Firefox, you're supposed to be in my pocket, not the other way around

http://dustri.org/b/firefox-youre-supposed-to-be-in-my-pocket-not-the-other-way-around.html

372 254 11 years ago

Is Mozilla getting anything from this? I know in the old days almost all of Mozilla's income came from money Google gave them to set Google as the default search. I suppose you could look at this as a similar thing, the difference is you could easily remove Google as the default if you wanted to.

Manishearth6• 11 years ago

From what I've heard, no.

Mozilla had a reader mode, and instead of implementing their own service for saving things to a cloud, they used an existing, popular one after lots of user research.

sp3329• 11 years ago

Firefox still has a reader mode, based on code from https://readability.com (just like Safari's).

justcommenting• 11 years ago

Their new suitor is Yahoo, but since we're on the subject of Firefox defaults and funding, this reminds me that Firefox's "Show Cookies..." UI has been broken for years.

And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult.

I could trivially list at least a dozen default Firefox preferences that could readily be explained by conflicts of interest, rather than common sense or Mozilla's commitment to user privacy or their increasingly-touted (and I'm guessing, unpublished) user studies.

It would be interesting to study which Firefox 'features' get prioritized or broken or fixed via paid staff time on a given time horizon and plot that against deals Mozilla makes with 3rd parties.

throwaway20486• 11 years ago

id be interested in a list of preferences please.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult.

Tor is willing to break webpages and website features if that keeps the user untracked. That isn't viable for a general purpose browser.

asddubs3• 11 years ago

And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult.

Source? I'd like to read more about this

coldpie10• 11 years ago

And that Mozilla refuses to merge many of Mike Perry's privacy and security-enhancing patches for Tor Browser Bundle because they make advertisers' lives more difficult.

I don't think Mozilla should be in the business of deciding what content is appropriate for users to view. Users can install extensions to do that if they wish.

ryanolsonx2• 11 years ago

I would be interested in that trivial list. Especially if, in your opinion, some of the preferences should be defaulted to something else.

vacri4• 11 years ago

Is this the modern form of the drive-by-installed toolbar?

rocky1138• 11 years ago

It reminds me a bit of those PCs from the late 1990s where they'd give you a unit free if you give up so much of your screen space to show ads.

notatoad• 11 years ago

No, this is the modern form of the old free version of opera, back when opera was paid software, and they had banner ads embedded in the browser ui.

mhd• 11 years ago

It's more like Google as the default search engine, plus extra toolbar button.

meesterdude• 11 years ago

mozilla's response: http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firefo...

Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users.
All the code related to this integration within Firefox is open source and Pocket has licensed all the Firefox integration code under the MPLv2 license. On top of that, Pocket asked Mozilla for input on how to improve their policy, based on early comments from Mozillians. After that discussion, Pocket updated their privacy policy in early May to explain more precisely how they handle data. You can read Pocket’s privacy policy here.
Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. To disable Pocket, you can remove it from your toolbar or menu. If Pocket is removed from the toolbar or menu, then the feature is effectively disabled, though you can still find it again by accessing it in the Customize Panel. You can find detailed instructions here.

anonymousab• 11 years ago

Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible

That's sounds weird. Why wouldn't they just make it opt-in on the "you've been updated" page? Or just bundle the extension?

azakai13• 11 years ago

Almost all users of any popular browser are not tech savvy like you and I and other people here on Hacker News. They would not enable an opt-in feature because it would sound complex and confusing to them.

The Firefox design team did studies on this, seeing how real users interact with the feature. The results are that bundling it in the browser makes it useful to a lot of people, overall making the browser experience better for them. That's really all this comes down to - the data shows users are happier, overall, with it present by default.

Some users don't like it, like the author of this article, but more users do like it.

nchelluri• 11 years ago

According to an article I found, the way to disable it via about:config is to set browser.pocket.enabled = false

A comment on the post said to restart FF to get the change working. After I did that, the icon left my FF toolbar.

http://lifehacker.com/disable-pocket-integration-in-firefox-...

raesene5• 11 years ago

Unfortunately what I've found is that it re-appears when you upgrade Firefox, which is annoying.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

You should file a bug. That's absolutely unacceptable. (And I didn't see this happen, so I suspect it wasn't intended)

endemic• 11 years ago

I still see a "View Pocket List" item in the Bookmarks menu, even after disabling. Kind of annoying.

burnte2• 11 years ago

Right click the toolbar, select CUSTOMIZE. Drag the Pocket button off the toolbar. Click "Exit Customize". No more Pocket.

