Mozilla Jumps On IoT Bandwagon (thestack.com) 191
mikejuk writes: Mozilla has been clarifying some of its plans to convert the Firefox OS project into four IoT based projects. At a casual glance, this seems like a naive move that is doomed to failure. Project Link is a 'user agent' for the smart home, that helps the end user set preferences for device interaction, and automates those connections for the user in a secure environment. Next, Project Sensor Web will be a pilot project for crowdsourcing a pm2.5 sensor network. Project Smart Home is focused on bridging the gap in IoT smart home providers between completely boxed solutions like Apple HomeKit, and completely DIY solutions like Raspberry Pi. Finally, Project Vaani is a voice interface for IoT access, which Mozilla credits as the 'most natural way to interact with connected devices.' With Firefox losing market share and projects like Firefox OS, Thunderbird, Shumway, and Persona closing down, perhaps Mozilla should try and find its way back to core concerns. All four of the projects need significant AI expertise and a powerful cloud computing resource neither of which Mozilla is likely to be able to afford.
mozilla distracted to death (Score:5, Insightful)
what are people in charge of mozilla thinking ? or can they even think ?
they are ultra concerned with everything other than their core project, which has suffered and is losing.
it is not just related peripherals, but what amounts completely different things which should be handled as completely separate projects with groups and resources set up for them, if there is a need.
nor is that all, mozilla is way too much concerned with pandering to market hype (hype not market reality as represented by numbers) and spout out the latest buzz words and social ideology of the western 'liberal' elite.
shame!
Re:mozilla distracted to death (Score:4, Insightful)
> what are people in charge of mozilla thinking ? or can they even think ?
> they are ultra concerned with everything other than their core project, which has suffered and is losing.
> it is not just related peripherals, but what amounts completely different things which should be handled as completely separate projects with groups and resources set up for them, if there is a need.
That's exactly the point. People have penetrated and co-opted Mozilla to redirect it's resources towards their own pet projects. Mozilla has become their own little cookie jar.
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Shhhh, maybe IoT will distract them from F'ing with the Firefox UI, like throwing a dog a bone so that he doesn't maul the cat.
OK, first off there is no mauling, it seems the dog has been humping the cat for some time...
But I agree if it gets them to quit missing with the browser then anything would be good.
I have given up hoping they would go back to innovating, now I just wish they would do maintenance only.
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They've clearly already shifted their focus back onto Firefox lately
Then why all this other non-browser shit?
it suddenly had Google, Apple, and Microsoft to compete with
You're posting AC so that no one can trace this idiocy back to a real person, right?
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Then why all this other non-browser shit?
Because it's important.
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Because it's important.
To whom? Vain developers.
Pocket, FirefoxOS, IoT and constantly dicking with the UI are substantially less important than getting full multi-threading implemented. Otherwise, there won't be anymore users using FF.
Re:mozilla distracted to death (Score:5, Insightful)
Pocket isn't a Mozilla project. FireFoxOS is important for a litany of reasons you've already heard countless times. IoT is a natural evolution of FXOS which is why it's such a shame to see FXOS for smartphones being moved to a community project.
As for dicking with the UI, that's the most foolish complaint I've ever heard. The move to Australis brought with it far more customization options than the browser ever had before, all while a few vocal Slashdot users cried that they wanted their customization back. As for Mozilla " constantly dicking with the UI", that's just ridiculous. There have been no significant changes since Australis. If it really bugs you, just install the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. Though I don't know why you'd want the old UI everyone complained about before complaining about Australis. As to your complaint about multiprocess support, e10s has been moving along just fine. I have it enabled now.
As for regular users caring about e10s and the UI, well, that's just pure delusion. An overwhelming majority of users won't even notice the minor UI tweeks since Australis, and have little hope of understanding what multiprocess support even means. Though I wonder how Chrome would be doing if it didn't come bundled with a host of popular apps while also setting itself as the default browser. The UI is very similar, after all, so if the UI were a serious problem, you'd think Chrome wouldn't have gained much share on that basis alone. It's not like it's the winner on performance these days; its primary advantage is long gone. Or are you suggesting most users really, really, want multiprocess support so badly that they'll overlook the UI, poor performance, and privacy issues?
Mozilla is very important to the web. Rather than bashing them needlessly in some weird attempt to hasten their demise, how about you find some real (as opposed to imagined) criticisms or, better yet, contribute yourself. Do you really want to let the future of the web be decided by Google and Microsoft? We had a similar war once. Everyone lost.
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Yes, Mozilla is important, but it's killing itself.
Two years ago, I stopped using FF on all but a handful of sites because in this era of Web 2.0 and heavy JS usage, after enough tabs get opened eventually the main thread gets to 100% CPU and just sits there. All tabs become unresponsive, which is very anti-performance.
I'd much rather use FF than Chromium, since Chromium doesn't display pages so accurately whereas FF does. However, accurate unresponsiveness is significantly worse than not-so-accurate resp
We don't want to be negative about Mozilla. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't want to have to be negative about Mozilla. We love the concept of Mozilla. We love what Mozilla once was, years ago. We loved them when they produced the best web browser around. But then they went and threw it all away.
