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Comment by twelvechairs | Hacker News Reader

They say 'internet' rather than 'web' but Mozilla's recent direction seems very heavily web-only oriented to me (FirefoxOS, Persona and basically concluding Thunderbird). Are they actively working on anything serious which is not web-based?

(Not to put them down. I love Mozilla and what they have done for all of us. Just curious as to their direction)

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Do you have any suggestions for internet problems or projects that could use more attention? The question of "web versus internet" seems pedantic at first, but it is a thought-provoking. Privacy tools like Tor come to mind.

Rust?

Good point. But its not strictly 'internet' is it?

Rust seems more like a tool, a means to an end, rather than a product.

The web is the universal language that the internet speaks. Whatever you do, the web is likely the output channel.

Incorrect. TCP/IP is the universal language that the Internet speaks.

HTTP merely rides on top of it...just like SMTP, FTP, SSH, IMAP, DHCP, POP3, IRC and BitTorrent.

Take a look here - http://www.sandvine.com/downloads/documents/Phenomena_2H_201...

"Web browsing" is only one piece of the pie - far from universal.

Incorrect. IP is the universal language that the Internet speaks. Technically.

That was included in my answer. Technically :)

Your answer explains well why so many people in this thread do not understand the Mozilla mission very well.

Mozilla sees the Internet not as a bunch of bits and bytes and protocols but instead as an integral part of people's lives. As a way to enrich people's lives, to enable innovation, to give people opportunities, to let people communicate.

Sure Mozilla contributes heavily on the technical side in many forms. But, the real value, and this is outlined very well in the mission statement, is about empowering people.

And the single biggest channel for that is the open web. Hence the large focus on web technology.

TCP/IP in itself does not provide any value. It is just a transport. Web technology does all the interesting things, this is why I dare to call it the universal language that the internet speaks.

> And the single biggest channel for that is the open web.

No, streamed or buffered audio and video are the biggest channel for that. Look at the report that I posted.

> Web technology does all the interesting things...

My full, un-sandboxed operating system does all the interesting things... Web technology is just a kludge that runs on top of that.

The Web is for things like Facebook. Operating systems and TCP/IP are for things like Rasberry Pi monitoring and controlling my solar panel array.

All of the popular full, un-sandboxed operating systems for end-users are proprietary. No, desktop GNU/Linux doesn't count. The only non-proprietary platform that has sewrious user market-share and developer mind-share is the Web platform. Therefore, as much as it may disgust us from a technical/aesthetic point of view, advancing the open Web platform is the best way to achieve certain highly desirable social/political goals.

And by "all of the popular full, un-sandboxed operating systems for end-users" you mean the one that isn't sandboxed, Windows? because, technically even just the popular part could mean only Windows, but the addition of un-sandboxed further cements that because OS X sandboxes things a bunch now.

What do you actually mean by the 'open Web platform'?

>> And the single biggest channel for that is the open web.

>No, streamed or buffered audio and video are the biggest channel for that.

Video may take up enormous amounts of bandwidth, but the information density is very low. And it's unclear whether the time spent watching video is anywhere close to the time spent reading text, looking at pictures or navigating the links of the Web. And buffered video is delivered over HTTP...

Anyway, this pedantry is tiring, st3fan has a valid point. TCP/IP is necessary, but not sufficient. It is the combination of Web technologies (TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, etc) that is driving so much of the innovation of the past 15 years. Could the Raspberry Pi have been the success it is today without the visibility afforded by the Web? I doubt it.

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