Mozilla’s rapid release schedule that kicks out 8 versions of Firefox a year has caused some consternation amongst enterprise IT Professionals, which came to a head back in July as you might recall. By the release of Firefox 7 an “Extended Support Release” channel was proposed to make Firefox compatible with the workflow of enterprises who needed longer to test software before deployment. Today, Mozilla blogged that it is making the proposal a plan of action.
The ESR version of Firefox will be the current version for a year and will receive security updates but not updates that affect the add-ons platform.
We are pleased to announce that the proposal for an Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox is now a plan of action. The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform. We have worked with many organizations to ensure that the ESR balances their need for the latest security updates with the desire to have a lighter application certification burden.
It sounds like Mozilla has certainly softened their tone from the strong ‘No’ they offered publicly before, which fueled the fire in the first place. Now if there was only an easier way to deploy it.