They turned Firefox into a really shitty imitation of Chrome. Each new release somehow manages to be worse than the last.
They pretty much gave up on Thunderbird.
They've failed with one stupid idea after another. I mean, Firefox OS?! Really?! How the fuck did they ever hope to succeed with a slow, shitty mobile OS that was more primitive than even the initial versions of Android and iOS were, years before?!
Servo is going nowhere. Seriously, try it out if you haven't already. It's nowhere near usable.
Rust is pathetic. It has the worst programming language community I've ever experienced. They have a goddamn moderation team, for crying out loud! No other programming language community has its own Staatssicherheit like Rust has.
Then there's all the social justice nonsense. Their former CEO lost his job merely because of his views about marriage, for crying out loud! Nobody should lose their job over something like that, especially when it comes to an organization that's supposedly so about "openness" and "tolerance" and "diversity".
We want the old Mozilla back. We want the pre-hipster Mozilla back. We want the Mozilla that produced a highly usable and very extensible web browser that worked well for beginners and power users alike. We want the Mozilla that produced one of the better email clients. We want the Mozilla that made us happy with each new release of their software. We want the real Mozilla back!
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Their former CEO lost his job merely because of his views about marriage...
False.
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He lost his job because he didn't keep his controversial views secret.
Nope, he wasn't fired for his views.
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So if you know why, please tell us.
This seems like something one who is reasonably educated on the topic should know. I'll give you two hints: It wasn't because of a remark he made and it wasn't because people around him were telepathic.
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Wow It's been a while since I saw children going "na-uh" on the internet.
Good discourse guys keep it up!
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So you don't know either but for some reason cannot believe what the op said?
The op was correct too. The fact is that he had donated (which is political speech) to a cause to keep marriage at a traditional definition (his opinion about marriage) was the reason behind him being forced into leaving.
Now you may be hung up on him being driven to quit rather than being fired or some other stupid quibble but the op said lost his job not fired or something specific.
BTW, I stopped using Firefox shortly after that
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The fact is that he had donated (which is political speech) to a cause to keep marriage at a traditional definition (his opinion about marriage) was the reason behind him being forced into leaving.
You're really really close, unlike the AC who hand-waved away the fact that this wasn't about something he said, but something he did. There's some nuance here that you have overlooked. He did make a 'political speech', but he ended up representing Mozilla on views that they weren't interested in supporting, unlike places like Chick Fil A. Worse, he proved he was hostile towards a portion of his own employees, which, btw, is who brought the issue to light.
So, no, the OP was wrong, he wasn't ousted for si
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Lol.. you are imagining things. He in no way represented Mozilla in his speech. He made a donation that was secret at the time and only made public years later through no actions of his own.
Furthermore, no one has ever claimed he was hostile, discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate to any Mozilla employee. He has been there since the beginning and your point of mentioning a portion of his employees proves he wasn't hostile towards them. Otherwise they wouldn't be employed there.
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He willfully made a donation that required him to list his employer. The reason for that rule is transparency. As for hostility, his donation went towards an ad-campaign that was anti-gay in nature. At the time he made his donation the campaign had already started, he knew what he was putting his money towards. As for how he'd behave as CEO, he had already demonstrated where he was and how far he was willing to go. Oh and he had already caused harm to his employees before taking the role. DURING his
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You are a complete idiot. Campaign laws require you to list your employer's name when making donations over a certain amount. The reason is to catch employers who make illegal donations through their employees.This in no way whatsoever at all means he "representing Mozilla on views that they weren't interested in supporting". his employment at Mozilla or his donation for that matter wouldn't have e
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So, no, the OP was wrong, he wasn't ousted for simply having an opinion.
Riiiiiiight. Eich was purged for expressing his (very widely shared) political opinion, not for having said opinion. Thank you, Dr Pedant, for drawing out attention to that important distinction.
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You are a complete idiot.
...
Grow up for fucks sake.
Heh.
Campaign laws require you to list your employer's name when making donations over a certain amount. The reason is to catch employers who make illegal donations through their employees.This in no way whatsoever at all means he "representing Mozilla on views that they weren't interested in supporting".
There's an old executive saying: Don't write anything you can't erase. At the end of the day he willingly made a donation to the campaign and put his company name on it. He knew what he was doing.
Bullshit. Not redefining marriage is not hostile in the least.
That's not what we're talking about.
His donation went towards the production of a bunch of anti-gay ads that spent most of their time talking about how shocking homosexuality is to kids and very little talking about marriage. Yes, that was hostile, it's also the core of the annoyance with him.
No one, I repeat, absolutely no one has ever demonstrate...
False. Even
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Heh. Obviously it wasn't that widely shared. You should read more.
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And he knew that in no way was he representing his employer. What is your point other than you want to twist stupid shit that shouldn't even be a consideration?
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There is no "I assume you're gay", you advertise it in your sig and have said as much in other posts.
