Towards an alternative way forward for Seamonkey

[Philip TAYLOR (Webmaster, Ret'd)]

Justin Wood (Callek) wrote:

>> Insert -> Characters and Symbols
>> has no options.
>
> Rob, unfortunately this is a known issue, I plan to release an addon within the week to 
correct this, as a hotfix. and will get the real fix into a 2.4.2 *IFF* there is another 
reason for a "chemspill" release.

In many ways, this hearkens back to my message of a day or
so ago, where I expressed my concerns that Seamonkey users
were beginning to lose their brand loyalty, almost certainly
as a result (direct or indirect) of Seamonkey's following
Firefox's rapid release schedule as well as its seeming
determination to follow Firefox's lead, regardless of whether
that lead is consistent with Seamonkey's heritage and the
expectations of its users.

Having just read Justin's message (above), it seems to me
that Seamonkey is indeed suffering as a result of those two
philosophies, and I would therefore like to offer, for
serious consideration, an alternative which I /think/ might
help to retain Seamonkey's existing user base, and perhaps
even enlarge it if Firefox users are similarly getting
p****d off with the problems that seem automatically
to follow from the need to release on such a tight
time-scale.

I would like to propose that Seamonkey continue to make
use of Firefox and Gecko as its core components (I do
not know to what extent it also draws on Thunderbird),
but rather than slavishly following Firefox's 6-week
cycle, it adopts an altogether more leisurely approach.

What I propose is that Seamonkey aim at a 6-month release
cycle, using Firefox/Gecko from six months ago as its
basis.  This will allow adequate time to identify bugs,
features that are counter-intuitive to Seamonkey users,
ill-advised design decisions, and so on.

This does not mean that later Firefoxes/Geckos will
necessarily be ignored; if, for example, they address
a bug in the version selected as the basis for the
next Seamonkey, then of course the bug fix can be
incorporated.  But there should be no last-minute
(or last week, or perhaps even last month) changes :
there should be a good, stable Seamonkey in beta-test
for at least a month before it is released to Seamonkey
users in general.

Comments, please ?

Philip Taylor
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