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It looks like Mozilla is chasing tech buzzwords, but are always a few steps too far behind to actually do any impact. Why not focus on what they are doing best

by kbart 11y ago

It looks like Mozilla is chasing tech buzzwords, but are always a few steps too far behind to actually do any impact. Why not focus on what they are doing best (i.e. browser, email)? There's still plenty to do, Firefox keeps crashing both on my desktop PC and Android phone, now Thunderbird is abandoned. IoT market is full of big players with vast amount of resources and saturated not less (if not more) than smartphone market, I don't see how they gonna compete there. As for OSS, Linux is doing great and keeps doing better in IoT scene[0], why not merge efforts? I appreciate Mozilla's efforts, but lately it lacks focus and clear goals. Maybe some fresh blood would help? We will explore and prototype new use cases in the world of connected devices as an open source project with a clear focus on the user benefit and experience. ..yada yada, sounds like a buzzword filled marketing crap with no substance whatsoever[1]. 0. https://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/818011-embedded-linux-keeps-growing-amid-iot-disruption-says-study https://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/mobile-linux/8180... 1. https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/5/005/04f/263/04c1eb8.jpg https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/p/5/005/04f/263/04c1eb8.jpg

krisdol 11y ago
They focus a ton on the browser. I use chrome a lot less than Firefox and I still see chrome tab crashes more often. Spidermonkey performs amazingly today, and even beats V8 on its own benchmarks. FF used to be resource hungry, but now is a lot lighter on memory usage than chrome. Beyond current tech, they're investing heavily into Rust and Servo for the next generation, and their ES6/7 support has been steadily growing. By all measures, it's clear that they have goals on the browser and they take those goals seriously. What else can they do? Third party desktop mail clients are just not a killer feature for the vast majority of users. IoT may not be a winner for various reasons, but I'm sure it can't be easy trying to figure out where to go from here. (let's face it, IoT is going to be the same locked-down, vendor-specific experience that Internet tv has become; and without manufacturing a must-have device or buying out a manufacturer of one, why would Mozilla win in that field?)
- rapind 11y ago
  Rust and Servo are easily the most important things they're working on IMHO. And WebAssembly, which combined with Servo I hope will have a big impact on web UI development and performance.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  > Spidermonkey performs amazingly today, and even beats V8 on its own benchmarks. And yet somehow Firefox manages to run WebGL a lot worse than Chrome and Opera (Blink/V8 based browsers)...
wodenokoto 11y ago
Because what they're doing good - desktop browser and desktop mail client - are becoming more and more irrelevant. Browsing is quickly becoming a thing most people do on (only) their phone and email is for more and more something you do on the web. If Mozilla keeps focusing on these two aspects they will start to cater to a niche market and lose the ability to influence the Internet at large.
- r3bl 11y ago
  > [...] email is for more and more something you do on the web. Yeah, I would say that I agree with that, but about a month ago, I have joined a tech team of an NGO that works with a lot of sensitive data. Convincing them to use Enigmail with Thunderbird is hard. Convincing them to use Enigmail with Thunderbird even though you are not sure what will be the future of Thunderbird is just plain frustrating. And no, there's absolutely no alternative that could handle all three desktop OS's (Windows, Linux, OS X), attachments, and other things that are completely necessary to have a safe, encrypted communication. There's absolutely no alternative what so ever. I really wish that some cool project (like LibreOffice) takes over Thunderbird and makes it great, but the odds for that are practically non-existing.

by kbart 11y ago

krisdol 11y ago

They focus a ton on the browser. I use chrome a lot less than Firefox and I still see chrome tab crashes more often. Spidermonkey performs amazingly today, and even beats V8 on its own benchmarks. FF used to be resource hungry, but now is a lot lighter on memory usage than chrome. Beyond current tech, they're investing heavily into Rust and Servo for the next generation, and their ES6/7 support has been steadily growing. By all measures, it's clear that they have goals on the browser and they take those goals seriously. What else can they do? Third party desktop mail clients are just not a killer feature for the vast majority of users. IoT may not be a winner for various reasons, but I'm sure it can't be easy trying to figure out where to go from here. (let's face it, IoT is going to be the same locked-down, vendor-specific experience that Internet tv has become; and without manufacturing a must-have device or buying out a manufacturer of one, why would Mozilla win in that field?)

rapind 11y ago
Rust and Servo are easily the most important things they're working on IMHO. And WebAssembly, which combined with Servo I hope will have a big impact on web UI development and performance.
Mikeb85 11y ago
> Spidermonkey performs amazingly today, and even beats V8 on its own benchmarks. And yet somehow Firefox manages to run WebGL a lot worse than Chrome and Opera (Blink/V8 based browsers)...

wodenokoto 11y ago

Because what they're doing good - desktop browser and desktop mail client - are becoming more and more irrelevant. Browsing is quickly becoming a thing most people do on (only) their phone and email is for more and more something you do on the web. If Mozilla keeps focusing on these two aspects they will start to cater to a niche market and lose the ability to influence the Internet at large.

r3bl 11y ago
> [...] email is for more and more something you do on the web. Yeah, I would say that I agree with that, but about a month ago, I have joined a tech team of an NGO that works with a lot of sensitive data. Convincing them to use Enigmail with Thunderbird is hard. Convincing them to use Enigmail with Thunderbird even though you are not sure what will be the future of Thunderbird is just plain frustrating. And no, there's absolutely no alternative that could handle all three desktop OS's (Windows, Linux, OS X), attachments, and other things that are completely necessary to have a safe, encrypted communication. There's absolutely no alternative what so ever. I really wish that some cool project (like LibreOffice) takes over Thunderbird and makes it great, but the odds for that are practically non-existing.