

Mozilla Executive: We're Not Interested In Enterprise Level Users - adeelarshad82
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387514,00.asp?f=2

======
vessenes
To my mind, this is mostly a culture clash. In no way is it "Enterprise Users"
that FF is worried about; it's Enterprise IT guys.

Spoken as a startup executive who also wears the IT hat at times -- those guys
can be fascist bastards. I don't really want to help them either. Well, I
guess I'll erase this post when I do my next Group Policy-based startup. Until
then, I stand by my statement.

Long ago, IT was there to help users work with something they couldn't
understand. Now IT has sort of turned into that abusive controlling parent who
too often says "you can't do this, because I don't like it."

Standard disclaimers apply: you are not like this, you are a great IT person.

That said, I think there is absolutely no chance that the Firefox team will,
after significant internal effort to speed up and become more agile, slow down
to please IT groups.

Organizations that are also learning to speed up will get benefits from FF or
Chrome, others won't.

I do agree that plugin development issues are a serious pain point. I
anticipate that they'll work out some better system (maybe a version API
contract that tells a plugin what they can consume?).

~~~
Flenser
_That said, I think there is absolutely no chance that the Firefox team will,
after significant internal effort to speed up and become more agile, slow down
to please IT groups._

It's not the speed of development that's the problem; it's the speed of
obsolescence. If they supported older versions for longer there wouldn't be a
problem.

~~~
vessenes
I think this is functionally why the Chrome team hides the version number.
They wanted it to be more like a utility, or web app. What version is your
version of Hacker News running?

In order to get that kind of instant deployment for a distributable
executable, you have to really solve distribution down the chain to
(especially) the windows desktop. The Chrome guys did that, it rocks, and it
works.

Versions probably originally existed to allow marketing teams to sell more. I
wouldn't be surprised if FF eventually drops the version number thing and just
has a 'stable' and 'exciting' branch type system for their users.

~~~
ultrasaurus
True, I'm vaguely aware that I run Chrome 13 (Stable) and Chrome 14 (Canary)
for testing -- but I'm surprisingly vague on that awareness -- in fact I got
it wrong (I thought it was 12 that was stable)

~~~
vessenes
Ooh, now I'm jealous. I'm on 12 for Mac. Boo!

------
angdis
The exec is right. Why should mozilla "slow down" to accommodate enterprises
who churn out absurdly brittle applications and who change them literally only
when a crisis forces them to do so.

It is the internal enterprise apps that need to "get with the program."

------
djhworld
Enterprises don't have time to be modern or forward thinking, they're too busy
wrapped up in management process and business bullshit to concern themselves
with upgrading the software on their corporate network.

I know this because I work as an enterprise developer in a large enterprise
company. I can't wait until I die :)

------
raganwald
I sympathize with both sides of the argument. Large organizations really do
need a longer support and deployment cycle. If they adopt version ___ of a
product, they need some assurance that it will be supported for a certain
window of time. On the other hand, if you let "The Enterprise" dictate your
development strategy, you will find yourself making faster horses rather than
electric roadsters.

This might be a good opportunity for a business to sell support contracts with
guaranteed life cycles for EOL'd versions of Firefox. That way, an enterprise
shop could pick a version knowing that it will be supported for a year or two
years or whatever they negotiate.

~~~
adamc
It isn't just large organizations that may be inconvenienced by rapid releases
of major versions -- when I adopted FF5, a bunch of plugins stopped working.
If that happens every 3-6 months, I'll probably stop using FF for daily work
(Chrome is arguably better anyway). Of course, I'd still have to test in FF --
but that's a minor issue.

------
wccrawford
Part of the problem is how enterprise-y companies do things. Taking 3 months
to roll out a new browser is ridiculous. But then, so is designing your
website to only work on the most popular browser, and they do that, too.

Fix the latter and you can probably fix the former at the same time.

~~~
eitally
Yeah, in an ideal world.... This is a really ignorant statement, though. Just
one of my teams has a tracking spreadsheet for >100 web apps they support. A
fair number of those are "legacy" -- created by folks who are no longer with
the company, or which are no longer the standard way of performing a task --
but are unkillable for one reason or another. Besides homegrown stuff, certain
versions of expensive commercial software only support specific browsers and
versions of browsers. If you have to test, AND you have to setup GPOs for
users at the app-level because of browser incompatibilities, it is completely
understandable why the internal upgrade cycle can take longer than the
vendor's upgrade cycle.

You should spend some time in enterprise IT and see what it's like on the
other side of the fence.

~~~
pohl
That problem could be easily solved by having multiple browsers installed so
that a user could chose one that works with a broken, legacy web app. IT
departments could roll out two different browsers in a tick-tock manner.

