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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.
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.
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.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)