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Mozilla Mulls Dropping Firefox For Win2K, Early XP
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Apr 14, 2009 04:59 PM
from the upgrade-or-die dept.
from the upgrade-or-die dept.
CWmike writes "Mozilla is pondering dropping support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP without Service Pack 3 when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, show discussions on the mozilla.dev.planning forum by developers and Mozilla executives, including the company's chief engineer and its director of Firefox. 'Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher,' said Michael Conner, one of the company's software engineers, to start the discussion. Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, the still-in-development browser the company hopes to release at some point in the second quarter. Gecko 1.9.2, and the successor to Firefox 3.5 built on it — dubbed 'Firefox.next' and code named 'Namoroka' — are slated to wrap up in 'early-to-mid 2010,' according to Mozilla."
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forcing users to upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
Did Mozilla get taken over by Microsoft or something?
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Ever try running Firefox 3 on a version of Linux from 2003 or 2004? Get ready to build Gnome from source, because the versions (of Gnome) that are compatible with distro's of that age don't support Firefox versions higher than 2.
XP is what, 4 years older than that?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yea, if you're running a Mac, you need OS X 10.4 (Tiger, released in 2005) or better.
Why should windows get off so easy, eh?
(On reflection, I think it's GTK or GLib that you have to upgrade to make firefox 3 work on an older linux distro)
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you why: because Windows doesn't change the API of a major component every 5 years or so.
Parent
Re:gnome changes too often (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about needing, it's about testing. By dropping support for XP-SP0, you declare that you've never tested your software on XP-SP0. It might work, or it might not. Some code might have recently been written which breaks on SP0 because of a bug that has been fixed since SP3. Or it might not.
Point is, dropping support for older Windows versions decreases the amount of testing needed. That is the biggest value, not about utilizing newer APIs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of all the comments so far, halfway down the page, this one makes the most sense.
A sincere thanks. The rest of them were starting to hurt my brain.
Re:gnome changes too often (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:4, Informative)
In a sense, RHEL4 is not old. Update 7 came out in July 2008 [wikipedia.org] and includes Firefox 3 [redhat.com]. According to Red Hat's support schedule [redhat.com], RHEL4 left "Production 1" phase just two weeks ago, meaning it will no longer recieve "Software Enhancements".
Red Hat has the resources to make the latest things things work on their distribution without replacing everything. And Firefox 3 didn't work easily in RHEL 4 until Red Hat provided support... [mozillazine.org]
Parent
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a quick note for clarification, only gecko 1.9.2 and firefox built on that version of gecko (firefox 3.6?) will lack support for 2000 and xp. The development (3.5) and current version (3) will likely still be supported and still receive updates.
I actually agree with this move - it adds time/bloat/etc for each platform you want to support. By choosing to drop some of the less used platforms, assuming by then xp won't be used much, you can really save on development time/etc.
Parent
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
"forcing developers to support aged buggy platforms with dropping adoption levels"
There, fixed that for ya. Really, it's disingenuous to whine about there being a user impact when dropping support for these platforms without also acknolwedging the ongoing support cost to Mozilla's finite development and QA resources.
WinOld users will still be free to use Firefox 3.5, and will get updates for a good while. And since the source code is available, users of Win 2000 through XP SP 2 can band together to produce their own updates if so desired.
However, my bet is on no one caring enough to waste the time or energy.
Parent
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, yeah. XP SP2 was brought up just because MS is going to drop support for it in a year. I don't think it's realistic to drop app support for it, and neither do a lot of other people.
> because XP is nearly the same core operating system.
It's the differences that make testing a huge hassle... And yes, there are XP APIs that Firefox uses that are not present on 2k, and yes we've had 2k-only bug reports that took up a lot of QA and developer time to deal with. So it's not silly at all to drop 2k support: it frees up people to work on other things.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What possible components can firefox need from SP3?
Vulnerabilities that the various service packs fix.
