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It’s time to give Firefox another chance

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Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#651

Post by bigbugbag »

noncoml wrote: post #9

I was very critical of Mozilla in the past about all their "science projects" like Rust. While I appreciate Rust, I thought it was wrong for Mozilla to be wasting resources on it, instead of focusing on Firefox. I was so harsh with them only because I strongly believe that Firefox is my only hope for a free web. But then I tried 57, and I must admit, boy was I wrong. This thing is fast! I haven't stopped recommending…

I don't care about firefox being faster, it has been fast enough for years. I care for functionality that i'm losing because extension are dropped, because features are dropped, because unwanted features are added. I care about my voice being heard and being dismissed with attitude. I care about privacy and freedom.

For these reasons I switched to waterfox.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#652

Post by zmix »

oatmealsnap wrote: post #574
agumonkey wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of work, the extent for how long they've been doing so, all relative to the funding they got.. it's even painful to think about. Chrome shadowed them overnight, had Google infinite wallet and started from scratch. Mozilla became the old slug.. Since then they got Rust off ground, servo yielding good fruits, firefox cool n quiet. Once again kudos.

Sorry, that’s just not what happened. I think there’s an important lesson in what happened to Mozilla, so I think it is worth clarifying. Chrome didn’t start from scratch (they used WebKit to start) and they didn’t overtake them overnight. Mozilla couldn’t decide what their focus should be for many years, and in that time Chrome grew thanks to Google’s infinite wallet. They made worthwhile risks that didn’t work out…

First, many years ago, they should have made an XUL IDE.

Then they should have focused on XML and giving the world an XML based web-browser, trying to drive XML further. XML would have had a much better chance on the web, if web-servers could have responded to URL encoded XPaths (or even XQueries in POST/GET), serving back XML Fragments which could have been XMLIncluded by the browser. They could have lobbied that.

Now we've got HTML5...

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#653

Post by nitrogen »

zmix wrote: post #652
oatmealsnap wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that’s just not what happened. I think there’s an important lesson in what happened to Mozilla, so I think it is worth clarifying. Chrome didn’t start from scratch (they used WebKit to start) and they didn’t overtake them overnight. Mozilla couldn’t decide what their focus should be for many years, and in that time Chrome grew thanks to Google’s infinite wallet. They made worthwhile risks that didn’t work out…

First, many years ago, they should have made an XUL IDE. Then they should have focused on XML and giving the world an XML based web-browser, trying to drive XML further. XML would have had a much better chance on the web, if web-servers could have responded to URL encoded XPaths (or even XQueries in POST/GET), serving back XML Fragments which could have been XMLIncluded by the browser. They could have lobbied that. N…

That sounds rather unpleasant from a user or non-XML-loving developer perspective. Such a heavy focus on XML for XML's sake would have guaranteed Firefox's decline into obscurity.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#654

Post by bigbugbag »

bad_user wrote: post #483
syshum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are one of those that "Open Web" == performance only and you look the other way on things like EME, Pocket, and various other things that lower Privacy and betray the very foundation of the "Open Web"

I personally love Pocket, it's my bookmarking service and I'm a paying customer. And staying true to their mission, Mozilla bought Pocket and is now releasing it as open source [1]. You're speaking of "betraying the foundation of the Open Web", but Mozilla is the only one out of the big players that isn't guilty of betrayal, the only big player that tried opposing patent encumbered video codecs or DRM, that have been…

As a long time user of wallabag why would I welcome the addition of a proprietary alternative that's difficult to disable into firefox ? Stripping user of choice is the opposite of free software and empowering users.

It's arguably not so smart to spend millions of dollars to buy the company behind pocket to release it opensource when an opensource alternative already exists.

Turns out mozilla did not buy pocket as much as the 10 millions user base and 1 billion saved link to get a foot on the mobile platform and helps with their upcoming recommendation engine. Not exactly putting the user first.

Besides there's no integration of pocket into shaarli whereas wallabag has one. Also where is the option to self host a pocket service ?

Not sorry, but pocket sucks on many counts compared to open source alternative.

I've been boycotting microsoft (because microsoft), google (because privacy), apple (because vendor lock-in), netflix (because pollution and bandwidth saturation and killing p2p) was before mozilla made its betrayal to their own words for their own profit. Yup I tend to boycott all opponent to net neutrality and open web. Neither google, microsoft, apple, nor netflix bear responsibility for mozilla deciding to bake support for DRM for fear of becoming irrelevant. To me they showed that they do not put their money where their mouth is and as such are not worthy of trust, also their priorities are not aligned with an open web based on their actions.

