Mozilla Backtracks on Decision to Cease Development of 64-bit Firefox

[JMH]

[h=3]Don't look now, but 64-bit Firefox nightlies are set to return.[/h] Mozilla in November made the decision to pull the plug on 64-bit Firefox for Windows, disabling 64-bit nightlies because of a lack of resources required to make it worthwhile. What Mozilla didn't anticipate was that there would be "significant negative feedback" from the online community, and because of that, the open source browser maker said it's willing to make a compromise.

Developer Benjamin Smedberg, the one who first proposed ceasing 64-bit Firefox development, said Mozilla still doesn't have the resources to reverse course, but the Release Engineering team does.

"After reviewing that feedback, and consulting with Release Engineering, I believe that we can keep a set of users happy by making a modification to the original plan," Smedberg said in a blog post.

Mozilla Backtracks on Decision to Cease Development of 64-bit Firefox | Maximum PC

 

[AceInfinity]

Why would they even do that in the first place? That's a silly decision. If they stop development on 64 bit, 32 bit won't be the norm in a few years, and more people will have 64 bit operating systems instead because by that time we'll probably have 128 bit computer architectures available, and lots of hardware to support them along with software that is able to support it as well... Microsoft is already working on 128 bit backwards compatibility, and a long time ago it was rumored for Windows 8 (good thing they didn't rush it that soon). Perhaps Windows 9 you'll see it.

In my opinion though, any developer should know that they should be moving forward, not concentrating on today only; that is just as bad as moving backwards. Even the average developer knows this, or should.