Mozilla Mulls Dropping Firefox For Win2K, Early XP 455
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."
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.
I feel their pain (Score:1, Insightful)
What does XP SP3 provide that they want? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get what feature is available in XP SP3 and above that would justify the change? Can anyone enlighten me?
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.
Re:Sorry- but (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)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forcing users to upgrade (Score:1, Insightful)
I went through that once. You have to upgrade about 8 system libraries to build Firefox 3 for that era. I use KDE and found that KDE components did not have to be recompiled though (newer libraries had different major versions and so could be installed along side the older ones).
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.
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.
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:Sorry- but (Score:1, Insightful)
Having a web browser installed on a server for convenient download and installation of patches, drivers, etc. seems prudent enough.
No, it's very much not prudent on a production server. God help any company who hires you as a server admin.
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?
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.
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:Sorry- but (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sorry- but (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sorry- but (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, 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.
Re:Sorry- but (Score:2, Insightful)
So you have never installed Oracle or Cache or DB2?
How do you configure these databases without their web interfaces?
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.
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.
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.
Re:its hard to write code that cant work in xp (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?
Re:Dropping a big selling point! (Score:2, Insightful)
What happened to all that? Even the cheapest computers these days can run XP SP3. The number of people still using XP-SP0 or a 2001-era Linux is like, what, 0.03%? It absolutely makes no sense to talk about running on XP SP0 as a selling point when almost nobody uses XP SP0.
It's not like they're dropping support for SP3.
"And personally, I'm still disappointed there is no Windows 9x version any more."
As a software developer I gave up on Windows 9x 5 years ago. I used to worry about Windows 9x users 6 years ago. However, I did not have access to Windows 9x (all my machines were running XP), making it very hard to develop and test for it. Finding a Windows 9x CD or ISO was almost impossible even 6 years ago. I asked my user base to help me with testing on Windows 9x, and nobody responded. Once in a while, maybe once every 4 months, one user (of the approximately 20000 in total) asks about Windows 9x support, but is not skilled enough to help me with testing.
How can you reasonably expect any software developer to keep supporting Windows 9x in such conditions?
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:gnome changes too often (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:Sorry- but (Score:1, Insightful)
So you have never installed Oracle or Cache or DB2?
How do you configure these databases without their web interfaces?
With Oracle, our DBAs re-direct the X installer to a VNC session (Xvnc), then go in via VNC from their Windows desktops. They prefer to do this, but can also use the CLI interface. This is all under Solaris (and some Linux RAC stuff).
The other point is that why do you need to configure the system from itself? If it's a web interface you should be able to access it anywhere that has an IP (firewalls permitting). Bring up the config, set things up, stop the config daemon to remove security issues.
Re:Why? (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:What does XP SP3 provide that they want? (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.
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
What a terrible idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry- but (Score:3, Insightful)
So you have never installed Oracle or Cache or DB2?
How do you configure these databases without their web interfaces?
vi and sqlplus
Same way you do when you disable enterprise manager because java is a memory hog.
Re:its hard to write code that cant work in xp (Score:3, Insightful)
why am I explaining the obvious?
It's Slashdot, the land of knee-jerk reactions to things they don't want to really think about.
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.
Than don't upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
If your current browser does everything you want, don't upgrade!
Shooting self in foot in the long run. (Score:1, Insightful)
This kind of policy will, in the long run, promote adoption of new MS OSes, thus increasing the MS revenue stream and line the pockets of the IE development team.
Balance that with less development resources on older OSes and of course this makes sense. But dropping XP support altogther should take a longgggg time.
Re:Dropping a big selling point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I think you're in sync with the majority of Slashdotters.
I also think that you and those like you represent a loud minority of the user base who believe that somehow Mozilla owes it to you to maintain support for $archaic_OS_of_choice, regardless of market realities.
If you'd ever been involved in Enterprise software development, you'd realize that to stay competitive, Firefox must move forward. They must do so with this thing called "limited resources". That means that they can't support everything everyone wants all the time, but rather they must pick and choose their battles wisely. Supporting 10 year old vendor-unsupported Operating Systems and unsupported OS revision levels is not a wise use of limited resources, as the majority of the market has moved on.
If they indeed decide to drop Win2k and WinXPSP3 support going forward, kudos should go to the Mozilla team for not falling for the open source "design by committee and keep all users happy no matter how marginal their needs while we completely miss the big picture market opportunity" philosophy to guide Firefox development.
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.
Re:Dropping a big selling point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, so that's why Opera is less feat.....wait.
Re:Sorry- but (Score:3, Insightful)
How are you going to keep it secure without getting patches for newly discovered security flaws?
You might want to ask the same question about the (already long unsupported) OS first.
Re:Dropping a big selling point! (Score:3, Insightful)
Luckily, that's not at all universal. Just look at Opera; and I suspect Google will also be able to keep what's good with Chrome.
