Weekly Status Report, W51/2009

Here's a summary of SeaMonkey/Mozilla-related work I've done in week 51/2009 (December 14 - 20, 2009):

• Releases:
  Released SeaMonkey 2.0.1, updating security and stability compared to 2.0 final, as well as fixing a number of other glitches found in the previous final release.
  As a side note, we know that caused lots of users to experience automated update the first time ever and leaves a number of them more or less excited!
• Build Machines:
  My patches for the buildbotcustom breakage and the checkout timeouts got reviews and were checked in.
  I also could get reviews for freezing branch extensions so that we don't inadvertently take string changes on the branch any more, which I checked in together with pulling ChatZilla from Mercurial on the branch.
  This made us not need local patching on the buildmaster any more, we're now finally running an unpatched tip of buildbotcustom there.
  After clobbering the dist/ directory on build machines, we saw some Windows failures that could be resolved with a full objdir clobber.
  At the weekend, we had problems with a build machine that only Mozilla System Operations could fix, I filed a bug for that.
• Metrics and Bug Radars:
  I worked myself through some numbers on the release bug radars that should not be, like any unfixed blocking bugs or requests on shipped releases, or similar things with approvals, or bugs targeted at shipped milestones. I could clear out most of those, or request them to be cleared, and one is a blocker that got reopened.
  I also did some work on improving how we receive data about daily downloads and active users from the Mozilla metrics team and how we store them and create reports. I got some preliminary views of the data done, but need to do more work on all this before making those reports fully accessible to the public.
  For now, I can tell you that we have almost 500,000 manually triggered downloads of SeaMonkey 2.0 (significantly more than any other version in 2009), peaking at almost 30,000 per day on October 28, and 1.1.x downloads dropping to <4% of the daily total since that day. Active Daily Users ("ADU") on 2.x have risen to over 50,000 as of December 12th (which is the last day we currently have data from), over 97% of those on stable releases, 550-650 on nightlies (150-200 of those on 2.1a1pre).
  More data will come in the following weeks, once I come around to work on the presentation a bit more.
• Various Discussions:
  Windows 2.0.1 freeze when entering addresses (related to OE contacts), Lightning beta nearing, interview for article on Asa's non-Google recommendation, 1.9.1.7 fast-cycle release, Serbian L10n, continued SeaMonkey 2.0 feedback and support group bashing, add-on support and compatibility and ways of improving that, Mozilla domain names (.com/.org), possible changes in Mozilla roadmap, Manifesto and privacy, etc.

It's good to be back into doing actual work after the vacation, but I also noticed that Christmas neared way faster than expected during working backlog and trying to stay relaxed - I've not even drunk any cup of Punch this winter even though our Christmas markets are so famous for all kinds of variations of that stuff (as well as "Glühwein" and "Glühmost", which are wine- or cider-based hot drinks). At least I could complete my collection of presents today...

With that, I wish y'all who celebrate it a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays if you have some, and all others a good time this week - I'll mostly step back from work and spend some time with my parents, grandparents, brother and probably his future wife, possibly also some friends of the family.