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 filled no real need, and nobody wanted it.
For Mozilla to stay alive, they need to pick a space that is currently desperately needed but being ignored by large corporations and the government: privacy and identity. Mozilla could be the champion of the Snowden era, yet instead they're distracting themselves with IoT, VR and other shiny new toys.
(And yes, I realize that users don't care about privacy. But nobody cared about web standards, either: it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength.)
Mozilla is a non-profit with a mission (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/). It's time they start acting like one again.
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.
Re: privacy / security, I really wish they hadn't dropped Thunderbird.
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.
In the internet-landscape, Mozilla is the one that tries to intervene on the user's behalf against commercial interests. Maybe they thought they could do the same for the much more competitive mobile market.
The bigger problem i think is that Mozilla didn't make a phone that appealed to influencers - the high tech crowd similar to the early adopters for Firefox. Instead they tried to go for the emerging markets that was already well served by other alternatives, and who aren't ideal early adopters. From what i saw the user experience and quality of their Platform wasn't top notch either (and html apps still suck in 2015).
Ubuntu was on the right track with Ubuntu Edge (the Indiegogo campaign showed that there was definitely a demand for it), but they set their goals too high and since then they seem to be dragging their feet in getting into the market.
On Android you can install a custom launcher to get rid of that annoying Google Search bar, you can replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo's app, you can install Firefox for Android on it and completely replace Chrome, you can install apps from third party sources like F-Droid or Amazon's Appstore. In Marshmallow the previously broken permissions system has been finally redesigned. Chrome for Android is pretty cool lately, as it also does push notifications, the app manifest and it does a much better job for making web apps first class citizens than Safari on iOS or Firefox on Android or whatever Opera is doing. You can actually run Facebook in your Android browser now and pretend that it's a native app.
And Android is also open source, I mean yes, while it's dependent on Google's Play services, like for push notifications or its location services, those can be replaced and Android is very much fork-able. Hey, Amazon did it.
Ubuntu was doomed from the start and Android is light years away from its competition imho. I mean, experiments are cool, but if your mobile OS is less usable than Android from 5 years ago, that's a failed experiment.
"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).
If there was to be any market interest, I thought their targeting and marketing efforts like this were pretty spot-on.
The feedback I received from the people that tested the platform development wise was that they had not built it yet.
So that explains the lack of marketing.
Android ... 81.2%
iOS ... 15.8%
Windows Phone ... 2.2%
Others ... 0.8%
Android ... 82.6%
iOS ... 14.1%
Windows Phone ... 2.3%
Others ... 0.9%
@downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its own
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.
Firefox OS seems to be something between Android and IOS. They are trying to solve all the problems of those two but on the end are just average. Just another OS that really looks like Android for regular user.
Redesign everything and rethink the basics - go the way Windows Phone went, but with open environment and much more developer friendly space. Widnows Phone is an amazing piece of UIX and with great ideas, but it failed regarding supporting developers and making its store user friendly. This is where Firefox should aim, not another "better" version of something everyone knows to well.
Plasma Mobile has the right idea. Build the platform, let communities form around the layers above it (and below it) and just try to get people working together on one goal (especially since all these mobile OS projects are all using Qt, all using Wayland, all using Linux). Lets just hope the KDE guys don't vaporware this one like Plasma Active, it sure would be lovely if Unity 8 got rebased on top of it, and used xdg-app like the community is pushing towards. Firefox could even get in on it as the default browser with great integrated webapp support.
Checked the ebay listings again, there are a few sellers from Australia, the USA but seems like the ZTE listing is gone.
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 the open, it is quite easy for the user to disable and strip out rent extraction code.
And yes your right about Mozilla being distracted. And sadly they are not alone. The whole FOSS world seem hell bent on wasting energy doing all kinds of shiny projects and social outreach.
I'm tempted to call it the curse of SXSW.
> 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.
And there is also the issue that if your app is just the web page, it is either universal and thus crap on all devices, or highly customized for each platform at which point it would be easier and less messy just to write it natively.
"it's all about packaging. That's Mozilla's strength."
On this we start to deviate. I think its all about platform. And you only get mainstream users on your platform if its awesome in the "mainly used" ways.
Its like the difference between a doctorate of psychology vs medicine. With one you can help people who really want to be helped, the other, you can give someone a flu shot and they are treated.
