14 ms·

Update on Firefox Send and Firefox Notes

228 points by BoumTAC 6y ago

hellcow 6y ago
Getting rid of Send is so disappointing. That was a hugely useful tool. Why not add a Report button and start charging for the service?
- Thin_icE 6y ago
  Indeed, it was so useful, they could simply tie Send uploads with Firefox accounts and block the abusers. It's so sad to see this amazing service die.
  - blytt 6y ago
    Perhaps someone else can pick up https://github.com/mozilla/send https://github.com/mozilla/send? Not sure how much of this is the production code or not.
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  The implicit problem is you have to know the download is sketchy in order to report abuse. For your average consumer, that will be after they downloaded it. Having a consumer download a sketchy file from what should be a trusted service (it's firefox! they're the good guys!) is not good for your company image, either. And unfortunately, charging for a service is no guarantee that these issues will go away. I have seen fraud links from many b2b services presumably caused by credential misuse. If you operate a file sharing service, please be sure that there is a way to report a file either on the download page or on the contact us page. I'm the guy with too much time on his hands and actually follows up on reported phish emails and I've seen many services with no reporting mechanisms. Also, give your customers their own subdomain so I can selectively allow them in the palo alto.
  - the8472 6y ago
    > Having a consumer download a sketchy file from what should be a trusted service (it's firefox! they're the good guys!) is not good for your company image, either. I just don't understand this kind of logic. I can send mail bombs with the trusted postal service and people will open them. Does anyone blame the postal service?
    - colonelxc 6y ago
      usps does scan packages though...
    - mulmen 6y ago
      > Does anyone blame the postal service? Yes? Do you think the USPS does nothing to detect bombs in the mail? You can’t earn trust by saying “that’s not my problem.”
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - the8472 6y ago
        Ok, fine, they scan for bombs. So people shift to mailing sealed anthrax envelopes (which has happened). A public service is also going to be used by criminals, yet we do not expect the service to be shut down.
        mulmen 6y ago
        > So people shift to mailing sealed anthrax envelopes (which has happened). Which they also scan for? The USPS does try to keep the mail safe, and generally does a good job. Mozilla cannot make the same guarantees about Send so they shut it down.
        the8472 6y ago
        Ok, I googled a bit. According to this[0] they're running PCR tests on samples from the air around the mail processing. I.e. outside the mail. In a sufficiently sealed package/enveloped that wouldn't be detected. Well, and with encryption the files going through mozilla are always properly sealed and they can only rely on external indicators such as reports or IP blacklists. So they're doing no worse than USPS. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/06/postal-service-test-anthrax-detection-systems-14-sites https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/06/postal-s...
mathfailure 6y ago
That's good.
amingilani 6y ago
Send was the only reliable tool I'd found to date. I'm really disappointed by this. Hopefully, they'll have better luck finding a profitable product.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Oh man, send was great. I think I would have paid to use the service just fine.
codefined 6y ago
Hm, been spending a while creating a 'Firefox Send' copy, attempting to host files. Check out a new verison at: - https://v2.femto.pw/ https://v2.femto.pw/ Looking for some help if anyone can, :) - https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader The old copy (https://femto.pw/ https://femto.pw/) has been used over 100 million times and sent over 13PB of data!
- timw4mail 6y ago
  https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader is the non-typoed url
- freeAgent 6y ago
  Check out this project as well: https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://github.com/kern/filepizza
  - foresto 6y ago
    Last time I looked, FilePizza failed on large files, seemingly because it wanted to pull them entirely into RAM. Has that changed?
    - freeAgent 6y ago
      I don't believe so. It's definitely still got some stability issues.
- wsowens 6y ago
  This is really cool and will probably fill the void that Firefox Send left for me. Out of curiosity, how do you deal with all that bandwidth? Are you self-hosted?
  - codefined 6y ago
    We are self-hosted, I'd _hate_ to think of the costs of hosting this service through AWS or similar who charges for ingress / egress. We have 5gbps of bandwidth and 12TB of storage that I've dedicated to the service (costing me ~£30/mo, so a fairly trivial sum). I'm hoping that if we ever exceed 12TB / 5gbps, others will similarly host their own versions of the application. I've heard of half a dozen people already who have just decided to host their own.
wcerfgba 6y ago
I'm glad Mozilla are focusing more on their core product (Firefox the web browser) instead of trying to compete in overcrowded markets like file transfer (WeTransfer, MEGA, Google Drive, Dropbox, ...) and notes (Notion, Workflowy, Google Drive, Microsoft OneNote, ...).
- tssva 6y ago
  The announcement doesn't mention the browser but does mention focusing on Firefox VPN, Firefox Monitor and Firefox Private Network.
  - Drdrdrq 6y ago
    Yes. Quite an omission. :-/
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Not true: > While saying goodbye is never easy, this decision allows us to sharpen our focus on experiences like Mozilla VPN, Firefox Monitor, and Firefox Private Network.
kilroy123 6y ago
Why couldn’t they make send work and make money while https://wetransfer.com/ https://wetransfer.com/ is flourishing?
- rvba 6y ago
  Because all those side projects are not made to make Firefox, or Mozilla foundation better, but to have nice greenfield projects that allow to boost CV and find a job elsewhere. All those side projects is the reason while Firefox is dying. They completely ignored their core product: they made a worse copy of Chrome that killed all extensions.
  - codedokode 6y ago
    But old Firefox extension model (when an extension could patch any part of browser's code) did not guarantee that the extension would stay compatible forever. It was more quick and dirty hack rather than a proper standartised extension model.
    - rvba 6y ago
      Mozilla had 1000 well paid people, maybe they should have tried to figure this out. But instead of focusing on their core product, like 50 people dealt with Firefox and 950 did various side projects that nobody used. I get it, hard projects are hard. But it doesnt help that nobody is interested in Firefox development and most people focus on useless side projects used to boost their CV.
  - jimmySixDOF 6y ago
    Those side projects or the various other 20% time random walk policies push the innovation envelope. It allows the garden approach where a hundred flowers grow, untended, weeds and all. It might be messy but it is supposed to be. It might be uneconomical in the short term sense and therefore first into to the lawnmower during a cash crunch; but it is supposed to be like that also. I personally have had great, highly individualized, product-market fit with a two year old beta android app out of Mozilla Indonesia of all places [1]. It provides on device unbelievable OCR search for my massive screenshot inventory unique to my personal workflow and it just works. I have no idea of its future in the new Mozilla but will keep using it until it dosen't work anymore and then find another way. [1] https://mozilla-next.com/eng/firefox_screenshotgo_beta#firstPage https://mozilla-next.com/eng/firefox_screenshotgo_beta#first...
cozzyd 6y ago
Charging a nominal amount for send seems like it would solve the malware problem and help their finances...
- naveguese 6y ago
  A Freemium model seems like the way to go for Mozilla. Is there any reason it wouldn't work that I'm not seeing?
  - davisoneee 6y ago
