After stating that the company was not concerned with enterprise customers, Mozilla is finally on track to release Firefox 10 extended service release (ESR) alongside Firefox 10, to address concerns with enterprise users.
Back in June of 2011, one of Mozilla’s core employees went on record to say that the company was not concerned with enterprise customers and will likely never be. This statement came after businesses began complaining that Mozilla was pushing out new versions of its Firefox browser too quickly.
Now, Mozilla will be releasing the very first Firefox version that revolves around the enterprise needs. In other words, we will see Firefox 10.0.x released alongside Firefox 10 on the 31st of January. Mozilla will update Firefox 10 ESR in six-week rapid release cycles beginning with version 10.0.1 and phasing it out with version 10.0.8 on February 12, 2013.
After Firefox 10 ESR reaches its fruition at version 10.0.8, Mozilla plans on releasing Firefox 17.0 ESR alongside Firefox 17 on the 20th of November.
Mozilla plans on serving Firefox ESR 17.0 and 17.0.1 as “qualification versions” to allow companies enough time to update and prepare their IT environments. Mozilla will eventually transition from Firefox ESR 10.0.8 to ESR 17.0.2 on February 12, 2013.
Mozilla may had screwed up initially with its rapid release cycle and alienated its enterprise users, it seems that Mozilla is finally back on track with this extended service release plan for Firefox.
