The Evangelist

Mozilla has announced that they will stop updating the Firefox 2 series this December.

What will this mean? Firefox 2 and Thinderbird 2 will stop receiving updates of any kind, and all browsers based on Gecko 1.8 will at the very least not receive security updates from Mozilla. This means that Seamonkey 1.1, the original Flock browser, K-Meleon 1.1.1.5, Camino 1.5.5, Epiphany 2.16 and all older versions will no longer receive Mozilla security update.

Mozilla is encouraging users to switch to Firefox 3 to keep their systems secure. Those using third-party Gecko browsers should really update as well; there can really be little harm in it the way that browsers have been improving in speed these days.

This will mean that users who want Firefox on Windows ME or any older Windows operating system will have to stick with Firefox 2 despite the fact that support is stopping.

If you ask me, Mozilla is doing what is right. By killing of continued support, they can focus their efforts on developing new technologies such as Firefox 3. In the end, many users will benefit from this.