

Some Clarification and Musings - ck2
http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/some-clarification-and-musings/

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thristian
The given headline is needlessly inflammatory. The very next post on that
blog[1] says: "Firefox did not ship with 6,000 bugs."

[1]: [http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/even-more-
clarif...](http://tylerdowner.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/even-more-
clarifications/)

~~~
ck2
If I said "the firefox _project_ has 6000 open bugs" would that have been
better?

Now realize that's just semantics.

For the record I am a diehard firefox user, 6000 bugs or not.

~~~
robin_reala
Not really. The actual number of bugs (not enhancements) confirmed as
legitimate (NEW, ASSIGNED, REOPENED) but not fixed across both the Firefox
(interface) and core (backend) projects in Bugzilla is 31,992.[+]

This doesn’t matter. At the end of the day it’s about severity. If Firefox
ships with 31,992 critical end-user visible bugs then it’ll be rightly panned.
It hasn’t been, therefore the large majority of the issues aren’t that severe,
therefore they can be dealt with at a slower pace.

[+]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=1199753&...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=1199753&bug_severity=blocker&bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=trivial&query_format=advanced&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&product=Core&product=Firefox)

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obeattie
By comparison, Chromium (Chrome) has 28,299 open bugs.

~~~
mattvot
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list>

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elmindreda
That's great! That means we will get frequent releases, each with some bug
fixes, instead of being stuck with an old, bug-ridden version, forever waiting
for the perfect release.

[http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-
bazaar/...](http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-
bazaar/ar01s04.html)

~~~
sp332
Right, and not all of the "in-progress" features get shipped in each release.
Each release only ships the parts that are ready. That way, users get the
benefit of new, finished features without having to wait for thousands of bugs
in unrelated parts of the code to be fixed first.

------
0x0x0x
I've stuck with Firefox over Chrome because I don't want Google to win the
browser. But with most of the signs and some news out of the Mozilla camp
having not been good lately, each piece of news nibbles at my ear just a
little bit more.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I was considering moving from Firefox to Chrome, but with Firefox's recent
performance improvements, I no longer see any reason to. The one benefit which
Chrome had (performance), I no longer see. I like that Chrome exists, because
it pushes Firefox to be better.

~~~
thatjoshguy
I've been using Chrome for Mac ever since it was in early, buggy developer
builds. I was using Safari before that, but only because Firefox on OS X
sucks.

For Windows, on the otherhand, I love Firefox so much. I do fine it's
performance and UI so much better. Chrome sucks with lots of tabs open and the
UI just bores me.

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dirtyaura
In all large software projects I've worked, amount of open bugs always
increased over time, only way to decrease them was to aggressively mark
reports as ignored or wontfix.

~~~
rbanffy
Which is only natural. I don't expect fixes for Firefox 2 anymore.

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Yoric
It took me some time, but I have come to terms with the rapid release process.
I believe that it is actually a very good idea, as it makes the web much more
competitive against, say, native iPad development – I may be a tad sectarian,
but I tend to prefer the (mostly) open web to the (definitely) closed iPad
model.

Now, the problem mentioned in the OA is quite real. Some of the processes of
Mozilla have not scaled up yet. I suppose that they will.

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dotcoma
If you don't pay attention to them, they'll go away, won't they? ;-)

~~~
garrettl
Sometimes, yes.

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gcb
Just like chrome and android

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ck2
I would have much less of a problem with rapid release if they'd stop changing
major version numbers.

There is a three part version number for a reason, use it.

Firefox 5 should have been 4.5 and 6 should have been 4.6

If you want to release every other month to imply there are improvements, go
for it - just don't imply there are major changes for "political" reasons.

~~~
jmatt
I thought the goal was to motivate users and IT organizations to stay current.
This frees up Mozilla developers from fixing bugs in N many different old
versions of Firefox.

To me, the reasoning behind the change in version is pretty clear. Especially
looking at the disaster that was IE6. As soon as there is any support for old
versions some IT department somewhere will immediately decide it's time to
freeze their version. Moving forward after making a freeze like this becomes
very difficult (that has been my experience). This presents two options 1)
It's their own problem and move on or 2) Continue to patch old versions. The
issue with patching old versions is bad IT decisions end up costing Mozilla
time. Meanwhile chrome just continues chugging along at full speed only
supporting current.

The current linux distro versioning and support structure seems to map well to
this problem. Ubuntu, for instance, has LTS versions that IT can stick with
and are patched for X many years.

Windows users update their anti-virus software and definitions in near real-
time. Operating Systems update near real-time... why not browsers. I now use
chrome most of the time and I am (surprisingly) happy with their versioning. I
was a naysayer when they first started too.

~~~
ck2
Isn't this self-defeating when there are eight major version number changes
per year? Won't people start ignoring the need upgrade because there will be
another new version in a few weeks?

In all seriousness - Firefox _version 25_ in two years, think about that and
how no-one is going to take major version numbers for real anymore.

If they insist on this, I'd rather have a YEAR.MONTH version number. Firefox
Version 2012.4

~~~
perfmode
In the future, we will only concern ourselves with two versions: today's and
yesterday's.