Hahaha! Okay, a couple of things: 1. I have never posted, explicitly or implicitly, that I am gay. 2. You did not read my sig in its entirety. 3. Hahahaha that was impressively desperate.
Yes, you assumed.
No, his donation went to a group outside his control who was supposed to be backing prop 8. Here is the thing with donations though, once to give the money to someone else, you lose almost all control on how it is spent.
He made the donation after the ad campaign started. He has also made no statement expressing any sort of regret that his money was mis-spent. He clearly wanted those ads. He destroyed the confidence he had from what became his employees. That's how 'people like me', whatever that means, heard about
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First, how do you know he saw the ads that happened before he donated? How do you know that he even bothered to look at them after? For all you know, he simply donated to something because a
Re: We don't want to be negative about Mozilla. (Score:2)
Apparently his view was shared by at least 7 million California voters, a majority in the Prop 8 referendum [wikipedia.org].
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Gee, they sure were quiet when their buddy Eich needed their help.
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First, how do you know he saw the ads that happened before he donated?
Because I researched it. It's easy, you just type stuff into Google.
For all you know, he simply donated to something because a friend asked him to and really didn't care about it at all.
Haha! Yeah, I wonder what that discussion was like...
"Hey Brandan, buddy, couldja donate to a campaign?"
"What's this about?"
"Oh just some typical California Proposition."
"Oh yeah, they're always doing that. So how much you thinking?"
"A thousand..."
"Oh, is that all? No prob."
"Oh, hey, they may ask you to list your employer."
"Oh I'm sure it's fine!"
Heh, again, very desparate.
He has made no statements about it at all that I am aware of.
He famously did.
There certainly is nothing of record other than a donation that you imagine so much hate from.
The ad campaign.
You are simply wrong and if you had any evidence to back it up, you would have posted links by now. It's that simple.
Your basis for my 'being wrong'
Re: We don't want to be negative about Mozilla. (Score:2)
Perhaps they were caught by surprise. After all, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
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No the assertion was not. It was that he lost his job. We covered this in my first reply to you. In fact, you even quoted it in your initial response. The op said "Their former CEO lost his job merely because of his views about marriage".
Why do you have to make crap up?
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I personally like the theory that there's a small group of people who have super-human post-on-a-discussion-forum skills. "Capable of dethroning CEOs without even hitting the preview button!" Heh.
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For fucks sake, you cannot even get what was said correct and you will not link to anything that backs your claim up. You are just making shit up.
Heh. Nah, I didn't make anything up. You're a tragic combination of being poorly informed on a topic and you have an extreme opinion on it. If we were debating 9-11, I could mention the plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and your response would be: "What?! I don't remember that! You're just making shit up! It's your fault I don't know about it because you won't link me to it! I get it, you're a pilot, but that doesn't mean you get to slander ter'rists!" Heh. It's really more humorous tha
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You have gotten the premise of two major points materially wrong in your representation and you are calling me poorly informed. I'm seeing a pattern here. With that and your imagination about motives and lack of any evidence that exists outside your head I'm of the opinion that you need professional help if you are not already getting it.
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You have gotten the premise of two major points materially wrong in your representation and you are calling me poorly informed.
Your responses to 'materially wrong assertions' were remarks like: "I haven't heard of that...", "Maybe something else happened!", "You're making shit up!", and "you're gay." Yeah, you really thrive in the material plane.
You weren't even aware of the basic points of the story, that's why I'm calling you poorly informed.
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Ah, I almost forgot. Since you're referring to details of the story at hand that still have nothing to do with Eich's beliefs... we're now at Round 5 of a successful disproval of the original assertion.
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Lol... maybe being gay has clouded your mind or something. You claimed the op said he was fired when he said lost his job. That was corrected by simply pointing to what was actually said. You claimed his listing his employer when making the donation was him representing Mozilla when you were corrected that it was law and in no way reflected on Mozilla. You insist that he participated in the so called hateful advertising when there is no proof he did. In fact you keep alluding to some nefarious alternative r
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You claimed the op said he was fired when he said lost his job.
Heh. I love how people switch sides on this depending on what argument they're trying to put forth. "Oh he lost his job." "Oh the mean ol' SJWs got him fired." It's not very often you see someone clearly on the side of Eich not claiming he was fired. Anyway, you should have scrolled down a bit, the AC didn't have any particular issue with the word 'fired'.
. You claimed his listing his employer when making the donation was him representing Mozilla when you were corrected that it was law and in no way reflected on Mozilla. You insist that he participated in the so called hateful advertising when there is no proof he did. In fact you keep alluding to some nefarious alternative reality that you refuse to share any details of despite several people requesting them (including me).
And here's the short version: No matter which way you slice it, he willingly made the donation and wrote in his employer. He willfully participate
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He willfully participated in helpful advertising, proven in the time-line of events
That was supposed to be 'hateful advertising'. I was in a rush when I wrote my last post, I apologize if there are other haste-related errors that hindered my clarity.
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So your excuse for getting lost his job wrong is that you didn't expect the wording? That's just stupid and you continuing to harp on the fired notations hints to you having issues deeper than the facts.