I, too, don't care for it, but I'm not going to pretend that the inclusion of a new button that doesn't do anything if you don't use it is like injecting malware into my browser.

ekianjo• 11 years ago

Why is this opt-out and not opt-in, seriously ?

azakai13• 11 years ago

It's opt-out because if it were opt-in, far fewer people would benefit from it.

The Firefox design team conducted user research experiments, and found that a significant amount of people like the feature (far more than dislike it). Most of those users are not techies, and would never even hear about an addon, so including it in the browser is the most realistic way to reach them.

pdkl95• 11 years ago

Because that's how surveillance-as-a-business-model[1] works[2]. The industry that brought us the "EULA" just loves to try to force contracts on people, especially when it tricks the user into giving up even more data.

It starts as a useful product until the network-effects take over and raise the cost of leaving, de facto locking people in. After they are hooked, you introduce various types methods to make the product rely more on remote services instead so more data can be captured. As few people understand the difference between a product that runs locally and a service that necessarily gives your data over to a 3rd party, this usually works without anybody noticing and objecting.

If a few nerds object, they are usually countered with a few lies about why such a service is "necessary", even when it isn't. In this case, the lie is that a 3rd party service is necessary so you can share your bookma^H^H^H^H^H^Hreading list on different devices (which assumes you have multiple devices, and that you want to move bookmarks between them). In hard cases, it may require some vague, misleading, and hard-to-prove statistics ("our data says user's like $foo", "everybody uses $foo"), or simply browbeating anybody that complains ("Then submit your own patches", "stop being paranoid").

The worst part is that for many of the engineers involved, this is probably unintentional. The human mind has a very limited "working set" that is given full attention; everything else is filtered heavily with various shortcuts[3], heuristics, and assumptions, making it incredibly easy to be distracted by endless technical details.

TL;DR - watch [2] for a much better explanation

[1] aka "big data" and sometimes "analytics"

[2] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...

[3] most illusions and magic tricks are based on this - Apollo Robbin even bases his entire show on working just outside the focus-set of his audience ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0k2gja3ym4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d54ydsKUNGw )

sp3329• 11 years ago

It is opt-in. If you don't sign up for a Pocket account, nothing happens.

shmerl2• 11 years ago

You can also disable it in about:config, but the icon still stays in the reader view (that's a bug).

zobzu6• 11 years ago

removing it from view doesn't actually remove pocket - in fact you just have to click the hamburger menu and click pocket.. ooh its still here ;-)

gear54rus• 11 years ago

When in dragging mode, there's an area on the left which kinda removes it from burger as well :)

silverwind• 11 years ago

Better yet, disable it in about:config through browser.pocket.enabled. Should save some CPU cycles too.

Manishearth6• 11 years ago

It won't. Firefox features are lazy loaded; so if it's dragged off the customizeable UI it's got zero footprint until you drag it back.

Actually, it's got very less footprint until you click it.

morganvachon7• 11 years ago

Maybe that's all you have to do to have it not track your activity, maybe not. Maybe disabling it in about:config and setting all the strings related to it to "null" is enough to keep it from tracking you; again, maybe not.

Either way, it's a shitty thing for Mozilla to do, just as it was a shitty thing for Google to sneak in code in Chromium that downloads and installs proprietary blobs after compilation and packaging.

The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller.

coldpie10• 11 years ago

There is no "maybe" about it. It's open source. If you don't interact with the button, then nothing will be sent to a third party or tracked. You can remove the button and disable it entirely if you want, but at no point will anything be sent or tracked if you don't click the button.

The list of truly open web browsers keeps getting smaller.

What are you talking about?

foiboitoi2• 11 years ago

I want Pocket & Telefonica removed. Or at the very least implement something fair like the Search Engine toolbar (in the case for WebRTC video). Except Pocket, why on earth isn't that still just an extension.

Why force it on people who don't want it AND withhold the ability to permanently remove it? What's wrong with them?

