How does new F7 schedule affect Firefox

[Bojan Smojver]

Now that the planned release date for F7 is 24 May 2007 (a month after
EOL for FF 1.5) and keeping in mind that FC6 will be supported until
F8T2 (so, say until about September 2007 or so), isn't that going to
cause the need for backporting of fixes to FF 1.5 for about 4 to 5
months? Wouldn't it be better (i.e. less effort) to bite the bullet now
and just upgrade the whole FC6 to FF 2.0?

PS. Yes, I'm aware that similar questions have been asked before, but F7
was on a different schedule then.

-- 
Bojan

[Christopher Aillon]

Bojan Smojver wrote:
>  Now that the planned release date for F7 is 24 May 2007 (a month
> after
>  EOL for FF 1.5) 
Apologies for the delayed response, I was on vacation.

EOL is misleading here.  The Mozilla Corporation will be transferring 
maintainership away from themselves simply because they do not have the 
resources to continue pushing out builds for it.

     <aside>
     With over 40 officially supported language locales on the 3
     platforms, with installer, non-installer, "update" and source,
     there's a rather large number of files that need to built and
     then put through testing (I think I managed to remember all the
     variants, but I might have missed one or two.)  This gets done
     many times in the days leading up to the release.  I don't
     blame them for wanting to stop doing releases for it.  That's
     even before they start playing around with the various
     extensions.
     </aside>

If Firefox were closed-source, it truly would be EOL when the entity 
controlling it decides it is.  Since it isn't, then the nature of open 
source takes over.  When Mozilla.org stops supporting it, others in the 
Mozilla community will.  I've already announced that Red Hat will take 
on this responsibility at least until 3.0 is released.  Prior to Robert 
O'Callahan leaving Novell, he also mentioned he would assist with that. 
  Whether or not this is still the case, I cannot say, but Red Hat's 
commitment is still intact.  Red Hat has already successfully 
demonstrated this with past Mozilla branches, such as Mozilla 1.4.

[Bojan Smojver]

Christopher Aillon <caillon <at> redhat.com> writes:

>  Red Hat's commitment is still intact. 
No worries.

--
Bojan

[Rahul Sundaram]

Christopher Aillon wrote:
>  Bojan Smojver wrote:
> > Now that the planned release date for F7 is 24 May 2007 (a month after
> > EOL for FF 1.5)
>  
>  Apologies for the delayed response, I was on vacation.
>  
>  EOL is misleading here.  The Mozilla Corporation will be transferring 
>  maintainership away from themselves simply because they do not have the 
>  resources to continue pushing out builds for it.
>  
>      <aside>
>      With over 40 officially supported language locales on the 3
>      platforms, with installer, non-installer, "update" and source,
>      there's a rather large number of files that need to built and
>      then put through testing (I think I managed to remember all the
>      variants, but I might have missed one or two.)  This gets done
>      many times in the days leading up to the release.  I don't
>      blame them for wanting to stop doing releases for it.  That's
>      even before they start playing around with the various
>      extensions.
>      </aside>
>  
>  If Firefox were closed-source, it truly would be EOL when the entity 
>  controlling it decides it is.  Since it isn't, then the nature of open 
>  source takes over.  When Mozilla.org stops supporting it, others in the 
>  Mozilla community will.  I've already announced that Red Hat will take 
>  on this responsibility at least until 3.0 is released. 
When Mozilla.org stops supporting it, are they willing to let Red Hat 
add patches and release new versions under the Firefox name?

Rahul

[Michel Salim]

2007/2/26, Bojan Smojver <bojan(a)rexursive.com&gt;:
>  Now that the planned release date for F7 is 24 May 2007 (a month
> after
>  EOL for FF 1.5) and keeping in mind that FC6 will be supported until
>  F8T2 (so, say until about September 2007 or so), isn't that going to
>  cause the need for backporting of fixes to FF 1.5 for about 4 to 5
>  months? Wouldn't it be better (i.e. less effort) to bite the bullet now
>  and just upgrade the whole FC6 to FF 2.0?
>  
Note that since RHEL4 is still supported and has FF 1.5, Red Hat will
still have to maintain it anyway.

-- 
Michel Salim
http://hircus.wordpress.com/

[Bojan Smojver]

Michel Salim <michel.salim <at> gmail.com> writes:

>  Note that since RHEL4 is still supported and has FF 1.5, Red Hat
> will
>  still have to maintain it anyway. 
Not necessarily true. RHEL4 started with FF 1.0.x and then switched to 1.5.x
later. So, it may go to FF 2.x or even 3.x in the future.

That's kind of my point - why maintain old stuff and waste effort on that when
even the super stable RHEL is getting latest and greatest anyway. And, by going
with current "mainstream" FF we also get the latest stuff (let's face it -
we
all want features :-). Two birds with one stone and all that...

But, since it's not going to be my time going into any of this, I'm cool with
any decision package maintainer(s) make.

--
Bojan