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Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

cnet.com

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Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#81

Post by pjmlp »

mevile wrote: post #13
maxlybbert wrote: post #10

The original announcement that Netscape would release Mozilla as open source included some FAQs, including one question along the lines of "are you going to release your own operating system?" The answer was that there was no good reason to build an operating system on a browser. If only they had remembered that!

> The answer was that there was no good reason to build an operating system on a browser. Because Chromebooks are such a failure right.

They are, for those of us that live outside US.

I might have seen around 5 total, on sale across European consumer stores, since they exist.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#82

Post by synotna »

trome wrote: post #78
fabrice_d wrote: post #27

I don't know where journalists get their facts, but this article is terrible. 1) FirefoxOS was killed a year ago. 2) We never attempted to bring FxOS to other kind of connected devices beyond phones and TVs. If they had took the time to check the projects being worked on (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Projects ) they would have understood the activities a bit better. For instance, the device built fo…

The journalists definitely got their facts wrong here, but they missed the overarching story. Why is Mozilla acting like a tech company/startup, and not as a non-profit here to push Firefox and other projects under their management to new heights? Mozilla has basically ignored Firefox for the past few years and let it languish as a single threaded browser in a multi-threaded world, where the other 3 major competitors…

Electrolysis? Servo? Rust?

I'm far from an expert, but the switch to multithreading has been perilous to not break everyone's favourite plugins, likewise the switch from XUL

Electrolysis is basically here and working, slowly rolling out

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#83

Post by flukus »

pjmlp wrote: post #80
Apocryphon wrote: post #26

Never mind sufficient adoption to challenge iOS/Android, what are the chances any of these other OS's even manages to survive? * Windows Phone * Tizen * Ubuntu Touch * Sailfish OS Honorable mentions: CyanogenMod, Plasma Mobile

Tizen is a joke, no serious developer would ever care about it. - Branched from MeeGo - Got the BADA SDK, with its C++ dialect similar to the horrible Symbian C++ - After the Enlightenment guys joined in, the SDK was thrown away and replaced by C one - A new C++ SDK was created to appease the crowds that in spite of Symbian C++ like experience wouldn't touch pure C - Recently they adopted .NET as the new apps tooling…

So many (ubuntu, sailfish, tizen) seem to be going down the Qt path which really only ever works well with c++ (and a particular dialect at that), bindings for other languages have always been unstable to non-existent. I wish they'd either go with GTK or something else in pure C.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#84

Post by chris_wot »

pjmlp wrote: post #76
carussell wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of argument I'm trying to burn to the ground in the second part of my comment above (see "nerd niche itch"). You write this, thinking that you're revealing some uncomfortable truth that the bubbleheads don't understand. But the real truth is that Chromebooks are killing. The penetration Chromebooks have made in education is huge. And even if it were an entirely no-profit/break-even situation,…

That is an US phenomenon, there are hardly any queues of people buying Chromebooks outside US, let alone having them on display.

He wasn't talking about consumer purchases - he was talking about education.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#85

Post by avian »

fulafel wrote: post #66
fabrice_d wrote: post #27

I don't know where journalists get their facts, but this article is terrible. 1) FirefoxOS was killed a year ago. 2) We never attempted to bring FxOS to other kind of connected devices beyond phones and TVs. If they had took the time to check the projects being worked on (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Projects ) they would have understood the activities a bit better. For instance, the device built fo…

At least in outside communication, a year ago Mozilla only said they are shifting Firefox OS from phones to other devices and IoT [1]. Then they went on to do some smart TV stuff but were looking at other applications as well. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/02/04/next-step...

A single-board computer running Firefox OS was discussed last year here on HN. The post itself is now private. I think this was the demo, where they showed how to blink a LED from some HTML and Javascript:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10864089

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#86

Post by mintplant »

cpeterso wrote: post #28

This article is inaccurate. Mozilla canceled Firefox OS a year ago. Mozilla is now canceling the Connected Devices project, which was exploring IoT and "Web of Things" technology outside of a browser: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Connected_Devices/Projects This CNET article more accurately describes the affected Connected Devices project: https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-layoff-firefox-device-rele...

It's worth noting that the title and URL have since been updated.

Original: "Mozilla gives up on Firefox OS, lays off 50"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/mozilla-ends-firefox...

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#87

Post by pjmlp »

flukus wrote: post #83
pjmlp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tizen is a joke, no serious developer would ever care about it. - Branched from MeeGo - Got the BADA SDK, with its C++ dialect similar to the horrible Symbian C++ - After the Enlightenment guys joined in, the SDK was thrown away and replaced by C one - A new C++ SDK was created to appease the crowds that in spite of Symbian C++ like experience wouldn't touch pure C - Recently they adopted .NET as the new apps tooling…

So many (ubuntu, sailfish, tizen) seem to be going down the Qt path which really only ever works well with c++ (and a particular dialect at that), bindings for other languages have always been unstable to non-existent. I wish they'd either go with GTK or something else in pure C.

Tizen went that way and no one really wanted to go back to using pure C for GUI apps, hence the revamped C++ SDK, followed by the adoption of .NET.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#88

Post by pjmlp »

chris_wot wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an US phenomenon, there are hardly any queues of people buying Chromebooks outside US, let alone having them on display.

He wasn't talking about consumer purchases - he was talking about education.

Still an US only phenomenon, I haven't seen anyone in education related domains with a Chromebook, specially since in Europe it is up to the students to care for their own hardware, as consumer purchase.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#89

Post by flukus »

pjmlp wrote: post #87
flukus wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many (ubuntu, sailfish, tizen) seem to be going down the Qt path which really only ever works well with c++ (and a particular dialect at that), bindings for other languages have always been unstable to non-existent. I wish they'd either go with GTK or something else in pure C.

Tizen went that way and no one really wanted to go back to using pure C for GUI apps, hence the revamped C++ SDK, followed by the adoption of .NET.

I don't really mean for app development to be in raw c, just the core libraries so that bindings can be made available for a number of languages (go, rust, c++, .net).

Lately I've been playing with gtk in c and now rust and it's fantastic how simple gui development is.

Re: Mozilla closes Connected Devices division, lays off 50

#90

Post by jopsen »

acchow wrote: post #33
Animats wrote: post #2

So they're laying off 50 people, yet hiring for roughly comparable jobs.[1] [1] https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/

You also need to publicly post job listings for PERM labor certification (for green card) and LCA (for H-1b petition). They probably have employees that want to move off whatever visa they are on (typically H-1b to green card, or STEM to H-1b).

afaik job postings are aimed at a specific team, have a hiring manager and a few engineers for phone screening and interviews assigned. There is even a system for tracking candidates, and an effort to blind screener for bias.

So spare me the baseless accusations. ---

By the way, most employees and jobs at Mozilla are distributed. Nobody on my team shares time zone with more than one co-worker on a team of 7 engineers :)

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