    Firefox gets 500M/year from Google (whether they _need_ that much is a different question). You'd need basically the entire current Firefox userbase to pay some amount monthly, or have a smaller subset donate massive amounts, to enable Firefox to operate independantly from Google. That seems wildly unrealistic to me.
freeAgent 6y ago
Damn, I didn’t know they already taken Send offline. I don’t use it much, but it’s great in a pinch for just getting a file to a stranger quickly and without much fuss. I’ll have to explore the alternatives.
feross 6y ago
You can always send files using the WebTorrent protocol, over at https://instant.io https://instant.io No file size limit.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago
  encrypted and private?
  - prophesi 6y ago
    Sort of; the underlying WebRTC protocol WebTorrent uses encrypts the data in transit, and the data never hits the server. Downside is that the sender, or someone else who has completed the torrent download, must keep the page (or their WebTorrent client) running for the share link to work.
SubiculumCode 6y ago
I LOVED Firefox Send. This saddens me...stupid malware abusers
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
I'm crushed to see Firefox Send go away. It was an amazing tool. In the "This is why we can't have nice things category" it's sad to see yet another encrypted file-sharing service that is inevitably shut down when someone starts abusing it to host malware or child porn.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  I've found croc[1] to be a good alternative, but not ideal for async unless you have a NAS. 1 - https://github.com/schollz/croc https://github.com/schollz/croc
- Macha 6y ago
  It's the one service of the new wave of Mozilla products I actually liked. Well, maybe lockwise might be ok, but I already have a password manager.
  - zymhan 6y ago
    I use Lockwise since I'd been using Firefox Password manager for years. I keep my important passwords (Financial, etc) in Keepass, but for the myriad websites I use that require logins, Lockwise is a great solution. I'm also very impressed by it's iOS integration.
- nine_k 6y ago
  There is no way around it. Either [insert technology name] works for bad guys and good guys alike, or it does not work for bad guys and good guys alike. You can't make technology follow morals. The moral panic almost inevitably tilts the scales towards [insert technology name] not working for anyone, rather than allowing bad guys use it publicly. So bad guys use it privately, and good guys... well, they can also use it privately, if they are tech-savvy enough. Otherwise, tough luck.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Like it’s a pseudo-public file storage system. If you’re not going to put up the moderation effort and block the spread of malware, cp, phishing attempts, and spam then the people who would get kicked off of, say Dropbox, will migrate to your service and now you’re the company whose links are inherently sketchy. It’s not really a moral panic so much as it’s damaging to Mozilla’s reputation.
SubiculumCode 6y ago
I suggest we all write to Firefox and suggest charging $1/month for Send.
- fzzzy 6y ago
  Yes, please do this. This was the proposal from the engineers behind it (I had a small part) all along.
varbhat 6y ago
Looks like Mozilla is becoming VPN company shifting it's previous focus which was on browserware. Mozilla VPN seems to be just rebranded resell of Mullavad VPN with Mozilla Goodies. Mozilla Monitor seems to use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ (also as seen in Firefox desktop) Mozilla Firefox Private Network looks like another Cloudflare Warp's rebrand (with litte good additions maybe?) seeing that it uses Cloudflare . Mozilla Firefox is also losing it's usershare and Management division may force in future to ditch Gecko and adopt Webkit/Blink in the hope that it could bring more userbase (just my thought) to lessen maintainance and focus on revenue. If it brings revenue for them doing this,then it is absolutely good for them , but we are slowly loosing the Original Mozilla as Company based on Philosophy.
- irrational 6y ago
  Is Gecko open-source? If not, I hope they do open-source it before ditching it.
  - varbhat 6y ago
    Ofcourse, Gecko is Open Source. There are many forks of Gecko and Firefox too. Browsers would be forked then. But,maintainance and adding features require lot of effort which is almost impractical by single dev/group without much funding in the world of ever changing large web.
- varbhat 6y ago
  I am getting very much downvoted. Any fallacy in my reply? Please tell me so that i can correct it in future
  - staktrace 6y ago
    To me your comment seems based on a misguided idea of what Mozilla is about. I recommend reading https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future/ https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-f... for some good background.
  - 6y ago
unstatusthequo 6y ago
https://send.tresorit.com https://send.tresorit.com
causality0 6y ago
Calling a service that launched only 17 months ago "legacy functionality" is troubling. Why should I engage with any new Mozilla product or service if they're going to cut it off at the knees after a year?
- masukomi 6y ago
  this question is why i haven't engaged with any new Mozilla product in years. They just KEEP making cool things that you want to integrate into your workflows and then killing them.
  - jherdman 6y ago
    Are you using Chrome? If so https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/. Google is guilty of the same.
    - binaryjay 6y ago
      And so if Microsoft. https://pastebin.com/PMQwd8Q0 https://pastebin.com/PMQwd8Q0
      - devit 6y ago
        Most of these are offline software programs that you can continue to use indefinitely, or physical buildings that are very expensive to run.
        slac 6y ago
        Nokia has to be the biggest one.
      - xnyan 6y ago
        Not long ago I worked in a lab that was still using Microsoft Windows 95 for one workstation that was a host for a microscope that had a very expensive license tied to that specific set of hardware. The system has worked great for decades. Data is automatically gathered via a hardware datalogger accessory that has a ethernet interface. Is there any google product with anything close to that useful lifespan?
the-dude 6y ago
~ $500M funding a year.
haxorito 6y ago
“divide, conquer and destroy” - slogan of current Mozilla management
- kyleee 6y ago
  All while collecting nice paychecks thanks to the google money
- dralley 6y ago
  What the heck does this even mean. This flavor of complaint would make more sense if you were criticizing Mozilla having too many services.
  - haxorito 6y ago
    Money, they divided all the money company had in form of super high paychecks and bonuses.
slater 6y ago
Now do Pocket integration! :D
propogandist 6y ago
they were using s3 for file storage. This was likely just burning incredible amount of cash and had absolutely no monetization angle in play.
- fzzzy 6y ago
  We had the monetization angle in place from before Send shipped. Charge a small monthly fee. Management didn't care.
  - propogandist 6y ago
    What was the angle they were after then...people will use it so much and love it that they will use FF? Was there any angle at play other than releasing it? It was a great feature and even a small fee would've been more viable than freemium only.
    - fzzzy 6y ago
      No, it was just fumbled through three generations of management changes.
      - fspoettel 6y ago
        It's a shame to hear that. Send was a very good product that saw adoption in my circle, especially among creatives. It was used to share files with clients and replaced WeTransfer for some. I believe a monetization strategy among those lines could have been successful.
ahnick 6y ago
Yea, for easy github forking! :) Firefox Send was such a great and simple tool for sharing those >10MB (anything that won't fit in an email) files with literally anyone. Now that we'll be maintaining our own fork (https://github.com/plyint/send https://github.com/plyint/send), if anyone has any thoughts on features or fixes you'd like added I'd love to hear from you. Just send us a message from our website (https://plyint.com https://plyint.com), open a github issue or contact me through my HN profile. I can't promise will implement it, but we'll definitely give it a serious look.
