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<p>I sent the following to Thunderbird drivers earlier this week.
For now, this is the Thunderbird plan going forward...</p>
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</p>
<p>In an email titled "COVID-19 and the Firefox Release Schedule"
to the Firefox drivers list, it was stated that Firefox release
management will be proceeding with greater caution in shipping
updates, to reduce avoidable risk to users, some of whom are
doubtless in unusually stressful situations. Chrome also <a
href="https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2020/03/upcoming-chrome-and-chrome-os-releases.html">posted
plans</a>, stricter than Firefox, in "pausing upcoming Chrome
and Chrome OS releases" (modulo security issues). These are
wise approaches. <br>
</p>
<p>I'm not suggesting we suspend Thunderbird updates at this time
or slow development of new features. But given the current world
situation it will be wise for us to give even greater scrutiny
to our
patch uplifts to ESR and beta, in both timing and content.
Greater scrutiny is important because every update involves some
level of risk, even for our main release which is a "stable"
ESR, with fairly limited and targeted patch uplifts. <br>
</p>
<p>So regular Thunderbird ESR releases will continue on a four
week cycle. Beta also is on a four week cycle, with typically
two to three beta shipments per cycle.<br>
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<p>Additional thoughts are welcome about how the current times
might affect us and our users, and on reducing risk and
increasing release quality.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Wayne, for the release team</p>
<p>Footnote: Our daily download numbers have recently doubled
according to Andre. Our support volume seems <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/dashboard/metrics?category=&product=thunderbird">relatively
flat and unchanged</a>.<br>
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