ID: IRCNE2011061158
Date: 2011-06-28
According to 'teckworld', Mozilla is planning to retire Firefox 3.6 from support, but won't put the 18-month-old browser out to pasture until August at the earliest.
The retirement of Firefox 3.6 would follow that of Firefox 4 and Firefox 3.5 earlier this year.
Firefox 3.5, which Mozilla launched in mid-2009, received its last security update in April. Since then, users have been encouraged to upgrade to either Firefox 3.6 or 4. Going forward, the estimated 12 million users of Firefox 3.5 will see their browser automatically updated to Firefox 3.6 , a move the company discussed last month.
This week, Mozilla retired Firefox 4 , which debuted three just months ago, as it rolled out Firefox 5 .
That move has been criticised by some enterprise IT managers. They've argued that the quick retirement combined with Mozilla's rapid-release scheme -- which delivers a new edition every six weeks -- puts them in an impossible position: By the time they examine one version, another will already be out.
Mozilla has decided to issue at least one more security update for that edition, which shipped in January 2010. The update, to be pegged 3.6.19, will be released alongside Firefox 6 when the latter ships on Aug. 16.
The company has not disclosed other parts of its plan to declare Firefox 3.6 at "end of life".
The retirement of Firefox 3.5 will affect only a small fraction of Mozilla's active users. It's unclear how many users would be impacted in mid-August by the retirement of Firefox 3.6.
Links:
Mozilla stops security support for Firefox 4
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