As for willing listing his employer, it is mandatory by law. Your logic is like saying he willingly got a drivers license or paid more taxes when the law requires him too. There is no willingly representing anything when it is a damn requirement by law. You are ignoring this reality in order to impose one th
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So your excuse for getting lost his job wrong is that you didn't expect the wording?
Heh. I don't think you read my post. "Fired" vs. "lost his job" is a matter of interpretation. If you had read a little further (your lack of reading completion seems to be a theme, here...) The AC didn't have any particular issue with it. Down the road when you argue about this topic the convenience will change and you're going to claim he was fired because of those stupid SJWs.
He willfully made the donation with his employer's name listed. Somebody else didn't come along and write it in for him. Do
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Fired verses lost is absolutely not a matter of interpretation. Fired means one thing, the employer terminated someone. Lost means any number of several things and fired can be one of them. I don't care what an AC thinks either. You specifically distorted the comment in question in reply to me.
I'm no more uninformed about the situation than you are. The difference between me and you is that I'm not going around inventing crap and presenting it as the truth.
Here is why the link is important. None exist othe
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Fired means one thing, the employer terminated someone. Lost means any number of several things and fired can be one of them.
When we talk about all those mean old SJWs forcing him out", people like to describe that as them getting him fired. The AC and I weren't disputing that people speaking up directly resulted in his losing his job, and I doubt you're disputing that either. Use of either term doesn't distort anything, as backed up by the AC.
I'm no more uninformed about the situation than you are.
You literally said "He has made no statements about it at all that I am aware of.", which is hilarious because the very statement he made caused a lot of babble over here from the people
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I don't care what the SJW say. Use of the term does distort things because you are saying it is false.
He has said he was sorry for causing pain. That is not any statement that he did or did not know of the advertising at the time of the donation or at any time before this fiasco broke out. It does not concern if he intentionally or unintentionally caused pain or knew his actions would outside of keeping marriage defined as it traditionally has been. You said he clearly wanted those ads which you claim were
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Use of the term does distort things because you are saying it is false.
Actually I was just fuzzy on the usage. Also if you're going to throw out the context then it doesn't make sense to whine about about linkage.
He has said he was sorry for causing pain.
Hey! You typed something into Google! Congrats!
That is not any statement that he did or did not know of the advertising at the time of the donation or at any time before this fiasco broke out.
... and you didn't read much of it. Okay, that's fine, we'll work around it. Not only did he have the opportunity right there to say: "I don't support what those ads depicted." .. but that was also the appropriate time to do it, especially later in his apology when he talks about adhering to Mozilla's goals. It's p
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There is no fuzzy or throwing out context. Words have meanings and they are assembled to convey messages and thoughts. If you used the wrong word and conveyed the wrong thought, just admit it, correct your statement and we can move on. But be specific because as of now, you are pulling a Trump and saying something that is true (lost his job) is false because he wasn't fired but you didn't really mean it but you did.
As for the rest of your dribble , it is all your imagination. I addressed that his s
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Words have meanings and they are assembled to convey messages and thoughts.
Correct. The AC and I were communicating our messages and thoughts just fine, we understood each other. You, however, became conveniently confused right about the time that I teased you for not having read up on the topic. That would be you misunderstanding the context. Now if you're putting forward the idea that Eich didn't end up unemployed because of the actions of 'people with opinions', then one could attribute that to something other than a cheap debate tactic.
I'm insisting that there is not enough of an official record to make statements that are anything more than an opinion.
What happened was you went forward on
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There is no confusion, you used specific
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There is no confusion, you used specific words with specific meanings. If you wish to recant them, then fine.
As I said, the AC and I were communicating just fine. If you really do believe that Eich's departure wasn't related to public outcry I really do need to understand this because it fundamentally flies against what I understand your position to be on this argument.
I wasn't poorly informed...
Your description of what the conflict was lacked any of the important details of this story. When you finally did partially educate yourself we were able to move forward. Unfortunately you didn't read all of it so we're stuck again.
But if you think outing you was an attempt to insult you, you are completely missing the point. ...
BTW, do you have a problem with being outed as being gay? Are you some sort of closet hater or something? Are you simply transposing your own feelings and motivations on to Eich in order to satisfy some internal conflict about your homosexuality? I don't understand all the hate from you.
Those two stat
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I never said his departure was because of anything else. I said lost his job was a correct description in which you were insisting it wasn't. But we later found that you were conflating that with getting fired. Like I said, if you want to walk your
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I never said his departure was because of anything else.
You're implying exactly that in this particular context. The AC would agree. Back to packing that parachute, I see!
Nope, my description is completely accurate.
After you started reading it got a little closer. Your initial description bore little resemblance to the actual story and you are still displaying the signs of someone who doesn't fundamentally understand the topic.
I dismiss it out of hand because it doesn't match any of the known facts.
Heh. Well you would know more of the facts if you read up on the topic before developing an opinion on it. Right now it's like arguing with someone about a movie, but they've on
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Wow. You just invent anything you want in order to justify your fallacies. We are going in circles now with you almost completely ignoring what was said in order to impose your fantasies. I was wrong, you weren't intentionally lieing, although it is still lies, you are delusional enough to believe them. What I do not understand is how you can maintain that belief despite not being able to find any links to support it.
