14 DAY TRIAL // With the release of Firefox 5, it became obvious to many that Mozilla will not be supporting previous Firefox versions as new ones come out, every six weeks. This frantic pace is great for users, but it doesn't work in the enterprise environment, where Firefox has started to secure a foothold.
Mozilla came on strong and said that it plans to do what's best for its users, the majority of which have installed Firefox on their own computers.
Later Mozilla started to realize (and care) that system administrators deploying Firefox on tens or thousands of machines were left in the cold, and began talking about ways it could support the enterprise while still releasing a new Firefox every six weeks and without devoting too many scarce resources to it.
"Online life is evolving faster than ever and it’s imperative that Mozilla deliver improvements to the Web and to Firefox more quickly to reflect this," Mozilla explained.
"This has created challenges for IT departments that have to deliver lots of mission-critical applications through Firefox," it added.
Mozilla has now revealed the first concrete step, which is to talk some more about it.
A Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group has been established and the first order of business is, what else, what can be done to reconcile the rapid release cycle with the needs of the enterprise user.
"We are re-establishing a Mozilla Enterprise User Working Group as a place for enterprise developers, IT staff and Firefox developers to discuss the challenges, ideas and best practices for deploying Firefox in the enterprise," Mozilla announced.
"The next meeting we hold will discuss the release cycle and how enterprises can use Firefox in a way that fits into their own testing and release cycles," Mozilla said.
There have been several proposed solutions, but nothing has been agreed upon yet, which is what the next meeting hopes to achieve. Hopefully, Mozilla and the others involved can come up with a solution that is beneficial to everyone.