Mozilla retires Firefox 4 from security support

From InfoWorld: Unnoticed in the Tuesday release of Firefox 5 was Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4, the browser it shipped just three months ago.

As part of Tuesday's Firefox 5 release, Mozilla spelled out vulnerabilities it had patched in that edition and in 2010's Firefox 3.6, but it made no mention of any bugs fixed in Firefox 4.

That's because Firefox 4 has reached what Mozilla calls EOL, for "end of life," for vulnerability patches.

Although the move may have caught users by surprise, the decision to stop supporting Firefox 4 with security updates has been discussed by Mozilla's developers and managers for weeks.

A mozilla.dev.planning mailing list thread that started May 17 evolved into a back-and-forth about the rapid-release schedule and its impact on Firefox 4.

Christian Legnitto, the Firefox release manager, put it most succinctly in a May 25 message. "Firefox 5 will be the security update for Firefox 4," Legnitto said.

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