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We are going in circles now with you almost completely ignoring what was said in order to impose your fantasies.
Ah, nearly done packing that parachute! Don't forget you left a hole in it earlier.
What I do not understand is how you can maintain that belief despite not being able to find any links to support it.
You've already found the links you claim you're looking for (...but haven't asked me to provide), you've already proven that... also you've proven that you haven't read it. Basically you fast-forwarded through the intro and are somehow blaming me for that, even though I gave you a pretty clear hint.
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Who said he was fired? The op said lost his job. Your reply seems a bit imaginative.
Re:We don't want to be negative about Mozilla. (Score:5, Informative)
I've been working at Mozilla for many years, from peak to decline. I can tell you exactly what's wrong with it. Nobody will tell you in their right mind though, and I'm tired to not communicating this, so here goes:
Mozilla has quickly been identified by a few as a way to make a quick buck. You see, it does not have share holders, no shares to give out, so execs gets really high salary in exchange with a 40% bonus every quarter that is almost guaranteed (everyone gets it, but 40% of 100k is +40k/y. 40% of 500k is 200k. that's 700k/year). Easy, when you get 400mi+USD and don't need much money to operate.
The problem is that they don't give a rats ass if Mozilla is successful, their metric is not financial (because its +- been assured to come every month through the single revenue stream: search deal), and it's not market share (because they have nobody to answer to except the employees and they tell us, I quote "market share does not matter much stop looking at it") (Fucking really Chris? REALLY?).
They also set their salaries, by the way. So basically they do random things they think are cool, with little to no data or idea of what matter or does not matter. Do you know half of them use Chrome as their main browser? How is that not telling?
We keep getting ridiculous thing after ridiculous thing. A lot of people opposed FirefoxOS vs getting back to the roots and attempting to do something about the web. FirefoxOS sounds like a nice concept, but everyone with a bit of a brain knew we had ZERO technical AND market chance.
Then, when it sounded like we're ok killing that and doing things well again BOOM IoT. Same mistake only even worse!
Oh as for when Brendan Eich got fired, yes, it was also ridiculous. But Psst. Mr Eich got the CEO position and a lot of execs were unhappy about that. He wanted to make Firefox the focus and make it a kick-ass browser. He started by changing everything we were doing. Sounded great! BOOM FIRED.
Mr Eich is now making the Brave web browser (based on Webkit by the way) which is arguably one of the most promising new browsers right now. Go figure. .. private browsing only. What about copying the stuff Chrome does well instead of copying Chrome UI? Like, you know, Sandbox, profiles, etc. Oooh nope not a priority. Adding ads (directory tiles) in the user's face THATS the priority (which got eventually killed because that did not even bring any money back, we only lost users to it).
Did I tell you about the story of our marketing and legal teams that did not want Firefox to ship with tracking protection? It took a long fight to get it in
TLDR most execs are corrupted pos, answer only to themselves, thus it's nearly non-savable and it will eventually die or be forked again as in the good old days (Rust+Servo anyone? These are THE good Mozilla projects around right now.)
RIP Mozilla.
- a long time employee and contributor
Re: We don't want to be negative about Mozilla. (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, how depressing. So people at Mozilla *do* know how to fix the company but they're shut out of the decision-making process and the loonies are running it into the ground. That's even worse than nobody knowing what's going on.
Wow, it's time to fork MoFo, apparently. Who can fund this? Really, a year of focused development on Electrolysis, memory, mobile performance, and the plugin ecosystem, with fewer than a dozen new hires to those teams, ought to yield a privacy-focused browser with enough usability to retain/gain users (and therefore become self-sustaining).
We need a Mozilla[historical] organization to advocate for the free web, but the bozos in charge are squandering this very crucial role. I wonder who cares about Internet freedom enough to ensure this happens.
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It's been forked into Pale Moon, with the Goanna rendering engine. Help that project and you're basically helping the fork of Mozilla.
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Not to mention the question of whether it have "Slaughterhouse" (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s... [mozilla.org] and http://bholley.net/blog/2016/t... [bholley.net]). This is not the only incident where Mozilla people have suggested hiding bugs until an old ESR goes end of life BTW.
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What a load of FUD. I've found the Pale Moon people, on IRC and otherwise, to be extremely helpful. I use Pale Moon on linux exclusively and it is well supported.
As for being "frozen" in the past, have you used Pale Moon recently? Just because the version number doesn't increase at the rate of Chrome or Firefox doesn't mean they aren't making improvements from sub version to sub version. It's noticeable.
And what do you mean by "all the HTML 5 features"? Do you mean they refuse to implement the digital right
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How I wish I had mod points right now! Someone, please mod this up.
