Enterprise users to get Firefox Extended Support Release

While most home consumers have no problems updating their web browsers every few weeks or so, businesses and companies aren’t too keen on the idea, especially when it’s just a minor update and they have multiple floors of computers to deal with. Because of that, a lot of companies were unhappy when Mozilla decided to push Firefox down the path of receiving frequent but small updates – following the footsteps of its competitor, Google Chrome.

Enterprise folks have voiced their opinions, and it looks like Mozilla has found a way to address their needs. The developers of Firefox have come up with a proposal to provide an Extended Support Release (ESR) for Firefox. This means that Enterprise users will use a version of Firefox that won’t be updated so frequently, which means less trouble for technicians/staff that have to perform the upgrades. However, this also means that ESR versions of the browser won’t have all the latest features, bug fixes and security patches.

Mozilla doesn’t seem to happy about having to come up the ESR as well, claiming that it will consume resources and might even impact the regular release of its other products. Well, I guess it’s better than nothing – if enterprise users are unhappy with Firefox ESR, they will have to make the decision to use an alternative browser, or stick with regular Firefox and upgrade constantly.

George Wong
Categories: Web
Tags: Firefox, Mozilla