GrantSolar2• 11 years ago

Chrome has google accounts to synchronise recently viewed pages across devices. This is just Mozilla's response. There is already a popular extension, so why re-invent the wheel?

lmm3• 11 years ago

I see this as Mozilla basically admitting that the extension model has failed; this is a textbook example of an extension, but they've decided that's not good enough.

sp3329• 11 years ago

Firefox already has sync built-in. I think this is supposed to be an improvement over the current bookmarks system. Mozilla realized that Pocket was already doing that better than they were, so they just integrated it instead of reinventing it poorly.

lagadu4• 11 years ago

There is already a popular extension

Exactly! There is already an extension, why isn't Pocket an extension then?

sp3329• 11 years ago

The Firefox team has been very aggressive about performance lately. Each extension you have installed increases the startup time, so that's probably why they baked it in.

672723074828• 11 years ago

So it improves the performance for a very small number of Firefox users at the expense of the performance of all of the other Firefox users who never would have had the extension installed in the first place?

orblivion• 11 years ago

What's wrong with Telefonica? I heard people complain about it when Hello came out and I never understood why because I'd never heard of it. Is Firefox still open source at this point?

sergiotapia• 11 years ago

What browser can I use that respects privacy? Mozilla was the last bastion of privacy. The final pillar to lean on. What happened?

I miss the early 2000's of the web where everything was the wild west and was untouched by the advertising cancer.

bitmapbrother• 11 years ago

Lynx ;)

jd3• 11 years ago

So install SeaMonkey

nindalf• 11 years ago

Suppose you were to right click -> Customise and remove the icon, the feature is effectively disabled. If you can't take Mozilla's word on that, that's understandable. You can check the integration code - its open source. Now if you're going to say that its the principle of opting-out rather than opting-in, that's a separate discussion. If you're concerned about your privacy, you can protect it in 3 clicks.

If you're still concerned, then use IceWeasel or SeaMonkey.

listic• 11 years ago

How could one go about installing Firefox without Pocket from the command line? Clicking doesn't scale well.

lmm3• 11 years ago

Konqueror. The browser that was open-source from day 1 (back when Mozilla was still Netscape), that wrote their own first-class rendering engine with a tiny fraction of the money or developers that Mozilla has. I often wonder how history might've been different if they'd got the money and attention that Mozilla did.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

They did?

KHTML became WebKit. I'm sure many of the original authors moved along with it. And WebKit is far more popular than Gecko.

vacri4• 11 years ago

w3m

Also, while this is from 2005, this is how I remember the early 2000's: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Interesting that the page has lasted longer than a great many of it's links.

serf2• 11 years ago

in some sort of weird recursive stroll through the internet I clicked a link from that page and got 'TabMarks', a service that consolidates bookmarks. Thought that was pertinent, given the discussion in this thread.

miclill_kit• 11 years ago

I trust IceCat by the GNU people:

http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

"Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons."

sp3329• 11 years ago

What part of this is anti privacy?

TheLoneWolfling7• 11 years ago

we collect information about the URLs, titles and content of the web pages and other information you save to Pocket. The types of information we collect includes your browser type, device type, time zone, language, and other information related to the manner in which you access the Pocket Technologies. We also collect information about your use of the Pocket Technologies so that we can provide our services. For example, as a part of providing Pocket’s syncing features, we sync information about the items that you save and view within Pocket so that your list, tags, scroll position, and other account and usage information may be synced across all of your devices.
In addition to the methods described above, we may also collect information using cookies or other technologies. You may decline our cookies if your browser permits, although in that case you may not be able to use certain features, you may be required to enter your password more frequently during a session, and you may be unable to install or use certain Pocket Technologies. Cookies and other technologies make our Pocket Technologies easier to use and help us customize and personalize the services we provide based on your interests and activities.
We may also use "pixel tags," "web beacons," "clear GIFs" or similar means (individually or collectively "Pixel Tags") in connection with emails that we send to our users in order to collect usage data. Our use of Pixel Tags allows us to count users who have visited certain pages on our Website, to deliver branded services and to help determine the effectiveness of promotional or advertising campaigns.
We may also analyze and use aggregated information to improve the products and services that we offer, and to develop new products and services.
In the event that we or certain of our assets are acquired, user information may be included among the transferred assets.
Please note this Privacy Policy will change from time to time. We may amend this Privacy Policy at any time by posting the amended terms on our Website that you can access at getpocket.com or through the options or help menu of the Pocket application. All amended terms shall automatically be effective thirty (30) days after they are initially posted on the Website.

