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What happened to Firefox Send?

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Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#151

Post by amelius »

aj3 wrote: post #64
40four wrote: post #32

Too bad. I really enjoyed using it while it was up. The code is open source, and they have docs on how to set it up for self hosting. I wonder if there is a chance some active forks might live on? https://github.com/mozilla/send https://github.com/mozilla/send/blob/master/docs/deployment....

We still have Magic Wormhole though and it's awesome! (at least for techies) https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html

Only if the sender and recipient are using it at roughly the same time (within a 1-hour time-window).

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#152

Post by davisoneee »

rvba wrote: post #95
torben-friis wrote: post #43

I really don't understand it. - Content was used to spread malware/illegal content - It was not profitable How are those two things something you find out after the fact? What was the reasoning for launching the product in the first place?

Nearly all their "side projects" look like greenfields used by the project teams to boost their CVs so they can land better jobs. Those teams know very well that those projects have no use case, but they dont care. Foundation does not care either, since it is busy with increasing own remuneration and politics. Meanwhile their core product lost around 10 percentage points of market share (from 15% marketshare to 5%):…

Regarding 2) ...evidently focusing on their existing userbase isn't viable.

So often these comments like "they are ignoring their user base" and "why won't they let us donate to firefox" miss the point (even if true / beneficial)...they don't want to double down on their existing user base; they want to expand their userbase to go with their mission of bringing more trust to the web

Firefox was the better extension platform for years, and that wasn't enough to entice users away from Google and Chrome. They are trying, and failing, to find a differentiator that will give market share. Trust, privacy, and security on the web so far hasn't got to consumers' hearts, and extensibility and donations are basically just pandering to those few users that remain.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#153

Post by zxcvgm »

To be honest, I think some form of abuse was bound to happen. Your files are encrypted client-side with JavaScript before uploading, so to the server it's just an opaque blob.

Out of curiosity, I did some technical analysis¹ of how your files were being encrypted to see if they were really secure and as a side-effect, also wrote a Go client for it.

An interesting property I did discover about the way the encryption keys are derived is that the scheme allows you to delegate an oblivious third-party to download the blob for you, without actually revealing the file contents to them.

¹ https://irq5.io/2019/05/14/data-encryption-on-firefox-send/

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#154

Post by eterm »

happypants23 wrote: post #119
rvba wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly all their "side projects" look like greenfields used by the project teams to boost their CVs so they can land better jobs. Those teams know very well that those projects have no use case, but they dont care. Foundation does not care either, since it is busy with increasing own remuneration and politics. Meanwhile their core product lost around 10 percentage points of market share (from 15% marketshare to 5%):…

If you think Firefox has stagnated you clearly aren't aware of the substantial and complex improvements that have been made to the firefox core over the last couple of years: * Faster Quantum Engine (multi-process architecture, etc) * Faster CSS rendering with Stylo * GPU-based rendering with WebRender Any Moz engineer who worked on the above will have boosted their CV's substantially. They don't need to work on tang…

There's a big difference between Firefox the product and the renderer.

I'd argue the parts outside the renderer have got worse even if the renderer part has got better.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#155

Post by wistlo »

Wow, this thread just turned into bookmarked resource for file sharing. Best compilation I've seen recently.

I get CPU usage with both Chrome and FF, running a consistent 10-20% for what seems no good reason. Windows task manager "power usage" also indicates FF as "very high" in "power usage", which might be related to GPU use. Windows seems happier with Chrome's power usage. I detect no difference between the two in my Z-book's fan or CPU temps (which are always warm, and warmer if I don't run atop a cooler base).

FF has significantly improved over past 18 months in response and load times for a complex heavy front end UI for Siebel, matching Chrome's response time.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#156

Post by btrask »

ekianjo wrote: post #93
darkstar_16 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Mozilla does not understand how the Internet works!

They also don't understand how to make money. They think eating in the hand of Google is a viable financial strategy.

Google is giving them so much money, for such a long time, that it is hard to replace. Golden handcuffs. Donations and $10/mo "Firefox subscriptions" aren't going to make up for it.

There are ways they could make money and leverage their browser, such as becoming a certificate authority (they're literally outsourcing profit) or making their own search engine (which would probably be a bad idea for other reasons). Nothing else is going to replace $400m/year.

Their real problem is not "making money." It's too much easy money making them go soft, and then wasting it.

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#157

Post by akhilcacharya »

unicornporn wrote: post #107
aj3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still have Magic Wormhole though and it's awesome! (at least for techies) https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/welcome.html

"We" as in "the people who knows how to use the command line". Unfortunately very few of the people I send files to knows that. There's https://webwormhole.io/ and https://file.pizza/ , but can I know what they really do behind the scenes? Native open-source software for this would be a dream come true. It's 2020 and I still wrestle with sending files between devices. And no, don't take this as a wish for creating ju…

I've used File Pizza to share files with friends, but it feels like the upload speed is being bottlenecked by something that isn't my ISP (I have synchronous upload) - is there an inherent speed issue with using WebRTC for this?

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#159

Post by timvisee »

Sad! Developer of `ffsend` here.

I've built `ffsend` as CLI tool for Send to securely share files from the command line. It has been a great success! Thanks Mozilla, for building and providing this amazing service!

For the interested: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend

I'm currently hosting a public Send instance myself so ffsend keeps working. Let's see how long I can keep this going (and funded). It's available at send.vis.ee .

Re: What happened to Firefox Send?

#160

Post by this_user »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #15

Hows firefox doing these days? I've not really used it since it used to run out of memory every few hours, did try it again after they rewrote everything but it was really buggy with half the sites I frequent not working.

The desktop version is fine. The mobile one they recently decided to blow up with an ill-advised switch to a new architecture. In the process they have pretty much ruined the UI for no good or apparent reason, and have neutered key selling points like the addon support by only allowing the installation of pre-approved addons. The app is borderline unusable now. I truly do wonder who signed off on this, because this may very well be one of the worst redesigns of any peice of software ever.
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