Re:Sorry- but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Windows 2000 vs. Firefox 2010 (Score:3, Insightful)
2000 and XP were released a year apart with next to 100% API compatibility with one another. I fail to see how an app would ever choose to disable the ability to run on 2k.
If you want this in today's standards, imagine a company 5 years from now deciding to develop an application for Windows 7 and not allow it to be run on Windows Vista. Simply idiotic since API wise, they're basically the same.
Finally, if 2000 was anything like Win9x generation or maybe NT4 which lacks many common hardware profiles, there's no good reason for the platform to die at all. If MS wasn't out to just make money, they should've left 2k as the sole windows OS and simply build bigger and better features around them in the form of paid add-ons.
No, instead they send you through the upgrade treadmill so that everyone along the way can collect their checks for something that in the end will not improve end user productivity.
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.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Because I have yet to see a single legitimate reason NOT to upgrade XP from SP2 to SP3? The real question is why bother supporting users who are too lazy/stubborn to help themselves. Besides, it's not like it will suddenly break Firefox on sp2. It just means if you have an issue, they can say "upgrade to sp3 and see if you have the same problem". If your company's apps are such piles of shit that installing what is basically a collection of the hotfixes and security patches that were available before (although in the cases of some hotfixes they were not released except by request) you have bigger problems then running the latest and greatest firefox version.
why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Just because MS has abandoned W2K users is no reason for FF to do also. There are many W2K users that are perfectly happy with W2K and have no compelling need to upgrade both hardware and software, just to feed MS's insatiable appetite. If it aint broke don't fix it.
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.
Re:Than don't upgrade (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad not upgrading is not really an option with a web browser. You have to keep up with security updates.
Re:Win2K and XP SP3 -- similar status from MS (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they don't come out with detectives and try to take away my two W2K licenses, I could give a rip wether Microsoft 'supports' my W2K boxes. I refuse to upgrade past W2k. All the briteboys who aren't even old enough to have used W2K can say what they want. Microsoft hasn't done anything since the W2K release compelling enough for anybody with a clue to upgrade past it. That's the whole POINT in keeping Mozilla current on W2K.
In any event, I thumb my nose at Firefox anyway. Seamonkey rules my world.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Should they update to SP3? Maybe but SP3 isn't a notable safeguard against malware. Updating Flash, Java, the browser, and a few individual security patches is a notable safeguard.
They can work today. Assuming their HD doesn't pack it in I can assure them that they can work tomorrow but I can't do that if they update to SP3.
SP3 has been very good at uninstalling without pooching the OS which is a major improvement from previous MS SPs. Probably by the end of the year or so we will be at the point where enough of the equipment and software will have been updated so we can make a blanket recommendation to update to SP3.
Re:gnome changes too often (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
* You lose the address/command line bar (in the taskbar - you might not even know it's available in XP because it isn't on by default)
* Some software won't install on SP3
* It runs slightly slower
* It breaks some drivers (I ran into the same problem someone else did on my Latitude - well, before the latitude finally croaked)
Re:its hard to write code that cant work in xp (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting people used to auto updates, even in linux, is about this idea of getting people used to monthly charges over software.
Though I don't disagree that Microsoft would love to get into the OS rental market, I don't think this statement has much to go on. The automatic update is about preventing another Blaster from embarrasing them, at least as near as I can tell.
An absolutely secure OS would also eliminate the need for virus scanners, and the yearly/monthly subscription fees associated with getting updated virus signature files.
I don't think MS has a pay-for anti-virus product. Certainly not one that means much to them. Having a reputation as the least secure OS certainly isn't helping their marketing. $10 says they'd rather have perfect security than revenue from selling a virus scanner. (Although the humor in that is the human experience suffers every time security precautions are put into place.)
You will never get an absolutely secure OS from a company like MS...
You never will from anybody.
Security scares are a great way to nudge people into obeying some centralized high command.
Steve jobs would smirk at that.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that really isn't a good reason. It means something is severely broken with either the install or the upgrade, and most likely the problem is with the current install. If it had been a problem with the upgrade, it would have been reproducible and fixed. If your system is so broken it is impossible to install an upgrade, the best solution is not to refrain from upgrading it, but rather to find out what the heck is wrong and fix it. If you don't know what is causing the problem, how would you know what else it would break? If you can't figure out what is wrong, a reinstall is the way to go (even if it seems inconvenient).
Re:Sorry- but (Score:2, Insightful)
The real question is: Why would you need Firefox 3.5 in order to perform these tasks? FF 3.1 or Chrome or Opera or IE should be sufficient.
Re:Sorry- but (Score:2, Insightful)
And if you're using it as a desktop system...well, I hope god help you.
Er - why?
(Honestly, I find the Windows 2000 hate funny. I remember when XP first came out, people here hated it. In a few years' time, I bet Vista will be praised as the best OS ever, and anyone on XP will be mocked!)