This part of this.

TheLoneWolfling7• 11 years ago

I'm currently using Pale Moon. It works fairly well. It's a Firefox fork, but as time goes on its diverging further and further from FF.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

Mostly because it's just a rebrand of the ESR releases.

JadeNB9• 11 years ago

I think what I don't get is why this is so important that it has to be bundled in the browser. I have always viewed Firefox as being fiercely, at times absurdly, about the idea of providing a minimal browser on top of which users can use extensions to build whatever customised experience they want. Sure, integrating Pocket allows Mozilla to (in the quote linked by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221 )) "provide this feature to our users in the best way possible", but the same argument could be made for tons of extensions; I think that they haven't made the case that this one is so important that it needs to be integrated. (Is the extension functionality, which can provide amazing services like Greasemonkey, really so limited that Pocket and Mozilla couldn't work together to write an extension that provides an indistinguishable experience?)

brighteyes4• 11 years ago

From other comments here, it sounds like data shows that this one is good for users. You can argue that other extensions might help, but this one has had an actual investigation done proving its benefit.

JadeNB9• 11 years ago

It seems likely that there are lots of other extensions that would also pass the bar of "users" (even 'lots of users'!) "like it in tests".

(Also, not to be nit-picky but because I think it's an important distinction, I don't think the investigation here "proved its benefit", but rather showed only that those users tested liked it. I suspect every designer would agree that bundling everything a user wants leads, almost paradoxically, to an unuseable mess.)

zobzu6• 11 years ago

because:

1/ its a source of revenue and get VP's bonuses for diversifying mozilla's revenues

2/ its a test to see how people like if mozilla starts incorporating 3rd party cloud services in the user-agent

(doesnt actually sound evil put like that does it?)

result:

1/ some few people get paid a few hundred thousand/year

2/ mozilla alienates people, loses market share

3/ said vps will leave when mozilla can't pay them bonuses no more

(I think that's sadly close to the truth)

throwaway20486• 11 years ago

i dont know about you, but that sounds pretty damn evil to me.

mburns2• 11 years ago

I think what I don't get is why this is so important that it has to be bundled in the browser.

They've made a statement just last week following a developer summit. Sounds like Pocket et al might yet be repackaged as default addons afterall.

    Folks said that Pocket should have been a bundled add-on that could
    have been more easily removed entirely from the browser. We tend to
    agree with that, and fixing that for Pocket and any future partner
    integrations is one concrete piece of engineering work we need to
    get done.

https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/firefox-dev/2015-July/003...

addicted• 11 years ago

This is making a mountain of a molehill. Pocket like functionality is an integrated and expected feature of every browser today. Mozilla decided that instead of making the effort to reimplement this (efforts which are better redirected towards stuff like finally completing per tab processes), they would integrate the most popular extension that was being used for this functionality.

Pocket does not immediately gain any info about the user until the user explicitly opts in.

Mozilla certainly needs to be more transparent about how these companies are selected, and the way this information is first presented to the user. And they have acknowledged they did it poorly with both Telefonica and Pocket, and are looking to improve. But it is in no way an abandonment of their core principles by any stretch of the imagination.

sjun• 11 years ago

Can you point out which other major browsers integrate a feature like Pocket?

girvo• 11 years ago

Safari's Reading List, no?

ethana• 11 years ago

IE11 has a reading mode since Windows 8 I think. The replacement Microsoft Edge browser will also include it.

Firefox for Android actually had its own 'reading list' for a while too. Won't be long until Pocket will be on Firefox for Android by default if this is their direction.

slowmovintarget• 11 years ago

Interesting that it's disabled by default in the Developer's Edition.

gruez• 11 years ago

Makes sense. Developers aren't receptive forced addons.

hysan• 11 years ago

For everyone saying "Customize" this and opt-out/in that. Why not just have Pocket be a pre-installed add-on? That sounds like a compromise that would satisfy both camps and fit in with the Firefox philosophy.

