Mozilla Leadership Changes
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
Mitchell Baker's post - https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/24/a-return-to-found...
Brendan Eich's post - https://brendaneich.com/2014/03/mozilla-news/
-Cease copying Chrome's UI
-Comprehensive Bug / Security review focus cycle
-Slightly slower release schedule[achieved in part by the previous item]
"Leaving it up to the community" - we all know what that means. Even if it doesn't mean it though, what image does that leave? Sure, they use it as their internal auth system, but nobody outside mozilla cares about their internal auth.
Mozilla is in favour of the open web. An open web needs properly open third party authentication. They obviously know that since Persona does things right. It seems like, since it didn't gain the traction they wanted it (in my opinion due to bad marketing and bad prioritizing than anything else), they're just giving up.
While it might be nice to have from an ideological standpoint, in practice it just isn't of much value to enough people. This may not be pleasant to admit, but I do think that it's the reality.
Compare it to Firefox. Firefox proved to be a product that was useful to a lot of people, and it rapidly gained a comparatively large share of the market quite quickly.
Persona has been the opposite of that. Its adoption never took off, and there's nothing to suggest that it ever will. It just wouldn't make sense for Mozilla to waste more resources on a dead-end effort, especially when those resources could be put toward improving a product like Firefox, which is actually used by millions of people today.
Woah. Put those pink glasses away. Firefox took YEARS to become anything else than a toy browser in the eyes of even developers.
Firefox was released in 2002 (and let's not even count before it was actually "Firefox" and not the Mozilla browser). In 2005, IE still had almost 90% market share. In 2007, it still had almost 70% market share.
Chrome was the game changer, not Firefox. Firefox managed to stay around and slowly grind its way to 20ish % not because it was an exceptional browser, but because the alternatives were awful.
As long as they keep the search field separate I'll be happy, but it would be nice if they brought back the status bar.
Mozilla is staunch about seperating the Awesome Bar (which autocompletes locally) and the Search Bar.
I get that companies need insight about how users use their products. This is not an instance of that, because companies definitely don't need insight about which websites are visited.
Other than that, I don't like the idea of automatically sending my browser history to my search provider. To that end, I also immediately turn off phishing protection on all new installs.
[1]: http://blog.sidstamm.com/2012/02/malware-and-phishing-protec...
What I'm really saying is, if you think something is important enough to use any sort of a private-browsing mode? Spend the extra few seconds and open up Tor instead.
Everything else is the same boring noise everyone else generates. The more noise you put out, the less suspicious you look. Nothing says "this person leads a secret life" to the NSA better than having a blank "file" in their automated-dredging system. You want such a file to be full of mundane detail, such that your data doesn't have a different "shape" under traffic analysis than the average 16-year-old who makes public posts about their plans to hang out with their friends at the mall on Saturday.
It never occurs to me to do it until I see the error page, though; it's always a bit of a hassle.
Is it because you want Firefox to be distinct with its own aesthetic or that Chrome is ugly. I don't understand why people keep on bringing this up as if there is much in Chrome's UI to copy. Chrome UI is just tabs with a menu button to the right. And it is open source, a.k.a you may copy it if you will.
Chrome-style UIs are quite dumbed down and non-standard. Now, this might actually work tolerably for average or casual web users, or those with very tiny screens. But for other users, especially those who expect a lot from their browser and push it hard, this approach is just plain ineffective.
Chrome's single menu, for instance, is a total mess. A traditional menu bar and menu hierarchy is a much saner way of organizing functionality. Best of all, there's a lot of similarity between applications, which in turn makes them all easier to use.
Firefox used to have a UI that offered a good balance between not wasting space, while still making important functionality quick and easy to use. As they've copied Chrome's UI more and more the past few years, Firefox has become decreasingly useful for a lot of users.
Having to remedy these deficiencies using more and more add-ons with each release is getting increasingly tedious. The worst part, however, is that all of the major browser vendors have fallen into this let's-imitate-Chrome trap, so it's not like there's a viable alternative to switch to.
It's actually pretty slow. It doesn't matter if you have 29.1 and 29.2 at a 6-month interval. You will have to patch security fixes quickly and release urgent bug fixes like constant crash. The release cycle is pretty slow... And users actually expect to see more constant updates to ensure they are getting the latest bug-fixes.
Chrome on the other hand needs to slow down.
For any flourishing society, a broad spectrum of opinion is vital. But when you start attacking the underlying system that make that open society possible in the first place, you've crossed a bright and shining line.
After all, not everything is up for debate. Indeed, that's the whole point of having constitutionally protected rights. People are comfortable with the back and forth of democratic rule if - and only if - they know that their fundamental human rights and basic legal equality are beyond the reach of public debate.
Put that in play, and all bets are off.
Or not. In which case I'm prepared to change my views. But I'm not prepared to change my view about the 14th Amendment and the wisdom and decency of assuring basic legal equality for everyone. To my mind, that is an entirely settled issue. I'd no more go back on that than I'd tolerate a return to slavery (which, let's not forget, is the horrible error that necessitated the 14th in the first place).
But in any case, Thiel gives money not only to candidates of the Libertarian Party, but also (in fact, mainly) to the regular, anti-gay GOP. It could be that he hates gays. It could be that he doesn't, but just considers funding anti-gay propaganda to be acceptable collateral damage in a quest to promote the Republican Party's other positions. Either way, he's a much bigger problem in my mind than some small fry giving 4-figure amounts to them, because he's giving 6-figure amounts to the bigots, which they can use to promote bigotry.
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Regarding Thiel: I'm not defending the guy. I simply didn't realize how big a GOP supporter he really was. But now that I know, yeah, he can go die in a fire.
Political differences I can accept. Debates about the basic legal equality of one's fellow citizens are beyond the pale.
I agree that political differences are tolerable, but we must be speaking of political differences that respect the opponents' basic right to live. Neither libertarians nor fundamentalist Christians meet that standard. And to the extent that I have American friends who are denied healthcare because of these libertarian fucks, something that doesn't happen in civilized countries, I blame the startup scene for their tolerance of the antisocial libertarian assholes in their midst.
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While justifying it with the "15 countries with 4 operators and 4 device manufacturers"-style claims may sound good, in practice we don't really see much serious adoption.
It isn't even really competing with Microsoft's or BlackBerry's offerings at this point, and even they are significantly far behind Android and iOS when it comes to market share.
If Firefox OS were actively competing against Android and iOS, I could see it being called a "success". But at this point it's, at best, the fifth-place player, and realistically it's further down the list than that. There isn't much to indicate that it'll get much uptake, either. So all in all, that's not really impressive, I'm afraid to say. It surely should not be described as "successful".