Firefox 10 Extended Support Release Promises One Year of Updates

Along with Firefox 10, Mozilla has made available the first ever Extended Support Release (ESR) of Firefox. This version will enjoy support, security patches mainly, for at least one year before a new version is launched.

The idea is to give enterprises and other big organizations a chance to test the browser and adapt their specific tools to it before deploying it to thousands of computers.

Firefox 10 ESR is now available for download, for all supported platforms except Android. This release will receive updates up until Firefox 19 will be released, on the 12th of February 2013.

"Mozilla Firefox ESR is meant for organizations that manage their client desktops, including schools, businesses and other institutions that want to offer Firefox," Mozilla explained.

The need for an ESR came after Mozilla switched to the new six-week release cycle. With new versions of Firefox coming out so fast, big companies and organizations could not keep up.

Any software that gets installed on hundreds of thousands of computers needs to be tested. What's more, companies may have various web-based tools that need to work in the browser.

Initially, Mozilla was reluctant, to say the least, to offer any kind of support for these companies. It simply didn't have the resources necessary to maintain all Firefox versions with security fixes for a long time.

A compromise was reached and ESR was created. As the details were put together, Firefox 10 was chosen as the first ESR. The next ESR will be Firefox 17, coming about a year from now. Later, Firefox 24 ESR will be released.

Mozilla has promised that it will issue at least two ESRs, but has not made a long-term commitment. That still gives it plenty of time to see how the release is received by the community.