JadeNB9• 11 years ago

I think this is a very good point, and I agree! For what it's worth, in the response quoted by meesterdude (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876221), Mozilla said:

Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible.

I don't know why (or whether) this direct integration makes such a difference compared to providing it as an extension, or even what is 'best' about it (fastest? Easiest? Most consistent?), but that's what they said.

EDIT: On the other hand, mburns (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467) quotes another reply where Mozilla seem to agree with you.

omouse2• 11 years ago

If you don't like Pocket, get more people to use the Sync feature instead or help build out Sync to do what Pocket does.

To get to free/open source sometimes you have to start with proprietary software and progressively move over.

ams6110• 11 years ago

I don't want either one.

pessimizer2• 11 years ago

That's not allowed. You must want one, because Chrome has one. You must want everything that Chrome has; that's why you use Firefox.

pmontra2• 11 years ago

I'd use Sync with my own server but Firefox on Android is not good enough (rendering is too slow, font inflation sub par, etc) so I don't have anything to sync with. I'm using Opera on my phone and my tablet. Opera doesn't sync with personal sync servers so I'm not syncing between them too.

shmerl2• 11 years ago

Does Mozilla make any money on it? Why would they bundle a non FOSS service into the browser, enabled by default with that?

zobzu6• 11 years ago

yes, albeit i bet its negligible compared to the yahoo search deal

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

Like Google or Yahoo search you mean?

Probably because people find it useful.

pessimizer2• 11 years ago

Like Google or Yahoo search you mean?

Including those has provided most of Firefox's revenue, so they're the worst possible examples.

joshmn• 11 years ago

Time for an open-source pocket clone.

I'll start the API.

zobzu6• 11 years ago

interestingly - firefox nightly for android has a "reading list" and no pocket

which is .. basically pocket on top of firefox sync... also has a nicer integration and its pretty simple.. i dont even..

brighteyes4• 11 years ago

As said in other threads, firefox/mozilla decided to stop developing their own in-house similar feature, and to collaborate with the existing and apparently better pocket.

jshwlkr• 11 years ago

https://github.com/zhy0216/random-read

bdcravens• 11 years ago

I use Pocket, and am pretty happy with it. However, this bundling may cause me to eye it more critically now.

nacs• 11 years ago

There's a (currently) 178 response thread for this bundleware in the Mozilla "governance" forum:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/2PY...

hiou6• 11 years ago

When I first heard about this all I could think was "Wow, Mozilla must be having some really serious money concerns right now"

I've been a huge Mozilla fan for a long time(I'm typing this on my Firefox OS phone) but this is all starting to feel really hopeless.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

As has been pointed out dozens of times in this thread, Mozilla didn't get any money from the integration. Although indirectly they of course save engineering salaries from not building the feature themselves.

phantom_oracle• 11 years ago

This is what happens when you have a tightly-coupled "NPO" that needs to use creative means to fund their organization.

Mozilla is not exactly light-weight anymore and they have major expenses these days, which means they either need to go cap-in-hat and beg YaGoogFace or tell users that user-interest is still core, whilst integrating "sponsored" plugins deep into the browser.

This is no different to getting "free" software on MS back in the 2000s, at the expense of having to install that shitty ask.com toolbar.

Privacy and security really seems to be becoming more of a fallacy on the internet now.

Manishearth6• 11 years ago

No.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...

vultour2• 11 years ago

So Mozilla said that isn't the case. The NSA also said they aren't spying on American people. You really believe everything you see?

cddotdotslash2• 11 years ago

Everyone saying "oh, just right click and remove it; it's so easy" is entirely missing the point. The simple fact is, Mozilla took a third-party, proprietary service and bundled it into the browser. If this becomes the new norm, imagine downloading Firefox v53 and having six different services installed (all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.) all because some research studies they collected said "people like this." Sure, every subset of the population is going to like different services. When I download Chrome, I install PushBullet, Disconnect, the Chromecast extension, and Ublock. But that doesn't mean that every other users wants or even needs those same things. The entire purposes of add-ons is that they can be... added onto the default experience. Mozilla has now begun changing the default. While they may claim this was done "purely for the benefit of users," it sure smells like it was done for money.

