Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess we're not understanding each other. My point is that Mozilla's development of Firefox is no longer user-driven. Instead it's about what Mozilla thinks users should want, and they can take it or leave it, and if it helps Mozilla make money, users should want it. Despite vocal and repeated requests and complaints, Mozilla refuses to back down and remove things that users did not ask for and do not want; instead…
> where is the built-in Facebook plugin? Years ago Facebook Messenger was actually built into Firefox. I remember using it myself, but have no idea what's become of that effort since then. See https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th... > Where's the built-in Netflix extension? Users demanding Netflix support is literally the reason why Mozilla was strongarmed into adding support for EME, despite…
Yes, I remember. Another example of CADT-style development.
> Users demanding Netflix support is literally the reason why Mozilla was strongarmed into adding support for EME, despite trying to hold out against it for so long.
EME is about more than just Netflix, though, and I was referring to site-specific support, just like the Pocket support only works with Pocket. As I wrote on the mozilla-governance list, what should have been done instead is to define and implement a save-for-later API (which could be built-in to the Firefox Places/bookmarks/etc API), which Pocket could then add support for on its end, and then users could choose to sync with a save-for-later API provider.
> Click in the search box, type a query, and at the bottom of the suggestions dropdown you'll see that Amazon is one of the search engines supported out-of-the-box. I actually use this fairly regularly.
Yes, I know how the search engines work, thanks; I've been using Firefox since at least Phoenix 0.6. Again, that is not the same thing. The search engine API is a standard that is used by many web sites to let their site-specific engines get added to the list. In contrast, the Pocket support only works with Pocket. An analogy would be if Mozilla added an Amazon-only sidebar that integrated Amazon.com logins and shopping lists and order status, etc. They aren't doing that, so they shouldn't have done it with Pocket, either.
> This why I find it extremely unlikely that someone "cut a deal", because Mozilla would want people to know that they're succeeding at the task of finding alternate revenue streams.
Now that is an interesting point, and thanks for sharing that. However, I'm still skeptical, because, again, we still have not heard an actual explanation for why Pocket was added, other than vague "it helps people save stuff, and people want to save stuff [even though they could already do that]."
There must have been some kind of inside deal. If not, what other explanation is there? Mozilla added Pocket support suddenly, without any community input, going against established Mozilla policy regarding features being in addons. Mozilla has shown a pattern of removing features and leaving the community to reimplement them in addons, yet here it does the opposite, and for a proprietary service! And it has ignored repeated requests for an explanation of the real reason.
So some kind of secret, inside deal is the only answer I can see. If it wasn't for money, it must have been for something. If you are in fact right that they would want people to know about a deal for money, then what does that suggest? Why would it need to be kept secret? What is going on here?
Whatever the real story, the way they are handling it undermines trust.