Or is it that not one can be bothered to keep a VMware XPsp2 system running to test with.
As I've already stated, it takes resources to do that. Every OS they have to test ... why am I explaining the obvious?
How about helping MS out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dropping a big selling point! (Score:4, Interesting)
It used to be that one of the big selling points of Mozilla/Firefox was that it could run on almost any OS! Mac, Windows (95 and NT 3.51 and up), Linux, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris, and more!
To me this meant I could go to just about any computer, use Firefox, and have every web page render the same regardless of the OS. And I didn't have to worry about purchasing or learning a new OS just to browse a web site.
What happened to all of that?
I would almost think that with the economy as it is, Mozilla would want to keep Firefox as popular as possible by keeping it running on all these older computers out there that will NOT be replaced any time in the near future.
And personally, I'm still disappointed there is no Windows 9x version any more. Thank goodness for SeaMonkey 1.1.x and Opera!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It used to be that one of the big selling points of Mozilla/Firefox was that it could run on almost any OS! Mac, Windows (95 and NT 3.51 and up), Linux, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris, and more!
I guess Opera will be the last browser still supporting everything then.
Re:Dropping a big selling point! (Score:5, Insightful)
I was using Windows 2000 last month at work. It is still currently being used by everyone that doesn't see the need to disrupt workflow by upgrading all the old PCs to XP. Yes, all current computers that you could buy in a store "today" can run XP SP3 (and maybe even Vista), but not everyone is buying a new computer every couple of years. Especially not corporations who have to live with a budget and who are smart enough to see that the recession means they have to tighten the belt and make do with capital equipment they already have.
It doesn't matter how much Microsoft whines that we're not upgrading, or how badly developers wish they could dump support for older OSes, or how desparately new hires out of college want to see cutting edge tech waiting for them, older hardware and software will be around for a long time.
Parent
OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Particularly when it comes to security, too much backward compatibility can be a really bad idea, and it is partially MS-fault that everyone expects all general-purpose consumer Windows software to run on older depreciated platforms adding code complexity, inefficiency and a greater risk for security issues.
Apple users have dealt with (for a long time) that certain updated software might require a newer OS release than they have and the vendor left it up to them to make the call if upgrading the OS+software or sticking with what they have is the right call.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Back when Mozilla dropped MacOS 9 after Mozilla 1.2.1, some other folks rolled their own 1.3.x versions. And there is even a version of Firefox 3 for OS/2! I was even kind of hoping someone would have hacked together a version o
How about x64 support? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know those of us that will never get a SP3 for XP64 per MS "making it so". I know there are so few of us these days, but that's kind of beside the point isn't it?
XP x64 is a different code base (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Trying to see the reason for this (Score:5, Insightful)
So Moz is only going to support the current shipping service pack for XP and Vista. Why? Is Firefox doing anything (better question SHOULD it be) low level enough for the current version to matter?
The situation with FF on Linux it is bad enough, in that they don't do security fixes for older versions, and new versions generally won't run on old Linux distributions but we understand that Moz Corp doesn't really give a crap about Linux, they make their coin on Windows. But now they are slashing Windows support. Only supporting XP SP3 isn't terrible, but if it is a prelude to dropping XP when 7 ships it will be a terrible thing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"So Moz is only going to support the current shipping service pack for XP and Vista. Why? Is Firefox doing anything (better question SHOULD it be) low level enough for the current version to matter?"
Yes, bug fixes in the operating system. If you write code then you'd have to test your code on all supported versions of Windows to make sure that there's no weird Windows bug which breaks your code. The more OS versions you support, the more testing you have to do. All the effort spent on testing $ANCIENT_VERSI
Are they breaking compatibility for its own sake? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's get this straight: "Raise the minimum requirements to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher," with no benefit, and no rationale other than for breaking compatibility for its own sake? If that's the case, I venture to say that Mozilla has seriously lost its way.