EDIT: for anyone who doesn't think it wasn't about money, please explain why it is so difficult to remove, why I have to open about:config to "disable" (not remove) it, and why it wasn't just added as an add-on (which already existed)?

throwaway20486• 11 years ago

Sure is funny how a little bit of cash goes a long way to ensuring something is for the benefit of the user.

emn135• 11 years ago

[citation needed].

brighteyes4• 11 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876467 they will do that, but it takes more effort i guess.

21echoes• 11 years ago

(all consuming memory, collecting personal data, etc.)

the integration does not collect personal data until the user opts in, and it does not consume memory beyond loading the image from disk until the user opts in.

meanwhile, that search bar up at the top is an integrated browser function (not even an add-on) that sends personal data to a 3rd party, closed source server.

please explain why it is so difficult to remove

you remove it just like every other thing in your toolbar: click the menu button, drag it off of the toolbar.

Mozilla has now begun changing the default

like when they added bookmarks, search, download menu, spaces, and countless other functions? that's literally what browser vendors do.

pllbnk• 11 years ago

like when they added bookmarks, search, download menu, spaces, and countless other functions? that's literally what browser vendors do.

All of those features either work offline or use Mozilla's own services as opposed to third party services.

The only exception I can think of at the moment is search which should also be provided through add-ons in my opinion because I don't use it - I go directly to Google website and search there.

glandium• 11 years ago

please explain why it is so difficult to remove

right-click, "Remove from toolbar". There you go.

vacri4• 11 years ago

Removed from toolbar, but not from Firefox itself. My password list isn't accessed directly from the toolbar, but it's still in the application.

Manishearth6• 11 years ago

Mozilla took a third-party, proprietary service and bundled it into the browser

This is no different from the integration with Google or Yahoo. The Firefox-side code is not proprietary. It doesn't consume resources if you're not using it.

You can remove it via the customizeable UI feature too.

I've seen Firefox employees stating that there was no money involved.

asddubs3• 11 years ago

wow, if there really was no money involved, this has to be the dumbest PR decision they've made

asddubs3• 11 years ago

of course it was done for money, I don't think there's any doubt about that. The question is: Is that bad? If this was an extension you could remove entirely, that didn't be default track you, I'd say no. Just like with google/yahoo tie-ins, mozilla has to earn money somehow. But I think the implementation of this tie-in was extremely clumsy

astrobe_3• 11 years ago

of course it was done for money, I don't think there's any doubt about that. The question is: Is that bad?

Yes it is. They have started to sell users just like everyone else.

eevilspock• 11 years ago

People need money to live. It is unavoidably about the money. The real problem is not the money, but where it comes from. It is not coming from the users, who expect everything to be free. That is the real problem. Things won't get better until we truly are the customer, not the product.

Trombone122• 11 years ago

Could someone explain how pocket isn't like the cloud synching bookmarks Firefox already provides?

joekrill• 11 years ago

Well for one thing Firefox's cloud sync is completely open source, whereas Pocket is a proprietary cloud service. This, I believe, is one of the primary reasons people have a problem with this whole situation.

JohnTHaller2• 11 years ago

The service integration code is entirely open source and isn't executed even once unless you choose to use it.

Just for comparison, Chrome has chunks of closed source code, including the binary blob that is downloaded on first run to enable listening for "OK Google". This add-on is pre-installed. And it's pre-installed to make Google more money.

psykovsky3• 11 years ago

How do you define executing the addon? Clicking the Icon in the addons bar? Just having it there?

cddotdotslash2• 11 years ago

It's not an add-on; it's a default, difficult-to-remove-entirely integration into the browser. Surely that must have taken more engineering work than to simply ship it as a default add-on, which is why people are questioning the motives behind it. How about instead of installing extra, third-party services into the browser that people may or may not want, Mozilla improves the add-on search experience to direct users to add-ons they may like? Or the first boot experience?

And I think comparing Firefox to Chrome is just legitimizing the argument; Firefox markets itself essentially as the opposite of most of the things Google does. "It's okay because Chrome does it" doesn't make me feel very good about Firefox.

DavideNL• 11 years ago

The service integration code is entirely open source and isn't executed even once unless you choose to use it.