They have a real chance if they ride the social justice and progressivism train, though. It's hot and unlike privacy, people care about it a lot. They've already set the precedent with the Eich controversy. They just need to double down and start promoting it better. Take initiative instead of being reactive. Not too hard when the organizations you're up against are gigantic multi-billion-dollar companies who can't afford to fire every conservative employee, not comply with government regulations their audience views negatively, or kowtow too hard to diversity for fear of angering the technolibertarians.
Notice that last part about downloading? That's the key. We could download Phoenix, and run it. I can't download FirefoxOS, and run it. My devices are locked to what they can run. If mobile appliances were like personal computers, then a Phoenix could rise. But it's a completely different situation, so there is no way to compete like you could with web browsers.
It's not ideal, as the integration points don't appear to be fully worked out and it doesn't always perform very well, but I'm sure it could be turned into essentially a downloadable FirefoxOS as a hook to try to get people to get a native device next time, if some development effort was available.
I actually always liked the idea of a FirefoxOS. Linux style operating system alternatives could need a proper fucking GUI and general average-user-oriented design. Firefox is amazing at that for a non-profit, they could actually pull it off.
It's based on HTML5, but because of how webrtc has to punch through firewalls, it uses one of their partners to initiate the connection (Telefonica?). After that it's mostly peer to peer.
In general, users don't want any ads at all showing in their browser.
They don't want them as part of web pages, they don't want them embedded in videos, and they surely don't want them as part of the browser itself!
This should have been obvious given the popularity of various ad-blocking extensions for Firefox.
Going against the obvious wishes of a product's users is something that's deserving of criticism.
It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web developers in the world compared to the number of (in this example) embedded rtos UI C/C++ developers. However, on resource-constrained platforms (as phones tend to be, since they are battery-powered) it's really hard and requires brilliant developers to be able to build web-based UIs that can compete in performance with non-web-based UIs built by (in comparison) not-so-brilliant developers.
And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa. The first time I saw that I just laughed out loud, to be honest.
They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money. Those sponsored tiles introduced in Firefox last year? Opera did that in 2008/2009-ish. (Not to mention the concept of a graphical speed dial on the new tab page itself...) That Google search field to the right of the URL field? Opera pioneered that business model in 2001 - followed by Mozilla and Apple half a decade later. Sorry, I get carried away. :D
Having been there (ex mozillian, lots of time spent on FFOS), I wouldn't characterize it like this. The leaders of the project were two engineers, not a pointy hair on their heads (at least at first).
There were certainly plenty of us who felt like trying to cram this much into a low-end device was insanity (when was the last time you saw any web browser use under 128mb of ram?), and we definitely raised this objection. I feel like the pathology I observed was more planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else (I'd certainly be the last to claim that I've never been guilty of that).
There's also another fallacy that I don't have a name for, which is basically "this is the only (way we see how) to do it, so we're going to make it work." That is, it was hard to imagine a FFOS device competing with a high-end device, so they decided to focus on the low end. That's the only way we can do it, so we'll make it work. But that causes you to perhaps lose sight of the real question: "can we make it work?"
It's not clear to me whether FFOS would have had a shot if not for the focus on low-end hardware. Having been there, I feel like the architecture itself was really hard to program against. Bugs that should have been easy -- "make sure the alarm clock actually goes off", "don't leak apps" -- required lots of specialized knowledge and time to fix. But certainly a lot of time was also spent on performance/memory optimization.
Just my two cents. A lot of smart people worked hard on this project for many years, and there were many impressive technical accomplishments along the way. Look up Nuwa if you're interested; that shit is nuts.
> They actually have a time-honored tradition of following in the footsteps of Opera when it comes to ways of making money.
"Opera had it first" indeed. :)
planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else
So yes, Mozilla is simply a poorly ran organization.
I think it's worthwhile to remember at the time Firefox OS launched much of Android ran on the Dalvik VM, so it wasn't so clear cut that the approach was so doomed to fail.
The execution of the code, be it javascript on some modern engine or Java/Dalvik bytecode - that isn't typically the performance bottleneck. It is fast enough now.
I'm not an expert on this (this is where I thread on thin ice), but my understanding is that the HTML/CSS logdoc/layout tree model is inherently non-performant compared to a more traditional hierarchical windowed object oriented model. It is too easy to write HTML/CSS that is not performant (it's way too easy to accidentally cause performance issues), while it is a lot more natural to write performant windowing/OO code. And inversely, harder to write code that is not performant.
The problem is that the phones currently dominating the market in developed countries have native apps, with slick interfaces - enabled by mid to high end SoCs.
Trying to produce vaguely similar experiences with low-end SoCs is going to be very hard, even without the additional handicap of doing everything with web technologies.