~~~
cageface
If you think it's easy to teach users to intelligently choose among several
different browsers for each of several web apps you've never worked in
corporate IT before.

~~~
rayvega
Users have already been taught to choose among different _desktop_ apps. How?
By clicking on installed shortcut links on their desktop. The same can be done
with internal web apps.

Treat these legacy web apps just like desktop apps in that launching them
requires clicking an icon specifically for that web app somewhere on their
machine that opens the web app in the appropriate browser. Those browsers
(like IE6) could be locked down to only work for certain URLs. For everything
else, the user would then just need to use a more modern web browser such as
Firefox 5.0.

An ambitious startup could find many other (and probably better) ways to solve
this problem. The issue with legacy web apps that run only on IE6 always
struck me as a potential business opportunity for any startup interested in
targeting the enterprise space. With Firefox's recent shift to an accelerated
release cycle, it has made this problem even more pronounce.

------
Produce
I saw an interesting point in a scientific paper recently which I, admittedly,
only got to read the abstract of (scientific journals are littered with
paywalls). It basically stated that the corporation is a form of social
technology which has failed society. When looking at the reality of the
situation, in particular, how slowly they move and how much they tend to halt
progress, I tend to agree with the sentiment. Just look at IE6 - the web would
be a very different place if certain people weren't so obsessed with making
money (by always taking the path of least risk) and making everyone else pay
for the fact.

EDIT: This paper - <http://sts.sagepub.com/content/15/1/1.abstract>

------
JohnLavoie
The entire notion of 'certifying' a browser is ridiculous anyway. This is how
IT organization get 'stuck' still having IE 6 as the approved browser.

With all of the work going into web standards, agile processes, and automated
testing, why is certification such a huge labor-intensive ordeal anymore?

~~~
chadgeidel
Because every organization has a "web app" that they bought and installed
years ago that simply doesn't work in newer browsers.

------
G_Morgan
Glad to see this. If Mozilla started chasing corporate then it would be
necessary for me to switch browser. I've stuck with them through the
misconceptions about memory from people who don't understand how memory
management works. I've put up with slightly worse performance and standards
support for enabling features I actually use like ad block.

However I would never tolerate kowtowing to the mishmash of nonsense that is
corporate IT. I don't use IE for exactly this reason.

The simple truth is that if corporations need consistent behaviour they should
not be using web apps to begin with.

------
iwwr
Can someone more knowledgeable describe why each new FF version breaks
existing extensions? Can't FF have a more stable extension architecture?

Edit: though the idea that enterprise is useless may be dangerous. Each new FF
user is worth maybe pennies or nothing at all in revenue to Mozilla, while
enterprise 'seats' can get a nice premium.

~~~
windsurfer
The issue is usually the extension creator's fault. It's left up the developer
to say what versions your extension is compatible with - and usually that's
left to just the current version.

~~~
mbrubeck
For add-ons hosted by Mozilla, this is no longer left up to the developer.
Mozilla will automatically scan add-ons for compatibility with new versions
and update their metadata:

[http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-
compatibili...](http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-
compatibility-rapid-releases/)

~~~
windsurfer
Oh that's so cool. It's been a while since I've worked on themes and
extensions, so this is awesome news :D

------
eitally
The consumerization of IT goes both ways: people get the latest & greatest at
home and want to bring it to work, but they often are trained to use
interesting tech at work -- and become comfortable with it -- so they tend to
use the same at home. If Mozilla doesn't change their tune, Google & Apple
will eat their lunch.

------
mmuro
Why should Mozilla be held responsible for whether an enterprise business
cannot update their own applications? This is not a Mozilla problem.

------
skrebbel
This article made me realize that to enterprises, what SaaS really sells is
not the ease of (or lack of) deployment, but the disability for IT departments
like these to _control_ deployment at all.

------
meow
The question is not whether Mozilla should cater to enterprise users. The
question is should Mozilla cater to internal enterprise applications which
don't get updated very often and are easy to break.

------
cdcarter
The real problem here isn't the release cycle, it's the support cycle. Many
open source apps that are used in enterprise settings (servers, mostly) get
this right, and mark dedicated supported versions, for customers who can't or
won't yet upgrade.

Mozilla could start doing this, and all of a sudden they'd be both accessible,
but still able to do their release cycle as planned.

------
m0nastic
So I work for an "enterprise company", and if you install Firefox on your
computer, it will be automatically removed within an hour, and an email will
be sent to your manager. (Unfortunately, the same thing happens if you try to
install IE 7 or later).

I'm not sure this is a market that they want to be in.

