January 2012 Archives

For a number of years we've held off on updating our Windows toolchain to a newer version of Visual Studio, and in so doing preserved support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP RTM and SP1. Firefox developers and the 99.6% of our Windows users have paid a price for this support, though. Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from breaking -- including having had to back out and ultimately delay some important new features like SPDY. Our users have have suffered a slower Firefox than would be possible as both direct and indirect results of moving to a more modern compiler.

So this week, after a few months of discussion and evaluation of the latest Firefox user numbers and the pros and cons of moving our tools forward, I've called for Mozilla to begin the process for ending support on those older Windows version. Next Tuesday or Wednesday, after Firefox 12 moves to Aurora, the Mozilla Release Engineering team will begin upgrading our Windows build systems to Visual Studio 2010. With VS2010, we will no longer be able to build a Firefox that runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP RTM, and Windows Service Pack 1.

It's always a difficult decision to leave some users behind. The number of Firefox users on those OS versions -- less than one half of one percent of our Windows Firefox users, and the benefits to our development process and the hundreds of millions of Firefox users on XP SP2 and above, however, compel us to look forward rather than back.

If you are a Windows 2000 user, Firefox 12, which will be supported until June 5th, will be the final supported Firefox release. After that, your options are limited. Switching to Opera is probably the best path forward.

If you're a Windows XP user still on RTM or Service Pack 1, I strongly urge you to install the free Windows Service Pack updates.

And finally, for Enterprises adopting the ESR, these older Windows versions will be supported for the length of the first ESR of Firefox. That works out to an extra 6 months or so before these Windows versions become unsupported.

The first public version of the browser called "Firefox" -- a 0.8 release, came out 8 years ago. With that release and the 1.0 release later that same year, we showed the world that browsers mattered.

Innovative new features like tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, spell-checking, integrated search, and browser add-ons, re-invigorated not just the browser market, but the entire Web. We put users in control of that mess of windows, and the horrible pop-ups from advertisers and malware makers. We made it simple for users to customize their experience and to find what they were looking for without jumping through a bunch of hoops.

In addition to those awesome new user-facing features, Firefox delivered great performance, stability, compatibility, and security at a time when Internet Explorer was falling down on most of those fronts. It wasn't enough to offer great user features, the integrity and quality of the product had to be top notch and it was.

Today, there are more compelling browser choices than ever before and all of the major browser vendors are delivering high-quality products with innovative new features, even Microsoft :-) This is good for users and good for the Web.

But browsers are not all the same. Each of the major vendors, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Mozilla are building Web browsers for very different reasons. They may resemble each other on the surface, but everything from the features they offer to users and to Web developers, to the myriad of user interface design considerations, to the distribution models, exist to serve very different interests.

Only Mozilla, a non-profit organization, produces a Web browser designed, first and foremost, to put users in control of their online experience.

The desktop browser is not the only part of the Web that impacts user control, security, and privacy, though, so in 2012 Mozilla is expanding its efforts and will be delivering a new standards-based Web Apps ecosystem, a user-centric identity system for the Web, and a cross-device strategy built around user empowerment.

Desktop Firefox in 2012 is going to do again what we did in 2004. We're going to deliver innovative features that put users in control. And we're going to give users the speed, stability, and compatibility that the modern Web demands. We're going further this year, though. We're going to help launch powerful new Mozilla products like Apps, Identity, and mobile.

There are a lot of pieces that will have to come together to make that vision a reality and in the coming days I'll be sharing more specifics here and in the Mozilla wiki. Stay tuned.

Personal data is the currency of today's digital market, and like any currency, it needs stability and trust. Only if consumers can 'trust' that their data is well protected, will they continue to entrust businesses and authorities with it, buy online, and accept new services.

That's from EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, speaking at the DLD Conference in Munich.

I think the final sentence there takes an optimistic view on users' understanding of the issue, but I hope that we can build a Web where something like that will be obviously true to everyone.

Ms. Reding's proposal for new regulations on that front has three main components.

First, people need to be informed about the processing of their data in simple and clear language. Internet users must be told which data is collected, for what purposes and how long it will be stored. They need to know how it might be used by third parties. They must know their rights and which authority to address if those rights are violated.