If anything, the only way that could've worked in the current market is on ultra high-end phone hardware, and with a focus on privacy & security to attract the rich & technically savvy end of the market.
Started using Opera since ~2000 and really liked it. Really innovative (tabs, mouse gestures, download manager, ...) and fast! Even an email client was included :) !
But replaced it with Firefox by the time FF had tabs and was fast enough, due to 'trust/privacy' reasons. For the same reasons I do not use chrome.
And if FF keeps disappointing me and Opera gains trust I can imagine a switch :) (hmmh, but how if closed source?)
To his credit, Jon a year later championed that Opera Mini needed to be free/without "in your face ads" in the critical first couple of years. This allowed it to reach 250+ million monthly actives (it still has that!). And we did came up with really lucrative monetization models later on that worked without sacrificing the user experience.
Thank you - I didn't know about this.
In terms of regular users, there are tons of dirt cheap chinese no-name android devices that more or less work. For 100 euros, you can get an acceptable Android phone from a major manufacturer (LG, etc). FirefoxOS was competing in a similar price range, however offered much less to the end user. I guess it's fair to say that it didn't deliver any extra value.
When I was using FirefoxOS and poking around the code base, I saw potential in their web-first platform as an introduction to programming. It's much easier to write some basic HTML, CSS and JS than to figure how to do the equivalent in Java for Android, etc.
However, things like ionic or phonegap and reasonably good, and it's hard to compete with them as they produce something fairly acceptable and available to run on the vast majority of the smartphones.
At the end of the day, I really appreciate Mozilla's work on this project. Thanks to all the volunteers who contributed to the project. You are amazing people :)
- "WebMaker", whatever that does.
- Rust.
- The $60 Mozilla hoodie.
- Their world tour of meetups.[1]
- The really fancy headquarters overlooking SF bay.
A tight focus on Firefox might be a win. I'm looking forward to an all-Rust browser.
I do not begrudge high their salaries in the slightest, but I can't help but think bringing on folks with half the salary of the above employees would buy enough coders to do more innovation, which they really need. The Technical Lead in 2013 got $179,000 (the job is not listed in the financials in 2014).
The those three top job cost the equivalent of 20% of the Foundations revenue in the 2014 year ($13.5 million, more or less evenly split between donations and "program service revenue").
[0] Year end 2013 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2013_Mozilla_Found...
[1] Year end 2014 Financials: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...
Edit: revised 2014 figures higher as I was not looking at total compensation.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3009646/search/mozilla-...
You state that as if it's a bad thing. It's the best news I heard in years! Firefox could certainly use more engineering resources especially with the recently extended platform coverage (iOS).
The hedge failed, so Mozilla is in a tricky situation that it can be kicked out of the mobile ecosystem entirely by its competitors.
I think that Firefox OS as a phone operating system will always be available for hackers to port and install on their own devices.
But is also almost entirely vapour.
Seeing this news gave me relief that Mozilla might be pulling their heads out of the clouds chasing fantastical dreams of mobile platforms, but if anything IoT is worse!
I work for an M2M company whose been around for 25 years now, in some form or another. M2M is the backbone of IoT and while it isn't as glamorous, it's a large space. Industrial gases, especially helium, are very lucrative right now.
Mobile was already mature with a well entrenched duopoly when FFOS began. IoT is still up for grabs.
I think that platforms with a thriving ecosystem in other markets have an advantage over Firefox OS, and Firefox OS doesn't offer any compelling advantages over, say, Linux (since at the kernel level, that's what it IS) to offset that disadvantage.
As a person that runs FirefoxOS on my main phone (LG Nexus 5 running FFOS v2.5), this sucks to hear. I used to own a Flame which was the developer reference phone and basically the best ffos phone you could buy except the fx0 which is for sale only with contract in japan (or very very expensively otherwise), and it was pretty good phone, and got better with every update.
However, as far as FirefoxOS (aka b2g/boot2gecko) itself goes, it's open source, so it's got a life of it's own (though it may be significantly less contributed to from now on) -- and I'm totally OK with that. I will continue to run FirefoxOS because it still does the things it should (makes calls, text messages, use apps) -- and can be (relatively) easily ported to existing phones (some flagships).
Sad day, but also kind of fine, because they did what they set out to do, and I'm running this OS on my phone, and it's verifiably not garbage (I think it's great). Looking forward to a leaner, meaner, faster Firefox on my desktop -- I'll be getting my hands dirty with FFOS on my phone in the meantime.
