Very well spoken.

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I use Mozilla Nightly x64 11.0a1 myself...

*switches to Austin Power voice*
AND I LOVE IT BABY!!! YEAH!!!

Major number of FireFox does nor means anything, did You forgot it? Difference between FF 8.0 and 9.0 is equal to difference between FF 3.6.13 and 3.6.14. And I cannot remember there was any FF 3.6.14beta in /testing. Or was? That is my point.

it's not exactly like that: 3.6.x releases were maintenance ones.

this article maybe can shed some light on the differences

http://betanews.com/2011/11/10/whats...excited-about/

Hi,
Security differences are one area to be concerned with! Adding something to '-current /testing' is of no concern to me. You can choose to ignore! Major numbered releases for beta or stable identify each and allow us to discern.

I really think you are making mountains from mole hills here with '/testing'. PV provides '/testing for those who wish to 'test' or not. Look at other stable releases for '/testing' as far back as 10.0;Look at 'PACKAGES.TXT' for the above. To get a understanding or reasoning for '/testing' within stable 10.0.

'-current' is in flux thus '/testing can be a means for us to use beta if we choose to help with beta software for '-current'.

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I can give one example of the problem with the Firefox major versioning: My internet banking uses a firefox addon for security. When there were minor releases, the addon worked just fine and we could access internet banking with firefox. With the major release, every release breaks this addon, making impossible for firefox to access internet banking, so with testing we can know if the next release will break the internet banking access with firefox and ask the bank to take a look at it.

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for Slackware.

With the speed at which Firefox is releasing, there is sometimes a day or 2 between updates in Slackware. Some users are confused that Slackware is Arch Linux, and start complaining 3 seconds after the date changes in Mozilla's version control software.

I see the beta versions in /testing as a means to appease the OMG version +0.01 seekers. Plus the added benefit for the rest of us to TEST the package. As we never know when some compile option in Cairo needs to be changed to fit in with Firefox, or some obscure never used before header from the includes directory in Seamonkey needs to be added.

So, in short, yes we are beta-testers. This was a decsion made by 1) using -current, and 2) installing something from testing.

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The whole thing about alpha, beta and gamma doesn't really make much sense to me. Software is always in a state of testing at different stages. How does alpha differ from beta and so on? Everyone has a subjective interpretation of stages (e.g. google gmail was in beta for how long?)

Most software is either outdated or in one stage of testing or the other. Frozen versions are just snapshots at various stages. Maybe a version without the "beta" or "alpha" tag satisfies some people. I doubt whether there is a perfect version number of any software that will satisfy everybody.

Firefox appears to be in a version number war with Internet Explorer. The rapid bumps in major version are not likely to stop until Firefox 10 exceeds IE 9.
Ed

I think almost everybody is satisfied with TeX version π.

On topic. Alpha and Beta are indications of what you can expect when using the software. Alpha means the program might crash, and that functionality might change before release. Beta means that the software is mostly stable. Some small problems might still exist, but all functionality should be there and working as expected.

On the original topic.
Firefox used to do a lot of maintenance releases, and not a lot of releases with new features. This was the case untill the end of the 3.6 series. Starting with 4.0, new features are released very often. So often that most people will never use a maintenance release because the next major version is already there.
Even though the differences between 7.0 and 8.0 are smaller than between 3.6 and 4.0, they are bigger than between 3.6.13 and 3.6.14. New features are added every major version. Just not as much as there used to be (that is the point of doing major version releases more often).
If Firefox releases for enterprises become a thing, maybe Slackware will use them for -stable, but -current has a big chance of always using the latest and greatest major release. Including betas allows people to test if the new version will break something before the final release is made. This is even more important now that maintenance releases have become rare.

Just reviewed changes between "major" releases of FF(4 and 5, 5 and 6, 6 and 7, 7 and 8), my conclusion is none of them separately deserve to be named "major"(didn't noticed any real feature added). Only if we merge them, result probably have right to be called "major". So question: why we are testing betas of minor subreleases?

I think you've made your point. Open source software is all about choice. No one is forcing you to use a browser you don't like.
I don't have a problem with the development path the Slackware team is on.

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I wondered that myself, but why not fight fire with fire? Microsoft's very first version of IE was 4.0-- to match Netscape Navigator's then-current release. And what major changes are there between IE 6 and IE 8 besides the default settings for tabbed browsing and the placement of icons?

Very well stated.

Wrong. The first version of IE was 1.0. I got it on a single floppy in '95, and it wasn't bundled with the original Win95. (although it was intended to be, it wasn't ready for the release.) The floppy was free from my ISP, which was an advantage over Navigator that cost money, which is why IE ultimately was more popular. By the time Netscape Communicator went totally free at 4.5, IE 4.0 was also released and ended up bundled in Win98 too. IE won out not because of being at version 4.0 similar to Communicator, but at the price point, especially since its users already had windows.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/...pport:Proposal

In the Risks section they say: "Public (re)distribution of Mozilla-branded versions of the ESR will not be permitted."

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