Second, whenever users give their agreement to the processing of their data, it has to be meaningful. In short, people's consent needs to be specific and given explicitly.

Thirdly, the reform will give individuals better control over their own data. I will include easier access to one's own data in the new rules. People must be able to easily take their data to another provider or have it deleted if they no longer want it to be used.

But it's the third part that I think is really novel and important. Users have a right to be forgotten. I should be able to pull my data back out of a system, and not only the data I actively submitted, but any additional data that's been collected as a result of my use of the system. For example, Google lets me kill my Docs account and pull that content, but they don't let me see, much less manage, the targeted advertising profile of me that they build based on my "use" of Google services like AdSense, DoubleClick, Analytics, and the various other Google surveillance tools I happen across when I'm surfing the Web.

How user data is managed is going to be one of the next big challenges we face on the Web. Europe may set the pace but it's up to all of us to be a part of any solutions.

Tim Taubert recently posted on how he got involved with Mozilla. I intend to post about my experience at some point in the not too distant future but for now I wanted to highlight something from Tim's post:

I loved this feature but noticed that it was in an early stage and needed some fixes. I set up a Firefox build environment, went through Bugzilla to find open bugs, nagged people on IRC and was totally overwhelmed by the warm welcome and the appreciation of my work. This was something I did not at all experience when trying to contribute to other open source projects.

Are you an add-on author that uses C++ in your add-on(s)? If so, can you take a look over this discussion and comment there if you think it would help you maintain your add-on(s)? We're trying to balance moving as quickly as we can to improve Firefox and Gecko with maintaining add-on and Web compatibility and this approach looks somewhat promising for at least some add-on authors. Please post comments to that thread and not here. Thanks.

Today, Mozilla will be taking part in a protest the U.S. SOPA and PIPA legislation. You can read more about this from:

Mozilla's Chairman, Mitchell Baker
Mozilla's CEO, Gary Kovacs
Mozilla's Privacy and Public Policy Lead, Alex Fowler

Our sites will go black and offer information and links to help folks understand this issue. In addition to www.mozilla.org and www.mozilla.com, hundreds of millions of Firefox users will see a blacked out Firefox Start page with a small note under the big search box pointing to more information.

(Note: All users will still be able to receive security updates and access our technical support website.)

In his most recent column, Ed Bott said something, mostly unrelated to the rest of the rant, that got me thinking. He said, "In the general-purpose PC segment, where small vestiges of Microsoft's one-time monopoly still exist..."

What I think he's trying to say here is that Microsoft doesn't really have monopoly market power any more in PC operating systems. Or maybe Ed thinks it's possible to have a tiny little bit -- "small vestiges," of monopoly market power. That doesn't really make any sense to me. It's kind of like saying someone is "a little bit pregnant." You either have monopoly market power or you don't.

Here's what I think.

Microsoft absolutely does still possess monopoly market power for PC operating systems.

Microsoft Windows has somewhere between 90% and 92% of the worldwide PC installed base and Windows PC sales accounted for somewhere between 93% and 95% of total PC sales in 2011. (Mac sales were about 4.75% of total PC sales in 2011 -- 16.73 million Macs out of a total of 352.4 million PC shipments)

Microsoft Windows is just as much the overwhelming dominant PC operating system power today as it was back in 1999 when it was declared a monopoly.

"Yeah. Sure. But what about the rise of the smartphone and the tablet?" I hear you saying. Well, those are not PC operating systems. Those belong to different and fairly competitive markets. PC operating systems installed base and current sales market share are still very much dominated by Microsoft.

Mitchell Baker has just posted about a very important issue, user sovereignty over our data. Please go give her post a read.

User Sovereignty for our Data

Firefox releases keep on coming. We just shipped Firefox 9 with the killer-fast JavaScript Type Inference work and Firefox 10, with add-ons defaulting to compatible is just around the corner.

Firefox 11, which is in Aurora today, makes an awesome leap forward in developer tools. If you're a Web dev, you really should be checking those out. Firefox 12, currently on the Nightly channel, has killed the Windows UAC dialog, so there's one less annoyance on updating.