Mozilla to turn its back on Tiger

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 8 Feb 2010 at 09:17

Mozilla is ready to exorcise support for Mac OS X 10.4 from Firefox's development code, closing the door on Apple's ageing OS.

The foundation stopped supporting 10.4, codenamed Tiger, in September 2009, but, according to Josh Aas, a Mozilla platform engineer, "we left much of the code required to support that platform in the tree in case we wanted to reverse that decision."

"We have come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific code," he notes on the Mozilla developer planning forum.

We have come to a point where we need to make a final decision and either restore 10.4 support or remove this (large) amount of 10.4 specific code

Aas admits that supporting Tiger is a "hindrance", but admits that the decision isn't quite as clear cut as the foundation would like. According to its own usage figures, 24% of people running the Mac version of Firefox 3.5 rely on Tiger, bolstered by a further 12% of Firefox 3.6 users.

In all, the foundation reckons "approximately 1.5 million people are using Firefox on 10.4." Unsurprisingly, the decision to drop the code brought a heated exchange on the forum.

"So, in the end my opinion doesn't count for anything," posts Philip Jones. "Use a two-track method. Designate one for older versions and one for newer versions. You can create one with all the fancy new stuff, then one for us poor people that have to hang on to older equipment out of necessity."

The suggestion didn't exactly sit well with Mozilla's director of community development Asa Dotzler, who shot back: "does this suggestion come with a donation for doubling of full-time development resources, QA and testing, build and release infrastructure, and user support for this second track that would cover a shrinking minority of Firefox on Mac users?"

"I suspect that any sane outcome of this discussion will have to prioritise Mozilla's project resources over your personal resources," he concludes.