Mozilla very well could change their focus and compete in that space, but a newcomer without any entrenched ideas would be better off. So would a big company with the resources to spin off and fund a relatively independent branch to work in IoT.

Mozilla's only big success has been Firefox. Firefox succeeded because it was competing in a market with only one other player, and that player wasn't innovating at all.

Now the browser market is different and firefox remains popular because of free software nerds, people who like its customization power (something that Mozilla is risking with its recent changes to addons, although it looks like they're treading carefully), and people who switched to it from internet explorer because their kids told them to and don't care to use Chrome.

Mozilla is good at disrupting, including both developing a superior product and getting people to care about it, but they're bad at... basically everything else, business wise. Like any organization they can get better, but doing so would require a level of change that might ultimately just make them less good at what they are good at. It seems that's what they're trying to do, and it seems that's what's happening.

gkoberger's toplevel comment[1] might offer a good opportunity. They started down this path with personas, but then abandoned it when they couldn't make developers care about it. Maybe they've lost their touch.

It pains me to say it, since they've done so much good for the things I care about, but Mozilla's time might be ending.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698997