- mushufasa 6y ago
  The value of firefox send for me was that 1) it was hosted 2) it was free 3) I trusted mozilla As a developer, I am already aware of similar open-source packages like magic-wormhole. The code/tools themselves don't solve the problem, though. I had my non-techincal mom exchange sensitive documents through Send but I'm never going to get her to use magic wormhole, and self-hosting is too much hassle for one-off documents. I'm aware of dropbox etc but if my both me and my mom don't already use them, there's friction to create an account and pay. I'm not sure whether there's a business model for a standalone hosted version if Mozilla themselves couldn't make it work (and I presume they gave it thorough thought)
  - fzzzy 6y ago
    I wouldn't presume they gave it thorough thought.
haunter 6y ago
I've started using https://transfer.sh/ https://transfer.sh/ as a replacement
- WA 6y ago
  > As of October 30th 2020, Storj Labs will discontinue support for the transfer.sh service. Popup on the website
  - haunter 6y ago
    https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh/ https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh/ fork and works just as fine
    - jorams 6y ago
      It's very confusing. The README there says: > This project repository has no relation with the service at https://transfer.sh https://transfer.sh that's managed by https://storj.io https://storj.io. So far we cannot address any issue related to the service at https://transfer.sh https://transfer.sh. But the popup on transfer.sh suggests emailing hello@dutchcoders.io.
    - tech234a 6y ago
      Someone put together a list of instances: https://adrian.simionov.io/general/2020/02/25/transfer-sh-alternatives.html https://adrian.simionov.io/general/2020/02/25/transfer-sh-al...
forgotpwd16 6y ago
Services relevant to data sharing are going to be abused. This should have been expected. On the other hand Notes is being deprecated because isn't used much? It can be handy as an extension.
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Wrong title, Mozilla; title should have been "Firefox Send and Firefox Notes to be discontinued soon", or something like that. Don't hide behind the fact. Tell the fact in the title.
- boogies 6y ago
  It was “Mozilla gives up on …” before IIRC, the mods probably over-corrected the editorializing
  - boogies 6y ago
    Actually was “Mozilla give up Firefox send and Firefox notes” https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/
- input_sh 6y ago
  Firefox Send was effectively shut down months ago due to it being used to spread malware, but you could find messages saying that they're working on bringing it back. I interpret this news as "it's not coming back".
  - shbooms 6y ago
    > I interpret this news as "it's not coming back". No need for interpretation, they state it flat out: "In the intervening period [since the temporary shutdown], as we weighed the cost of our overall portfolio and strategic focus, we've made the decision not to relaunch the service."
Animats 6y ago
That's progress. I just want the browser, not a "cloud service". Now to lose "Pocket" and bring back a bookmarks toolbar that lets you find things locally.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Everyone in tech circles keeps saying this, and I agree, but until Mozilla finds a killer app Firefox’s only value is as an ad for Google Search. Which is honestly super depressing so I will applaud any attempt they make at an actual sustainable income stream.
  - basch 6y ago
    >until Mozilla finds a killer app I hate to say it, but that killer app could be ... a directory. A more portal like, tree like way to browse the web. Search has become so unruly. A person new to the web sits at a blank search box, and it might be hard to learn all the great places there are to visit. With the paradox of choice, people get so overwhelmed they just fall back to infinite feeds because browsing is so endlessly open ended. Everyone needs a "start page" of some sort, and I wouldnt mind if the msn's and drudge reports of the world had some nice fresh competition. Shopping leading you to wirecutter type things, in a slowly refined way. Recipes organized in a mildly coherent way. Crafts, ways to find local home contractors. Wikis of the best way to browse the web. Best practices for life. Promote financial literacy, web surfing literacy, comparison shopping literacy, seo avoidance literacy. Make it easier to navigate the plague the modern web has become, and get people directly to useful things. In a way, designed with purpose and experience in mind.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    There are so many service that Mozilla could charge money for that tons of people would use because we are paying someone for those service already so it might as well be Mozilla because they are trustworthy and open source. Stuff like file hosting, photo hosting/sharing, password management, blog/site hosting, etc etc. I just don't understand how Mozilla can be this bad at monetization while sitting on top of a gold mine in terms of reputation, developers and organization.
timvisee 6y ago
Sad! Developer of `ffsend` here. I've built `ffsend` as CLI tool for Send to securely share files from the command line. It has been a great success! Thanks Mozilla, for building and providing this amazing service! For the interested: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend I'm currently hosting a public Send instance myself to ffsend keep working. Let's see how long I can keep this going (and funded).
- basilgohar 6y ago
  I'm interested in knowing the infrastructure you've setup to continue this service.
  - timvisee 6y ago
    It's rather simple actually. Currently hosting it on a clean DigitalOcean droplet with an additional disk, which has been running for ~2 months now. It runs Send in Docker. I set up this configuration for it: https://github.com/timvisee/send-docker-compose https://github.com/timvisee/send-docker-compose
    - basilgohar 6y ago
      I presume bandwidth and storage are the main concerns since I doubt compute dominates in this kind of service.
      - timvisee 6y ago
        You're right! Luckily files have a maximum lifetime of 1 day, which helps with storage. Almost no computing needed. Expensive en/decrypting operations are done on the client.
        neolog 6y ago
        Do you know what you'll do when people start sharing illegal content?
frabbit 6y ago
And in nearly the same breath they announce a net nanny service to help people maintain their YouTube recommendations bubbles. I like Firefox, but I worry about the direction the Mozilla Foundation are taking. At least it's Free Software.
- sciurus 6y ago
  Keep in mind the YouTube work is from the foundation, and Send and Firefox are from the corporation.
nbzx 6y ago
>Unfortunately, some abusive users were beginning to use Send to ship malware and conduct spear phishing attacks. Isn't it absurdly incompetent of them not to foresee this?
- fzzzy 6y ago
  Yes. The engineers that worked on it foresaw it, but for some reason management didn't care.
Barrin92 6y ago
man that sucks I loved send. I generally used magic-wormhole with people who were comfortable setting it up but as far as ease of use went send was great.
lmedinas 6y ago
Another disappointment from Mozilla. Some of the tools that were kinda of unique from a browser and company that values privacy. I actually thought one of the strategies from Mozilla was to actually build an ecosystem around the browser to bring new users and to have something unique to fight chrome. It seems they have lost completely all focus have no strategy after killing the Servo and Rust Team. What is next killing the Gecko Team and use Blink ?
- xnyan 6y ago
  Unfortunately, that seems like exactly the direction things are heading. What is the point developing arguably the single most complex type of application when not even an entity with the resources of Microsoft can't make the numbers work? A few months months ago I would have argued that there were clear non-monetary motivations behind Mozilla and Firefox. I don't think that is as true today.
Kye 6y ago
I used Firefox Send for deliverables on a commission. It was so easy. I could send updated versions and set a date for the download to expire to make sure both sides were on the current version. That was worth money. They could have charged for it.
