5 ms·

I have since removed my plan of using WebThings in my house, right after Mozilla started it's self imposed suicide starting with firing Firefox devs.

benfrancis 6y ago
Sorry to hear that and I'm very sad about the recent layoffs at Mozilla too, which included lots of people I know. What would convince you to give WebThings a second chance under its new management?
- aesh2Xa1 6y ago
  For me, what would do it is a complete product that is not niche. A Chromecast competitor that supports the big platforms and content providers out of the box (Android/iOS, Spotify/Netflix, Alexa/Google/Siri) would be ideal. This already exists in the Chromecast, except it's not open. Ideally, it'd just be software on a Raspberry Pi or any hardware.
  - benfrancis 6y ago
    Interesting. That's very different to what WebThings provides today but that's something I'd like to see too and have toyed with building in the past. Chromecast was once very close to being an open platform by implementing the DIAL protocol (although DIAL also had some centralisation issues), but is now a proprietary platform built on the Google Cast protocol, and is creeping towards morphing back into Android TV. There was once a project to build a Firefox OS based TV stick called Matchstick which could have been great (B2G is still used on current Panasonic smart TVs believe it or not), which unfortunately got embroiled in a debate regarding DRM and never made it to market. The digital signage platform I'm currently building at Krellian (https://krellian.com https://krellian.com) could be adapted to consumer use cases like Chromecast and I'd be interested in building that in a standards-based way (e.g. using the W3C Second Screen Protocol), but the challenge would always be getting support from the big content providers, and of course the issue of DRM.
gostsamo 6y ago
The strange thing is that as far as I get, Mozilla didn't fire a single ff dev. Servo - yes, mdn - yes, but they actually want to focus on FF and transfered people from the servo team to the core product.
- calpaterson 6y ago
  My understanding was that some Firefox teams were cut. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef... Do you know different? I also think that cuts to servo are de-facto cuts to Firefox as that browser was supposed to be the source of faster components.
  - dralley 6y ago
    The only parts of Servo that could realistically be ported into Gecko within the next couple of years have already been ported. Servo's DOM engine would be the last major remaining piece, but that would be a very, very long-term project. According to your link, developer tools and internal tooling/infrastructure teams took a cut. The effects will mostly be indirect.
    - calpaterson 6y ago
      Internal tooling and infrastructure teams that work on Firefox are still Firefox teams though. If you work on the build pipeline you still count as a Firefox development in my book.
      - floatingatoll 6y ago
        Are DNS and email both components of the build pipeline, in your view?
  - gostsamo 6y ago
    They were not very clear on where the cuts are, but here is the quote from the linked article: "In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team," Baker wrote. The article prepends the paragraph with another sentence to impose its own interpretation on it, but the way I read it is that the browser division is reorganized around the user experience and everything else is moved in products and operations. Not sure how to highlight the words "browser growth". Regarding Servo, the project is killed and part of the people had been kicked out, but the rest were merged with the core engine team. My understanding is that Mozilla decided that even Google is not doing two browser engines at the same time and decided to move the old one to rust the evolutionary way. Did they fired someone from the ff team? Maybe, but I don't think that it is because the browser is no longer important for them. The fact that they moved there best rust devs to it testifies that at least they are not giving it up so far.

benfrancis 6y ago

Sorry to hear that and I'm very sad about the recent layoffs at Mozilla too, which included lots of people I know. What would convince you to give WebThings a second chance under its new management?

aesh2Xa1 6y ago
For me, what would do it is a complete product that is not niche. A Chromecast competitor that supports the big platforms and content providers out of the box (Android/iOS, Spotify/Netflix, Alexa/Google/Siri) would be ideal. This already exists in the Chromecast, except it's not open. Ideally, it'd just be software on a Raspberry Pi or any hardware.
- benfrancis 6y ago
  Interesting. That's very different to what WebThings provides today but that's something I'd like to see too and have toyed with building in the past. Chromecast was once very close to being an open platform by implementing the DIAL protocol (although DIAL also had some centralisation issues), but is now a proprietary platform built on the Google Cast protocol, and is creeping towards morphing back into Android TV. There was once a project to build a Firefox OS based TV stick called Matchstick which could have been great (B2G is still used on current Panasonic smart TVs believe it or not), which unfortunately got embroiled in a debate regarding DRM and never made it to market. The digital signage platform I'm currently building at Krellian (https://krellian.com https://krellian.com) could be adapted to consumer use cases like Chromecast and I'd be interested in building that in a standards-based way (e.g. using the W3C Second Screen Protocol), but the challenge would always be getting support from the big content providers, and of course the issue of DRM.

gostsamo 6y ago

The strange thing is that as far as I get, Mozilla didn't fire a single ff dev. Servo - yes, mdn - yes, but they actually want to focus on FF and transfered people from the servo team to the core product.

calpaterson 6y ago
My understanding was that some Firefox teams were cut. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef... Do you know different? I also think that cuts to servo are de-facto cuts to Firefox as that browser was supposed to be the source of faster components.
- dralley 6y ago
  The only parts of Servo that could realistically be ported into Gecko within the next couple of years have already been ported. Servo's DOM engine would be the last major remaining piece, but that would be a very, very long-term project. According to your link, developer tools and internal tooling/infrastructure teams took a cut. The effects will mostly be indirect.
  - calpaterson 6y ago
    Internal tooling and infrastructure teams that work on Firefox are still Firefox teams though. If you work on the build pipeline you still count as a Firefox development in my book.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      Are DNS and email both components of the build pipeline, in your view?
- gostsamo 6y ago
  They were not very clear on where the cuts are, but here is the quote from the linked article: "In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team," Baker wrote. The article prepends the paragraph with another sentence to impose its own interpretation on it, but the way I read it is that the browser division is reorganized around the user experience and everything else is moved in products and operations. Not sure how to highlight the words "browser growth". Regarding Servo, the project is killed and part of the people had been kicked out, but the rest were merged with the core engine team. My understanding is that Mozilla decided that even Google is not doing two browser engines at the same time and decided to move the old one to rust the evolutionary way. Did they fired someone from the ff team? Maybe, but I don't think that it is because the browser is no longer important for them. The fact that they moved there best rust devs to it testifies that at least they are not giving it up so far.