploring solutions that balance these needs, with active discussion in our community. Open Source software is well-suited to these challenges, as interested parties can come together to build what is needed."

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5 user comments

129.6.2011 21:40

i don't understand why the brought out a major build, when everything is the same as FF4.

they should have done it as a minor release version like FF4.5

if they ignore the updates using minor release number we may get FF10 by the end of the year if they do this.

230.6.2011 00:23

The update prompt comes up automatically...and if you don't want to update, you don't have to. This seems a lot better than the microsoft route; where IE updates install automatically, even if you set the updates to only install when you tell them to, they still install automatically...and half the time, they break the browser (not that it ever works correctly to begin with).

330.6.2011 03:58

QUite funny really as I bet firefox team didn't think of this and don't really know what to do about it.

I have FF5 beta and some sites and things will or won't work, like a site that works fully under FF3 or 4 might have flash working but it won't let a script work within flash so the site breaks and it doesn't work.

430.6.2011 07:13

Mozilla is still the best browser for me - for what I do on the web. That said; what infuriates me is that I no longer have access to the blocked cookies folder like before in tools>options.
Grrrrr!

54.7.2011 01:06

I am an absolute loyal user of FF. I tried to use ff 4.0 but was uncomfortable - read did not have the time to go into details. FF 5 is better.

My only grouse is that a number of addons won't work until they are updated. Guess will just have to wait.

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