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Feel that cold clammy shiver running down your internet connection? Well, spank me and call me Winston Smith because Mozilla plans to force recalcitrant Firefox 3.5 users to upgrade to v3.6.18 on or about June 21. The real question is should you care let alone stop them?

Mozilla’s Firefox release manager, Christian Legnitto, has an upgrade agenda vis-a-vis laggard Firefox 3.5 users.

1. We want to do this quickly
2. We want users to self-select into running Firefox 4 if at all possible (dangle the carrot)
3. We don’t think self-selection will ultimately get us to the place we need to be
4. We will force 3.6 on 3.5 stragglers not choosing to update to Firefox 4 or 3.6 (give them the stick)
5. We feel comfortable making the major update choice for users because a) the versions are very similar and b) we’d rather lose a small amount of miffed users than leave a large amount of users vulnerable

“We are treating the automatic update checkbox enabled as a ‘Yes, I want Mozilla to keep me updated,’” Legnitto adds. “Previously, as a courtesy, we had people opt-in between major versions due to the potential jarring nature of the update. We feel the difference between 3.5 and 3.6 is not severe and with 3.5 reaching end-of-life 3.6 is the security update for 3.5 users.”

See? It’s good for you and Mozilla’s gonna take care of it.

It’s a very nice carrot

Thereupon, Mozilla plans to push Firefox 3.6.18 to users on or about June 21 to all version 3.5 users that haven’t opted out of automagical updates.

This will sound a little Orwellian to some folks and perhaps there’s a smidgeon of Big Brother in there somewhere. Nevertheless, why not just download the latest version right now and, when v3.6.18 comes out in June, click “OK” to accept that update.

Is there any realistic reason not to keep Firefox up-to-date? Seriously, we’re talking about a point update not a game changing whole number release…

What’s your take?

via Macworld UK

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