Why don't we use Mozilla ESR in Precise?

Fri Jan 11 09:21:53 UTC 2013

>On 06/02/12 17:55, Micah Gersten wrote:
>> On 02/06/2012 05:49 AM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
>>> On 06. feb. 2012 10:22, Jason Warner wrote:
>>>> Hi All -
>>>>
>>>> Firefox ESR is indeed interesting, and it would seem to answer some
>>>> of the question corporations might have about Firefox, but I think
>>>> it is less interesting for Ubuntu.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You have to understand that my original post was not meant as a
>>> proposal, but as an open question. If Ubuntu now prefers the rapid
>>> release pace of Firefox and Thunderbird, then it doesn't bother me
>>> that much. But it does represent a shift in strategy. 10.04 has used
>>> 3.6 until very recently when it became unsupported. The reason that
>>> was given for not upgrading it, was the SRU process. The reason that
>>> was given for starting to upgrade Firefox in a rapid pace afterwards,
>>> was that Mozilla had changed their support strategy and that it
>>> wouldn't be feasible to backport the necessary security patches to
>>> old versions. But now, Mozilla has changed their support strategy
>>> again, making it unnecessary to circumvent the norms.
>>>
>>> Now this becomes a question of communication, which to me is the
>>> biggest weakness Ubuntu has that we can do something about. If this
>>> is an active decision, then I would be interested to know when it was
>>> made and why we haven't heard anything about it. This is a
>>> significant shift, and though I try to pay close attention to what's
>>> going on, it came as a complete surprise to me. I looked for
>>> blueprints, but I couldn't find any;
>>> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise?searchtext=firefox.
>>> It is bad communication, and we need to improve. I really don't like
>>> those surprises. I spend a fair amount of time writing articles and
>>> participating in discussions, in an effort to reduce some of the
>>> misunderstandings that will always be a part of FOSS. Because
>>> development is high pace and developers doesn't always have time, or
>>> even skills, to write comprehensible non-tech articles explaining why
>>> and how. When things like that suddenly changes without notice, then
>>> it can easily make what I write, wrong. In that case, my
>>> contributions, instead of being a small part of a small solution,
>>> becomes a bigger part of a big problem. I don't think I have to
>>> explain why that's demoralizing.
>>>
>>> Consider documentation writers. You've spent a few hours writing some
>>> paragraphs or pages explaining why Ubuntu doesn't use the newest
>>> version of Firefox. You're satisfied that your explanation really
>>> does explain and is comprehensible by anyone. That's not easy. It's
>>> hard work. So you commit. Then translators begin working on it. And
>>> translating single strings is not always that difficult, but
>>> translating an article, is. You finish two months ahead of schedule.
>>>
>>> But then someone makes a silent little decision, and instead of being
>>> two months ahead, you're suddenly two years outdated. Bad
>>> communication hurts both enthusiasm and the finished product. We need
>>> predictability.
>>>
>>> As usual, this has become much longer than I had intended. Let me
>>> finish by making a proposal. Let's use the ESR versions by default in
>>> LTS versions of Ubuntu, and add a package called something like
>>> firefox-fastpace for those who want that. This way, we don't disrupt
>>> the stability and predictability that is so attractive to those who
>>> chooses LTS versions, but also make it easy for those who do want to
>>> be on the cutting edge of the browser developments. When upgrading
>>> from an LTS to a non-LTS, the user should be asked if the ESR version
>>> should still be used, or switch to the fast pace version.
>>>
>>> Thanks for reading,
>>>
>>> Jo-Erlend Schinstad
>>>
>>
>> There was a UDS session on this [1] which I lead.  I was originally of
>> the opinion that the ESR for LTS releases was the best course of
>> action.  However, my wise colleagues have shown me that I was
>> mistaken.  I thought it would be just like 3.6 (stable ABI, still
>> getting High/Critical fixes).  The problems are:
>>
>>   * High/Critical fixes will be backported only if it's not too
>>     difficult (whatever that means)
>>   * There are usually new security features with each rapid release
>>   * No large testing base as Jason pointed out
>>   * Upgrades from ESR -> ESR will also be more shocking as UI across 7
>>     releases can change quite a bit
>>   * No guarantee of ESR existence past year 2 (or even that long
>>     depending on how you read it)
>>   * No guarantee that the ESR is inherently a stable platform (meaning
>>     that previously, you had a release that was frozen and bug fixed
>>     for a while before it was stable, Firefox 10 was stable enough for
>>     6 weeks of life, but who says it's stable enough for a year)
>>   * The ever changing web, we recently migrated Lucid and Maverick to
>>     Rapid Release since Flash and some websites were breaking with 3.6
>>   * The browser is one of the most exploited pieces of software on
>>     Linux outside of the Kernel
>>   * (from Lucid Firefox 3.6 comparison) Why is Chromium so much faster?
>>
>> With all these reasons, it seemed clear that we don't want the ESR in
>> the LTS or any Ubuntu release.  We want to make sure that our users
>> have the best browsing experience possible.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Micah Gersten
>> Ubuntu Security Team
>> Ubuntu Mozilla Team
>>
>>
>> [1] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/security-p-mozilla-lts
>>
>>
>
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for all of your comments and opinions. Of course, I support our
> decision to not offer the Firefox ESR by default in the Ubuntu LTS.
> I've tried to explain the reasons why I think that this is a good thing
> in http://www.chriscoulson.me.uk/blog/?p=111.
>
> Regards
> Chris

Hello Chris,

Your points are clear but, as many times already mentioned, addons
compatibility is a problem. Firefox 18 has just come out and been
automatically updated on my Work PC (Ubuntu 10.04) and brief addon
just stopped to work. Okay, this is just an RSS reader plugin but
imagine a company with 1000 Ubuntu PCs and one day they have got a
problem with an business critical addon on all of their PCs.

It would be better if Ubuntu ships with Firefox ESR by default and at
the same time allows to install the latest version of Firefox from the
same repository, for example:
apt-get install firefox-esr
apt-get install firefox-latest-stable