So, Microsoft ditched support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP pre-SP2? So what; the APIs are just the same now as they always have been. If anything, Mozilla should focus more attention to catering to users of OS versions that Microsoft left behind, where they have less competition...and chances are, the users of Windows 2000 are still using the OS that they are because they're frustrated with Microsoft's "support" policies and the further regressions (performance and usability issues, product activation) posed by newer versions of its products.
I'm seriously still bitter about them breaking compatibility with Windows 95 and NT4 a few versions back: One consequence was that the current version of Firefox was no longer capable of running off a version of Windows not unremovably inundated with Internet Explorer and its ilk. Short of a miracle of penetration from the Linux camp, how are we going to wean people off of a steady consumption of upgraded Microsoft products when we get attitudes and potential decisions like this?
Re:Are they breaking compatibility for its own sak (Score:5, Insightful)
No benefit? Do you have any idea how much effort is wasted testing these platforms? How many opportunity costs there are to supporting old stuff?
You can't say you "support" a platform these days unless your tests pass on it. That means you need it installed somewhere running test software, and someone familiar with the platform needs to be around to help you when things break, which they do. Supporting it also means crippling any software that wants to use APIs that later versions of the platform supports. You either need two versions of the code (one with the feature you want, one without, a serious nightmare) or you have to tell the users of Windows XP from *years* ago "so sorry, we can't use that important performance optimization. Some idiot somewhere is still running Win2k".
Platform support is a huge cost. Dropping it is an easy savings. Any organization that acts without regard to cost has never even seen the way, never mind "lost" it.
You'll still be able to download older versions of Firefox; they might even continue to provide security updates for them.
Parent
What if I can't run SP3? (Score:3, Insightful)
SP3 has been a bit crash prone for me on several computers. It's flat out unusable on my laptop. I'd really like to see Mozilla reconsider this one.
Windows 2000 vs. Firefox 2010 (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, they're talking about a release of an app in the year 2010, and whether they'll support it on Windows 2000. Windows XP and Windows Vista have both been out for years already, and Windows 7 should be current by the time this move gets made.
So that's a 10-year-old operating system, four major releases behind, for which Microsoft won't even be providing security updates after July 2010 (unless they've changed their minds).
XP is another story, mainly due to the fact that Vista not only took forever, but has failed to catch on with the market. Fortunately they're only talking about dropping support for systems running on older XP service packs, not for a fully-updated system.
it would hurt schools (who cant afford new hardwar (Score:5, Insightful)
the ones who would suffer most from such a move are those least able to afford new hardware -- kid you not -- i was at a school in march 2009 -- with old donated machines that were still running windows 98 (yes 98!!) and the 'new' machine was running windows 2000. i was trying to login to get my .mac webmail - which requires at least safari 3, mozilla 2, or ie7 - fat chance to get my webmail if i'm running on win2k - ugh. but i was able to DL & install (using win98) a copy of mozilla2 for win98 and get access to my webmail -- mozilla was the only link that made it possible to keep that old machine useful for a modern webmail app. cutting support kills old machines and puts them into dumpsters and landfills.
2cents from toronto
j
Luckily, there's a closed source program for you (Score:5, Informative)
Opera is willing to support you guys left out in the cold with a modern browser, going all the way back to Windows 95 [opera.com].
Re:Sorry- but (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Some people prefer Windows 2000. And if you have a server, you might not want to upgrade. Also, some legacy applications may not run on newer systems.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you have a server, you might not want to upgrade.
If you have a server, don't use it to surf the web!
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
"having web client software installed" != "plinking around randomly on youtube all day"
There are often very good reasons to have a usable and reasonably secure web browser installed on a server system.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, some people do... but how many people are actually in this category? And is it worth the Mozilla Foundation's time and money to provide official support for it?
