Mozilla

Rapid Release Follow-Up

October 3rd, 2011

Rapid Release

My recent post on the rapid release cycle generated a lot of response, some very thoughtful and some also very frustrated.   Many of the comments focus on a few key issues listed below.   We’ve been working on how to address these issues; I’ll outline our progress and plans here.

  1. large deployments that certify software before permitting use can’t manage a 6 week cycle
  2. add-on compability issues
  3. update notices and fatigue
  4. frustration that we didn’t get these things addressed better before making the change.

1.  Large Deployments. We’ve made a proposal for extended support for large deployments.This proposal is under discussion now in the relevant newsgroup and in our Enterprise Working Group.  We are incorporating feedback and expect to come to closure on this proposal shortly.

2.  Add-On Compatibility.  There are a couple of related issues that have made add-on compatibility difficult.  First, we have historically assumed that add-ons are incompatible until proven to be compatible.    This is a very conservative assumption which creates work for all add-on developers and notifications to all add-on users.    We’ve corrected this for the add-ons hosted by Mozilla.  Work is underway to correct this for the remaining add-ons.  Here is a  more detailed explanation of the topic; feature planning details are also available.

3.  Update Fatigue.  In the past we have been very careful to make sure people know something is changing with their web browser before it changes.  We did this to make sure people are aware and in control of what’s happening to their environment.   Our position was to err on the side of user notification.   Today people are telling us — loudly — that the notifications are irritating and that a silent update process is important.  This work is underway.    The first set of improvements should appear in the next Firefox release, with more improvements appearing in the next few months.   Also, one main reason people are notified of updates is due to incompatible add-ons which will be addressed by the work on add-on compatibility.  More details can be found in this blog post:  http://www.brianbondy.com/blog/id/125/mozilla-firefox-and-silent-updates

4.  Frustration.  The comments also registered frustration that we didn’t get these issues better addressed before making the shift.  The change was abrupt and we should do better in the future.  We focused very effectively on making sure we could make the core engineering aspects of a rapid release process work.  We focused well on being able to deliver user and developer benefits on a much faster pace — we’ve already brought major memory improvements to make browsing faster, Do Not Track to Firefox for Android, developer tools and HTML5 support.  But we didn’t focus so effectively on making sure all aspects of the product and ecosystem were ready.  We believe we have plans in place to alleviate the issues that resulted, with improvements rolling out in in the coming weeks.

88 comments for “Rapid Release Follow-Up”

  1. 1

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  4. 4

    Caspy7 said on October 8th, 2011 at 1:15 pm:

    Brings up a point about update size.
    Short.
    Worth a read if you haven’t already.
    http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/10/mozilla-plans-to-silently-update-future-firefox-releases/

  5. 5

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  8. 8

    HT said on October 10th, 2011 at 3:29 am:

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  9. 9

    gm said on October 12th, 2011 at 5:59 pm:

    .
    We like Firefox!
    We like the latest version FF8.
    We welcome your new (rapid?) quick releases.

    The little issue – though:
    – Looks like you are not the same rapid & quick
    enough for updating relevant Add-on’s, and other
    vital functions.

    That’s why the customers’ frustration.
    Don’t you think so?

    But Hey Guys! Keep trying!
    .

  10. 10

    Mj said on October 12th, 2011 at 10:32 pm:

    Yes! This is an infinitely good thing.

    However, it seems that there is still one thing that hasn’t been addressed: the downloads window. It’s always been annoying being the way it is. Will the next release have a fix on it already? Sure there are tons of add-ons to fix it up but still…

  11. 11

    Bob Trower said on October 19th, 2011 at 10:15 pm:

    After biting my tongue for some time, I just entered a comment against your original post about this:

    http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2011/08/25/rapid-release-process/#comment-19995

    In this latest update, you seem to have missed the point of most of the criticism. You have addressed some of the symptoms, but you have not really addressed the problems. Until you address the actual problems, you will lose people like myself and the user communities that follow us.

    Freeze the rollover of major version numbers at 8 and change 9/10/11/12 … to 8.09/8.10/8.11/8.12 …. Just do it. Your versions are totally messed up and the fact that you don’t get that is an indication that something has gone horribly wrong. Give yourself and the rest of the community time to regroup, understand the nature of the problem and address it reasonably. Maintain compatibility at version 8 until you have code for a truly major ‘version 9’. Hopefully that will not be too much before 2013 and between now and then you can figure some way to re-brand so you can go back to a ‘version 1.00’ via a version 0.90 in place of 9.0.

    Versions, amongst other things, signify the nature of the changes they contain. They help to organize your release schedule around Major architectural changes, Feature Releases, Bug Fixes and builds. Things that will take a long time and create big changes go into major releases. Things that make incremental improvements and add features go into minor releases. Things that must be released quickly to fix bugs or plug security holes go into ‘release level’ releases. There are a number of different conventions for version numbers, but they have some things in common that form a sort of ‘language’ that developers, build managers, testers, API partners, etc all understand. The capricious move to abandon this ‘language’ breaks all sorts of things for zero gain.

    Who at Mozilla decided that software development was sufficiently deterministic that you could predict a major release would be available at a particular calendar date six weeks away? You can’t even realistically expect to do that with a bug fix release. You have showstopping memory leaks going on years now, for goodness sake. If you can’t nail down these crucial basics, how can you hope to invent a new product every six weeks? The current release regime is willfully clueless. There is no way to defend it and the fact that you continue to cling to its defense is troubling. If I understand you correctly, you have a notion that the version numbers no longer have their usual meaning and are merely indicative of a release with no significance beyond that. That is hardly a defense. Version numbers serve a purpose and that is why you see them all over the place in operating systems, libraries, commercial products, specifications, documents, etc. Ceasing to assign version numbers rationally is a mistake. You are destroying a critical element of the system. It is still a mistake, even if you did it on purpose.

