Le 24/01/2013 20:41, L. David Baron a écrit :
On Wednesday 2013-01-23 11:19 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
We have not made any announcements around the availability of
updates (Mozilla-provided or otherwise) at this time, and no
overarching decisions have been made for the life of Firefox OS.
What I would like to note is that phone OS updates are not
synonymous with browser updates on other platforms - they have
their own very specific requirements and we can expect differences
in their implementation. For instance, each update needs to be
qualified by multiple partners. Think legal certification
requirements as well as full stack quality checks externally. As
for security updates specifically, the security and release teams
are working closely with partners to ensure that they understand
the necessity for frequent security updates on a regular cadence.
We'll keep you all updated as things solidify.
I think it's also important to work with partners to ensure they
understand why more than security updates are needed on a regular
cadence, in particular, why updates to newer Gecko release trains
are needed on a regular basis.
When people develop applications for the Web, they're generally
testing that their application works on a certain set of browsers,
basically the set of browsers that have enough market share for them
to care about. When developers can depend on new features is a
function of when *all* of these browsers support the new feature (or
at least enough that they're willing to sacrifice the market share
for the rest). When developers can depend on performance
improvements that improve the performance characteristics of the Web
as a platform again depends on when *all* of these browsers support
the new feature. And how consistent these browsers are with each
other has a big effect on how easy or difficult the development
experience is.
On the mobile Web today, there's a big problem with out of date
browser engines, but today it's out-of-date WebKit. When Facebook
said that HTML5 wasn't ready, my *understanding* (which may be
wrong) is that they weren't talking about the technology in current
browsers being ready; they were talking about old versions of WebKit
that are extremely common on phones and other mobile devices.
Populating the world with significant numbers of devices running
outdated browsers cripples our ability to move the Web forward and
the ability of the Web to compete with other platforms; shipping new
versions of Gecko users of Firefox OS phones is critical to our
ability to move the Web forward, which I believe is a key part of
our mission.
I could not agree more on the intention but can't help adding a pinch of
salt.
About partners.
if they don't just push Mozilla updates, it's because they want to
review updates carefully, certify them. So, the more update, the more
work it is for them. I don't have a clue of how much work is to
review/certify updates, but since partners have limited resources, it
may refrain them from pushing some updates. Gecko updates would probably
be the ones left aside, due to their non-critical aspect. Mozilla is
probably the only entity that can help reduce the burden off partners'
shoulders because it knows Gecko and can help partners
understand/review/certify updates quickly.
Apps may break after a Gecko update.
Congratulations to Gecko/SpiderMonkey for being the only engines running
OpenWebApps for now. This however comes with a set of dangers: people
can rely on Mozilla-specific extensions/bugs. I'm just back from
FirefoxOS app days in Bucharest and some people port apps from other
languages. If they find a misknown feature/bug of SpiderMonkey/Gecko to
make their app either work without further effort or to improve
performance, they will. Does anyone know if at least none of Gaia apps
use Mozilla-specific features?
Gecko updates potentially breaking apps (which users may have paid for!)
may be a deal-breaker to push Gecko updates to phones.
I'm not sure what can be done to address this issue. I mean, I'm not
sure what can be done additionally to what people already do fixing
standard-compliance related bugs and removing unnecessary
Mozilla-specific features.
David
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