Not very reassuring. Do you suggest i make a daily reminder to check the Firefox source code to check whether the implemented privacy invading code still "isn't executed" ?

frogpelt• 11 years ago

Literally one person said "just remove it, it's so easy."

endtime• 11 years ago

I know it's beside the point, but Pocket is actually a great product and I actively use it in Chrome and Android.

nefitty• 11 years ago

Firefox < Opera < Chrome, in terms of performance and business choices...

Animats3• 11 years ago

Mozilla employment billboard, 101 near SF: "Work for mankind, not for the man".

Mozilla reality: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Animats3• 11 years ago

On top of this, Firefox for Android now demands access to your contacts list. The browser itself has no need for your contacts list. But Mozilla Sync and Pocket do.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

Is that in Nightly?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use...

Doesn't list that permission. I see no reason why Pocket or Sync would require that permission, although Hello likely does.

eveningcoffee4• 11 years ago

Thank you for pointing out this possible problem. Must keep eyes open. It is disappointing that it is necessary.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

Actually, it seems to be to implement the "Contacts API": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=857730

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/1d77c3062662

Note that it's only enabled in Nightlies with no plans to ship.

Animats3• 11 years ago

Actually, it's access to "Your accounts" that Firefox for Android now wants. That's for "Sync", or so they say.

A browser shouldn't have access to your accounts. That opens up a big attack surface.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse".

I don't like patented codecs either but there's no argument that making Firefox actually work with pretty much any video website out there is making it better, especially as they fought tooth and nail and only caved in when it was a foregone conclusion that H264 won out.

It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him.

(And the tl;dr doesn't seem to agree with what's actually in the documents either)

throwaway77673• 11 years ago

I find it interesting that he considers Firefox getting H264 support as "the browser getting worse and worse".

The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back. Therefore it is no longer an open-source browser, unless I patch it and build my own version to disable this stuff. Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally.

Of course it's very convenient that video just works. User-experience wise it's just better. Noone is arguing that.

It's easy to see why Mozilla doesn't listen to people like him.

Yes. It's completely understandable, the market for people who don't care about these issues is much larger. The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla, that's the group that built the brand and the goodwill around it. Now they're turning around and using that goodwill to get new markets, while saying "screw you" to the people who built the brand for them.

All the power to them, it's just sad for us old users watching this ship burn. I'm hoping a new project will spring up that picks up the torch and focuses on being an open-source, privacy-preserving browser.

rockdoe26• 11 years ago

The issue, at least for me, is that the browser now downloads binary blobs behind my back... Firefox being open-source was one of the big selling points originally.

OpenH264 IS open source. Firefox downloads a pre-built binary (that happens to have a patent license included), just like it'll do if you update, for example, Debian Iceweasel.

The reason many people are annoyed is because the free-software tech crowd used to be the target consumer for mozilla

It still is, but only the people who are willing to be reasonable and listen to arguments. Demanding that a browser in 2015 does not support H264 is not realistic.

I mean, there's people arguing here that the current Sync system is a sell-out because it uses passwords instead of the old randomly generated keys.

If I see that, and the H264 argument, then I think there's two kinds of "open source communities": the ones that try to build usable products and a big circklejerk that is happy to have a solution only for themselves. If you follow the discussions about ANY kind of open source project that tries to help the mainstream, you'll often see the same pattern. (GNOME and systemd are some easy examples)

eveningcoffee4• 11 years ago

Wth Mozilla.org??? Do we have to create a fork due to your jerky moves? Better get rid of stuff like this.

tgb• 11 years ago

I have a Pocket account and use their bookmarklet when I want to save something for later reading on my tablet or phone. That should be reasonably private (apart from what I obviously send to them), correct?

gorgak• 11 years ago

ever since an ad appeared on my firefox ive been looking for something else. tried vivaldi but its based on google code, and i dont support google either. hard to know where to turn next.

ChildOfChaos• 11 years ago

Honestly who cares... this is not important to your life. People are always looking at reasons to be angry. Grow up.

hollerith• 11 years ago

Firefox is important to the web, and the web is important to our civilization.

ryanolsonx2• 11 years ago

It is very important to the open web. People expect more from Firefox because they state what they stand for. See here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/. Integrating a proprietary service into Firefox is contrary to this.

Firefox, you're supposed to be in my pocket, not the other way around

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