Had mozilla been serious about opposing they would not have implemented it in their browser to be netflix compatible out of fear of losing market share. I've had a difficult time reconciliating myself with mozilla "let's do one evil here so we can try to do one good there" approach to things.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#655

Post by bigbugbag »

syshum wrote: post #537
bad_user wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally love Pocket, it's my bookmarking service and I'm a paying customer. And staying true to their mission, Mozilla bought Pocket and is now releasing it as open source [1]. You're speaking of "betraying the foundation of the Open Web", but Mozilla is the only one out of the big players that isn't guilty of betrayal, the only big player that tried opposing patent encumbered video codecs or DRM, that have been…

>>and is now releasing it as open source I will believe that when I see the code. 7 months now still no code, and outside of the single blog post no other comments from Pocket, Read It later, or Mozilla has given any indication they will Open Source it. In fact Read It Later is still a for profit corporations operating as a subsidiary of the For Profit Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation the non-profit or…

> Where did the Leader in the open Web go?

It was killed by moving focus from users and long term to quarterly profits and short term, around the time Jonvon Tetzchner was pushed to leave the company.

wait are you talking about the leader in the open web or about mozilla here ?

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#656

Post by bigbugbag »

noncoml wrote: post #575
syshum wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and is now releasing it as open source I will believe that when I see the code. 7 months now still no code, and outside of the single blog post no other comments from Pocket, Read It later, or Mozilla has given any indication they will Open Source it. In fact Read It Later is still a for profit corporations operating as a subsidiary of the For Profit Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation the non-profit or…

I share your views and I am as angry as you are, but I think you are idealizing the Mozilla of the past. I always felt that Mozilla was just forced in a role it never really wanted. If you remember Mozilla was a child of the browser wars and my guesss is that if Netscape wasn’t cornered by MS it would still be closed source today. Even today you can see that business is still in their DNA, the for-profit subsidiary.…

Actually mozilla means Mosaic Killer as their sole purpose was to replace NCSA mosaic browser to become the n°1 browser.

It was the internal codename and user-agent for netscape and became the name of mozilla a reminder that their objective is to be the number 1 browser and the new target to replace had been IE.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#657

Post by Karunamon »

skinnymuch wrote: post #579
Karunamon wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of personal attacking is totally uncalled for here. Either their statement is correct or it is not, either Chrome is doing tracking on the sly or it is not. Either there is proof, or there is not. The burden of proof is on the one making the argument. So which is it?

But we are talking about green accounts here. Literally colored green usernames. Why is HN doing that if not to indicate they are new accounts?

What does the age of their account have to do with the correctness of their statements or the attempt by GP to shift the burden of proof?

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#658

Post by bigbugbag »

noncoml wrote: post #227
syshum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are one of those that "Open Web" == performance only and you look the other way on things like EME, Pocket, and various other things that lower Privacy and betray the very foundation of the "Open Web"

That's as a bit unfair conclusion. I just believe that if Firefox dies then for sure "Open Web" will die. But, yeah, of course I am not happy with Pocket. But it still better than using Chrome.

Turns out there are alternatives to chrome other than firefox. even open source ones.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#659

Post by bigbugbag »

Manishearth wrote: post #473
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big issues I have with Pocket isn't even the privacy problem, it's the integration. Firefox would (IMO) be better served by having such things as extensions included in the default distribution. They could even make a separate tab in the extensions dialogue for them, perhaps hidden behind an about:config preference. That way anyone who doesn't want them could disable them and speed the browser up. There wa…

Most firefox UI code is lazy loaded, and the pocket extension was a pretty simple thing that hit an endpoint. I doubt you could speed things up by removing it.

of course you speed things up, it takes a bit of time to go through the process of removing the icon and disabling it on a fresh install. when you have several install to do, it quickly adds up.

Re: It’s time to give Firefox another chance

#660

Post by bigbugbag »

jopsen wrote: post #272
noncoml wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's as a bit unfair conclusion. I just believe that if Firefox dies then for sure "Open Web" will die. But, yeah, of course I am not happy with Pocket. But it still better than using Chrome.

Curious what is the concern with pocket?

Here are some examples: Proprietary, got integrated into firefox for no apparent reason (hard to disable), had a security breach and privacy issue, got bought by mozilla for an undisclosed sum (millions), promises to open source have only been promises so far, acquisition turned to have been more a bout buying the 10 millions user base to get into mobile and 1 billion entries to feed to the upcoming recommendation engine.
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