Also why would you use Waterfox. It's like Firefox ESR, with a few changed settings and much slower security updates.
Taking something that works out of your product doesnt ever make people happy, and its never "the perfect use case" to remove features that work.
Its a "well that's ok that we wont take this on anymore and let those users manage their own problem" use case.
Of course scope creep adds a burden. It's one more thing Mozilla developers have to tend to.
I assume you work in tech, maybe even as a developer. So you know full well that every single unused line of code, let alone an entire feature, adds a maintenance, security, documentation and testing burden.
> and its never "the perfect use case" to remove features that work.
It absolutely is, if it makes those features better and gives them a focused place to develop outside of the core browser.
If you're so upset about it literally go and press one big blue "Add to firefox" button and have all the previous features, and more, back in under 10 seconds.
Mozilla's manifesto is just marketing now — it's obvious they don't really believe it any more.
And I'm not sure how that invalidates anything I said above, or really is of any relevance at all.
> Nobody did use them though. They belong in an extension, it's the perfect use case. [...] every single unused line of code, let alone an entire feature, adds a maintenance, security, documentation and testing burden.
And the same holds true for Pocket.
Pocket is used by people and is a feature Mozilla want to prominently integrate with Firefox. This is due to the financial gains they directly get when someone signs up for Pocket premium.
It's not an unused, dusty feature that's adding a burden to the platform and is a net time + money sink. It's something that makes them money.
As I said, in the comment you just replied to, even if nobody did use pocket then this would be a burden they are willing to take. So, comparing RSS feeds to pocket on the fact that it can be implemented as an extension alone is a nonsensical point.
You also have a discovery problem having to wade through multiple options increasing your surface area to malware exposure.
IIRC this isn’t even theoretical it’s happened with ones that replaced user style sheets, another “unused” feature that was gradually deprecated.
Maybe the best way forward is to take an apple iPhone approach and have official extensions, similar to the apps that come with the iPhone like the podcast one.
Then when these features are removed they are instead moved to an official extension. Thereby mitigating the security risk and alleviating the discovery problems.
The community can take over these extensions and you have a starting point to personally adapt and fork them that is a lot simpler and faster than trying to maintain a browser fork.
Further the browser maker can more directly see usage of these feature replacing extensions
And finally, when removing features ensure the extensions api has the power to support their replacement.
Waterfox preserves Live Bookmarks, doesn't do telemetry, was unaffected by expired certificate killing all addons (my FF mobile was affected so I basically had no mobile browser for a few days), among other reasons.
I know after a while I will be forced back to Chromified Firefox when development of Waterfox comes to an end, but at least for now, I can stretch out the moment of a non-Googly browser + Live Bookmarks a few more months or years like whats-her-name in Doctor Strange.