At the time this internal skepticism about the future of Gecko was very palpable from outside. Which is why it was infuriating to see Mozilla jumping on every bandwagon they could, eventually ending up with the OS silliness: it really felt like they were trying to run from their own browser and from their own tech, like they were ashamed of not being cool.
Thank god they eventually “saw the light” and they’re now back on track.
FxOS started in 2011, not 2008. But yeah, that's the usual scapegoat to explain any of Mozilla's issues from the last 5 (or 10?) years.
You also totally misunderstand the goal pursued with FxOS, which had nothing to do with "run from their own browser and tech". If anything, the current work to remove XUL and xpcom puts Firefox closer to how FxOS was built, not further away. At the time some employees even build a new desktop browser around the same tech (not the failed Tofino experiment), that was outperforming Firefox because it had a lot of the "new hotness" like e10s and web extensions. Guess what, the desktop team ignored it, only to do the same thing later.
Mozilla is not back on track at all, they are still playing catch up on the desktop market which is not growing much and totally irrelevant on mobile.
But they have enough money to last years, in a weird way of "to rich to fail".
> You also totally misunderstand the goal pursued with FxOS, which had nothing to do with "run from their own browser and tech".
FxOS embraced web technologies, but didn't embrace the browser. I think Mozilla is still having a hard time embracing the browser, though at least now the will is there.
Who at Mozilla ever talks about hypermedia? About link text? About navigation? About bookmarks? FxOS was a demonstration of how hollowed-out the philosophy of the browser had become at Mozilla. It used web technologies to faithfully clone non-web UI and OS organization. It would be like reimplementing JavaScript in JavaScript: an interesting intellectual pursuit, but completely useless.
> If anything, the current work to remove XUL and xpcom puts Firefox closer to how FxOS was built, not further away.
Technically yes, but the motivation is different: this is work to make Firefox better, not to make a better-thing-that-is-not-Firefox.
> At the time some employees even build a new desktop browser around the same tech (not the failed Tofino experiment), that was outperforming Firefox because it had a lot of the "new hotness" like e10s and web extensions. Guess what, the desktop team ignored it, only to do the same thing later.
The Firefox Desktop team was too small to pursue much of anything. It was like a dozen people maintaining the Firefox frontend. Progress couldn't happen until the organization was aligned to actually support Firefox.
You are wrong on the long term goal and vision for FxOS: in 2.6 we started to add very webby stuff to the overall UX with "pin the web" features.
And I wonder who the platform team was supporting then, because they were not supporting b2g either...
I'm sympathetic to the idea of building a great desktop browser, but at this point in time that should not be MoCo priority #1. Hopefully the platform improvements done recently will be reused in a different context.
> You are wrong on the long term goal and vision for FxOS: in 2.6 we started to add very webby stuff to the overall UX with "pin the web" features.
(I should say that I don't think there was a more webby version of Firefox OS that would have had more success.)
The webby features weren't the point of FxOS. It was always clear what the point was: create a phone OS/platform built entirely on web technologies, with Gecko as the core. UX was an afterthought and the basic transitions were all based on phone apps and not the web. And it
> And I wonder who the platform team was supporting then, because they were not supporting b2g either...
It's interesting that you felt they weren't supporting b2g, because from the other side we got the message that other things couldn't get done because of b2g.
There were really three directions vying for attention with Platform: Firefox OS, Firefox, and Platform's own goals (generally related to advancing web technologies). Notably when Platform was moved into the Firefox group there was also a message that we should stop trying to get ahead on new web APIs, and the focus became very clear: support Firefox. At the time of Firefox OS it wasn't at all clear what the focus was.
When things are confusing I think there's a tendency to fall back on your own competencies, and for Platform that meant sticking to what they knew how to do, not the most most gnarly (but potentially very impactful) b2g needs.
> I'm sympathetic to the idea of building a great desktop browser, but at this point in time that should not be MoCo priority #1. Hopefully the platform improvements done recently will be reused in a different context.
The desktop browser is why Mozilla has any money to do anything, of course it should be priority #1! People spend millions of hours every day in Firefox, and those people are worthy of attention.
I'm not sure why you think you know what the absolute truth about "the point of FxOS", but that doesn't matter anymore.
The way they played the "platform can't cater to all needs" story is a shame. I was naive enough to think I could trust people in MoCo to not just lie to my face but they acted like any corp. No real justification was given (I asked for numbers, bugs, etc. for months with no answer), 2 VPs did the dirty work for their CEO and the top level module owner declined both to support a community led project around b2g and to write down that they declined (exercise left to the reader to guess who this is. Hint: Brendan Eich was not top level module owner anymore).
Read [0], watch [1] and tell me if you are proud of your leadership for not even engaging a discussing on the topic.
Please read my comment, before trying to read my mind. I'm telling you what it looked like from the outside. Nobody ever cared for the internal politics of Mozilla; what we saw was a wobbly org that looked anxious to build anything that wasn't their own browser. I didn't say the OS was responsible, nobody cares if FxOS ended up making choices that the browser should have made or whatnot. The problem was not FxOS; FxOS was a symptom of an institution that had lost its way before the OS was even in the picture.
> they are still playing catch up on the desktop market
It's not the sort of wave you turn in a month. 57 is a big release, give it time. It had a massive surge of good press, which is a good sign. If they can come up with developer tools that can beat Chrome at something, they will see numbers go up.
> totally irrelevant on mobile.
They are making inroads on Android, which is the only market they will ever play into. iOS will only be cracked open by legal coercion. Anything else is wishful thinking.
> But they have enough money to last years
Mozilla is not just a company, it's basically a public institution. Their role is to champion a view of the web as an open utility, not to be the most popular widget maker. They don't need bazillions of money to do that.
> Their role is to champion a view of the web as an open utility, not to be the most popular widget maker. They don't need bazillions of money to do that.
To maintain Firefox as a viable product they do need a lot of money, and significant market share too.
Without Firefox as a viable product Mozilla would be a very different and much less useful organisation.
Inroads on Android? Got data on that? As much as I love Focus, it's irrelevant in terms of marketshare (and it's also just webkit/chrome under the hood). And Firefox for Android marketshare was going down ever since Mozilla shelved developing it. And Firefox for iOS is neutered thanks to Apple's policies.
I agree about their role, but they need a strong, successful product to defend this ideal of the web as a open/public utility. That is what they are struggling with, and giving up on owning a platform was a mistake imho - they have less options than their competitors.
As Fabrice said, FirefoxOS was really the opposite --- doubling down on Gecko by making it the core piece of a huge bet. And it mean a big investment in Gecko improvements such as multi-process which eventually paid off on desktop.
Thank god they eventually “saw the light” and they’re now back on track.