- fzzzy 6y ago
  Yes. Yes, we should have charged money for it. Sigh.
  - justfortechnews 6y ago
    Do you still work for Mozilla? I see you worked on Send, and am surprised that you'd comment on here in such fashion about the decision-making to not charge for Send.
ebfe1 6y ago
If you want a minimal setup that does similar job with all encryption done in browser and absolute no plaintext, password send back to server, i just wrote https://www.relaysecret.com https://www.relaysecret.com earlier this week. It is opensource, with minimal footprint on aws (1lambda, 1 gateway, 1 s3), deploy using terraform and should be very cheap to run. It's a pet project so i limit the filesize to 30mb but you can change that easily if you roll your own. :)
- dddw 6y ago
  Looks nice!
bachmeier 6y ago
Hate to say it, given that I've been using Firefox as my browser since before it was called Firefox, but I think Mozilla is done if they can't find a way to monetize these services. There's just a complete of leadership. I hope there's a non-Mozilla fork of Firefox that keeps it going. A big challenge I know but Google gets all your data once Firefox is dead.
- BuckRogers 6y ago
  We have Edge from a major vendor, and it’s good. We also have Vivaldi which has the features I want but is from a much smaller vendor but is also very good. A couple of good options.
SimeVidas 6y ago
Why not create a Firefox+ subscription service (for like $10 per month) and then make Send, Notes, VPN, and more exclusive to that service? Some people over here are dying to start paying for Firefox. (Mozilla donations go to the much smaller non-profit part of Mozilla and are unrelated to Firefox.)
- okbake 6y ago
  I am in this same boat. I recently signed up for Firefox Private Network and I'm in the process of switching over to Mozilla VPN. I think both of these services are great (even if they're essentially white-labels of other companies products) and they're the kinds of things I associate with Mozilla and Firefox. I would also pay for their password manager if it were a little more robust (and if they charged for it) just to get the tight browser integration.
- davisoneee 6y ago
  Mozilla's deal with Google is worth 500M per year. For Firefox to be independant of Google, you'd need around 4M people subscribing to Firefox, with your $10/mo suggestion. Now, whether Firefox NEEDS 500M per year is a different matter, but the whole idea of 'some people want to pay for Firefox' seems rather naive as a suggestion for how Firefox can be viable without Google.
  - SimeVidas 6y ago
    I didn’t suggest that the subscription could replace the Google deal. I merely said, why not make the services paid instead of closing them.
    - davisoneee 6y ago
      Perhaps because of opportunity cost. Compared to how dependant on Google they are currently, maintaining a comparatively low-revenue service whose existance must be justified to a board, may be worse than doing the 'startup' thing of just pivoting _again_ and using those same developers to try and find something that _can_ sustain Firefox; something that can be a core offering and keep Firefox relevant in the market, rather than a small add-on subscription service.
woranl 6y ago
This is inevitable. Mozilla should focus on their browser tech and monetization, instead of creating competing services to other consumer focused startups. Listen to the developers and implement API. Firefox web API implementation is so far behind from Chrome. It is saddening. Sell and bring values to developers. They are your most likely customers, not the general public.
- gilrain 6y ago
  Weird that they mentioned three products this helps them focus on, and Firefox wasn't one of them... I'm afraid that internally, they've already given up on Firefox.
m-p-3 6y ago
Sad to see Firefox Send being discontinued, it was a great service.. In wondering if they'll keep updating the source code and simply stop hosting an instance? Because I wouldn't mind hosting my own.
libraryatnight 6y ago
As a Firefox notes user, baiting me in with an "Update" title is cruel.
warkdarrior 6y ago
118 comments at this point, at least 5 complaining about Mozilla management. Hmmm
tempfs 6y ago
Seems pretty clear by now that Mozilla is on a path to just slowly transform Firefox into Chrome or try to abandon it 'to the community' like they did with Thunderbird. Either way they've clearly signalled that they could not give a shit about Firefox any more. Since Edge is basically Chrome with Microsoft's telemetry baked in that means that your browser choices will either be the one made directly by an ad company or Chrome repackaged by some other company that just wants to pipe the browser telemetry back into their already egregious OS telemetry pipeline. It is definitely time for a fork or a fresh start with actual privacy, security and simplicity in mind.
chriswalz 6y ago
At GoSecret.io you can use our upload feature (similar to Firefox Send). We haven't open sourced our code but we definitely are considering it in wake of Firefox Send getting shutdown. Please ping me if you're interested
thayne 6y ago
They are dropping things I might actually pay for to focus on products I never will...
cryo 6y ago
I've build cryo for end-to-end encrypted p2p file transfers without cloud or signal server components. Imho all solutions which require a webserver somewhere are doomed to fail at some point, or as in this case can be discontinued. P2P tools should be client only with no servers at all to survive time and provide independency. Tools on their own don't matter either, but protocols like BitTorrent do. https://cryonet.io https://cryonet.io
foresto 6y ago
I've been bookmarking point-to-point file transfer tools. These are not file hosting services like Firefox Send; both endpoints must be online at the same time. Nevertheless, I suspect they might be useful to some other folks here. Please post corrections or more detail on any of these if you have it. I haven't had time to try most of them yet. WebWormhole: WebRTC encryption, direct data transfer, large file support, browser and command line. Looks more versatile than the others. Has not undergone security review yet. https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole https://webwormhole.io/ https://webwormhole.io/ Magic Wormhole: Data relay required (public relay is often slow), mainly command line. https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/ https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/ croc: End-to-end encryption, data relay required (I think), command line only. https://github.com/schollz/croc https://github.com/schollz/croc https://schollz.com/blog/croc6/ https://schollz.com/blog/croc6/ File Pizza: WebTorrent, seems to load entire file into RAM, browser only. https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://file.pizza/ https://file.pizza/ Snapdrop: WebRTC encryption, local sharing only (I think), browser only. https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://snapdrop.net/ https://snapdrop.net/
timwis 6y ago
Darn, Firefox Send was excellent. end-to-end encryption, user-friendly, backed by a reputable privacy-focused company.. Anyone know a decent alternative?
gulerc 6y ago
SendGB.com is good way for file transferring up to 20GB. No needed registration or verification.
Yizahi 6y ago
Still true: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/
mwexler 6y ago
While sad to see Notes go, I've been pretty impressed with the continued support of the free Simplenote https://simplenote.com https://simplenote.com from Automattic. It's basic but nice, and I've actually gotten help from them the few times I've had issues.
- dddw 6y ago
  Be sure to backup those notes. Heard some horrorstories back in the day about unrecoverable notes. simplenote is nearly integrated in nvalt.
Walterion 6y ago
I worked on blackhole.run as a more advanced version, but it is sad to see such a cool and secure service shuts down; there is a need to have more secure tools, not less. Thanks to the Mozilla team for a great job.
user34580534 6y ago
Damn son whattt!>!>!>!
user34580534 6y ago
Damn son whattt
harrier-lcc 6y ago
There are some good alternatives out there like https://encl.io/ https://encl.io/ , pretty much a faster Firefox Send alternative for sending 1GB files for 7 days

