Aaron, thank you for explaining the reasons for this decision so thoroughly!
On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Aaron Klotz <akl...@mozilla.com> wrote: > Disclaimer: I am not a decision maker on this, these are my personal > opinions, etc, etc > > On 10/31/2016 3:54 PM, juar...@gmail.com wrote: > >> >> Discontinuing support for 10% of users sounds like shrinking 10% of >> customers, lay off 10% of employees, reduce 10% of funds for investments. >> >> - Is really necessary to abandon all XP users? >> > Shifting XP users to ESR is different from "abandonment" FWIW, but IMHO > this move is necessary. As I pointed out earlier in this discussion, the > problems have become more complicated than simply disabling certain pieces > of code when XP does not support them. > > - Is possible to discontinue the most hard to support components? >> Somenthing like "Video conferencing will not work in XP" or like is planned >> for flash. >> > Again, that is not the problem. The problem is more like, "Sorry 90% of > users, we can't give you a better sandbox because of the 10% of users > running an obsolete and unsupported OS," or "This feature is going to be > delayed a release because it mysteriously fails on Windows XP." Meanwhile, > our competitors *do* deliver that better sandbox or *do* release that new > feature before we do. Now we're preserving that 10% of users at the expense > of the other 90%, and it's in the latter category where the growth will be. > That sounds like a pretty lousy growth strategy to me. > > - Is possible restrict the user base affected? Like only XP SP2 and >> older... >> > Existing Firefox system requirements are for XP SP2, so we already > restrict older revisions, but that isn't really the issue here. The issue > is the gulf between all XP releases and newer versions. > > As somebody who has first-hand experience with this, let me assure you: > Debugging XP-specific problems has become very unpleasant. Most developers > don't just have an XP machine sitting around to work with. We can request a > loaner from Release Engineering and debug it through there, but that is > very tedious and time consuming. Turnaround on try builds for Windows XP is > sometimes terribly slow. As XP continues to die off, this will only get > worse, not better. > > I see how Mozilla is important for open web and how firefox user base is >> shrinking. This worries me. >> > Do not confuse shrinking market share with shrinking user base. That is > only the case when the total number of users on the web remains constant, > which is not the case. Having said that, I don't want to see shrinking > market share either. > > I do not believe that we can offer the highest quality experience to the > vast majority of our users by continuing to expend resources on the past. > One of our top-line goals for 2016 has been to build our core strength. I > don't know how we're supposed to do that by intentionally tying one hand > behind our back to support Windows XP. > > Supporting XP might curb short-term market share losses but it will hinder > our ability to deliver long-term market share gains. > > Maybe hiring one or two developers for supporting this user base is >> cheaper than loosing these users. >> > > Hopefully my other remarks in this post have made it clear that XP support > is not an issue of headcount. > > _______________________________________________ > dev-platform mailing list > dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
