Ending Support for WIndows XP to better Firefox overall
I will probably catch some backlash for this, but when will Mozilla stop supporting Windows XP SP3?
Rationale: By dropping support for Windows XP, you no longer have to spend the time, money and resources involved to support an EOL'd OS. Yes, some people are running it (some out of necessity).
Why not invest those resources in making Firefox better, more stable, improving memory usage and rendering, improving security and staying up to date or ahead of Google Chrome? It could very well increase your market share.
XP is old and dangerous to run at this point, 2 years after End of support. I am not saying drop support immediately, but offering a mere *suggestion* that you may want to ponder phasing it out soon.
All Replies (5)
The only OS's Mozilla is considering dropping support for at moment is Mac OSX 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 as the usage total of those OS's is pretty small.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/f0LNGDmC3KA
Hello, marketing and policies....indeed :-)
note that win xp is still very popular in China (1,375,000,000 population) (in 2015 reviews) almost 25-30 % in win operating system. :-)
thanks
Oh, you mean the reason for continuing support?
I was merely offering a suggestion to improve:
1.) Security 2.) Performance 3.) Bug Fixes 4.) Battery Life 5.) Features
I was proposing it solely due to what seems to be a lowering percentage of XP users (at least in the US). Chrome Dropped it, Opera only offers ESR support for version 36 (no major updates, Firefox and maybe one or more providers continue support).
I had no idea about the user share (other than in the US). I suppose that could possibly keep some users, I just wondered if it was 'holding back' the developers. Info Sec is the most important. That was my overall question (Don't get me wrong, it's a solid product. I was just reading about other software EOL's due to similar reasons.
I respect their decision either way, because they know a ton more than I do!
Hi mis16
Thank you for your post.
This is indeed a topic that has been discussed (and still is being discussed!) and you are right on several points. There is (I understand) some, but not a huge amount, of code in Firefox that is there because of Windows XP and it is fair to assume that it would be good if it was not there.
I would also agree that it is time for people to move off Windows XP, however whilst we can recommend people move, to force people to make what is (for many people) a cost decision, would be very unfair. Whilst there are many things we do at Mozilla to keep the web open, we also need to appreciate the economic situation that many web users are in around the world whilst we work as a community through other channels to remove those barriers.
I really like your question and am glad you raised it. This is the Support Forum for Firefox, so may not be the best place to discuss this, but if you are interested in being part of the decision and want to learn more, please drop me a private message over this forum (click on my name to the left < and select Private Message) and I will do what i can to help.
Firefox 49.0 will require SE2 support so users with older cpu's without SSE2 will be affected.
The ESR is based on a Release every seven versions so 45 ESR is not affected by this however Firefox 52.0 ESR will be.
Firefox 45.8.0 ESR will be out when Firefox 53.0 is Released as ESR version gets eight updates unless Mozilla extends it. Its possible Mozilla may decided to extend life of Firefox 45.0 ESR both due to SSE2 requirement and when Mac OSX 10.6, 10.7, 10.8 support is dropped.