228 points by BoumTAC 6y ago

Getting rid of Send is so disappointing. That was a hugely useful tool. Why not add a Report button and start charging for the service?

Thin_icE 6y ago
Indeed, it was so useful, they could simply tie Send uploads with Firefox accounts and block the abusers. It's so sad to see this amazing service die.
- blytt 6y ago
  Perhaps someone else can pick up https://github.com/mozilla/send https://github.com/mozilla/send? Not sure how much of this is the production code or not.
jabroni_salad 6y ago
The implicit problem is you have to know the download is sketchy in order to report abuse. For your average consumer, that will be after they downloaded it. Having a consumer download a sketchy file from what should be a trusted service (it's firefox! they're the good guys!) is not good for your company image, either. And unfortunately, charging for a service is no guarantee that these issues will go away. I have seen fraud links from many b2b services presumably caused by credential misuse. If you operate a file sharing service, please be sure that there is a way to report a file either on the download page or on the contact us page. I'm the guy with too much time on his hands and actually follows up on reported phish emails and I've seen many services with no reporting mechanisms. Also, give your customers their own subdomain so I can selectively allow them in the palo alto.
- the8472 6y ago
  > Having a consumer download a sketchy file from what should be a trusted service (it's firefox! they're the good guys!) is not good for your company image, either. I just don't understand this kind of logic. I can send mail bombs with the trusted postal service and people will open them. Does anyone blame the postal service?
  - colonelxc 6y ago
    usps does scan packages though...
  - mulmen 6y ago
    > Does anyone blame the postal service? Yes? Do you think the USPS does nothing to detect bombs in the mail? You can’t earn trust by saying “that’s not my problem.”
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - the8472 6y ago
      Ok, fine, they scan for bombs. So people shift to mailing sealed anthrax envelopes (which has happened). A public service is also going to be used by criminals, yet we do not expect the service to be shut down.
      - mulmen 6y ago
        > So people shift to mailing sealed anthrax envelopes (which has happened). Which they also scan for? The USPS does try to keep the mail safe, and generally does a good job. Mozilla cannot make the same guarantees about Send so they shut it down.
        the8472 6y ago
        Ok, I googled a bit. According to this[0] they're running PCR tests on samples from the air around the mail processing. I.e. outside the mail. In a sufficiently sealed package/enveloped that wouldn't be detected. Well, and with encryption the files going through mozilla are always properly sealed and they can only rely on external indicators such as reports or IP blacklists. So they're doing no worse than USPS. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/06/postal-service-test-anthrax-detection-systems-14-sites https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/06/postal-s...

mathfailure 6y ago

That's good.

amingilani 6y ago

Send was the only reliable tool I'd found to date. I'm really disappointed by this. Hopefully, they'll have better luck finding a profitable product.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

Oh man, send was great. I think I would have paid to use the service just fine.

codefined 6y ago

Hm, been spending a while creating a 'Firefox Send' copy, attempting to host files. Check out a new verison at: - https://v2.femto.pw/ https://v2.femto.pw/ Looking for some help if anyone can, :) - https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader The old copy (https://femto.pw/ https://femto.pw/) has been used over 100 million times and sent over 13PB of data!

timw4mail 6y ago
https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader https://github.com/femto-apps/web-file-uploader is the non-typoed url
freeAgent 6y ago
Check out this project as well: https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://github.com/kern/filepizza
- foresto 6y ago
  Last time I looked, FilePizza failed on large files, seemingly because it wanted to pull them entirely into RAM. Has that changed?
  - freeAgent 6y ago
    I don't believe so. It's definitely still got some stability issues.
wsowens 6y ago
This is really cool and will probably fill the void that Firefox Send left for me. Out of curiosity, how do you deal with all that bandwidth? Are you self-hosted?
- codefined 6y ago
  We are self-hosted, I'd _hate_ to think of the costs of hosting this service through AWS or similar who charges for ingress / egress. We have 5gbps of bandwidth and 12TB of storage that I've dedicated to the service (costing me ~£30/mo, so a fairly trivial sum). I'm hoping that if we ever exceed 12TB / 5gbps, others will similarly host their own versions of the application. I've heard of half a dozen people already who have just decided to host their own.

wcerfgba 6y ago

I'm glad Mozilla are focusing more on their core product (Firefox the web browser) instead of trying to compete in overcrowded markets like file transfer (WeTransfer, MEGA, Google Drive, Dropbox, ...) and notes (Notion, Workflowy, Google Drive, Microsoft OneNote, ...).

tssva 6y ago
The announcement doesn't mention the browser but does mention focusing on Firefox VPN, Firefox Monitor and Firefox Private Network.
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  Yes. Quite an omission. :-/
dkdk8283 6y ago
Not true: > While saying goodbye is never easy, this decision allows us to sharpen our focus on experiences like Mozilla VPN, Firefox Monitor, and Firefox Private Network.

kilroy123 6y ago

Why couldn’t they make send work and make money while https://wetransfer.com/ https://wetransfer.com/ is flourishing?

rvba 6y ago
Because all those side projects are not made to make Firefox, or Mozilla foundation better, but to have nice greenfield projects that allow to boost CV and find a job elsewhere. All those side projects is the reason while Firefox is dying. They completely ignored their core product: they made a worse copy of Chrome that killed all extensions.
- codedokode 6y ago
  But old Firefox extension model (when an extension could patch any part of browser's code) did not guarantee that the extension would stay compatible forever. It was more quick and dirty hack rather than a proper standartised extension model.
  - rvba 6y ago
    Mozilla had 1000 well paid people, maybe they should have tried to figure this out. But instead of focusing on their core product, like 50 people dealt with Firefox and 950 did various side projects that nobody used. I get it, hard projects are hard. But it doesnt help that nobody is interested in Firefox development and most people focus on useless side projects used to boost their CV.
- jimmySixDOF 6y ago
  Those side projects or the various other 20% time random walk policies push the innovation envelope. It allows the garden approach where a hundred flowers grow, untended, weeds and all. It might be messy but it is supposed to be. It might be uneconomical in the short term sense and therefore first into to the lawnmower during a cash crunch; but it is supposed to be like that also. I personally have had great, highly individualized, product-market fit with a two year old beta android app out of Mozilla Indonesia of all places [1]. It provides on device unbelievable OCR search for my massive screenshot inventory unique to my personal workflow and it just works. I have no idea of its future in the new Mozilla but will keep using it until it dosen't work anymore and then find another way. [1] https://mozilla-next.com/eng/firefox_screenshotgo_beta#firstPage https://mozilla-next.com/eng/firefox_screenshotgo_beta#first...

cozzyd 6y ago

Charging a nominal amount for send seems like it would solve the malware problem and help their finances...

naveguese 6y ago
A Freemium model seems like the way to go for Mozilla. Is there any reason it wouldn't work that I'm not seeing?
- davisoneee 6y ago
  Firefox gets 500M/year from Google (whether they _need_ that much is a different question). You'd need basically the entire current Firefox userbase to pay some amount monthly, or have a smaller subset donate massive amounts, to enable Firefox to operate independantly from Google. That seems wildly unrealistic to me.

freeAgent 6y ago

Damn, I didn’t know they already taken Send offline. I don’t use it much, but it’s great in a pinch for just getting a file to a stranger quickly and without much fuss. I’ll have to explore the alternatives.

feross 6y ago

You can always send files using the WebTorrent protocol, over at https://instant.io https://instant.io No file size limit.

