Mozilla steps on the gas, cuts time between Firefox upgrades in half

From ComputerWorld: Mozilla on Tuesday announced it would accelerate Firefox releases by reducing the interval between upgrades to just four weeks.

Firefox has been on a relatively rapid release cadence - an upgrade every six to eight weeks - since 2011, when Mozilla shifted to a faster schedule, a move seen at the time as reaction to the then-up-and-coming Chrome from Google. Prior to that, Mozilla spent up to a year - and longer - between upgrades.

Now, it'll be just four weeks.

"We're adjusting our cadence to increase our agility, and bring you new features more quickly," wrote Ritu Kothari and Yan Or, the Firefox release management team leader and senior director of product integrity, respectively, in a post to Mozilla's Hacks blog. "We've had many requests to take features to market sooner ((and)) feature teams are increasingly working in sprints that align better with shorter release cycles."_

Mozilla will ease into the faster pace, said Kothari and Or. The next interval - between the already-out Firefox 69 and the future Firefox 70 - will remain at seven weeks but the next (between Firefoxes 70 and 71) will be shortened to six weeks. (Until the cadence change, the year's final interval was to be seven weeks.) The next two upgrades, to Firefoxes 72 and 73, will take place in January and February, each five weeks after its predecessor. The pace will quicken to four weeks with Firefox 74, slated to ship in March, and remain there.

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