Did not expect that Sailfish OS would outlive Firefox OS.
Not one of these camps alone can come close to Android. If they had worked together - Firefox, Sailfish, Ubuntu, and Plasma, even WebOS - we may not have the defeated corpses of a dozen half baked dreams but instead have a common phone platform that were truly open and community driven.
As it is, the only way to compete with Android is with a better software stack (the ADK and bionic / surfaceflinger stack is awful hacked togther crap, and Linux / Wayland / QT promise to be way better if they ever ship a marketable result) and an open governance model. And what about Tizen? It exists, it is even shipping on a few devices, and you can contribute upstream patches, albeit with the same kind of bullshit copyright assignment that Ubuntu and the FSF use. Why exactly aren't we supporting that platform? Because we aren't the rulers? If its open we can fork it, and its mostly GPL so nobody can close it off again.
I still think Plasma Mobile might be the salvation. Outside of the kiddish Gnome vs KDE trolls (nobody working on either project actually engages in that crap, since both projects share protocols to inter-operate most of the time via freedesktop standards) everyone should be able to get behind that as the base to put Unity 8 / Firefox / whatever Sailfish's shell is on top, plus if Shashlik ever works you get Android apps, which are pretty much required.
And for Mozilla this may mean more resources spent into Firefox for Android, a mobile browser that is turning out to be the browser of choice for power users due to its extensions, an awesome browser that could use some love from Mozilla as it's lagging behind Chrome in terms of standards relevant for mobiles (e.g. push notifications, app manifest). And Firefox on the desktop needs some love as well. The multiprocess support is almost there, except for a list of bugs that keep delaying it.
Mozilla has many things on its plate. Firefox OS is a cool experiment, but it didn't work, so time to move on.
Exactly the thing Mozilla should do - focus on Firefox and maybe even continue to invest in making Thunderbird better. There are a lot of reasons why that approach is more likely to succeed.
If there had of been a way to install Firefox OS on an iPhone or Android phone, I would have certainly tried it out. Mozilla really needed to target power users, but it was just too hard to get hold of the hardware - both hardware availability and the stupid state of carrier contracts are to blame here.
I don't know that Mozilla's business model works if they are not bundling their software to a licensed phone, but it's a shame that the mobile platforms can't be opened up the same way desktops are.
Currently mobile hardware is in a space where the OS has to be custom built for the hardware choices of that particular phone manufacturer, unlike PCs which have a robust system of drivers you have some manner of control over as a user. Seems to be the biggest limitation.
Having web pages as native apps goes back to Web Widgets on Series 60 phones, followed by WebOS.
On the Series 60, almost everyone favoured native Symbian and J2ME apps to web widgets.
WebOS sadly failed to gain major traction.
Windows Phone and Android devices can be obtained by fairly low prices and have the advantage of native apps, Webviews besides the browser. On Windows Phone the WinRT is exposed to packaged web apps.
So although I respect their efforts, I never really understood the effort, given that they were under the same OEM constraints as Android and the reviews of the available devices weren't that great.
Mean while, Firefox isn't getting that much better and seems to be loosing marketshare.
What's the long-term plan?
Agreed, it seems like they're rapidly running out of options. It's getting a little concerning.
There is a space there for another OS that you can put on your non-iphone. I just don't think that's Mozilla's space to fill. Really, in all practicality, this is a space Microsoft needs to fill. It's almost like the world is waiting for them to step it up. Their new open source strategy is going to produce some big plays along these lines; .net in particular. Think about the native and multi-arch work being done for it.. ARM for Windows10 and .net; where is it all going you think?
I can tell you that if I could load up Windows10 on my nexus5 even if just for a test drive I certainly would.
Chromebooks already run Linux when so coerced, and are the most bulletproof computing platform for education and business. What could be special about the FirefoxBook?
Perhaps, instead of expending that much effort to engineer a new tablet entirely from scratch, find an Android tablet and put a Mozilla sticker on it.
With a tablet I would at least have a good browser, which would cover most of my idle browsing. And if there is something I absolutely must do on Android then worst case is I pull out my phone and use that instead.
I signed up for the contribution program, received a tablet, built and ran updates on it, participated in Discourse discussions and wanted to do more. Sadly, builds started breaking, they weren't attended to, and the program died a slow death.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Firefox OS is over. It means that it's over on the phone but it might move to those "connected devices". I bet Mozilla will release a more precise statement soon.
