"Now we hear that Mozilla is abandoning its traditional major release cycle model in favor of smaller, incremental changes that it will slipstream through security patches and other maintenance updates. Basically, Mozilla's developers are admitting that they can no longer deliver a fully baked and tested Firefox release in a timely fashion. So they're switching to an incremental model where they can deliver progress in more manageable chunks, thus bypassing the lengthy external beta/feedback process altogether."Randall goes on to say:
"releasing lots of small changes without broadly testing their effects on the underlying platform is often a recipe for disaster"This is where I have to jump in and disagree...
Releasing lots of small changes to the underlying platform can be a disaster because everything that is built on the platform can be effected, but incremental releases are absolutely your best strategy for ending up with a product that does what it needs to do.
Start with just enough to be useful and let people use it. Get their feedback then add a bit more useful stuff and let people use it. Get their feedback then add a bit more useful stuff. Continue until "done".
Waiting until everything is perfect is a recipe for never releasing anything... because perfect is a moving target. You'll find that stuff that you thought was useful when you started wasn't useful after all, and visa-versa.
Personally, I think Firefox has a much better chance of survival with this strategy... Sorry Randall.
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