Now that 1.5 is safely out the door (woo hoo!) it’s time to start focusing on our upcoming releases.

Our goal with the scheduled security and stability updates is to continuously improve the quality of the 1.5 release. We’ll need to push these releases with a very low tolerance for risk to give our users maximal confidence in the upgrade. The first of these releases will be Firefox 1.5.0.1, scheduled to ship in late January. This release will come from the MOZILLA_1_8_0_BRANCH.

As with the 1.0.x releases the primary focus of this release is security. In addition to security fixes “reliability” fixes that meet one of the following criteria may be considered:

• Top Crash
• Memory leaks or other major performance issues
• Regression in major functionality from 1.0.x
• Regression caused by a previous security release
• Significant loss of functionality in a major feature (e.g. the installer doesn’t work)

Unless it is a critical severity security issue the patch should meet ALL of the following criteria to be considered for inclusion:

• Has been on the trunk with no regressions reported in 2 weeks
• Must have a clear explanation in the bug of:
  • Summary of the changes in the fix
  • Risk assessment
  • A reproducible testcase
  • l10n impact
• Does not change any public API
• Does not change website compatibility or rendering

The “release drivers,” a subset of drivers@mozilla.org will make all final decisions on whether a particular patch can land or not. A consensus of 3 release drivers is needed to approve a patch. This will typically occur in a bug triage meeting. The first triage meeting will start this Monday at 2pm PST.

Changes that do not impact the code in release builds i.e. do not affect tier 1 platforms or are entirely in code specific to another product (e.g. Seamonkey) do not require driver approval. For other projects please abide by the guidelines for that specific project.

Since we are scheduling these minor releases every 6-8 weeks, if a patch does not make it into the current release there will another release to pick it up shortly. This also means that if a patch misses a code freeze date it will automatically slip into the next release.

Firefox2 is the next vehicle for new front-end features and will ship middle of next year. Firefox3/Gecko1.9 is the next vehicle for major platform changes. It will follow in early 2007.

The schedule for 1.5.0.1 will be published shortly, along with bug flag instructions and branch mechanics. In the mean time, if you are the owner of or know of other bugs which should be in the upcoming release, please nominate those bugs to blocking1.8.0.1?

Thanks and check back here regularly for further updates. As always questions are welcomed at drivers@mozilla.org.