Hacker News Reader

Comment by bipson | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the alternative is running a system with a ton of outdated software, with known bugs and active exploits while casually surfing the "oh-so-cosy-and-entirely-harmless" WWW...

The goal is not to ostracize automatic updates, but to have faster fixes.

Or to separate security updates from feature updates, but I think this ship has long sailed for modern browsers.

View on HN

> Or to separate security updates from feature updates, but I think this ship has long sailed for modern browsers.

That would be my preferred solution. But yes, as you say, that ship has sailed. No reason why it couldn't sail back though.

> No reason why it couldn't sail back though

Maintenance cost.

> No reason why it couldn't sail back though.

Multiplying the number of parallel maintenance tracks and associated support costs is not “no reason”.

The goal is to fully control your environment and not to expecting some unexpected updates.

User is the one who must choose update policy. If user is choosing to not update then it's their own problem and no manufacturer has the right to deside otherwise.

Automatic updates are a good default, you can always disable them if you don't want them.

Good default is to ask users about their preferences explicitly and not to hide that kind of settings anywhere.

Most users are computer illiterate, so they would choose to not auto-update to skip the hassle, and then never manually update anyways.

Every FireFox install comes with auto-update enabled.

Nope, mine on linux doesn't auto-update itself, though I update it diligently, but manually

In the past I would have agreed with you. Sadly there are "updates" which remove functionality.

In the case of Firefox, there's also the Extended Support Release. Security updates without the UI change every 4 weeks

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switch-to-firefox-exten...

In this case, ESR was also affected.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1749910

Reply on news.ycombinator.com