It's a legitimate question, and I'm betting the answer is: "Not enough to worry about." If you don't want to upgrade to XP or Vista because of the typical reasons I hear (don't like activation, too bloated, whatever), then switch to Linux or something. Or just keep using Firefox 3.1. Or fork Firefox to support Win2K, since you've got a vested interest in it. Just because it's your problem doesn't make it Mozilla's problem.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Informative)
You realise right, Windows 2000 goes out of EXTENDED support next year (i.e. the same support status that XP has just entered into). This means no more updates (including security) for 2000 EVER from the middle of next year onwards.
Mozilla supporting it or in people fact using it from then on simply is not the best idea.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
The response was to the outright dismissal of Windows 2000. Having a web browser installed on a server for convenient download and installation of patches, drivers, etc. seems prudent enough. The dismissal of Windows 2000 entirely is the real jackassery.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that you've never seen a server application with a web interface for its configuration.
That means you've never installed a commercial database.
I don't take much stock in your sys admin knowledge.
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Funny)
What's this web interface you're talking about? Real system admins don't even use the command line -- they go in there and start writing/manipulating machine code.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's very much not prudent on a production server. God help any company who hires you as a server admin.
I wonder. Does this apply to terminal servers too?
It would be rather absurd at a lot of companies to log into the vpn, log into the terminal server, and then search in vain for the web browser, only to be told after calling the help desk they can't browse the company intranet, or use any of the internal web applications like the CRM, web based project tracking, web based defect tracking, web based groupware, web based order entry and inventory tracking systems, etc, etc, etc because the new idiot server admin has a strict policy of not installing browsers on production servers.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:4, Insightful)
Not every shop requires 24/7 99.99999% uptime. Not every shop can afford identical test hardware (or test hardware at all). My point is there are very different levels of "production" and pain tolerance (vs. spending more money and time).
Sometimes, in small companies, you just have to wing it and hope for the best (while having a fallback plan if everything goes to hell). A competent admin with an adequate sense of risk-vs-reward will do fine.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
I mean, obviously if software vendors are going to discontinue support, that's a decent enough reason. But you understand it's kind of circular reasoning to argue that developers are right to drop support because people shouldn't be using it, because developers are dropping support?
In general, I don't buy new stuff just because it's newer than what I have. I'm not particularly outraged that Win2k support is being dropped, though. It is old, and if your old system is working fine with all the old software and drivers, then keep using it with Firefox v3 or v3.5. That's fine.
Still, if your computer is 6 years old and still working for you, I say stick with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just try to keep it secure, since you won't be seeing new security patches.
Parent
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Firefox.net? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure where you're getting the .NET from. TFS reads "Firefox.next" - not "Firefox.NET" or somesuch. TFAs certainly don't mention any .NET.
At least they give some manner of justification - Microsoft themselves dropping support for Windows XP SP2 and anything older than that. fair 'nuff, I suppose - it's not like Firefox will magically stop working once they drop support and if somebody really, really wants to contribute patches to deal with older OS's, there's nothing really stopping them from doing so (or forking if the Mozilla peeps would actively block such patches from being included ).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 are due for retirement on 7/13/2010.
As long as Firefox waits until after that date to yank support from non-test code, I don't see a problem.
I disagree. It'd be a waste of resources for Mozilla to commit development and QA resources to supporting platforms that will be within scant months of their retirement date by the time "Firefox.next" is out.
The allegorical rat flees the ship while it is sinking, not afterwards.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From the proposal (actually, the first line of the damn thing):
Furthermore, I'd hate to see Mozilla get bogged down in the same must-maintain-backwards-compatibility-cruft that MS fell victim to. Firefox is already bloated enough.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The advantage? That's simple.
They get extra resources, which are man hours, which equates into money, with which they can invest into other projects, or on the same project in different ways to improve it for the platforms they do want to support.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They probably won't make it unusable, they just don't garantee bug correction and such. But it will probaly work anyway.
Re:Glad they didn't do it last week (Score:5, Informative)
Parent