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Move to a portable app modelMove to a portable app modelPosted Jun 7, 2006 21:44 UTC (Wed) by h2 (guest, #27965)In reply to: Move to a portable app model by madscientist Parent article: The problem of Firefox in Ubuntu Breezy
Easy enough to test, install tarred firefox 1.5 on debian stable, if it runs fine, that's the answer. I might try that in the next few days to see, I've been wanting to do a debian stable or etch install anyway, might as well do both and see how that stuff works. My guess is firefox will install fine as a tarred thing, maybe not the deb, but that's easy to see too by a simple apt-get install firefox -s test.
The extension thing is another matter, but at some point you have to adapt yourself to that situation, every single new version, 1.5.3->1.5.4 for example, can break an extension, extension compatibility is tested every time you upgrade version no matter what.
Very few extension developers pay much attention to older versions, and it's up to them and only them to do that, there's no way anyone else could handle doing extension backward compatibility testing, that's not realistic, and won't happen. You're much better off using the latest firefox, with its glitches, especially if you use extensions heavily, but most people don't do that.
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Move to a portable app model Posted Jun 9, 2006 12:40 UTC (Fri) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] "Easy enough to test, install tarred firefox 1.5 on debian stable, if it runs fine, that's the answer."
hahahahaha. That's such a ... charmingly naive approach to QA. What about:
You have to test all of those too. And 'testing' something that depends on a browser is a hit or miss thing, given that a browser is so large.
All of the major distros are going to have to have a chat with moz.org at some point if they see themselves as seriously doing long-term desktop support, because it is clear that moz.org doesn't realize how deeply flawed their support policy is for those distros. Ubuntu is just the only one having this discussion in public right now.
Move to a portable app model Posted Jun 9, 2006 19:42 UTC (Fri) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link] so how much are those distros contributing to mozilla to get that long term support? With the exception of debian, we are after all talking about for profit corporations here. So if they want that type of support, I suggest they get together and create a few staff positions at mozilla.com whose sole role is maintaining old mozilla/firefox versions.
If they don't want to pay for this, then their feelings on this question are fairly irrelevant. And what would that cost, tops? To maintain security patches for a handful of gecko based browsers? Probably one person could do it, so between redhat, suse, mandriva, etc, what are we talking about to get this desired security patch support? $10,000 a year? Maybe 20k if they hired two people?
This isn't very hard to do, if you need something done that nobody wants to do, pay someone to do it. And if you need it done, for reasons of corporate network stability, then pay for it. This isn't complicated.
If redhat/suse/mandriva can't afford to pay this pittance then they are in the wrong business and should contemplate entering into a new line of work, maybe ice cream sales or something.
Move to a portable app model Posted Jun 16, 2006 12:28 UTC (Fri) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] Actually, as I see it, since the Mozilla folks get $$ every time someone searches at Google w/ their browser, I'd say the fact that distros choose to make Firefox their default browser is payment enough.
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