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Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#231

Post by kibwen »

moron4hire wrote: post #125
RyanZAG wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That's not the case anymore with this merger though, right? Pocket will now cease to make actual money.

From the announcement: "Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation" Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit, taxable entity. Here are their articles of incorporation: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/documents/articles-... . It is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit thing that people call "Mozilla". The Foundation is really just a holding compan…

The foundation exists as a separate entity because laws prohibit charitable donations from being used for all but a small number of categories, and software development generally does not fall under such a category. The funds received by the foundation pretty much have to go towards education (or things that can be justified as education, e.g. sponsoring educational conferences or sponsoring attendees to such conferences). Charitable donations can't be used to fund Firefox development.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#232

Post by pbhjpbhj »

talklittle wrote: post #78
gcp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was stated several times that Mozilla didn't get any money from Pocket for the integration.

That much is unclear. http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/05/mozilla-has-a-revenue-share...

Wow, if that article is true then not only were Mozilla [indirectly] taking money for the integrations but they also lied to us all about it.

Is there corroboration that Mozilla had/has revenue sharing with Pocket and Telefonica? I've always trusted Mozilla, this suggests that trust has been badly misplaced.

I can't help but feel that I'm being suckered somewhere here - who from Mozilla is benefiting personally out of this acquisition and why are they being allowed to steer the ship?

It's 14 months since that blog post, I realise it's not news to some, but it's really disappointing to me.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#233

Post by mcintyre1994 »

rhelmer wrote: post #155
omouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It looks like their Firefox addon has (https://github.com/Pocket/pocket-ff-addon), and I guess by definition you can get the source of their Chrome addon and getpocket.com, but I don't think they meet the definition of open source unless they're somewhere other than Github. Also their mobile apps seem to be closed source too.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#234

Post by carussell »

moberemk wrote: post #223
FatalBaboon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot understand the need for a thing like Pocket. Much less why Mozilla prefers to keep it close, and even less for money. I mean, what is wrong with bookmarks and sharing links? Firefox can even send tabs to other computers I got linked via ff sync. Iterate on a bad idea, give it a social spin, and voilà! You have a sellable startup. Except you should not buy that.

Two big things: 1) it's a lot faster to send to Pocket with the button > mark as read than managing bookmarks IMO but the real killer feature for me is 2) the offline saving of articles. Pocket is killer when I'm commuting or without Wi-Fi because it means I can keep reading things without worrying about finding a hotspot or wasting my (very limited) data.

> Pocket is killer when I'm commuting or without Wi-Fi

... and yet this thread and every other Mozilla apologist thread is always filled with folks who suggest that it's no big deal to assume an always-on, always-available network connection.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#235

Post by adultSwim »

I think this is great. I'm weary of add-ons/extensions so only run a couple (which are from providers I trust)

I didn't really trust my saved article data to a random startup. Being under Mozilla means now I'll actually use it.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#236

Post by pix64 »

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.

Thunderbird is awful, but I have yet to find anything better.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#237

Post by comex »

chriswarbo wrote: post #200
j3097736 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google usually does a pretty good job as far as performance is concerned. ie: They have a simple 404 page instead of some novelty page with funny text and a random webm playing in the background

Maybe different Google departments have different opinions about such things. Chrome's error pages include a game http://www.omgchrome.com/chrome-easter-egg-trex-game-offline

But performance-wise, the error pages still load instantly and don't waste CPU when the game isn't activated, so who cares?

...though I don't know why anyone would care about slow 404 pages either, given that they should be rarely visited and quickly left.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#238

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hendersoon wrote: post #179
mcmahoniel wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Instapaper did it back when I used it (may have a full-fledged add-on now, but I don't know for sure). The only drawback, for me, was the added bulk of the Bookmarks bar. I like to slim it down, so having the single button has been great. (Also, being able to add the tags, but maybe the bookmarklet is capable of that?)

I remove the bookmark's name so only the Pocket icon shows. It's very slim, but you do need the bookmark bar for that. I suppose it would work from the bookmarks menu too. When you click the bookmarklet a little dropdown banner shows and you can add tags from there.

You might like the "Custom Buttons Bookmarklet Maker" I use it to have a button for adding videos from a page to my Plex queue, removes the need to have the bookmark bar on screen. I found it rather arcane to set up however.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/custom-button... ... ah, and now I see it's unmaintained and recent version isn't working for some, carry on, never mind (works for me though).

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