Given how strongly Mozilla has pushed extensions in the past (traditionally core features pushed into extensions several times), what they should have done is simply offer Pocket as an "officially bundled" extension for the normal download. They could then trivially offer alternative downloads without the extension, making everybody happy.

This idea could even be pushed further: they could have several alternative downloads that are simply pre-bundled extensions. Alongside their normal version they could have "minimalist", "dev tools", "max privacy", "social/chat helpers", and the like. Most people would still download the normal version, but this might introduce more people to extensions, who would normally never even know about addons.mozilla.org.

I agree, but i had heard that certain components wouldnt work as an extension. That being said, they should have extended their api to make it work as an extension

That's exactly why it came bundled as a non extension. So they could figure out how exactly they needed to extend the extensions API after having in built in a for a while.

They could have done such experimentation in an unreleased fork of the browser. Or if they needed wider testing, they could have released this separate, experimental branch and clearly labeled it so that people would know what they were getting into if they installed it. Mozilla didn't need to force Pocket on so many Firefox users who wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

Why the rush to distribute it first and figure it out later? Couldn't they figure out the API extensions required during development, but before shipping?

Pocket? What exactly is the integration doing that the addon wasn't able to do?

This is a real, non-rhetorical question: I started occasionally using the addon when pocket was still read-it-later and never changed usage patterns since.

Wasn't pocket original an extension?

addons.mozilla.org has a "Collections" category where anyone can curate a list of add-ons. It would be good if an entire collection could be installed with one click instead of installing each add-on individually.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/

I'm well aware. My point is that if the company knew its userbase, it would not have happened.

I don't care about it by the way, I like Pocket and I use the functionality. But it was obvious that there would be drama.

Edit: In reply to the dead comment below, no I do not think Pocket should be preinstalled, and I really hope that's not the message that's getting through in my posts.

I think you underestimate the diversity of the userbase. Especially in places like Europe until Chrome ate their lunch, Firefox users were basically a random sample of the population.

Right, but at least in the US, there is a significant contingent of firefox users and advocates that are very privacy sensitive. Call it the Jonathan Mayer wing. FF should have known these people would be very upset.

Idk, for me I got tired of dealing with all the BS long ago, so I just run off a fork of nightly and remove/add then compile whatever I want… it's great.

I think If people really cared that much about it, they would do something themselves, but alas its all to easy to moan and do nothing. /me shrugs

Yeah so unless you know how to fork the project and remove/add + compile whatever you want, you don't really have a right to complain. But I guess if you do know how to do that, you also have no right to complain.

People can complain all they want, I wasn't saying one doesn't have any right to complain, people are free to have their opinions and I was speaking my mind like everyone complaining is, I apologize for that, maybe I should have joined in on the fun in the echo chamber, probably would get more internet points for that.

The probability of complaining, that actually solves any given problem in that moment, hovers around zero. Especially after all the BS people have been saying they have been seeing with Mozilla for some time now (enough time over the years to see hundreds of c/c++ code samples, walkthroughs, and to read their build instructions[0]) … its quite banal at this point. Too many people have worked too hard to share their knowledge on the internet for me to be satisfied with complaining about something that we all have a capacity to do ourselves to some degree if were commenting on hacker news.

But that's just how I feel, everyone else is free to feel differently.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...

Building Firefox isn't so easy.

There are like 50 build options, any random combination of which is likely to result in build failure, and your only option is to try a combination, wait 10-40 minutes for it to fail, try to diagnose what went wrong and fix it.

There's also the matter that Linux distro maintainers know more about building than you do, and include things like exploit mitigation, which you'll be missing out on.

And of course you need to monitor Firefox for security updates, and rebuild every time there's an update.

It gets boring pretty quickly. Even GNU barely manages to update their IceCat fork.

Isn't so easy compared to what? Complaining? Sure, but the research I work on is way harder than this for me… as well as a host of ill defined problems that require way more than just being able to write software…

Nothing you mention isn't uncommon for any decent size project. It shouldn't act as a deterrent for expanding ones horizons, and implementing something you want done where there will be no chance in hell it will be added/removed upstream in any decent amount of time for free (10-40 min, but you don't have to compile the whole project while debugging… I made some mods in dom/base/ and netwerk/protocol/http as well as other places, and neither took more than 10-20 seconds to compile standalone while debugging). I tend to think security is mostly security theater anyways for what its worth. So many ways to get owned, and the user is usually the weakest link… and if you are targeted and don't know it, game over…

And if its boring for someone, they obviously don't have enough motivation, but maybe just enough to moan. Then again, the only user I have to support is myself for the things I want in the browser instead of a bunch of people who will probably never push a line of code with their complaints masquerading as requests… yeah, I can see how that can get boring.

