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Mozilla Jumps On IoT Bandwagon (thestack.com)
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.
It's no secret that Firefox is seriously losing market share. Firefox is likely under 8% of the browser market 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!
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
Typical SJW crap.
SJW: We're going to implement a Code of Conduct to eradicate harassment and abuse.
User: Great, banning the worst trolls will be good for us.
SJW: Agreed, all harassment is bannable besides the harassment that we condone. It's not harassment if the victims are white cis male shitlords since they wield institutionalized power.
User: Wait, what?
SJW: See, just like that. Disagreeing means you're against us, you bigot.
User: [This Comment Has Been Removed]
Or a Thunderbird local server unified messaging platform using Firefox as the client (my proposal): http://pdfernhout.net/thunderb...
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-...
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/
http://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.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.