As part of the new rapid release process we have been doing outreach to three main groups of vendors who ship or integration with Firefox:

• Linux Vendors
• Extensions with Binary Components Vendors
• Accessibility Technology Vendors

On the Linux side we’ve talked to a number of companies and projects. Linux vendors may need to do more aggressive security patch backporting, especially on long lived distros like RHEL and SLE.  In the next couple of months we should be formalizing the framework for acceptable changes for the distros and contributed builds that have longer support tails.

Extensions with binary components will need to re-compile for each release.  Hopefully in many cases it is just a re-compile.  Binary component authors who are primarily utilizing binary components as a scriptable shim to binary libraries may wish to use js c-types to make those calls.

For accessibility vendors we’ve talked already to most of the key assistive technology vendors about the coming changes.

Much of the contact has been done simply to raise awareness and create contacts as we learn more about the rapid release process.

If you are a vendor of or for Firefox and have questions about the rapid release process, please contact kneedham at mozilla.com.