Compiling something for yourself has an effect on exactly one person: you. "Complaining" affects other people and often enough actually reaches people who have a more direct line of effect on the product (especially in the foss world).

I hope so but sometimes tradeoffs have to be made.

Compromise is the name of the game, and if BSD development is any indicator, security/privacy focus users are not ones to jump in and help keep lights on in most circumstances

That said I'm not sure FF could have done better things, but in their situation I would be trying to find some revenue streams that weren't Google

There was no compromise necessary. Pocket is possible as an extension, cf the work being done right now to integrate it as one. Why was it rushed out before? What was so pressing about it that it needed to be in "the next firefox version" and massively damage Mozilla's reputation, instead of waiting a few months and passing it without a fuss?

> Compromise is the name of the game

In most cases, I'd agree.However, it's never a good idea to compromize on your mission statement. How does pre-bundled Pocket integration promote an open web? IMO, it goes against it.

While they are losing market-share, Mozilla are not running out of cash any time soon and they are not in a death spiral. They can afford to, and should think long and hard about how they diversify their revenue streams, rather than trying random decisions that alienate part of their userbase trying to find anything that sticks - which is the impression I'm getting.

how significant is it really? anybody ever put numbers to it?

The most significant number that anyone needs to know about Mozilla is that the global desktop browser market share of Firefox has fallen 50% over the last 5 years (from 31.64% in January 2010 to 14.7% in November 2015).[1][2]

If the declining trend continues, desktop Firefox would approximate zero market share in less than 4 years from now.

On mobile phones, the market share of Firefox is so small, it doesn't even show up on anyone's chart.[2]

Users wouldn't be fleeing in droves if they liked what Firefox has turned into.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#St...

[2] http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-december-2015-fight-...

This is my experience with Firefox, there will be no sources provided.

I remember using Firefox since I was in college in 2004 and I can tell you what happened when I first tried Firefox 4. The performance was horrible for a very simple reason: the system requirements were increased _tenfold_ and it was pretty much impossible to enjoy browsing using it on older hardware.

Extensions started breaking and the menu options would suddenly change place, function or disappear altogether without any prior warning or explanation. Meanwhile, Mozilla devs would either ignore the feedback or post snickering comments on their blogs.

The constant version change made it so things were rapidly falling apart - you could no longer rely on Firefox to stay one and the same for any period of time.

I saw that Firefox was going downhill, but it was still far superior to all browsers simply due to the wealth of extensions it had. And now, what is the most recent change to Firefox paradigm? Locking the extension ecosystem inside a walled garden.

I currently use Palemoon and I look forward to Edge, which promises a basically open-source environment, which will include extensions. Now that´s irony.

I like Google Voice and I use the functionality. Should every single Firefox user have a Google Voice extension pre-installed?

It's just painfully stupid in every way. If it was a built in extension that by-default talked to a Mozilla hosted open source Pocket clone, we might be having a different conversation.... but I'd still be annoyed.

Just as annoyed as I am that Chromium (yes, Chromium, not Chrome) comes with a god damn Google Docs extension.

> Although the company emphasizes that Pocket and Telefonica didn’t pay for placement in the Firefox browser, Mozilla Corp. chief legal and business officer Denelle Dixon-Thayer told WIRED that Mozilla has revenue sharing arrangements with both companies.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mozilla-is-flailing-when-the-we...

Can you explain what the revenue sharing agreement is, especially after so many Mozilla employees have vehemently denied that Mozilla got money from Pocket for the tie-up?

This would be outright stupid. While I do not want any default ties to external services like Pocket in the browser I for sure hope that such a data harvesting and customer acquisition effort at least yields money for Mozilla to further fund open source development.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10681622

Wow, the corporate speak is strong with this one.

If they think it's what "the majority" wants - let them just ignore the hater devs and leave it. See how far that gets them.

They are removing it because it's a poor idea that's poorly thought out. People won't bite the PR.

They arn't even removing it, they are turning it into an extension and then still bundling it.

The work to move Pocket to an add-on is happening in Firefox bug 1215694:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694

If you ran a survey to every firefox user asking "Would you prefer this Pocket bookmarklet show up by default or not", I'm sure this wouldn't have been a "vocal minority" group. Most people (in terms of ratio) hadn't heard of Pocket and to them it's just a spammy new bookmarklet. Most people are not "vocal" about it because they don't know where to complain. Just because you don't see vocal people doesn't mean it's all fine.