by Joe Hildebrand and Selena Deckelmann.
There’s likely not a single person reading this who hasn’t been impacted in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that school and office closings and “shelter in place” orders have taken a toll on many of you and have led to large adjustments in day-to-day routines.
The team at Firefox is no different. As people have been adjusting to the new normal, our product leadership and release management looked into our teams’ capabilities and new limitations. Based on this, we believe we can maintain our 2020 Firefox release schedule as we navigate this global crisis together.
Our Firefox staff and contributors are used to working remotely, including doing their tests on remote hardware. We often work with people in different timezones, whose regional culture is different. We’ve built empathy into our systems for handling difficult or unexpected circumstances. These strengths are what allow us to continue to make progress where some of our competitors have had to slow down or stop work.
We are launching our next release, Firefox 75, today, April 7, as scheduled. We will continue to monitor both internal and external feedback and remain open to making future adjustments.
We know that this is a time when our users depend on Firefox to provide uninterrupted access to vital government and health services, so we have taken steps to avoid shipping changes that might negatively impact user experience or possibly break these websites.
For example, we have prioritized fixing video conferencing issues specifically in this time of greater usage. Going forward, we will continue to examine all new features and planned changes with closer attention paid to backwards compatibility, and their potential for any user-facing issues.
Above all, it is our goal that we continue to focus on shipping high-quality releases to our users because we know you depend on us to do just that.