~~~
7952
So they give you enough admin rights to install an app? Security theatre i
think.

~~~
wmf
Or some legacy app requires admin rights just to work, so instead of locking
down they scan for badness every hour. Of course, that won't help against
something _really_ bad.

------
Maro
One the one hand, you can't really blame FF. Chrome is killing them with their
quick release cycles, so they felt they needed to respond.

On the other hand, what options do enterprises have? Assuming they're
currently using FF, they probably don't want to go back to IE. Chrome is out
of the question for the same reason we're having this discussion, frequent
releases. So, what's left? Safari on Windows? And too much is broken on Opera.
So, I don't really think FF has much to fear in terms of losing existing
enterprise customers.

It may stall adoption on the enterprise market, but if it brings them back in
the consumer market, and it's a net gain, then it was a good move. After all,
Mozilla's customers like Google are buying eyeballs wholesale, irrespective of
them being enterprise or consumer users.

~~~
bad_user

         what options do enterprises have?
    

Change their policies?

Just let Firefox freaking update itself, after all, Mozilla is more
trustworthy than an IT department of debatable competency.

And what on earth are they doing in those internal apps that makes them
incompatible between Firefox 3 and Firefox 5 ?

I do have an intranet app of reasonable complexity that was created using
IExplorer 6 and the original Mozilla browser. It still works today, the same
as it was working when I made it. That's what standards are for.

~~~
pilif
what though, if by total accident, that one webapp worked on FF 3.6 due to a
bug in that borwser version?

That one webapp that some guy once created to make his life easier, that's not
documented anywhere any more and that's now being used to do all accounting
over even though nobody knows about it.

Now imagine you as the IT guy update Firefox from 3.6 to 4 and now that app
breaks and with it the accounting department stops working.

Nobody will appreciate your "but... I didn't know that app was there" which is
totally not the correct answer to "why the hell did you just break the
accounting department?"

I have seen this happen. Maybe not at this scale, but it definitely did
happen. No wonder IT people are scared of updating: If you don't do anything,
everything will keep working, but you might piss off some web developers who
you don't know. If you DO update, you may risk breaking some home-grown
solution you didn't know about and you will be held responsible for all the
damage caused.

Yes. That app shouldn't exist. Yes, it should be documented, yes it should not
have bugs.

But it might exist, it might not be documented and it might have bugs. You.
Just. Don't. Know.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not one of these guys, mainly because I have not
been burnt by this yet (and probably never will - 10 people company and I
still know about everything that's going on), but I can certainly understand
them.

~~~
bad_user

        what though, if by total accident, that one 
        webapp worked on FF 3.6 due to a bug in that 
        borwser version?
    

It's not the browser's fault, it's the fault of the people who made that app.

Mozilla's responsibility is indeed to provide reasonable backwards
compatibility, but as long as that behavior is specified in the standard or as
long as it benefits lots and lots of people.

But it is also Mozilla's responsibility to advance the state of the art, to
implement new emerging standards and to fix their broken implementation, if
needed of course. And let me tell you - Mozilla almost lost me to Chrome.

I also think your argument doesn't hold water as I've never seen Firefox
behave badly on upgrades, ever since version 2. Sure, there might have been an
incompatibility here and there, but I never ran into one and if it was, it was
easily detectable if you just executed your app in Opera, or Chrome, or
Safari, or another non-Gecko browser.

However, I suspect that this fear-mongering is from "consultants" and IT staff
that are paid for support contracts and testing new versions of Firefox was
part of their billable hours. And now they'll have to do more work supposedly
testing Firefox.

------
jolan
These corporations aren't paying for Firefox so why should they expect
understanding or support?

~~~
st0p
These corporations aren't paying for IE either (comes for free with Windows),
but IE has some form of support with security patches.

------
pronoiac
The faster release cycles didn't bother me until I realized that with Google's
new support announcement [1], that Firefox versions would officially only get
about _six months_ of support on Google Apps. And that I have no idea how
Ubuntu's handling quicker releases.

[1] [http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-
su...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-
modern-browsers.html)

------
rwar
It'd be nice for Firefox to adopt a LTS version. That way security updates can
be guaranteed and IT guys can work on making sure LTS versions work.

------
zem
now is the time for a third party organisation to step up and support
designated firefox 3.6 or 4.0 releases. it might not be feasible for a company
to do just this, but someone already in the business of supporting open source
software could conceivably add firefox on to their product list.

~~~
wmf
And rather than pay for FF 3.6, enterprises will keep using IE 6 for free.

------
hugh4life
While I prefer Firefox to Chrome for my own personal usage, I think businesses
would be better served by Chrome.

~~~
tedmielczarek
So they could be left with the exact same rapid release cycle? I fail to
understand your point.

------
programminggeek
You know, enterprise software is a funny thing. Every time a new version of
say Firefox comes out, I get a bunch of emails at work saying that whatever
version of SAP doesn't support it so please don't upgrade or face great peril.

Then there are older legacy products like Lotus Notes Domino web access that
is the biggest pile of garbage when run outside of IE that I've ever seen.
Heck, inside of IE it's still terrible.

Web software was supposed to make large scale software updates better, but
thanks to "enterprise software" the whole thing is actually worse inside of
enterprises. Go figure.