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Your comment confirms what I have been suspecting for a long time. Now, you may disagree with most of what I am about to say. The thing is... I don't think Firefox was ever all that great. It's strongest asset is that it came out at the right time: Internet Explorer was stagnant, Netscape was all but dead: there was simply no competition. Most of their successes came from copying features from Opera, and releasing them for free. I remember seeing Opera users raving about their browser, but I stayed on Firef
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I wonder if this blog article is a good example: https://blog.mozilla.org/advan... [mozilla.org]
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I wonder if this or something similar is happening inside Mozilla: https://www.quora.com/CEOs-1/A... [quora.com]
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I should mention the https://np.reddit.com/r/firefo... [reddit.com] fiasco. I wonder what is happening here.
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If they had funded openSSL correctly years ago maybe we could have avoided heartbleed.
Heartbleed was not an accident. Seriously, read up on the details of how it works. It's quite subtle and almost beautiful. Totally implausible that it's an inadvertent bug.
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I have been thinking that Mozilla should do a new browser for Servo and continue to support Firefox for those who need XUL based add-ons.
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https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:... [mozilla.org] FYI
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Feel free to email me too. I also participated in the Reddit thread.
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They pretty much gave up on Thunderbird.
I think their strategy towards Thunderbird is absolutely wrong.
What they did: abandon Thunderbird. "Sorry pals, now you are on your own"
What I would have done: create a thunderbird.com service, competing with GMail and Outlook.com. Plus provide Thunderbird as a desktop/offline client, like Microsoft does with Outlook. THAT would have been a logical step: further develop one of your products, provide a cloud version, take a % of a successful existing market (e-mail outsourcing) which provides recurrent incom
Mozilla should (Score:4, Informative)
Or a Thunderbird local server unified messaging platform using Firefox as the client (my proposal): http://pdfernhout.net/thunderb... [pdfernhout.net]
Mozilla rejected my application to do that project the very next day after I sent it. The rejected a related proposal by me a couple years earlier to improve Thunderbird desktop. From an earlier poster who works at Mozilla, I now understand that situation better. I had not realized how dysfunctional the organization had become.
That Thunderbird server project is currently on hiatus as I just started a new job, but I still hope I can do some bits and pieces of that idea of a FOSS messaging platform now and then that might someday add up to it.
Meanwhile, a proprietary Slack is eating the free/standard messaging sphere: http://pdfernhout.net/reasons-... [pdfernhout.net]
One year of Mozilla's revenues is about the same as all the VC money that has gone into Slack. Meanwhile the Mozilla CEO says essentially that FOSS messaging tools like Thunderbird do not matter any more and kisses off Thunderbird. To my mind, at this point, Thunderbird is the more viable concept compared to Firefox (let alone any of the other ill-considered projects) -- as the success of Slack shows.
I can be thankful for Mattermost and Matrix.org as free Slack alternatives.
http://www.mattermost.org/ [mattermost.org]
http://matrix.org/ [matrix.org]
But imagine what such FOSS messaging software could be like with hundreds of millions of dollars a year behind it to fund a team of thousands of full-time developers.
Bottom line: Mozilla is pissing away hundreds of millions of dollars a year of money (and thousands of developer years) that should be earmarked for essential FOSS (like communications tools) on projects with near zero chance of success(a new mobile OS?) or that are unneeded (yet another programming language?) -- while paying huge executive salaries.
Re:Mozilla should support FOSS for messaging (Score:2)
Thanks for the feedback. I can easily concede that anyone who did not watch "Thunderbirds" on TV as a kid would find confusing any references to stuff like "International Rescue" or "Thunderbirds are Go": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In any case, this is what it starts out saying after providing a contextual quote: "To deal with Thunderbird's technical debt (which Andrew Sutherland described on the Mozilla Governance thread that Mitchell Baker started), I propose Mozilla fund a "skunkworks" team of abou
Re: (Score:2)
AC, thanks for the additional feedback. That web page was not exactly what I sent Mozilla directly when I applied there (which was about a page or so long), although I said much the same thing as the summary, and as I put a link to it on the tb-planning list someone at Mozilla might have seen it. I could speculate they rejected my application so quickly (the next day) because they had rejected my previous application a couple years before about Thunderbird and probably just consulted a flag somewhere, but I
Re: (Score:2)
Does anyone at Mozilla know what Mozilla is doing?
Just what I need (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
but it runs angular.js, ruby on rails and nim!
Ooh shiny (Score:3)
This is the worst kind of open source flaw. Developers are going to scratch their itch...and what they want has nothing to do with what users want. It's a damn shame to see things end up this way. They're just chasing the latest trend, late to the game as usual, and will end up making a terrible mess of things.
However the resumes of the people involved will be enhanced, and that's what it's all about. Sadly.
Re: (Score:2)
No way! (Score:2)
No one wants Mozilla to write software that goes on the web, there's no need for that. They should stick to what they're best at.
The esp8266 will bring iot to the masses (Score:2)
Troll Submission (Score:2)
What?
1] An standardised app interface
2] Data monitoring, logging and possibly analysis
3] Software converters / adapters to assist people who want to customise their home network with products from various vendors.
4] Voice recognition to create simple, limited commands to a set of devices.