SubiculumCode 6y ago
encrypted and private?
- prophesi 6y ago
  Sort of; the underlying WebRTC protocol WebTorrent uses encrypts the data in transit, and the data never hits the server. Downside is that the sender, or someone else who has completed the torrent download, must keep the page (or their WebTorrent client) running for the share link to work.

SubiculumCode 6y ago

I LOVED Firefox Send. This saddens me...stupid malware abusers

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

I'm crushed to see Firefox Send go away. It was an amazing tool. In the "This is why we can't have nice things category" it's sad to see yet another encrypted file-sharing service that is inevitably shut down when someone starts abusing it to host malware or child porn.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
I've found croc[1] to be a good alternative, but not ideal for async unless you have a NAS. 1 - https://github.com/schollz/croc https://github.com/schollz/croc
Macha 6y ago
It's the one service of the new wave of Mozilla products I actually liked. Well, maybe lockwise might be ok, but I already have a password manager.
- zymhan 6y ago
  I use Lockwise since I'd been using Firefox Password manager for years. I keep my important passwords (Financial, etc) in Keepass, but for the myriad websites I use that require logins, Lockwise is a great solution. I'm also very impressed by it's iOS integration.
nine_k 6y ago
There is no way around it. Either [insert technology name] works for bad guys and good guys alike, or it does not work for bad guys and good guys alike. You can't make technology follow morals. The moral panic almost inevitably tilts the scales towards [insert technology name] not working for anyone, rather than allowing bad guys use it publicly. So bad guys use it privately, and good guys... well, they can also use it privately, if they are tech-savvy enough. Otherwise, tough luck.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Like it’s a pseudo-public file storage system. If you’re not going to put up the moderation effort and block the spread of malware, cp, phishing attempts, and spam then the people who would get kicked off of, say Dropbox, will migrate to your service and now you’re the company whose links are inherently sketchy. It’s not really a moral panic so much as it’s damaging to Mozilla’s reputation.

SubiculumCode 6y ago

I suggest we all write to Firefox and suggest charging $1/month for Send.

fzzzy 6y ago
Yes, please do this. This was the proposal from the engineers behind it (I had a small part) all along.

varbhat 6y ago

Looks like Mozilla is becoming VPN company shifting it's previous focus which was on browserware. Mozilla VPN seems to be just rebranded resell of Mullavad VPN with Mozilla Goodies. Mozilla Monitor seems to use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ https://haveibeenpwned.com/ (also as seen in Firefox desktop) Mozilla Firefox Private Network looks like another Cloudflare Warp's rebrand (with litte good additions maybe?) seeing that it uses Cloudflare . Mozilla Firefox is also losing it's usershare and Management division may force in future to ditch Gecko and adopt Webkit/Blink in the hope that it could bring more userbase (just my thought) to lessen maintainance and focus on revenue. If it brings revenue for them doing this,then it is absolutely good for them , but we are slowly loosing the Original Mozilla as Company based on Philosophy.

irrational 6y ago
Is Gecko open-source? If not, I hope they do open-source it before ditching it.
- varbhat 6y ago
  Ofcourse, Gecko is Open Source. There are many forks of Gecko and Firefox too. Browsers would be forked then. But,maintainance and adding features require lot of effort which is almost impractical by single dev/group without much funding in the world of ever changing large web.
varbhat 6y ago
I am getting very much downvoted. Any fallacy in my reply? Please tell me so that i can correct it in future
- staktrace 6y ago
  To me your comment seems based on a misguided idea of what Mozilla is about. I recommend reading https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future/ https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-f... for some good background.
- 6y ago

unstatusthequo 6y ago

https://send.tresorit.com https://send.tresorit.com

causality0 6y ago

Calling a service that launched only 17 months ago "legacy functionality" is troubling. Why should I engage with any new Mozilla product or service if they're going to cut it off at the knees after a year?

masukomi 6y ago
this question is why i haven't engaged with any new Mozilla product in years. They just KEEP making cool things that you want to integrate into your workflows and then killing them.
- jherdman 6y ago
  Are you using Chrome? If so https://killedbygoogle.com/ https://killedbygoogle.com/. Google is guilty of the same.
  - binaryjay 6y ago
    And so if Microsoft. https://pastebin.com/PMQwd8Q0 https://pastebin.com/PMQwd8Q0
    - devit 6y ago
      Most of these are offline software programs that you can continue to use indefinitely, or physical buildings that are very expensive to run.
      - slac 6y ago
        Nokia has to be the biggest one.
    - xnyan 6y ago
      Not long ago I worked in a lab that was still using Microsoft Windows 95 for one workstation that was a host for a microscope that had a very expensive license tied to that specific set of hardware. The system has worked great for decades. Data is automatically gathered via a hardware datalogger accessory that has a ethernet interface. Is there any google product with anything close to that useful lifespan?

the-dude 6y ago

~ $500M funding a year.

haxorito 6y ago

“divide, conquer and destroy” - slogan of current Mozilla management

kyleee 6y ago
All while collecting nice paychecks thanks to the google money
dralley 6y ago
What the heck does this even mean. This flavor of complaint would make more sense if you were criticizing Mozilla having too many services.
- haxorito 6y ago
  Money, they divided all the money company had in form of super high paychecks and bonuses.

slater 6y ago

Now do Pocket integration! :D

propogandist 6y ago

they were using s3 for file storage. This was likely just burning incredible amount of cash and had absolutely no monetization angle in play.

fzzzy 6y ago
We had the monetization angle in place from before Send shipped. Charge a small monthly fee. Management didn't care.
- propogandist 6y ago
  What was the angle they were after then...people will use it so much and love it that they will use FF? Was there any angle at play other than releasing it? It was a great feature and even a small fee would've been more viable than freemium only.
  - fzzzy 6y ago
    No, it was just fumbled through three generations of management changes.
    - fspoettel 6y ago
      It's a shame to hear that. Send was a very good product that saw adoption in my circle, especially among creatives. It was used to share files with clients and replaced WeTransfer for some. I believe a monetization strategy among those lines could have been successful.

ahnick 6y ago

Yea, for easy github forking! :) Firefox Send was such a great and simple tool for sharing those >10MB (anything that won't fit in an email) files with literally anyone. Now that we'll be maintaining our own fork (https://github.com/plyint/send https://github.com/plyint/send), if anyone has any thoughts on features or fixes you'd like added I'd love to hear from you. Just send us a message from our website (https://plyint.com https://plyint.com), open a github issue or contact me through my HN profile. I can't promise will implement it, but we'll definitely give it a serious look.

