Update on Mozilla WebThings
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Update on Mozilla WebThings
1–10 of 64 posts
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#2In other words: It's dead.
And to be clear, IMO that is absolutely fair.
At this stage WebThings seemed more like a conceptual thought, rather than actual marketable products, protocols or even code.
If Mozilla need to cut for real, they should definitely get rid of stuff like this which lacked a complete and convincing story.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#3I hope this goes well, but I am worried. This is a project that I really care about. Mozilla seemed like our only hope for a smart home that doesn't spy on you between WebThings and all the speech processing tech they had.
It's important that we have open source alternatives. I will be contributing to this project and I encourage others to do so as well.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#4I have since removed my plan of using WebThings in my house, right after Mozilla started it's self imposed suicide starting with firing Firefox devs.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#5Wow, this must be a new record for an IoT platform from conception to death. Thank god they didn't actually dare to sell any devices with this.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#6In other words: It's dead. And to be clear, IMO that is absolutely fair. At this stage WebThings seemed more like a conceptual thought, rather than actual marketable products, protocols or even code. If Mozilla need to cut for real, they should definitely get rid of stuff like this which lacked a complete and convincing story.
I strongly disagree. They have a W3C spec for the WebThings API[1]. Not a protocol as such but its a big step in the right direction.
And the existing product is great. I have been using it for months to control my TV, stereo, lights, etc with no issue. I have even added custom adapters for my own little projects. It's a great product to work with and use.
I agree that this project was unlikely to make Mozilla any money, but this is much more than a "conceptual thought".
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#7Maybe just a marketing failure, but WebThings to me always seemed like a project with no clear purpose in the ecosystem. Not enough mindshare and nothing unique to attract that mindshare. Open-source home automation projects is not a field lacking options. While the idea of standardization for protocols has some merit, a W3C group working silently and then tying it to another new standalone "gateway" project is not the way to get the standard attention (sadly an anti-pattern many of the more niche W3C groups fall into, made worse by time limits imposed on WGs). Projects with more impulse behind them create defacto-standards instead, and unless the focus shifts to integrating with other software more I don't see them coming out of that ditch.
(+ for my taste the standards involve to much JSON-LD complications, but I'll accept that that's taste)
EDIT: I guess part of the question is, what exactly is the goal? Bringing forward the WebThings "standard", or building yet another IoT/home automation controller? To me it has seemed like the "mission" is the former, while the thing actually done is the latter.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#8I have since removed my plan of using WebThings in my house, right after Mozilla started it's self imposed suicide starting with firing Firefox devs.
Sorry to hear that and I'm very sad about the recent layoffs at Mozilla too, which included lots of people I know. What would convince you to give WebThings a second chance under its new management?
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#9I have since removed my plan of using WebThings in my house, right after Mozilla started it's self imposed suicide starting with firing Firefox devs.
The strange thing is that as far as I get, Mozilla didn't fire a single ff dev. Servo - yes, mdn - yes, but they actually want to focus on FF and transfered people from the servo team to the core product.
Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings
#10Wow, this must be a new record for an IoT platform from conception to death. Thank god they didn't actually dare to sell any devices with this.
The WebThings platform was a four year project at Mozilla which sadly ended when their Emerging Technologies department was wound down, as part of a recent round of layoffs affecting a quarter of Mozilla's workforce.
The closest that WebThings got to a commercial product was this developer kit available on OKdo https://www.okdo.com/p/mozilla-webthings-gateway-kit/ As the Founder of the new commercial sponsor for WebThings, that's something I'd like to change.