1) Without FirefoxOS, what is Mozilla's future on mobile devices? The Firefox browser, while I think it's great, has very low adoption on mobiles. I'm not sure content-blockers are enough, and they now need the platform owner's cooperation to get their product in front of users (i.e., to get into the app store and to be compatible with the user systems).
2) Without a future on mobile devices, what is Mozilla's future? How influential can they be while playing no role on the most popular Internet platform?
3) Without a player on mobile devices, what is the future of open platforms in general? On the desktop there are several mature operating systems and ecosystems but what is there on mobile? Can open platforms be relevant without a presence on mobile? Where are the BSDs for mobile? GNU tools? Vim?
There are Android forks, but they depend on the continued generosity of the market leader (to release AOSP, a version of Android designed for that purpose). And having looked around for a good option, I can report that the various forks are unambitious, provide little to differentiate themselves from Android, and their organization and support don't inspire confidence.
Sad to hear this news. I wanted to move away from Android and iOS, and saw FFOS as the only viable option.
They should've mass produced whatever the developer phone was, the Flame I think? Sell it to consumers as a flagship, supported by Mozilla devs, and community devs...
Though they aren't quite saying that, I guess there'll be no new Firefox OS Smart TV's, too? http://www.techradar.com/news/television/6-best-smart-tv-pla...
Something like this could have been the future if Webassembly was ready for prime time - you could have 'native' apps all running on top on Firefox, on top of the Android/CM base.
Anyhow, hopefully Mozilla refocuses their efforts on Firefox, Rust and Webassembly, and regain relevance.
I wonder what a third player in the mobile OS market would look like and if it's even possible at this point. Microsoft is basically number 3 at this point, right? Yet they have so little market share that companies are activity leaving their marketplace.
I wonder if the next mobile OS isn't an OS that requires apps to survive but, instead, offers a crazy amount of integration experiences. For instance if someone came up with a way to unify how to call a car then integrate that directly into the phone (so ultimately it wouldn't matter if it was Uber, Lyft or even yellow cab).
Maybe not the best example but I'm getting the feeling creating a phone that needs apps to be highly functional is simply not possible at this time and another angle is needed to break in.
Currently they are the only option to Android for those that cannot afford an iOS device, usually in countries where the majority go for pre-paid and average salaries are on the 1000 € or lower range.
But if the current trend continues, given the current Windows Phone 10 expectations, it might become a two horses race.
FirefoxOS: stopped.
Rust: as nice as the language is, I can see it become irrelevant in the rise of Swift (and tons of developers already using and praising it).
so the last thing that remains is the very core of mozilla: firefox. But then version 42 hit me, disabled the support for custom themes, leaving me alone with a crappy UI I can't stand any longer to the point I uninstalled Firefox forever.
As others have already mentioned: from several sessions of customer development out in the streets, I can confirm that privacy is something that no-one has really interest in, let alone pay a penny for it nowadays.
I'd love to know what Mozilla's vision of the future is, given that the points above are real and Firefox itself becomes more and more an awful "me too!" of other, better browsers.
How are Rust and Swift in the same language niche at all?
While I'm unhappy that Mozilla is not going to focus on Firefox OS smartphones, I do consider this as an experiment that organizations like Mozilla ought to do. I'm sure there were a lot of things accomplished (like some mentioned in the comments for phone APIs) and a lot of things learned. These will in turn help other initiatives.
Now, please put Thunderbird back on the development track with the same priority as Firefox. :) And while you're at it, we want Persona too! :)
Dear Mozilla, I hate IoT devices. I don't want them. They are security exploits incarnate. At least a phone is useful, why the hell do I really need a microwave with an IP address? I don't.
I'm disappointed, though. I looked forward to a more open phone built by an organization I trust. Google is barely OK. Apple is not even that. Microsoft is improving, but still out of the running in terms of openness.
As a smartphone OS, I don't see what problems Firefox OS solves. Both iOS and Android have great browsers, and can pin webapps to their homescreens.
It's not me, it's you. You were the symbol of informatics progress in the right direction, but now you're just another pusher of one size fits all crapware. Hope this changes again because we need a good guy in this space.
Now to finally remove the slow, crashing behemoth that has become Firefox...
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.
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.
They're having a developer conference so big announcements are concentrated.
Distribution of the OS was a reckless debacle and, from the perspective of a non-technical customer, fraud, if you ask me.
I desperately want to drop Android and was hoping Firefox OS would continue to mature and improve.
I guess the writing was on the wall of course -- but in case they just heard me and decided to stop it: please guys prioritize a native-UI on all platforms, servo based release for 2016.
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.
* 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!