81–90 of 331 posts
Tried Firefox OS emulator and it's fine, but not impressed enough to actually to get a real device.
Yes they better focus on privacy/identity and revamp Thuderbird to make it a unique product.
Most of you are probably not aware that Opera Software (where I spent a decade on Opera Mini/Mobile) went down the same rabbit hole around 2002-2006, spending many many man-years building a web-based (pre-smartphone) phone UI platform using web technologies. The product name was "Opera Platform". Here are some screenshots: http://imgur.com/on4gHdi It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web d…
Thank you - I didn't know about this.
Not to mention rust, it's adoption is nowhere comparable to Java, see what happened to Sun, I would boldly say Mozilla's mission has completed.
Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
The difference with browsers was that improvements in the browser led to clear improvements in web browsing experience, which even the least technically minded could notice. What changes in privacy and identity are Mozilla going to pioneer that result in obvious benefits that those who don't know anything about these issues (i.e. the majority) will notice and clearly attribute to Mozilla's products? I really wish there were such things but I have yet to see any presented.
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I dunno. From what i am seeing, Apple and Google are busy rearranging UI deck chairs. The major problem of FirefoxOS though was trying to pitch the whole "everyone can (re)write apps" to a market that is all about user lock-in. Every OEM and carrier wants to be the landlord of the phone "owner", taking a bite out of everything the user does with the device. But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in t…
> But if every app is a web page, and all the code is out in > the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and > strip out rent extraction code. No. There should be more than a billion smartphones/tablets sold, what do you think is the ratio of those who can do what you told to those who have no idea? And what is the ratio of those who can willing to do it instead of just using the app? And there is also the i…
Good. I can't remember anyone other than Mozilla actually being excited about Firefox OS. It seemed like a massive sinkhole on the company's part that drew resources away from the development of the browser.
Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
Outside of hacker news, I haven't heard of Firefox OS even once. They had no marketing to speak of, and you have to complete HARD on marketing to get into that market. "If you build it they will come" isn't a valid benchmark when there's already two options with massive market share that consumers are more or less happy with. (Since it's talked about in some replies, I live in the US).
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Completely agree that they should turn their focus towards solving privacy and identity management. I'm hoping that this might mean they can direct some resources towards Persona development again. Or at least experiment with something new in this area.
I really agree on this. They should focus on a browser that respects privacy and email that respects privacy (perhaps by resuming Thunderbird development). On top of that, I'd argue IM + video/audio chat that respects privacy is something that desperately needs better solutions. I'd push software forward, and then innovate on protocols. Peer to peer might be the only way to achieve true privacy.
Although the market for centralized secure messaging is currently being served adequately by the likes of Signal and Telegram, centralized messaging platforms inevitably leak metadata.
I don't want to belittle the work done by teams that have already started work on distributed messaging platforms like Tox and Matrix (and my own proof-of-concept, Toc [1]), but Mozilla is in a much better position to tackle the problem of decentralized, private messaging that also has great UX, and not just in terms of sheer resources:
1) They have (or at least had) a decentralized identity management platform in Persona.
2) They have a decentralized, zero-knowledge data sync platform in Firefox Sync.
3) They have a lot of influence in the web standards community that they can leverage to push a new federated messaging protocol to succeed XMPP.
This is the kind of work that I think Mozilla should be doing, because they can do it better than anyone else who's willing (i.e. not for-profit corporations, because they have very little to gain by building decentralized apps and federated protocols that have no lock-in whatsoever).
[1] http://toc.im/
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"Pioneer"? Really? Is the bar so low now that embedding ads into the browser is considered innovative?
IIRC Opera had it years ago. Maybe even before there was Firefox.
Two days ago when Mozilla discontinues Thunderbird, people cheering "oh yeah, finally they can focus on firefoxOS", the same people are yelling Mozilla should focus on their mission (the browser)? Not to mention rust, it's adoption is nowhere comparable to Java, see what happened to Sun, I would boldly say Mozilla's mission has completed.
By that metric, no language produced in the past 10 years has been a success.