
Firefox OS pivots to IoT, wants to build an AI smart home assistant - ilyaeck
http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/02/mozilla-tests-the-waters-for-firefox-os-iot-apps-including-a-samantha-style-virtual-assistant/
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hackerboos
Fits in with the recent story “I've been working at Mozilla for many years,
from peak to decline” (slashdot.org)"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11230084)

> We keep getting ridiculous thing after ridiculous thing. A lot of people
> opposed FirefoxOS vs getting back to the roots and attempting to do
> something about the web. FirefoxOS sounds like a nice concept, but everyone
> with a bit of a brain knew we had ZERO technical AND market chance.

> Then, when it sounded like we're ok killing that and doing things well again
> BOOM IoT. Same mistake only even worse!

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hartator
I think we should limit open source non-profits to a maximum of 3 buzzwords by
announcement.

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Grishnakh
Maybe Mozilla should concentrate on improving its browser instead of chasing
fads.

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dz0ny
I too think this one will die eventually. They should focus on core tech: \-
RUST \- Embeddable webview and JS engine \- Make Thunderbird more a priority
than "something that we don't care about"

~~~
Grishnakh
The Thunderbird one is somewhat understandable at least: not that many people
are still using standalone email clients any more. Almost everyone's moved to
webmail. Not everyone, of course: there's still some stalwarts out there using
_pine_ , for instance, but pine isn't under active development or even
maintenance AFAIK, and doesn't require full-time developers to maintain it.

But yeah, they really should focus on core technologies, especially the
browser itself. There just aren't many alternatives: Microsoft's "Edge" (or
whatever they call it today) (closed-source, corporate-controlled, Windows-
only, not well supported by plugins), Apple's Safari (closed-source with FOSS
engine, corporate-controlled, Win/Mac/iOS-only, not well supported by
plugins), Google Chrome (open-source but not completely, corporate-controlled,
privacy issues), and Google Chromium (same as Chrome but missing the closed-
source stuff). Oh yeah, don't forget whatever piece-of-junk browser that
Android comes with by default.

We really need a non-for-profit-corporation-controlled browser that keeps up
with standards and gives us open access to the web, arguably the most
important communications technology now in existence. So Mozilla is really
doing society a disservice by losing their focus on this and screwing around
with unimportant BS like FirefoxOS, IoT, etc.

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dingaling
> not that many people are still using standalone email clients any more.

Dozens ( hundreds? ) of millions of office workers still use Outlook.
Thunderbird was starting to play in that space and have some success with
S/MIME and client-certificate authentication, both aspects essential to
enterprises but infeasible for web-mail.

~~~
Grishnakh
You have a very good point there; I actually use Thunderbird at work, using
client-certificate authentication like you say.

However, I thought my smallish company was just weird that way.

And it doesn't seem like many companies are willing to move away from
Microsoft office tools; the FOSS community has been pushing Open/LibreOffice,
Thunderbird, etc. for probably 20 years now, with very little uptake. I can
see how Mozilla might have finally gotten tired of it.

Also, the big problem with Thunderbird is (correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't
do any calendaring (I don't see it at my company), which is the "killer
feature" that Outlook has. Google does it with GMail, and it works great, and
it's really necessary if you're going to try to get anyone to switch from
Outlook/Exchange. But FOSS has never done a very good job of coming up with a
drop-in replacement for that.

~~~
dfc
Consider yourself corrected, Thunderbird supports CalDav out of the box now
that lightning has been integrated.

~~~
Grishnakh
Interesting. Unfortunately, from the Wikipedia page about CalDAV, it appears
that Microsoft Outlook and Exchange are curiously missing, and do not support
this open standard at all. (There is an open-source plugin for Outlook.)

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shirro
I was at a linux and open source focussed conference once and a speaker
started talking about the future for their FOSS office software. I think it
was going to be some multimedia or video something or other but I turned off.
It was already bloated enough and it still was missing functionality demanded
by people coming from other platforms. At the time my wife couldn't get it to
do some basic job the market leading product could do and a feature request
had been outstanding for several years to implement that feature.

Firefox needs to keep up with Chrome. Then when they have done they need to
get better than Chrome. Then when they have done that they can provide a
development environment better than Chrome. Then they can try and take market
share back from IE and Chrome. Then they can make a purely Rust based next gen
browser that is more secure than any other browser. And perhaps they can
produce a ChromeOS competitor which has a decent IMAP mail client (I would buy
that).

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phantom_oracle
I don't get why both can't co-exist at the same time. FF OS is ideal for the
low-end market with a more light-weight OS that can run on cheaper devices.

Perhaps they should open a satellite office in a place like Kenya so that they
can understand a tech-savvy local African market.

Then again, this is Mozilla, the company that tried to kill Thunderbird...

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sf_rob
I think that the issue is that people would rather have an Android device
(with a healthy ecosystem), on specs that barely support it running
Gingerbread than have a brand new Firefox OS device (which isn't bad, I had an
early unit) with no history and a poor ecosystem. I've talked to lower middle
class people in India about this and my understanding is they are fine with
feature phones if they're trying to save money or a cheap Android if they want
a full smartphone. The middle ground of Firefox OS does not have a good enough
value proposition.

~~~
vmorgulis
Seems Firefox OS is missing a killer app.

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zubiaur
The similarities to WebOS are striking.

The reasons why are different but they made some of the same mistakes and are
ending up in the same place.