Seriously? There's a slim chance that AI may benefit p
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> I wouldn't be surprised if people here are being paid to be negative about Firefox, given how much they complain without ever offering any constructive criticism.
Never attribute to malice...
who cares about obsolete junk like FF anyways? (Score:3, Insightful)
SJW's need a new project to infect.
Firefox Losing Market Share? (Score:2)
I suspect they are losing market share because they are chasing Google Chrome and abandoning the traditional browser market.
They are no longer a fast, flexible web browser.
Dropping support for their long-time plugins is bad move, IMHO.
Re: (Score:2)
>Dropping support for their long-time plugins is bad move, IMHO.
It's either that or staying forever insecure due to the lack of sandbox.
So expect to see these (Score:2)
in Firefox 53 due out in a couple of months where they will take out bookmarks because nobody has touched the code in a couple of weeks.
Firefox should rename to Phoenix once again (Score:2)
Mozilla should reinvent the browser again. Browser is what makes Mozilla. If they don't clean it up it wont be successful anywhere else. If they make it work it will span into other areas like IoT, mobile phones, cars... naturally by people willing to use it for their projects.
Trying to push broken/sluggish/buggy software beast into those areas using heavy investments of resources that Mozilla needs elsewhere is management's misstep.
I am the user of this browser since Phoenix 0.5 (not to mention Netscape be
GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, MOZILLA! (Score:4, Informative)
It's no secret that Firefox is seriously losing market share. Firefox is likely under 8% of the browser market [caniuse.com] now, across all desktop and mobile platforms! To put that number into perspective, note that desktop Chrome 48 alone has over 3 times the number of users that Firefox has in total, and Chrome for Android 47 has over 2 times that number. IE 11, iOS Safari 9.2, and UC Browser for Android each have about the same number of users as Firefox does. Firefox nearly has fewer users than even Opera Mini has! And Firefox has essentially no mobile presence at all. Firefox for Android is only at 0.04%!
Despite being one of the most popular browsers several years ago, I think that Mozilla has gone out of their way to alienate Firefox users as often as they can. They've trashed Firefox's UI, turning it into an awful clone of Chrome. They've injected unwanted shit like Pocket and Hello into Firefox by default. They even put ads into the browser itself, although rumor has it they finally realized how fucking idiotic this was and are removing them. They've removed useful options from the preferences window. And despite making all of these changes that users don't want, they never seem to get around to fixing the longstanding memory and performance issues that have plagued Firefox for years.
The mandatory extension signing bullshit they've got in the works, along with changing to Chrome's extension model at some point, will utterly destroy Firefox's usability I think. The inconvenience these changes will bring to Firefox's few remaining users and extension developers will likely be enough to push them away completely. Firefox's 8% of the browser market will likely drop to the low single digits far quicker than anyone will have imagined.
To make matters worse, Mozilla has wasted a huge amount of time and effort on the Rust programming language and the Servo browser engine. In my view, Rust is a totally failed attempt to replace C++ with a "safer" language. I think that all they've managed to create is a language with an ugly syntax (even by C++'s standards!), an impractical ownership system, a single slow implementation (which itself is quite buggy despite being written in Rust, a language that's supposed to avoid this!), a rather awful standard library, and a questionable community that's highly focused on codes of conduct and censorship in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity".
Servo, which is written in Rust, is abysmal in my experience. I tried it last week, and I think I'd get better results using IE 3 today. Hell, Servo wouldn't even render any page for me for more than a minute before it crashed! Despite all of the hype around it, it fails to deliver even a 1990s browser experience.
In my opinion, things are looking extraordinarily bleak for Mozilla. They've ruined Firefox for so many users already. The replacement is going absolutely nowhere. And now it appears that they're going to make the Firefox experience even worse for the few users who remain! It's unbelievably sad what's happening to Firefox and Mozilla. Please, Mozilla, don't do this! Don't make yourself irrelevant! Please! For the sake of the web, please!
Re:GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, MOZILLA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox is likely under 8% of the browser market
This is partly because of mobile. The loss on the desktop wasn't as bad, some small decline was caused by iexplore.exe deserving the name "browser", and google doing a very agressive ad campaign for chrome. But for the mobile market, its just that the other browsers grew, and firefox didn't.
Firefox for Android is only at 0.04%!
That's thanks to Firefox for android being a third level priority for a long time, and the strong Google predominance on Android. Most people don't change their default browser, and on android which is targeted at making the user stupid even less so.
changing to Chrome's extension model at some point
This is a very risky descision and for some time I really hated them for it. However, the industry trend goes towards Chrome's extension model, edge plans it as well as safari. This can be the chance for firefox to use this in order to offer a more feature-full API on firefox than on any other browser.
I think that all they've managed to create is a language with an ugly syntax (even by C++'s standards!)
If you like python, and other "expressive" languages, you can't be healed. In fact you even have less stuff than in C++, for example type information gets filled in automatically, where it's possible, except for function declarations, because it should be understandable for the human reader at first glance.
an impractical ownership system
Types are impractical too if you have them, just use python or something even more script-y if you don't want your compiler to do anything.
