Mozilla ponders dropping Firefox support for Win2K, early XP

Mozilla Corp. is considering dropping support for Windows 2000 and the earliest versions of XP when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, online discussions show.

In a series of messages on the mozilla.dev.planning forum, developers and Mozilla executives, including the company's chief engineer and its director of Firefox, hashed out which Microsoft Corp. operating systems it should support with the 2010 edition of its browser.

"Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher," said Michael Conner, one of the company's software engineers, to start the discussion.

Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, the still-in-development browser the company hopes to release at some point in the second quarter. Gecko 1.9.2, and the successor to Firefox 3.5 built on it -- Mozilla has dubbed the latter "Firefox.next" and code named it "Namoroka" -- are slated to wrap up in "early-to-mid 2010," according to the company's current plans.

Conner based his proposal on the fact that Microsoft Corp. will end all support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on July 13, 2010, and has already ditched support for Windows XP and XP SP1. After that July 2010 date, Microsoft will only support Windows XP SP3, the free upgrade it shipped in May 2008 after some initial compatibility snafus.

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