In the middle of a very interesting post on free software packaging I saw these rather interesting stats:
Take, for example, modern web browsers like Firefox and Chromium. Arguably the most vital application for users, the browser is coming under increasing pressure to keep up with the breakneck pace of innovation on the web. The next wave of real-time collaboration and multimedia applications relies on the rapid development of new capabilities in web browsers. Browser makers are responding by accelerating deployment in the field: both aggressively push new releases to their users. A report from Google found that Chrome upgrades 97% of their users within 21 days of a new release, and Firefox 85% (both impressive numbers). Mozilla recently changed their maintenance policies, discontinuing maintenance of stable releases and forcing Ubuntu to ship new upstream releases to users.
Now compare that to what the average University (or corporate environment) does with it’s managed desktop systems. Software is upgraded on a predictable schedule, and the large number of users who want no change (“but it works!”) but often set the pace of innovation (*).
Here at York, we deploy Firefox via AppV and keep it fully updated. This works well: the actually deployment of the new version is easy, and the people that are using Firefox on Windows instead of IE pretty much by definition are happy to be keep at the cutting edge.
So far, so good.
Now, if we were to make Firefox our official browser instead of IE (just as a thought experiment) this starts to fail. At that point we’d have to provide screenshots based on Firefox and every time we upgraded we’d make unhappy large numbers of our users who just want to do their job and have to look again at those screenshots and check compatibility with applications etc.
But if the upstream only provides security fixes for the latest version, this isn’t possible.
There’s a whole set of solutions:
- Just stick to the old and steady technology. This is what most enterprises do, hence the very slow death of IE6 (we only upgraded this year)
- The Google approach. Get users used to constant change and out-of-date documentation (they are getting better but clearly spend a lot of effort trying to keep the docs up-to-date with the pace of change in the apps, with the result that many questions are only answered in some random Google Groups post)
- Give up on managed desktops totally. Tempting and probably worth a post all on its own.
Votes?
(*) In most ways of course, this is a very good thing. Plenty of people, myself included, can waste far too much time trying to fix what’s broken after “upgrading” stuff
