Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Update on Mozilla WebThings

discourse.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 64 posts

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#31

Post by gostsamo »

calpaterson wrote: post #24
gostsamo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not very clear on where the cuts are, but here is the quote from the linked article: "In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team," Ba…

I agree completely that Mozilla have been (almost deliberately) unclear. The article seems to be quoting from this: https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-... I think the sentence you've quoted makes it clear that cuts have happened to certain Firefox teams. Now, we can argue about what the effect is of this cuts is but at least you have to accept that some Firefox teams have received cuts and li…

The teams were downsized, but I'm not sure what happened to the people because it was bundled with the products and operations team. This is what I meant. Not a hill worth dying for though. It will be most clear if someone knows what the Taiwan office were doing because they were hit the hardest as far as I get.

Regarding the rust toolchain, all the FAANG are using rust one way or another. The project is healthy and Mozilla is not key there already. I'd even say that it would've been ugly if a non-profit corporation had to pay for the development of tools that trillion dollar companies are using.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#32

Post by rvz »

detaro wrote: post #7

Maybe 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 t…

In other words another Mozilla project failure.

It seems like they still have no clue how lucky they are to have the Rust Programming Language and yet they still really cannot create any revenue outside of their contract with Google. Without it, Mozilla would cease to exist.

That's the actual reality of open-source. It is funded by the same companies that oppose privacy - contradicting Mozilla's mission.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#33

Post by ptx »

calpaterson wrote: post #24
gostsamo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not very clear on where the cuts are, but here is the quote from the linked article: "In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team," Ba…

I agree completely that Mozilla have been (almost deliberately) unclear. The article seems to be quoting from this: https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-... I think the sentence you've quoted makes it clear that cuts have happened to certain Firefox teams. Now, we can argue about what the effect is of this cuts is but at least you have to accept that some Firefox teams have received cuts and li…

From their message, it's not clear to me how COVID-19 is to blame for the layoffs. Especially in Taiwan, since Taiwan has been among the best in the world[1] at handling the pandemic and is doing relatively well.

Did Google reduce their payments in the new search deal because people search less when they work remotely due to COVID-19?

Did Mozilla reduce investment in tooling because developers' need for tools is reduced by COVID-19?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#34

Post by calpaterson »

ptx wrote: post #33
calpaterson wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely that Mozilla have been (almost deliberately) unclear. The article seems to be quoting from this: https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-... I think the sentence you've quoted makes it clear that cuts have happened to certain Firefox teams. Now, we can argue about what the effect is of this cuts is but at least you have to accept that some Firefox teams have received cuts and li…

From their message, it's not clear to me how COVID-19 is to blame for the layoffs. Especially in Taiwan, since Taiwan has been among the best in the world[1] at handling the pandemic and is doing relatively well. Did Google reduce their payments in the new search deal because people search less when they work remotely due to COVID-19? Did Mozilla reduce investment in tooling because developers' need for tools is redu…

I think what they're referring to is that COVID has damaged the advertising industry from which Mozilla receive royalties but in fact the problem is much more likely to be that only a small minority continue to use Firefox.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#35

Post by benfrancis »

detaro wrote: post #7

Maybe 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 t…

To answer your question, the goal of the WebThings platform as a whole is to improve interoperability between connected devices by making the Web of Things a unifying application layer for the Internet of Things which bridges together multiple underlying IoT protocols. The goal of the WebThings Gateway is to allow users to directly monitor and control their homes over the web, without a middleman. Building a smart home gateway just happens to be the most obvious way to achieve the latter in a way that demonstrates the benefits of the former, whilst maximising compatibility with existing smart home devices.

I agree with your observations on the traps W3C Working Groups can fall into, though it's not fair to say the Working Group tied the standard to a particular gateway project. There are multiple implementations of the Web of Things (e.g. see ThingWeb http://www.thingweb.io/) targeting a range of different use cases spanning different application domains like smart homes, smart cities and industrial applications. WebThings itself has a framework of libraries to help device makers build web things using a dozen different programming languages which have no dependency on the gateway. I acknowledge that there is a bit of a risk in implementing a smart home gateway of making the gateway itself the platform, rather than the Web of Things, and that's something I was very conscious of when designing the WebThings Gateway.

