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Mozilla Acquires Pocket

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Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#371

Post by hashhar »

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…

Gotta start contributing to TB now. Thanks for all the insight.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#372

Post by Sylos »

rhelmer wrote: post #283
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The built-in Pocket feature is an addon that is pre-installed into Firefox: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/exten...

Yeah, but there's for example also a Pocket Android app and iOS app. Those should get open-sourced now, too, and I heavily doubt that they were before.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#373

Post by dredmorbius »

bartvk wrote: post #353
dredmorbius wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're on Android, I've found a set of tricks which work for this pretty well. Ingredients: 1. Termux App. 2. Termux API App. 3. Termux CLI utilities. apt install termux-api 4. Python: apt install python 5. youtube-dl: pip install youtube-dl 6. VLC App. Install from app store. 7. A set of shell functions for clipboard and application access: alias xc='termux-clipboard-set' alias xp='termux-clipboard-get' open () {…

Seconding this for macOS. If you haven't installed Homebrew, do so: https://brew.sh/ Then install youtube-dl as follows: $ brew install youtube-dl And download videos as follows: $ youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

The lack of a true, independent, freestanding multimedia application which can handle this sort of thing -- building and managing queues, interrupting, deleting, sorting, etc. -- puzzles me.

The browser is such an obviously poor place to stick A/V. Other than, of course, the fact that advertisers slobber over cramming every more crap down some "channel" or other.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#374

Post by Sylos »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #232
talklittle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Mozilla releases their financial reports about two years after any given financial year, so we should soon know for sure and I also just really can't imagine them having lied as a result of that.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#375

Post by bartvk »

dredmorbius wrote: post #373
bartvk wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding this for macOS. If you haven't installed Homebrew, do so: https://brew.sh/ Then install youtube-dl as follows: $ brew install youtube-dl And download videos as follows: $ youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

The lack of a true, independent, freestanding multimedia application which can handle this sort of thing -- building and managing queues, interrupting, deleting, sorting, etc. -- puzzles me. The browser is such an obviously poor place to stick A/V. Other than, of course, the fact that advertisers slobber over cramming every more crap down some "channel" or other.

Well, Google has a history of preferring HTML above all other interfaces. Only when someone else comes along and offers a better native interface, they jump in.

Thank god there's a native iOS/Android client.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#376

Post by Sylos »

epoch1970 wrote: post #255
mcmahoniel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When people say that they want to "remove Pocket from Firefox", they don't mean just hiding a toolbar button or disabling it using about:config. They don't want it there at all, in any way. They don't want it using any of their computing resources, no matter how minute this usage might be. They tend to see it as something that should be available as an add-on that's installed on-demand by those who actually want the…

I disagree. People wanted to get rid of it, because they viewed it as an untrustworthy component, which it now is not anymore. The few kB that it takes up are really not a problem that anyone could rationally complain about.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#377

Post by padraic7a »

sharkbot wrote: post #83
SwellJoe wrote: post #74

Pocket, for me, is a weird product/feature. I've tried to use it, but it ends up just being like a clumsy bookmarking feature. Allegedly, you can read things offline, but that feature never works for me. It seems the feature for offline reading doesn't exist at all in Firefox (which I'd assumed was the point of its integration, but my assumption was wrong), and I've tried the Chrome desktop app and the Android mobile…

The Kobo ereaders have had Pocket integration for a while now, and it works great offline. My usual routine is to find interesting articles on Hacker News, and if they are longer than a page or two, click the Pocket button and read them at home on the ereader. A few don't render well (the article on Arrival/Story of your Life not being a time-travel story was a recent fail), but generally it works great.

I love this feature. My only concern was being tied into Pocket and wondering what might happen to the company. I imagine that being acquired by Mozilla makes that future a bit more secure.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#378

Post by stymaar »

dbbk wrote: post #72
mplewis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a paid service. Youtube-DL is free and open source.

It is YouTube's prerogative to offer that feature for their paid service.

And it's the user's prerogative to build and use tools to circumvent artificial[1] limitations.

[1]: reminder: technically, streaming isn't different from download, what your computer does when watching a video in streaming is downloading. Forcing users to delete the video they have downloaded (which is exactly what's happening with streaming) so they pay the premium service for off-line use, is not a legitimate way to do business. They can do it of course, if people are willing to pay for something they can have for free it's fine, but people who don't want to pay aren't doing anything wrong.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#379

Post by Sylos »

dredmorbius wrote: post #327
chrisabrams wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will fund Firefox development :P

Source?

I think, he was mostly joking, but it might actually be the case. Sounds like they want to keep the Pocket company intact as it is, just as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation and with everything open-sourced. So, Pocket as a company should continue to try to make a revenue and if they do, that revenue goes upwards into the Mozilla Corporation (and from there upwards into the Mozilla Foundation, if the non-profit nature allows it).

There's also Callahad commenting in this thread, who, as far as I'm aware, is a Mozilla employee. And well, he sort of confirmed that this is a move to diversify Mozilla's income streams:

>bearcobra 12 hours ago [-]

>Does this mark a strategy shift away from search revenue as the primary funding source? A quick crunchbase search for other aquicisions by Mozilla yeilded nothing, so I'm curious if there are other examples of them buying up for-profits.

>>callahad 12 hours ago [-]

>>Mozilla is actively working to diversify its sources of funding; the greatest step in that was when we switched from a global default of Google search to smaller, regional deals with Yahoo, Google, Yandex, and Baidu toward the end of 2014.

Re: Mozilla Acquires Pocket

#380

Post by stroebjo »

grappler wrote: post #45

Pocket's post about the acquisition, referring to the main value their product brings, says, “a platform where high-quality, thoughtful content and free speech can rise above the rest.” Pocket used to have a feature aimed at surfacing high-quality content from the collection of things a user had already pocketed. They removed that feature. I was paying for their premium service before that change. After they removed…

I also was/am a frequent Pocket user. But the removal of features (also pointed out by others here) and on the other hand the addition of the recommendation/feed thingy left me wondering where Pocket was headed.

Pocket for me was my archive of things for which I would love to have a great diversity of searching, clustering and organising tools. The addition of recommendation of things I may like is nice, but not a core feature for me - my content is.

I also tried Wallabag [0] which looks promising but hasn't the ecosystem around it yet. So I'm exited to see where this open sourcing of Pocket will lead us. ;-)

[0]: https://wallabag.org/en

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