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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



Mozilla Firefox 3.6 - a minor update?

By Sean Michael Kerner on October 21, 2009 4:08 PM
sr-firefox3.jpg
From the 'Number Games' files:

What constitutes a major vs. a minor release for a browser vendor?

The upcoming Firefox 3.6 release is going to be classified as a minor update to the open source browser, as opposed to being a major update like Firefox 3.5.

The difference between a minor and a major release for Mozilla has a number of implications.

Earlier this year, when I was in the Mozilla Toronto office ahead of the Firefox 3.5 launch, Mozilla's Director of Firefox Mike Beltzner (Go Leafs!) explained to me what it would take to have a major release called Firefox 4.0. A major release implies major changes and requires users to migrate over to the new version. With a minor release, it's a simple upgrade, that should enable more users to adopt the release faster.

The whole issue of what is minor and what is major is now an active thread on a Mozilla mailing list, with Beltzner publicly explaining Mozilla's policy and why Firefox 3.6 will be a minor update.
"Major updates have been for code which has been in development for at least 12 months, features visible changes to the user interface either in terms or appearance or interaction, and/or contains major technology changes at the platform level which may cause significant differences in system requirements or support requirements," Beltzner wrote. "Minor updates have been for security and stability releases which do not contain any visible user interface changes, and are limited in terms of technological change."
Makes good sense to me, though I can also see how it can be confusing to some.

Take Google Chrome for example, which is now at version 4.x in the dev-channel. Is the 4.x version a 'major' change over 3.x in that it has major user visible changes? Not really.
Internet Explorer on the other hand iterates so infrequently (relative to Mozilla or Chrome) that each release is a defacto major release and a new version number. It is difficult to get users to migrate to major releases, just look at how many millions of IE users are still on IE 6.

Unlike Chrome, Mozilla does not 'auto-update' users but requires users to at least click ok when given the update notification window. For Mozilla, the browser belongs to the user, not the vendor and that's a very important distinction.

At this stage, I don't see Firefox 3.6 as breaking anything, and on the surface it does look the same, though it is faster. Another browser vendor might have claimed the performance improvement in the new Firefox 3.6 as being worthy of a 'major' release, but Mozilla isn't all about the numbers. Mozilla has its focus exactly where it should be, on user experience.

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