mushufasa 6y ago
The value of firefox send for me was that 1) it was hosted 2) it was free 3) I trusted mozilla As a developer, I am already aware of similar open-source packages like magic-wormhole. The code/tools themselves don't solve the problem, though. I had my non-techincal mom exchange sensitive documents through Send but I'm never going to get her to use magic wormhole, and self-hosting is too much hassle for one-off documents. I'm aware of dropbox etc but if my both me and my mom don't already use them, there's friction to create an account and pay. I'm not sure whether there's a business model for a standalone hosted version if Mozilla themselves couldn't make it work (and I presume they gave it thorough thought)
- fzzzy 6y ago
  I wouldn't presume they gave it thorough thought.

haunter 6y ago

I've started using https://transfer.sh/ https://transfer.sh/ as a replacement

WA 6y ago
> As of October 30th 2020, Storj Labs will discontinue support for the transfer.sh service. Popup on the website
- haunter 6y ago
  https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh/ https://github.com/dutchcoders/transfer.sh/ fork and works just as fine
  - jorams 6y ago
    It's very confusing. The README there says: > This project repository has no relation with the service at https://transfer.sh https://transfer.sh that's managed by https://storj.io https://storj.io. So far we cannot address any issue related to the service at https://transfer.sh https://transfer.sh. But the popup on transfer.sh suggests emailing hello@dutchcoders.io.
  - tech234a 6y ago
    Someone put together a list of instances: https://adrian.simionov.io/general/2020/02/25/transfer-sh-alternatives.html https://adrian.simionov.io/general/2020/02/25/transfer-sh-al...

forgotpwd16 6y ago

Services relevant to data sharing are going to be abused. This should have been expected. On the other hand Notes is being deprecated because isn't used much? It can be handy as an extension.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

Wrong title, Mozilla; title should have been "Firefox Send and Firefox Notes to be discontinued soon", or something like that. Don't hide behind the fact. Tell the fact in the title.

boogies 6y ago
It was “Mozilla gives up on …” before IIRC, the mods probably over-corrected the editorializing
- boogies 6y ago
  Actually was “Mozilla give up Firefox send and Firefox notes” https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/ https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app/
input_sh 6y ago
Firefox Send was effectively shut down months ago due to it being used to spread malware, but you could find messages saying that they're working on bringing it back. I interpret this news as "it's not coming back".
- shbooms 6y ago
  > I interpret this news as "it's not coming back". No need for interpretation, they state it flat out: "In the intervening period [since the temporary shutdown], as we weighed the cost of our overall portfolio and strategic focus, we've made the decision not to relaunch the service."

Animats 6y ago

That's progress. I just want the browser, not a "cloud service". Now to lose "Pocket" and bring back a bookmarks toolbar that lets you find things locally.

Spivak 6y ago
Everyone in tech circles keeps saying this, and I agree, but until Mozilla finds a killer app Firefox’s only value is as an ad for Google Search. Which is honestly super depressing so I will applaud any attempt they make at an actual sustainable income stream.
- basch 6y ago
  >until Mozilla finds a killer app I hate to say it, but that killer app could be ... a directory. A more portal like, tree like way to browse the web. Search has become so unruly. A person new to the web sits at a blank search box, and it might be hard to learn all the great places there are to visit. With the paradox of choice, people get so overwhelmed they just fall back to infinite feeds because browsing is so endlessly open ended. Everyone needs a "start page" of some sort, and I wouldnt mind if the msn's and drudge reports of the world had some nice fresh competition. Shopping leading you to wirecutter type things, in a slowly refined way. Recipes organized in a mildly coherent way. Crafts, ways to find local home contractors. Wikis of the best way to browse the web. Best practices for life. Promote financial literacy, web surfing literacy, comparison shopping literacy, seo avoidance literacy. Make it easier to navigate the plague the modern web has become, and get people directly to useful things. In a way, designed with purpose and experience in mind.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  There are so many service that Mozilla could charge money for that tons of people would use because we are paying someone for those service already so it might as well be Mozilla because they are trustworthy and open source. Stuff like file hosting, photo hosting/sharing, password management, blog/site hosting, etc etc. I just don't understand how Mozilla can be this bad at monetization while sitting on top of a gold mine in terms of reputation, developers and organization.

timvisee 6y ago

Sad! Developer of `ffsend` here. I've built `ffsend` as CLI tool for Send to securely share files from the command line. It has been a great success! Thanks Mozilla, for building and providing this amazing service! For the interested: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend I'm currently hosting a public Send instance myself to ffsend keep working. Let's see how long I can keep this going (and funded).

basilgohar 6y ago
I'm interested in knowing the infrastructure you've setup to continue this service.
- timvisee 6y ago
  It's rather simple actually. Currently hosting it on a clean DigitalOcean droplet with an additional disk, which has been running for ~2 months now. It runs Send in Docker. I set up this configuration for it: https://github.com/timvisee/send-docker-compose https://github.com/timvisee/send-docker-compose
  - basilgohar 6y ago
    I presume bandwidth and storage are the main concerns since I doubt compute dominates in this kind of service.
    - timvisee 6y ago
      You're right! Luckily files have a maximum lifetime of 1 day, which helps with storage. Almost no computing needed. Expensive en/decrypting operations are done on the client.
      - neolog 6y ago
        Do you know what you'll do when people start sharing illegal content?

frabbit 6y ago

And in nearly the same breath they announce a net nanny service to help people maintain their YouTube recommendations bubbles. I like Firefox, but I worry about the direction the Mozilla Foundation are taking. At least it's Free Software.

sciurus 6y ago
Keep in mind the YouTube work is from the foundation, and Send and Firefox are from the corporation.

nbzx 6y ago

>Unfortunately, some abusive users were beginning to use Send to ship malware and conduct spear phishing attacks. Isn't it absurdly incompetent of them not to foresee this?

fzzzy 6y ago
Yes. The engineers that worked on it foresaw it, but for some reason management didn't care.

Barrin92 6y ago

man that sucks I loved send. I generally used magic-wormhole with people who were comfortable setting it up but as far as ease of use went send was great.

lmedinas 6y ago

Another disappointment from Mozilla. Some of the tools that were kinda of unique from a browser and company that values privacy. I actually thought one of the strategies from Mozilla was to actually build an ecosystem around the browser to bring new users and to have something unique to fight chrome. It seems they have lost completely all focus have no strategy after killing the Servo and Rust Team. What is next killing the Gecko Team and use Blink ?

xnyan 6y ago
Unfortunately, that seems like exactly the direction things are heading. What is the point developing arguably the single most complex type of application when not even an entity with the resources of Microsoft can't make the numbers work? A few months months ago I would have argued that there were clear non-monetary motivations behind Mozilla and Firefox. I don't think that is as true today.

