Why don't we use Mozilla ESR in Precise?

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

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