November 2011 Enterprise Working Group Call

Meeting Notes

• We've had 8 weeks of planning. Hoping to take a decision in the next 4-5 days. Feedback has been fairly positive.
• Some proposed changes of note:
  • Lengthening the support tail to 9 release cycles (54 weeks)
  • Basing the initial ESR on Firefox 10.
  • Changing the commitment to patch sg:Crits and sg:Highs to something akin to Reasonable Commercial Efforts
  • Clarifying that the Application GUID and versioning will mirror Firefox's to mitigate further addon compatibility pain
  • Clarifying locale support
  • Clarifying versioning
  • Clarifying what happens at the EoL of an ESR release
  • Updating figures to reflect version and support tail changes
• Can we help link up the people interested in working on MSI? Yes, there's a bug and some work that's been done.
• If a serious security fix could not be backported, could a new ESR be shipped?
  • It depends. Make a determination at the time. Kev will get some more feedback from folks.
  • We will do everything possible to backport.
• Have to be careful with upgrading or downloading profiles. Kev will bring up on the list.
• When you go into Help, About Firefox, what will you see? Would it show up in the registery? Have to be able to show that people are moved.
  • Most likely you will see ESR. Distribution.ini file
  • Please also ask on the mailing list.
• When will it happen?
  • Getting last feedback now. If you will deploy this, please let Kev know, onlist or to him directly. (Yes/no and why.) The fact that people will use it or why they won't use it, helps justify the reason to the people doing the work.
  • Mostly positive feedback, 95%.
• How will it be announced?
  • Mozilla blog post
  • Announce on EWG (with a heads up to EWG)
  • Very similar to the way the proposal was announced.
• Can something be done to help mitigate impact on Mozilla?
  • We have very little visibility in this area. So having organizations involved and giving us feedback on new releases and any problems organiations see would be really helpful.
• And anything we can do to help move along MSI (and eventually) GPO support?
  • more feedback on MSI/GPO support needed, would like to get requirements figured out. MS has a ton of configuration available but we probably don't need all of it. Need info on how people use it.
• Would like to work on test plans with others and get feedback on how others test.
• Two minor downsides to increase to longer ESR
  • new OS support for ESR will have to wait up to 54 weeks for addition?
    • yes, you will have to wait for new OS support.
  • if MSI/GPO not ready for Firefox 10, have to wait for next ESR for these features?
    • MSI could maybe do a FAQ/howto depending on implementation details.
    • for GPO, yes you'd have to wait, unless we do it as an add-on but either way need more info for requirements
• Support for OSes would extend, eg if FF 13 drops OSX 10.5, ESR 10 would support it still until the end of the ESR
• How does Thunderbird enterprise interact with this group?
  • They are different apps, so they need to figure out how this works for them. may or may not follow suit, but no decision yet.
• How much does Thunderbird depend on Firefox?
  • Gecko is the important bit, right now it matches, but they have the option of changing cadence, (and have been looking at that). Conceivably could separate, but no known plans yet. Different user base, different challenges, still trying to figure out TheStrategy(tm)
• FF 10 would be the first ESR release right?
  • yes
• This will be announced soon right?
  • Yes, hopefully by next week. Due to holidays making announcement by end of month is super important

Next Meeting

• The next meeting will be December 1.