Kye 6y ago

I used Firefox Send for deliverables on a commission. It was so easy. I could send updated versions and set a date for the download to expire to make sure both sides were on the current version. That was worth money. They could have charged for it.

fzzzy 6y ago
Yes. Yes, we should have charged money for it. Sigh.
- justfortechnews 6y ago
  Do you still work for Mozilla? I see you worked on Send, and am surprised that you'd comment on here in such fashion about the decision-making to not charge for Send.

ebfe1 6y ago

If you want a minimal setup that does similar job with all encryption done in browser and absolute no plaintext, password send back to server, i just wrote https://www.relaysecret.com https://www.relaysecret.com earlier this week. It is opensource, with minimal footprint on aws (1lambda, 1 gateway, 1 s3), deploy using terraform and should be very cheap to run. It's a pet project so i limit the filesize to 30mb but you can change that easily if you roll your own. :)

dddw 6y ago
Looks nice!

bachmeier 6y ago

Hate to say it, given that I've been using Firefox as my browser since before it was called Firefox, but I think Mozilla is done if they can't find a way to monetize these services. There's just a complete of leadership. I hope there's a non-Mozilla fork of Firefox that keeps it going. A big challenge I know but Google gets all your data once Firefox is dead.

BuckRogers 6y ago
We have Edge from a major vendor, and it’s good. We also have Vivaldi which has the features I want but is from a much smaller vendor but is also very good. A couple of good options.

SimeVidas 6y ago

Why not create a Firefox+ subscription service (for like $10 per month) and then make Send, Notes, VPN, and more exclusive to that service? Some people over here are dying to start paying for Firefox. (Mozilla donations go to the much smaller non-profit part of Mozilla and are unrelated to Firefox.)

okbake 6y ago
I am in this same boat. I recently signed up for Firefox Private Network and I'm in the process of switching over to Mozilla VPN. I think both of these services are great (even if they're essentially white-labels of other companies products) and they're the kinds of things I associate with Mozilla and Firefox. I would also pay for their password manager if it were a little more robust (and if they charged for it) just to get the tight browser integration.
davisoneee 6y ago
Mozilla's deal with Google is worth 500M per year. For Firefox to be independant of Google, you'd need around 4M people subscribing to Firefox, with your $10/mo suggestion. Now, whether Firefox NEEDS 500M per year is a different matter, but the whole idea of 'some people want to pay for Firefox' seems rather naive as a suggestion for how Firefox can be viable without Google.
- SimeVidas 6y ago
  I didn’t suggest that the subscription could replace the Google deal. I merely said, why not make the services paid instead of closing them.
  - davisoneee 6y ago
    Perhaps because of opportunity cost. Compared to how dependant on Google they are currently, maintaining a comparatively low-revenue service whose existance must be justified to a board, may be worse than doing the 'startup' thing of just pivoting _again_ and using those same developers to try and find something that _can_ sustain Firefox; something that can be a core offering and keep Firefox relevant in the market, rather than a small add-on subscription service.

woranl 6y ago

This is inevitable. Mozilla should focus on their browser tech and monetization, instead of creating competing services to other consumer focused startups. Listen to the developers and implement API. Firefox web API implementation is so far behind from Chrome. It is saddening. Sell and bring values to developers. They are your most likely customers, not the general public.

gilrain 6y ago
Weird that they mentioned three products this helps them focus on, and Firefox wasn't one of them... I'm afraid that internally, they've already given up on Firefox.

m-p-3 6y ago

Sad to see Firefox Send being discontinued, it was a great service.. In wondering if they'll keep updating the source code and simply stop hosting an instance? Because I wouldn't mind hosting my own.

libraryatnight 6y ago

As a Firefox notes user, baiting me in with an "Update" title is cruel.

warkdarrior 6y ago

118 comments at this point, at least 5 complaining about Mozilla management. Hmmm

tempfs 6y ago

Seems pretty clear by now that Mozilla is on a path to just slowly transform Firefox into Chrome or try to abandon it 'to the community' like they did with Thunderbird. Either way they've clearly signalled that they could not give a shit about Firefox any more. Since Edge is basically Chrome with Microsoft's telemetry baked in that means that your browser choices will either be the one made directly by an ad company or Chrome repackaged by some other company that just wants to pipe the browser telemetry back into their already egregious OS telemetry pipeline. It is definitely time for a fork or a fresh start with actual privacy, security and simplicity in mind.

chriswalz 6y ago

At GoSecret.io you can use our upload feature (similar to Firefox Send). We haven't open sourced our code but we definitely are considering it in wake of Firefox Send getting shutdown. Please ping me if you're interested

thayne 6y ago

They are dropping things I might actually pay for to focus on products I never will...

cryo 6y ago

I've build cryo for end-to-end encrypted p2p file transfers without cloud or signal server components. Imho all solutions which require a webserver somewhere are doomed to fail at some point, or as in this case can be discontinued. P2P tools should be client only with no servers at all to survive time and provide independency. Tools on their own don't matter either, but protocols like BitTorrent do. https://cryonet.io https://cryonet.io

foresto 6y ago

I've been bookmarking point-to-point file transfer tools. These are not file hosting services like Firefox Send; both endpoints must be online at the same time. Nevertheless, I suspect they might be useful to some other folks here. Please post corrections or more detail on any of these if you have it. I haven't had time to try most of them yet. WebWormhole: WebRTC encryption, direct data transfer, large file support, browser and command line. Looks more versatile than the others. Has not undergone security review yet. https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole https://github.com/saljam/webwormhole https://webwormhole.io/ https://webwormhole.io/ Magic Wormhole: Data relay required (public relay is often slow), mainly command line. https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/ https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/ croc: End-to-end encryption, data relay required (I think), command line only. https://github.com/schollz/croc https://github.com/schollz/croc https://schollz.com/blog/croc6/ https://schollz.com/blog/croc6/ File Pizza: WebTorrent, seems to load entire file into RAM, browser only. https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://github.com/kern/filepizza https://file.pizza/ https://file.pizza/ Snapdrop: WebRTC encryption, local sharing only (I think), browser only. https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://snapdrop.net/ https://snapdrop.net/

timwis 6y ago

Darn, Firefox Send was excellent. end-to-end encryption, user-friendly, backed by a reputable privacy-focused company.. Anyone know a decent alternative?

gulerc 6y ago

SendGB.com is good way for file transferring up to 20GB. No needed registration or verification.

Yizahi 6y ago

Still true: https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/

mwexler 6y ago

While sad to see Notes go, I've been pretty impressed with the continued support of the free Simplenote https://simplenote.com https://simplenote.com from Automattic. It's basic but nice, and I've actually gotten help from them the few times I've had issues.

dddw 6y ago
Be sure to backup those notes. Heard some horrorstories back in the day about unrecoverable notes. simplenote is nearly integrated in nvalt.

Walterion 6y ago

I worked on blackhole.run as a more advanced version, but it is sad to see such a cool and secure service shuts down; there is a need to have more secure tools, not less. Thanks to the Mozilla team for a great job.

user34580534 6y ago

Damn son whattt!>!>!>!

user34580534 6y ago

Damn son whattt

harrier-lcc 6y ago

There are some good alternatives out there like https://encl.io/ https://encl.io/ , pretty much a faster Firefox Send alternative for sending 1GB files for 7 days