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Mozilla Acquires Pocket

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#271

Post by sbennettmcleish »

ffjffsfr wrote: post #226
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…

how does pocket make money? they do have pocket premium: https://getpocket.com/premium?ep=2 but I never saw them advertising it and never thought about using it and I'm using pocket heavily past several months. Is "pocket premium" their main source of income? Is it bringing real dollars?

They slot 'sponsered content' blocks into your stream of saved items, it's done very well IMO. These have to make some decent $$$ surely.

However, I just checked my queue and couldn't see any.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#272

Post by flukus »

rhelmer wrote: post #177
Manishearth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong here, but the thunderbird thing is basically that it was way too much work for little gain -- the way Thunderbird is designed was that it was a kind-of-fork of Firefox, and too many resources were being wasted just keeping the "fork" up to date from changes to internal Firefox APIs. I'm also not sure of this, but that vision thing you link to is focused on the goals of the Foundation proper (excludin…

Aside from technical issues, native mail clients are shrinking in use over time, not growing. It does not seem like the right place to invest to continue having relevance in the marketplace.

Mozilla doesn't have to worry about the marketplace.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#273

Post by Esau »

rhelmer wrote: post #161
Esau wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it's released under and open source license, then I'll be glad to have it integrated." Not me. I don't want a bloated Firefox; even if the bloat is well intentioned and fully open sourced.

One person's bloat is another person's critical feature. Are you thinking of install size, runtime cost, all of the above? Firefox is open-source and (fairly) easy to build - if you really want the utmost control then I'd suggest this is the best way to do it. You can easily do a build that has no Pocket integration. There's a cost to the level of configuration that I assume you're advocating here. Not saying we can'…

I don't like bloat in web browsers because, often, if just adds features best left as an add-on. Also, in something as important as a web browser, I feel a smaller codebase is wise from a security point-of-view.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#274

Post by ghostly_s »

jackmoore wrote: post #126
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.

Totally unrelated, but I keep falling for this same cycle of disappointment based on testimonials for The Simpsons.

I just hope you realize when people say the Simpsons are good, they mean seasons 1-{8-12}.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#275

Post by Jaepa »

Esau wrote: post #273
rhelmer wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One person's bloat is another person's critical feature. Are you thinking of install size, runtime cost, all of the above? Firefox is open-source and (fairly) easy to build - if you really want the utmost control then I'd suggest this is the best way to do it. You can easily do a build that has no Pocket integration. There's a cost to the level of configuration that I assume you're advocating here. Not saying we can'…

I don't like bloat in web browsers because, often, if just adds features best left as an add-on. Also, in something as important as a web browser, I feel a smaller codebase is wise from a security point-of-view.

This was actually one of the arguments for feature shredding things like browser customization (see Classic Theme Restorer) and tab groups (see uhm Tab Groups).

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#276

Post by no_wizard »

mbel wrote: post #98
mwcampbell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XUL was the future of old-school, heavy desktop applications. But people generally aren't interested in those anymore. At least HTML and the rest of the web stack work OK on mobile platforms.

> XUL was the future of old-school, heavy desktop applications. The old-school, heavy desktop apps seem to be so unbelievably light in comparison to current electron-based craziness. But I guess we deserve all the bloat for not being able to come up with sensible common API for desktop development :(

I know this might sound insane to everyone, just hear me out.

I always thought Mozilla should have built a Linux distribution (or rather, forked debian like everyone else ha!) and implemented their Firefox UI kit (Gecko right? I'm not as familiar.) and made a Front end for it that was smooth and easy to build apps for using web technologies, but could still run native *nix apps via debion packages.

I believe that now as much as I did when I was younger, but the itme for desktop OSs may have passed.

It would have been a hit I think. Well designed, well maintained, well documented. At least in my starry eyed version of this universe where unicorns exist

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#277

Post by wsy »

kibwen wrote: post #221
toyg wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we're talking about XUL the platform. That platform was built with the same use-case in mind that Electron has: allowing people to build cross-platform desktop applications with web technologies (html, js etc). Unfortunately Mozilla failed to execute on that vision, leaving the field open for Electron and friends to emerge. Part of that failure was due to bad technological choices (RDF-XML was terrible ), pa…

But lots of people did write apps in XUL. My first IRC client and my first FTP client were both XUL apps. I'm not convinced that Electron today is any more popular than XUL was back then (aside from Atom (or VS Code, based on Atom), I can't name any programs that use Electron). Additionally, XUL uses web tech, but it is not a standard and was never intended to be a standard (not even an informal specification exists…

VS Code is not based on Atom.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#278

Post by yellowapple »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #163
yellowapple wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own reason for disliking it was that it's a closed-source piece of an otherwise-FOSS browser. Hopefully this acquisition means a change for the better on that front.

So FOSS should be pure?

Ideally, yes. I can understand some exceptions there to get, say, driver/firmware support for FOSS-unfriendly hardware, but integrating Pocket - at the time - was not such a situation.

Now there's a different, much better story.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#279

Post by yellowapple »

Jach wrote: post #132
yellowapple wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own reason for disliking it was that it's a closed-source piece of an otherwise-FOSS browser. Hopefully this acquisition means a change for the better on that front.

I always thought that complaint was kind of odd. It's essentially the same as their Search input. Google/Yahoo/etc. are proprietary but Firefox lets you talk to them directly from their browser. Similarly, the code for the Pocket button (component) for where it handles the user clicking the button, along with what it does to talk to the Pocket server, was all in the open and if you build from source you could just re…

"I don't know what I'm going to do when I can't use treestyle tabs anymore. I guess move to Pale Moon."

I hear ya, being in a similar boat. My hope is that Netsurf ends up being a decent contender here by the time Mozilla kills XUL. Else, hopefully TST will indeed be made possible with Firefox-specific WebExtension APIs.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#280

Post by gault8121 »

zobzu wrote: post #262
Feld0 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what a nonprofit is. Nonprofits are corporations like any other, with a few key differences: - Instead of shareholders, nonprofits have members. Members don't own the corporation (no one does) but control it insofar that they hire-and-fire its directors. - Memberships normally can't be sold, and nonprofits have no equivalent to dividends. - There are stronger conflict-of-interest protections, preventin…

IIRC non-profits can't make and keep profits. Corps can, hence Mozilla Corp. They can keep profits around in order to.. like, purchase Pocket, or simply pay employees later when Mozilla makes less profit, or whatever else. These things are hard or maybe impossible in a non-profit (IANAL/correct me if I'm wrong)

Yes, nonprofits can charge money and hold onto it. What they can't do is distribute it to shareholders. Many universities are nonprofits, and they hold on to millions or billions of dollars. Nonprofits can also acquire companies, etc.
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