Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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!
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.