[Mozilla Enterprise] Moving Firefox to a faster 4-week release cycle!

[Andrew C Aitchison]

Paul,

On the whole I agree with you.

However, when my OS was on ESR I found that I often wanted the new features
"under the hood", particularly the security features, much more quickly
than ESR releases made them available.

I do agree that quantum and the switch of plugin api was an unfortunate
"under the hood" change.

On Sun, 22 Sep 2019, Paul Kosinski via Enterprise wrote:

> I don't understand why a more rapid release cycle is good for *users*.
> Bugs, especially security bugs, obviously should be fixed quickly. But
> new features often tend to confuse users (many of whom can barely deal
> with existing features).
>
> I am pretty expert in using -- and developing -- software (having done
> so since before Unix), but I prefer stability. I don't want changes in
> behavior or GUI appearance of software I normally use to take time away
> from whatever I'm working on, whether it's writing some C code, looking
> up specs, or just watching some video.
>
> The "rapid release" of new features is OK *only* if they do not change
> the behavior, or GUI, of *existing* features. Even supposed stable ESR
> has been seriously disrupted by Quantum. Quantum has been disaster in
> this regard, as it has destroyed a tremendous number of important
> Add-Ons, many of which cannot be recreated with the new API.
>
> So I am skeptical of the desirability of a more rapid release cycle. It
> might mainly be catering to users who view the browser as a game, rather
> than a means to accomplish actual work.
>
>
> On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 13:16:53 -0700
> Ritu Kothari <rkothari at mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>>  We?re excited to announce
>> <https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/09/moving-firefox-to-a-faster-4-week-release-cycle/>
>> that we?re adjusting Firefox release cadence to increase our agility,
>> and to bring you new features more quickly. Starting Q1 2020, we plan
>> to ship a major Firefox release every 4 weeks.
>>
>> Shorter release cycles provide greater flexibility to support product
>> planning and priority changes due to business or market requirements.
>> It allows us to be more agile and ship features faster while applying
>> the same rigor and due diligence needed to ship a high-quality and
>> stable release. *Major
>> updates to ESR* (Extended Support Release
>> <https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/enterprise/> for the
>> enterprise) *will remain yearly, as they do now*. There will be a 3
>> months support overlap between new ESR and end-of-life of previous
>> ESR version. The next two major ESR releases will be ~June 2020 and
>> ~June 2021. This change will be deployed gradually starting with
>> Fx71, achieving 4 week release cadence by Q1 2020. You can refer to
>> https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Calendar for the latest
>> release dates and other  information.
>>
>> As we slowly reduce our release cycle length, from 7 weeks down to 6,
>> 5, 4 weeks, there will be close monitoring of aspects like release
>> scope change; developer productivity impact (tree closure, build
>> failures); beta code churn (uplifts, new regressions); overall
>> release stabilization and quality (stability, performance, carryover
>> regressions). Our main goal is to identify bottlenecks that prevent
>> us from being more agile in our release cadence. Appropriate
>> mitigations will be put in place should our metrics highlight an
>> unexpected trend.
>>
>> If you have any questions or concerns, please email
>> release-mgmt at mozilla.com
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ritu Kothari
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