Mozilla Will Stop Developing and Selling Firefox OS Smartphones

That's my impression as well. A friend and I created a pastebin as a fun weekend project this weekend (https://www.pastery.net/) and we used Persona for auth, since it's so damn convenient. The only problem is that it loads a bunch of files on every request, and my questions about lazy-loading went unanswered.

I really wish Mozilla would change their mind and start developing this again. It feels like they expected all major websites to support it on the first year, and, when that didn't happen, they decided to drop it.

I use Seamonkey because it has sane UI interface elements like "buttons+text" that are actually larger than 15 pixels so that I can click on them without having to exactly aim my mouse on a tiny little button. My guess is that every Firefox developer still runs a 2007 Asus eeebook with a 7" screen. I got more pixels than I care to count, so I just want a UI that scales in proportion with the screen.

Just one example why Seamonkey is important (for me at least).

Opera was the only browser that would run acceptably on my even-then-way-old 16 MB-RAM machine back in 2000.

I'll argue there was a later screw-up on the desktop browser (and really mobile too): Unite sucked resources from much for a long while, failure to tackle some of the technical debt (things that manifested itself such as the integer maths used for percentage values in CSS, contrary to every other browser out there, and that went unchanged as layouts became increasingly complex and the web relied ever more heavily on CSS), and in later years general lack of investment (while Opera was posting record profits on a quarterly basis) in Presto leading it to fall further and further behind the competition causing ever worsening site-compatibility issues.

That's not very useful. I think you mean to link to this:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

I'm going to get voted down by those who don't like dissent or opinions that they fear are "offensive" (and certainly they probably won't participate in the discussion or even attempt to answer the issues I raise!), but here is why I asked the question:

Basically, I just don't see that Mozilla is actually doing anything terribly innovative any more. Certainly anything that seems to support their manifesto is dumped when it seems to get a bit hard. I'm specifically looking at the following:

1. Persona: Persona specifically fits into "build and enable open-source technologies and communities that support the Manifesto’s principles" and also "promote models for creating economic value for the public benefit".

They just didn't support it very well, or for long enough to make an impact. An identity service needs Facebook-like periods to make it work - Facebook took a LONG time to get to where it was an complete persistence of vision against pretty much overwhelming odds.

Ultimately, that Personna failed was because Mozilla didn't have courage and weren't willing to run with something they truly believe in. IMO, the heads of Mozilla have no real grit and only go for short to medium term goals.

2. Allowing EME to be implemented in Firefox. EME should only ever have been an extension, and not baked into the core Firefox platform. EME does not fit into point 2 of their manifesto:

  2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.

Here is an opinionated view of Mozilla initiatives:

* Rust - this is important and long-term. But it handles the underlying development of their browser, and as important as it is, it only goes so far in really making a big impact on promoting an open web

* Personna - abandoned, but this would have been a key way of opening the web. A secure, cross-browser website authentication mechanism which allows a user to use a single username and password (or other authentication method) to log in to multiple sites - I just can't think of a more important initiative.

That this was abandoned shows the sort of short term mentality of those leading Mozilla.

* Mozilla Location Service - interesting idea, but there are privacy concerns - they sell the underlying data to Combain AB, and Combain allow you to search on all sorts of things. I don't see how this helps Mozilla's underlying foundational principles!

* The MDN - now this is truly great, and does satisfy all the points of the manifesto. I hope that Mozilla keep this up!

* Firefox OS - now abandoned, but this was truly something that was needed in a market that is more and more proprietary. Evidently Mozilla have no stomach for keeping a project going for more than 2-3 years; there is no medium or long-term commitment.

So, given that Mozilla largely don't seem to want to do anything that they will commit to in the medium to long term (with a few exceptions, though these are already established) I have to ask: what is the point of Mozilla?

All the things Mozilla now promote (like the ad-blocker in iOS, which their own browser can't even use) seem like things that aren't very ambitious; certainly they won't change the world!