found this on firefox servers 14.0.1-funnelcake13

[hclarkjr]

what is that?

 

[lxskllr]

This is the only text information I could find on it. Your guess is as good as mine. If I get bored later, I may try to track it down, or maybe install it in a vm to see if that's more enlightening.

 

[hclarkjr]

i asked on the mozzilla forums also and got answer there -

The Funnelcake releases are from Mozilla, they are identical to standard releases in function, but have a couple of preferences changed in order to identify a particular version of Firefox that was downloaded over a short period of time. The idea behind this is to assist in identifying usage data for Firefox anonymously, such as the proportion of those who download Firefox who become long term users.

A Funnelcake version will be made available for download from a particular source for a short period of time. Mozilla will then know the number of downloads for that version. It will next count how many times it has been installed by the number of times the "first run" page is loaded for that Funnelcake version. In a subsequent update, it will count the number of Funnelcake versions are updated. All of this data is anonymous, it does not track which computers are using it, instead it keeps track of the number of downloads & updates there are.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2516483

 

[lxskllr]

Sounds like it's for their internal use. They seed a site with that particular release, and see how far it propagates, if I'm reading it right.

 

[hclarkjr]

sort of like MS " leaking " releases onto the internet before official release