Mozilla strikes a conciliatory tone with enterprises

In the past week, tensions have been running high between enterprise users of Firefox and the Mozilla Foundation over the new rapid release schedule for Firefox, but in a new blog posting, Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla, appears to be trying to calm the situation.

Previously, complaints that Mozilla's newly accelerated Firefox release schedule would be detrimental to those trying to deploy the browser in the enterprise had been met with comments from Mozilla employees including Asa Dotzler who said: "Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours". This worried enterprise users more, but Sullivan's posting looks to establish balance – opening by saying that the Foundation is "committed to providing the best Web experience for people everywhere, for whom the Web has become such an important part of their daily lives".

He went on to confirm that Mozilla's rapid release schedule had been adopted because the Mozilla community had "focused our efforts on the needs of the individual user, and prioritized the product roadmap and features accordingly". But he conceded that "loyal Firefox users and their IT departments, have sought to bring Firefox into their places of work" and that because of the time taken to certify sites, apps and addons, and the need for the latest security fixes, they faced a challenge.

Sullivan then added that "we are exploring solutions that balance these needs, with active discussion in our community, including valuable input from IBM", noting that the use of open source software means that "interested parties can come together to build what is needed". What is being built is unclear, but it does appear that Firefox may be redefining its approach to enterprise use of the open source browser.

(djwm)