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From Mozilla's previous attempts to jettison Thunderbird, and the period where the community kept it maintained while Mozilla allocated no resources, the relati
by Macha 4y ago
From Mozilla's previous attempts to jettison Thunderbird, and the period where the community kept it maintained while Mozilla allocated no resources, the relationship between Thunderbird and Mozilla these days is more akin to that between something like GNU or ASF and their projects than a company and its direct project.
While yes Mozilla could theoretically enforce its trademarks and appoint its own team to start making more direct decisions, we've seen how that goes with various ex-GNU projects like libreboot or ASF projects where they don't have the community like OpenOffice
> If you install Android app X and, due to an acquisition, the app suddenly morphs into app Y which has a different branding, different UI, different features, a different backend and a different development team (but still has your data), isn't this exactly one of the things that the app store rules are supposed to protect against?
On my phone currently, this applies to the following apps:
* Element
* Free Now (European taxi app bought out by BMW/Daimler, formerly mytaxi, formerly hailo)
* Google Hangouts (Was installed as Talk)
* WhatsApp (now Facebook owned)
* A local cinema chain bought out by a UK + Ireland chain
* Pocket Casts (independent -> NPR -> Automattic)
- dizhn 4y agoMicrosoft Swiftkey Keyboard is another good example. (The product got worse though)
- GekkePrutser 4y agoElement did not change ownership. They've just had a few confusing name changes. And the (same) people behind the client are trying to commercialise the client but not the network behind it where your data actually is. I never understood why they dropped vector as a name. It wasn't a worse name than element. Riot was a terrible name choice however. Sooner or later it would have got caught up being used by people coordinating a protest or something and the press would have had a field day with it. But your data has never left the matrix network or your own home server if you chose to have one.
- Macha 4y agoNo, but it did change name and appearence in the move from what was Riot Android to when RiotX was launched and rebranded to Element
- GekkePrutser 4y agoRiotX? I don't remember that. There was a TelegramX, maybe this is what you mean? However there was a couple years that I didn't use it much so perhaps I missed it. But it did go from Vector -> Riot -> Element and various UI and branding changes along the way yes :) Part of this is also that the app was not really "finished" back in the Vector days. It only really came into its own during the Riot age. For example E2E encryption didn't yet exist at the start, and the underlying support in Matrix was missing as well. It's still a protocol and toolset that's evolving rapidly. However the benefit of Matrix is that you can choose any client you want, there are several for mobiles.
- Macha 4y agoThe app that is now the Element Android app co-existed with the old Riot app for over a year as "RiotX". The rebrand and app changeover were timed together, so they renamed the RiotX app to the Element app and replaced the old Riot app with it in one go.
- throwaway67743 4y agoRiotX existed as an experimental client alongside the original Riot, the intention was always to replace Riot with RiotX and this was made very clear (The original java implementation sucked, although what has become Element still has its many many problems)