[Mozilla Enterprise] New 68 feature: BITS update downloading

[William Spratt]

To add my two cents, we have the kind of controlled environment Walt talks about.  We use SCCM to limit the updates to OS and applications in line with our schedule.  To maintain our security accreditation, we have to stay up-to-date, but when an update is made available, it's distributed using a phased deployment so any issues can be detected and dealt with before (hopefully) to much of the network is affected.

Now, SCCM uses BITS, so we'll have to see how it's implemented to see if it's useful to us or not...

Regards

Will  

Will Spratt
IT Science Support Specialist
Tel:         01904 46 2631

-----Original Message-----
From: Enterprise <enterprise-bounces at mozilla.org> On Behalf Of Walt
Sent: 19 June 2019 19:19
To: enterprise at mozilla.org
Subject: Re: [Mozilla Enterprise] New 68 feature: BITS update downloading

It seems to me that automatic update of *any* software would *not* be acceptable to some enterprises. Don't some enterprises run acceptance tests on a new version of software before deploying it? Even if the new version simply fixes a bug, rather than modifying overt behavior, changes can give rise to extra Help Desk calls. What some might consider The Right Thing others might consider disruptive.

Personally, I *never* allow automatic updates to software I use. I've been doing software development of various kinds for decades, and I always want to know what and why changes are made before I install them. The reason I use ESR is exactly because it *doesn't* change out from under me. (Except for the recent Add-On disaster, of course.)



On Fri, 31 May 2019 17:26:22 +0100
Nick Boyce <nick.boyce at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 28 May 2019 at 13:48, Jim Mathies <jmathies at mozilla.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, May 27, 2019 at 10:39 AM Nick Boyce <nick.boyce at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Thu, 23 May 2019 at 23:00, Jim Mathies <jmathies at mozilla.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Currently Firefox updates by downloading update files internally 
>>>> while Firefox is running. We've added support for downloading via 
>>>> the Windows BITS service in 68.
>>> [...]
>>> I'd be very interested if there's anything you can say as to *why* 
>>> Mozilla is doing this.  Why not just continue with the Mozilla 
>>> home-baked mechanism
>> 
>> This will allow us to cut down on the prompting we currently do to do 
>> updates, which we get regular negative feedback on
> 
> Okay, sounds good - we all like software that just automagically does 
> The Right Thing without bothering us with questions, though I'd have 
> assumed the home-grown update mechanism could be similarly modified.
> 
>> and it will keep installed  versions of Firefox that haven't been 
>> opened by the user in a while fully up to date and safe.
> 
> Ahaa - anything that might eliminate those pesky offers from FF to 
> "reset" itself because "It looks like you haven't started Firefox for 
> a while" is fine with me :-).
> 
> I shall just hope that the randomly-notice-update-availability issue 
> is also improved by this project.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Nick Boyce
_______________________________________________
Enterprise mailing list
Enterprise at mozilla.org
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/enterprise

To unsubscribe from this list, please visit https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/enterprise or send an email to enterprise-request at mozilla.org with a subject of "unsubscribe"

_______________________________________________
Enterprise mailing list
Enterprise at mozilla.org
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/enterprise

To unsubscribe from this list, please visit https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/enterprise or send an email to enterprise-request at mozilla.org with a subject of "unsubscribe"