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“We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

discourse.mozilla-community.org

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Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#81

Post by Dylan16807 »

Karunamon wrote: post #79
cookiecaper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm. Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Fire…

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

Version numbers and menu placement have nothing to do with being "nannyish" or data collection.

Can you name three good plugins? Removing an insecure legacy tech is not a big problem when the extension API is right there.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#82

Post by somebehemoth »

Karunamon wrote: post #79
cookiecaper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm. Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Fire…

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

> * There's the upcoming "all your plugins are going to break, many permanently" when XUL gets thrown out and the new hotness won't have feature parity at release (in other words, Firefox plugins will be as limited as Chrome plugins)

As a long time firefox user this is the one that hurts the most. I honestly hope someone forks firefox to preserve this functionality. I know it is a losing proposition in the long run, but right now my only option is to not upgrade firefox (which isn't an option for very long). I post this here to vent and with the hopes that there already exists a project to preserve XUL functionality and I am simply unaware.

P.S. I use tab groups, a native feature, and have been dreading this ominous warning that appears whenever I open them: "Heads up! Tab Groups will be removed from Firefox soon." I can't even disable the warning.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#83

Post by martius »

ajsalminen wrote: post #43
Loic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry you are down voted because fundamentally you are right. If you have a trademark, you are obliged to handle the use of your trademark very carefully, these are the rules and this is not because you are an organisation supporting free software that you can escape these rules.

Why isn't this a problem for Linux? Or Perl, Python, Drupal or many of the other packages that exist under their trademarked names in Debian and other distributions?

Firefox is a brand present in a highly competitive market. It's a brand known by consumers who are used to associate a name and a logo to an experience and can easily get confused (such as people seeing the "blue E icon" as the way to "start google" for instance).

Mozilla protected more agressively its Firefox brand to cope with malware-stuffed clones which were hijacking the name.

Projects such as VLC or Android protect their brand too, Chrome is only available through official closed-source builds, many linux distributions only package chromium.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#84

Post by Karunamon »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #81
Karunamon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

Version numbers and menu placement have nothing to do with being "nannyish" or data collection. Can you name three good plugins? Removing an insecure legacy tech is not a big problem when the extension API is right there.

I said more nannyish AND chromelike.

Three good plugins? Have nine. Here's my plugin load right now:

    * uBlock
    * Privacy Badger
    * HTTPS Everywhere
    * Calomel SSL Validation
    * FoxReplace
    * Vimperator (which used to be Pentadactyl before Mozilla decided that I can't use it anymore[1])
    * Noscript
    * DevEdition theme enabler
    * 1Password
And please spare me the "insecure legacy tech" argument. The new plugin architecture explicitly can't do things that the existing plugins can, per Mozilla's own words[2]. And also per Mozilla's own words, the new architecture takes after Chrome.

if I wanted to use Chrome and have its limitations, I'd fucking use Chrome.

And I have zero faith that they will fix those limitations by launch time either. seeing as how their attitude towards adding features nobody wants (Pocket, Hello, Australis) or removing features people actually want (installing whatever plugins I damn well please without a nann^H^H^H^H approval process, accessing sites with broken certs) up until now has been to ignore all feedback and just do it anyways.

[1]: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZVvYtKUsAAtMl7.png:large

[2]: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#85

Post by nacs »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #76
nacs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

So is basically every single website you visit and all the data you share with them wittingly or unwittingly. Pocket isn't a password manager, it's a short scrapbook of things you want to read later.

Not every website I visit has its code integrated right into my open-source browser.

And you can build a pretty accurate profile of a user from analyzing the content people mark to "read later" (and how long they spend reading them).

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#86

Post by nitrogen »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #76
nacs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

So is basically every single website you visit and all the data you share with them wittingly or unwittingly. Pocket isn't a password manager, it's a short scrapbook of things you want to read later.

Not every website collects data. A pure HTML/CSS/JS site can be examined fully.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#87

Post by Manishearth »

nacs wrote: post #69
JohnTHaller wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project Tor has too many legal and ethical issues around it for Mozilla to take that kind of risk. > And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork. Debian made a bunch of changes to Firefox and was still calling it Firefox. Debian al…

> Pocket code in Firefox is open source, you can examine it yourself You can see the client side code but what Pocket is doing with all the data on the server side is completely opaque and source is unavailable.

This only matters if you use Pocket.

This is no different from search integration. There's local code that lets you do Google/Yahoo/etc searches from the home page or the awesomebar. What these sites do with your data on the server side is unknown.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#88

Post by jcranmer »

Karunamon wrote: post #79
cookiecaper wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm. Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Fire…

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

> There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"

Firefox never followed semantic versioning. Versions 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 3.6, and 4.0 all had equally major changes to them. It's worse if you look at the internal version numbers: 1.8, 1.9, 1.9.1, 1.9.2, 4.0. The change to the rapid-release model was driven more by the pain of the protracted Firefox 4 release than by trying to ape Chrome.

> There's the UI rework which sacrificed information density and usability for what I evaluate as a weak attempt to look more like Chrome.

Actually, Firefox started developing the design before Chrome did. They just took far, far, far longer.

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#89

Post by Karunamon »

jcranmer wrote: post #88
Karunamon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world? unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data. Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release. * There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"…

> There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it" Firefox never followed semantic versioning. Versions 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 3.6, and 4.0 all had equally major changes to them. It's worse if you look at the internal version numbers: 1.8, 1.9, 1.9.1, 1.9.2, 4.0. The change to the rapid-release model was driven more by the pain of the protracted Firefox 4 release than by trying to ape Chrome. > T…

Fair enough on the versioning thing - but as far as the UI, Chrome's main interface has remained almost identical to its initial release seven years ago. Firefox was really working on something similar for that long?

Re: “We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release”

#90

Post by toggle »

Flimm wrote: post #71

Can the mods edit the title? Mozilla officially stopped their development efforts of Firefox OS on smartphones, not the brand in general.

The title is accurate. People think of Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system; Mozilla is killing that off. They may be reusing the name on something else, but Firefox OS, (as we know it right now,) is being discontinued.
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