    The people who release most of the major software used in the world routinely shift schedules by months. You do not even understand how to use version numbers, but feel confident you can beat the rest of the world in making major releases on a tight schedule. The notion that you can make major releases of a mission critical product to millions of users every six weeks is simply ridiculous on its face.

    Anyone involved in this set of decisions with less than a bare minimum of ten years hard-core hands on development experience as designer/developer/build manager, etc is suspect. If you have some, you should think about taking them out of the major decision process. It is highly doubtful they have the skill and experience necessary to make such decisions. This latest misstep on the heels of hundreds of comments pointing out your mistakes is an indication that you likely will not understand this in time to save the project. If you can’t, get out of the way for goodness sake.

    Whether you continue with them or not, the version regime and the release schedule are clearly dead. However, the entire project does not have to die with them. You can go back to a rational release regime and make things right.

    One of the things that just makes me grind my teeth is that you appear to be attempting to copy Google Chrome’s success *in spite of its mistakes* by copying its mistakes. Its constant stealthy updates are an unnecessary risk and makes it unsuitable for some purposes. Its versioning system is messed up. In its current incarnation, versions are not really used as normal versions, but I expect that they *will* have a watershed update that changes things at some point. They will probably call it Chrome 2. Whatever the case, empirically, Chrome rarely or never breaks on update, while FireFox invariably breaks on every update. I cannot remember the last time I even noticed Chrome was updating while it seems that FireFox involves some sort of interruption every single time I go to use it.

    As I mentioned in my earlier post, FireFox is no longer my default browser. Getting me back is still relatively easy now, but it will not be once I cease using it altogether and remove it from my systems.

    Although you are addressing some of the symptomatic fallout of your errors, the errors themselves persist and they will continue to do damage until you address the errors directly.

    One of the indicators that you have lost the guidance of seasoned developers is that you continue to have unacceptable stability problems. I have had to create a separate Virtual Machine to house only FireFox and Thunderbird because they are so unstable they can take down the operating system. They routinely exhaust nearly a gigabyte of memory each and about half the time FireFox or Thunderbird exits either by crashing or being forced closed to restore memory. As someone who has personally developed a real-time multi-user system by hand in less than 16,000 bytes, I find the use of 1,000,000,000 bytes by a single application excessive.

    Given that you still have some severe show-stopping issues to deal with, it is doubly puzzling that you are wasting the energy of both yourselves and the community addressing a non-problem and creating chaos and confusion by insisting on frequent, disruptive, compatibility breaking updates that render version numbering meaningless. Rather than messing around with rapid turn-around to satisfy your rampant ‘feature-itis’, you should turn your attention to the more important business at hand. The massive footprints of FireFox and Thunderbird are downright bizarre.

    As before, I realize this is harsh and I apologize for the tone. However, this really is poised to become a tragic waste of years of hard work by thousands of individuals.

    I am not sure who is in charge at Mozilla, but whoever they are, they have had plenty of time to respond to feedback and effect genuine solutions to the actual problems rather than the current damage control exercise. I do not think it unreasonable to ask that the people in charge show some humility and respect for the project and its many stakeholders by honestly ‘fessing up to their mistakes, addressing the source of the problems rather than the symptoms and correcting them before it is too late.

  12. 12

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  13. 13

    Miroslav said on November 10th, 2011 at 2:15 am:

    Rapid Release Process – that’s very nice way to do software development, yes it is! But does it has to mean releasing a major version every 1-2 months? Nooo, unless you are not familiar with contemporary software development or you do want to be kicked out of business. Actually this is what you are really trying to do, is it not? You are trying to ruin the Mozilla browser because you are a secret agent working for IE or Chrome or whatever?! This rapid major version release is bringing Firefox down and it is doing it fast!

    Now I am just going to disable the automatic update and if in several months I see that I have to update ti version 10 or 11 I will uninstall this software.

    Farewell Firefox!

  14. 14

    Tom Sullivan said on November 12th, 2011 at 2:22 am:

    Silent updates may be fine for some people, but I **strongly** recommend giving users the chance to opt out to a notification & permission to proceed method instead. There are significant security issues if Firefox or Thunderbird update in a very insecure environment such as an airport. There is also the issue if a user is on dialup – a dialup user needs all the bandwidth possible and would prefer to update overnight, etc.

    As always, the more control the user has – if he wants to exercise it – the better.

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    Tim said on December 15th, 2011 at 2:54 pm:

    Sorry but I’m afraid this is just too little too late. IE is becoming better and chrome is great, so I’ve had to drop support for firefox from my application.

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    Chris said on December 17th, 2011 at 1:39 pm:

    You lost me on 3 – Update Fatigue.

    I personally dont know anyone who wants away with release notes and been given a prompt to update. Silent updates would be a disaster for me.

    why didnt you post a link to where you claim people are asking for silent updates?

    Silent updates is fine for things like virus defenitions, its not fine for anything that changes how software works, needs a restart of software, and may cause things to break.

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    James said on June 6th, 2012 at 7:18 am:

    i use ff for about two years. the 3.6 is stable and supports all my addons as adblock, noscript, better privacy… with every new update the addons melting away. I dont use ff because of ff I use it because of the addons! loosing addons with every update is annoying!
    AND who got the highest release number? me! my penis is v20.0 … 😐

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