Something I think might help make the Web of Things approach more clear might be to create a general purpose Web of Things client/browser (e.g. a mobile app) which isn't tied to a gateway and can communicate directly with any web thing over the internet. Unfortunately with the current Thing Description specification this level of ad-hoc interoperability isn't possible, which is one of the reasons I created the Web Thing Protocol Community Group (https://www.w3.org/community/web-thing-protocol/), to standardise a more concrete (sub-)protocol for the Web of Things such that any WoT client can communicate with any WoT device.

It was by creating an implementation-driven defacto standard of sorts with Mozilla's Web Thing API (https://iot.mozilla.org/wot/) that Mozilla managed to drive a lot of simplifications to the W3C Thing Description standard, including dialling down the dependencies on RDF and semantic web technologies in favour of a more pragmatic default plain JSON serialisation. I hope that can continue by demonstrating traction with developers using the Web Thing Protocol in their real world IoT applications.

I acknowledge that WebThings has at times lacked an obvious direction and has not yet achieved mainstream mindshare, but I'm hopeful that things might be different outside the constraints and politics of a not-for-profit browser company.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#36

Post by baybal2 »

rvz wrote: post #32
detaro wrote: post #7

Maybe 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 t…

In other words another Mozilla project failure. It seems like they still have no clue how lucky they are to have the Rust Programming Language and yet they still really cannot create any revenue outside of their contract with Google. Without it, Mozilla would cease to exist. That's the actual reality of open-source. It is funded by the same companies that oppose privacy - contradicting Mozilla's mission.

> Without it, Mozilla would cease to exist.

Mozilla existed just fine without Google, and it was long before Mozilla Corporation was a thing when Firefox was steamrolling the IE.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#37

Post by [deleted] »

hellcow wrote: post #21
atonse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple’s HomeKit Is another ecosystem that doesn’t spy on you. It’s the main reason I picked it even though there are fewer, more expensive devices to choose from.

Helpful reminder that Apple still cooperates with the FBI [0]. They famously participated in PRISM and only pivoted to privacy-based marketing after this bad PR. It's also closed-source, so you have absolutely no idea that what you've said is true; they've certainly lied about it before. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

[deleted]

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#38

Post by floatingatoll »

calpaterson wrote: post #25
dralley wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only parts of Servo that could realistically be ported into Gecko within the next couple of years have already been ported. Servo's DOM engine would be the last major remaining piece, but that would be a very, very long-term project. According to your link, developer tools and internal tooling/infrastructure teams took a cut. The effects will mostly be indirect.

Internal tooling and infrastructure teams that work on Firefox are still Firefox teams though. If you work on the build pipeline you still count as a Firefox development in my book.

Are DNS and email both components of the build pipeline, in your view?

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#39

Post by ygjb »

baybal2 wrote: post #36
rvz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words another Mozilla project failure. It seems like they still have no clue how lucky they are to have the Rust Programming Language and yet they still really cannot create any revenue outside of their contract with Google. Without it, Mozilla would cease to exist. That's the actual reality of open-source. It is funded by the same companies that oppose privacy - contradicting Mozilla's mission.

> Without it, Mozilla would cease to exist. Mozilla existed just fine without Google, and it was long before Mozilla Corporation was a thing when Firefox was steamrolling the IE.

And I routinely placed in track races when I was a teenager, but funny how that doesn't help me with running as a middle aged overweight guy.

I love the Mozilla mission, and worked at Mozilla for several years as both an IC and Manager, but the current Mozilla leadership, and Mozilla fan base need to stop pining for the old days, and figure out a clear, sustainable path forward.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Mozilla earning money through their Google contract, but if the Mozilla mission is going to persist beyond the short term, they desperately need both revenue diversification, and a new, high-impact project that will buy them relevance in a market where the influence that Firefox has is waning.

Although this is a bit of a downer comment, I really do believe that is important that they are successful in this, and winding down investment in low-impact, low-relevance projects like WebThings in a way that preserves them for the community is a great step forward.

Re: Update on Mozilla WebThings

#40

Post by baybal2 »

detaro wrote: post #7

Maybe 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 t…

Having tried 10+ "IOT Frameworks," and still had to write our own because none of them managed to even boot on the most beefy MCU on the market without extra RAM.

Another example of something begging for a question "Do these people ever use their own software?"

Post reply on HN