The Minority Report

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it’s comforting to go to a website and see the familiar 2k/xp/2003/vista line that says the software you are downloading is going to run on the NT family of operating systems.

On the other hand, Windows 2000 came out in 1999. That’s 10 years old and a dinosaur in the software world. Even Windows XP is getting long in the tooth at 8 years old, 2001. Dropping support for SP2 of XP? That is a little surprising since SP3 just came out a little less than a year ago. Have all corporate installations of Windows XP been updated to SP3? Tough to say. I think most corporations should have deployed SP2 by now but I doubt SP3 has made it completely through yet.

Does this ultimately hurt or help adoption? I think it will hurt unless they draw the line at SP2. I think it’s an easy decision to drop Windows 2000 support considering that Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are not supported by even Microsoft. However, you can’t drop XP until Microsoft drops XP which may happen if there is an Internet Explorer 9.

Just for the record, up until a month ago, I was still running a Windows 2000 Server at home…

Mozilla Corp. is considering dropping support for Windows 2000 and the earliest versions of XP when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, online discussions show.

In a series of messages on the Mozilla.dev.planning forum, developers and Mozilla executives, including the company’s chief engineer and its director of Firefox, hashed out which Microsoft operating systems it should support with the 2010 edition of its browser.

“Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher,” said Michael Conner, one of the company’s software engineers, to start the discussion.
Mozilla ponders dropping Firefox support for Win2k, early XP

Here is the relevant information on the mozilla.dev.planning group:

Proposal:

Raise the minimum requirements for Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of  
Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP  
Service Pack 3 or higher.

Background:

Supporting multiple OS versions is not zero cost, in terms of testing,  
code complexity and developer sanity.  We have previously raised the  
minimum requirement to Windows 2000 for Firefox 3.  We have also  
raised the minimum requirements for Linux and Mac builds in that same  
timeframe.  While we have not formalized a policy by which we drop  
support for OS versions, in general the main concerns have been how  
recently the OS versions have been available and sold (in some cases)  
as well as the ability and costs involved for users to upgrade.  
Additionally, the continued availability of security updates for the  
OS level is important, as users on unsupported of operating systems,  
especially Windows, are highly vulnerable no matter what we do, so  
there is a strong argument against giving those users a reason to stay  
on that platform.

On July 13, 2010, Microsoft will end all support for Windows 2000 (all  
service packs) and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (XP SP1 and the original  
XP have already passed their end of support).  This means that after  
this date, these OS versions will not get any security updates and  
will not receive any support from Microsoft.  Service Pack 3 is a free  
upgrade for all XP users.  Windows 2000 has no free upgrade path, but  
has not been available at retail since March 2004, and was last  
legally sold as a preloaded OS in March 2005, which is over four years  
ago, and will be more than five years from when we ship the last  
supported version of Firefox.  Users should be able to successfully  
migrate to XP or Linux if they intend to keep using their old hardware.

Affected Users:

All users still running either Windows 2000 or Windows XP Service Pack  
2 (or lower).  As Service Pack 3 is a free upgrade for XP users, only  
Windows 2000 users will be forced to change their OS to use the next  
version of Firefox.

As we intend to ship the next version of Firefox in early 2010,  
Firefox 3.5 will continue to be supported under our current support  
policy (six months after the next version) until after those OS  
versions are no longer supported, so users will continue to be  
supported by Mozilla as least as long as their OS is supported.

Relevant Links:

General Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy:
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/

Windows Service Pack Support End Dates:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifesupsps#Windows

Windows 2000 Support Lifecycle
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3071

Windows Life-Cycle Policy (licensing availability)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx
Proposal: Raise minimum requirements for 1.9.2 on Windows to WinXP SP3 – mozilla.dev.planning | Google Groups

p.s. Regardless, please join the campaign to kill Internet Explorer 6.