(which itself is quite buggy despite being written in Rust, a language that's supposed to avoid this!)
Its a young language, and more effort was spent on having a nice API design and features than on speed or bug-freedom. Its best if both features and API design come in first, and optimisation and bug fixing later. Otherwise you spend lots of time on getting something bug free and optimal in speed and you realize that you want to add a feature, which you then patch somehow to the API, but its not proper at all.
a rather awful standard library
I've found it more cleanly organized than the C++ standard library, and by far more featureful.
and a questionable community that's highly focused on codes of conduct and censorship in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity".
They waste their time with this, I agree.
Servo, which is written in Rust, is abysmal in my experience. I tried it last week, and I think I'd get better results using IE 3 today. Hell, Servo wouldn't even render any page for me for more than a minute before it crashed! Despite all of the hype around it, it fails to deliver even a 1990s browser experience.
Its a WIP project, and they themselves say Servo is not ready yet. Its open source, not developed behind close walls. People criticise google for not doing this with android.
In my opinion, things are looking extraordinarily bleak for Mozilla
I really hope that Mozilla keeps relevant. Its just great to see a company so devoted to open source and user freedom.
Re: GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, MOZILLA! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's no secret that Firefox is seriously losing market share. Firefox is likely under 8% of the browser market
If you don't mind, I'll wait for Netcraft to confirm this.
Re:GOD FUCKING DAMN IT, MOZILLA! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My problem isn't the content, I've not commented on that at all. The problem is that it's copy/paste spam no different from those long GNAA posts. I thought I made that quite clear.
Modding up these mindless copy/paste posts just encourages spammers.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think it's quite copypasta. They seem to mix up the verbiage now and again. You can go into any Firefox thread from the past six months or so, CTRL + F, and search for "caniuse" and find it, nearly verbatim, in all of them. Well, you might not be able to - you may need an account for it to show the domain name. If that's the case then I think "seriously losing market share" might be in most of them?
So, I don't think it's quite copypasta and I don't disagree with the moderation of the post. Not at al
Re: (Score:2)
Do you work for Mozilla? If Mozilla's going to jump on a bandwagon, how about a bandwagon that is headed in the direction of making an adequate browser?
That said, I don't think anyone has noticed besides you and I. I think your moderation is unfair. For the moderators: That really *is* copypasta. Well, I think they mix it up a little bit each time. However, it's largely the same each and every time.
Re: (Score:2)
It's hypocritical and contradictory of them to state that they want to provide "a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all", yet they turn around and almost right away use a very unfriendly and unwelcoming threat like "We will exclude you from interaction".
And how would you maintain a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment without removing people who would make that environment unfriendly, unsafe, or unwelcoming?
The moderation policy even states that anyone could be "indefinitely excluded". That's also not not creating a "welcoming environment for all"!
I think it's quite clear that 'all' involves only those people who obey the rules. If the code of conduct stated "We will exclude you from interaction if you murder anyone", would you then be complaining that they are such hypocrites because they fail to provide a "friendly, safe, and welcoming environment" for people who really like to murder?
It's a total lack of justice, as far as I'm concerned. Arbitrary judgment, arbitrary enforcement, arbitrary punishment, and no public appeal process all reek of injustice.
Yes
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Yes, see my earlier comment here on that: http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
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Thunderbird is not dead. The rumors of its demise are based on horrific misunderstanding of a press release. I want to say that it was a willful misunderstanding but that would be speculation. It's separating from Firefox but not from Mozilla. It's so that Thunderbird can continue to use the add-on architecture without limiting (placing a technological deficit on) Firefox.
As the framework for Firefox is changing and is *not* changing for Thunderbird, this means they'll not be required to do the extra work a
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I know this is hard to understand but, as I posted above, Mozilla is not getting rid of Thunderbird. Read the actual press-release yourself. Read what they're saying. Read what they're doing. They're moving it to another part of the organization so that they can more easily keep it separate from Firefox. They kind of have to because the framework is about to change and the old-style add-ons are not going to work with the new versions of Firefox but they want to keep those add-on styles for Thunderbird.
I alr
I once used Mozilla/Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox (Score:2)
> Remember when Mozilla did a bunch of stupid things and the Firefox fork was an attempt to purge
> the idiocy? Firefox became popular enough that Mozilla was forced to replace their blunders with Firefox.
I remember doing manual builds of Mozilla 0.9.x. IANAP (I Am Not A Programmer) and I had to blindly follow instructions. The original Mozilla was an all-in-one webbrowser-cum-webpage-composer-cum-email-client. The Phoenix project (which changed its name to Firebird and then Firefox, beacuse of IP issu
Re: (Score:2)
>SQLite... why?
Because most people's machines are crap and will crash randomly, yet they'll be upset when you lose their history of bookmarks.
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>A poorly made one with Yahoo
Do you have some inside information? Nobody outside Mozilla seems to know what the deal with Yahoo was or how much money they got for it?
Re: (Score:2)
Did you file a bug about this? I haven't ever heard about this problem, and it works fine for me. Time to look at your addons/plugins or go to about:support and force a profile refresh?