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Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#151

Post by jlgaddis »

pfg wrote: post #123
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair Thunderbird is awful. Every single time I try to find a better client I see someone suggesting "oh Thunderbird has gotten way better; give it a shot! I love it!" and every time I fall for it and it's the same slow, horrible application that I've tried again and again. I'm all for them killing it.

The only thing that forces me to keep Thunderbird around are mailing lists. I haven't found anything else that doesn't break quoting or messes with word/line wrapping in plaintext mails. To be fair, even Thunderbird requires quite a bit of about:config tuning to get it to behave sanely. I suppose I'll have to learn to live with mutt eventually.

IMO, mutt is the best mail client there is when it comes to lots of high-volume mailing lists. I can catch up on all my lists so much quicker than with any other mail client.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#152

Post by threatofrain »

bttf wrote: post #127

I have been working on a prototype for a competitor to Pocket and other save-for-later services with an emphasis on minimalism, privacy and ease of use. https://slushi.es Very early app, features are rolling out daily. My end goal is to build a recommendation engine out of user data, while keeping things anonymous. Although social bookmarking has been done plenty times before, I think execution has been sub-par in pr…

I'd be curious to see an organization scheme other than just tags, as I suspect that it leads to difficult to trim (potentially always climbing up) bloat and cognitive load.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#153

Post by notatoad »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

The people that complain about mozilla stopping development on thunderbird seem to be the same people that complain about things like firefox moving to WebExtensions, and Firefox changing their UI, and Firefox integrating Pocket.

I don't understand why people are disappointed that Mozilla has stopped actively developing thunderbird - it means it's not going to change. There is an email client that you like, as is, and want to keep using, and you're annoyed because mozilla has promised not to change it?

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#154

Post by mark_l_watson »

It sounds like a good plan, making Firefox a platform for organizing information while web browsing, research, etc.

A question: what advantages privacy-wise does Firefox have over Safari on iPad and macOS? I frequently delete all cookies on Safari and set strong privacy options. I ask because I have transitioned in the last year or so to working on my iPad and MacBook, largely letting my Linux boxes collect dust. On Linux, using Firefox was an easy decision. On iPad and MacBook, Safari is more convenient.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#155

Post by rhelmer »

omouse wrote: post #75
niftich wrote: post #57

Oh, what a twist! In a story that began two years ago with Pocket's integration by Mozilla [1] in Firefox [2], large segments of the userbase spoke out with scathing criticism. This, at first blush, appears unrelated: Mozilla previously announced its Context Graph initiative, which was a bold undertaking to be built partially upon a new and emerging set of W3C standards to take back some of the control over linkage,…

My only problem with Pocket was that it was proprietary and it was integrated with Firefox. If it's released under and open source license, then I'll be glad to have it integrated. Pocket makes Mozilla competitive on mobile because Firefox's market share on mobile is very low.

The client-side portion of Pocket has always been open-source.

If you mean the server-side then fair enough, maybe this acquisition will help with that.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#156

Post by maxxxxx »

omouse wrote: post #73
zobzu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That Mozilla is a Corp owned by a not-for-profit isn't the real thing anymore (ie not what people may believe, not that they have any obligation beside following the rule of law) - it just frees the Corp from having to report to random share holders - instead, the Corp and the Org self-select a Board of directors that they report to. At the end of the day, it's othe…

You can see that just by looking at their job postings. The experimental ads team was hiring and then stopped and then the team was absorbed into other teams. Now they have more postings for project managers. They're basically introducing more hierarchy and traditional corp. stuff from the sounds of it.

Having more project managers is how things get done. I see it everyday at my company...

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#157

Post by hendersoon »

mcmahoniel wrote: post #15
datatan wrote: post #5

So much for my hopes of them removing it from Firefox. Uhg.

In case you didn't know, you can remove it from the toolbar via "Customize", or completely disable it by toggling `extensions.pocket.enabled` in `about:config`. That being said, I started using it extensively after being a big fan of Instapaper. The browser integration (especially the easy tagging) has been really helpful in keeping my tab count down.

I use a simple bookmarklet for Pocket. This consumes zero resources and works just fine.

https://pastebin.mozilla.org/8980504

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#158

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Roritharr wrote: post #122

After this, why should I donate to Mozilla? I really don't get what's the difference between donating to Mozilla and donating to Facebook. Facebook open-sources some of their stuff. Facebook buys companies to generate revenues... I guess Mozilla doesn't need help anymore.

I don't understand your point. Are you upset they bought Pocket?

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#159

Post by Arizhel »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #106
anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

To be fair Thunderbird is awful. Every single time I try to find a better client I see someone suggesting "oh Thunderbird has gotten way better; give it a shot! I love it!" and every time I fall for it and it's the same slow, horrible application that I've tried again and again. I'm all for them killing it.

The problem is that there aren't exactly a lot of other great FOSS standalone email applications these days. Everything's been neglected because of webmail, and corporations' dogged insistence on Outlook.

So if you think Thunderbird should be killed, what do you suggest as a replacement? It needs to be free, and run on Windows for my company to use it.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#160

Post by jlgaddis »

jimporter wrote: post #129
anexprogrammer wrote: post #48

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and can acquire startups. Mozilla doesn't have the resources to continue with Thunderbird. I am increasingly baffled by their decisions and how they relate to the strategic plans [0] they've been producing for a while. Despite the worthy words in their plan they seem to have no sense of direction. That saddens me. That said I'm happier having Pocket as an open source part of Mo…

(Context: I'm a submodule owner on Thunderbird, but haven't had much time to work on it lately. It should go without saying, but the comments below are my own view on the matter and shouldn't be considered authoritative.) tl;dr: I think Mozilla has actually treated Thunderbird fairly well (but not quite as well as I'd like). Thunderbird has been difficult for Mozilla to support for a while. In many ways, Thunderbird…

Thanks for taking the time to provide your insight and especially for the link so that I can contribute directly towards continued Thunderbird development!
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