The only thing I can guess is they thought that to succeed in convergence, they would have to win the phone market, and that was the harder market to design for and react to. So, they built for that and tried to win the hardware developers/companies.
I suspect they thought if they got that, they could converge things back on the desktop
Did you request this with your plugin/addon developers, or with mozilla yourself through their many methods of contact for this if you are a plugin/addon developer?
I don't get why addon/plugin developers not communicating upstream is the problem of upstream.
Vimperator has an issue in it's github referring to e10s and webextensions from 2015. It was commented upon a few times through 2015, more in 2016, and obviously more now. Nobody ever started moving forward. Only 10 days ago, a different issue was opened with regards to porting to an entirely new codebase for vimperator that uses WebExtension. They just now are talking about getting in touch with Mozilla for API requests.
Mind you, a year plus ago, multiple mozilla developers were holding office hours blocked out in the day to explicitly talk to e10s and webextension developers. It got scaled back because nobody ever talked to them and paid developers cannot be paid to do nothing for hours at a time when nobody calls in/emails/etc.
Meanwhile OTHER plugins HAVE taken this seriously, but not a lot of them. Certainly not enough. And yes, that means that you are going to have those plugins lose compatibility. But that's not firefox's fault. Mozilla has done everything they can do to help this transition, including paying people to help, pushing it back multiple times, giving numerous conferences, opening up api requests, and communicating on most every forum available on the internet.
It's on the plugin developers now. That's where your anger should be. Not on the company that is doing, finally, what it said it'd do numerous years ago.
Partially because when Mozilla initially said "XUL is going away, what do you guys need?" Everyone just laughed at them and said "No, it's not, you'll never replace it because it is too important in extensions", and then all went away.
Where are the specs for what replaces it supposed to come from? And when they asked for those specs and got little answers, what were they supposed to do? Run around screaming "No we're serious this time, we really are going to drop this, and we really need you guys to work on getting requirements voiced? And also it'd be great if you took us seriously about e10s too!"
One of my favorite extensions is vimperator. There are comments going back over a YEAR that there would be problems with e10s and XUL, and they were always just pushed off and ignored because it wasn't a current situation. I've got two or three other extensions whose github issues section mirrors the same situation. Some of them thought Mozilla would put in a "allow me to run dangerous addons" button and leave the code in play, but if add on developers can do that, then malicious add on developers can too.
See, I don't think it was poorly communicated by the Mozilla team. I've been reading their volunteer emails and their public facing blogs, and seeing their commentary on e10s all along.
What HAS been a problem is that they keep pushing it back because they don't want to upset the applecart of the legacy apps, and thus, e10s has basically become stalled by fear. And they didn't really do much to push back on that until very recently.
I think the main problem is, people look at e10s refactoring for their extensions, and thought it would never need to happen. That Mozilla would always just offer a 'back door' for them. I think that the XUL heavy extensions thought the same thing. The problem is, those two areas are the areas where a lot of the instability and issues come from, and the only way to solve those issues is to excise the code completely.
Mozilla's problem isn't communication. It's that people never seem to believe them, and they kept pushing it back.
But this is not a secret. This has been discussed repeatedly for at least 5 years now. The current XUL methodology CANNOT sustain, and everyone knew this.
But everyone also knew Mozilla was famous for putting off being confrontational, so nobody actually thought this was going to happen, so nobody really communicated with mozilla on what would be needed to avoid this happening. Now Mozilla has finally set a date (which maybe they won't push back YET AGAIN), and people who've not been doing work on their extensions in preparation for this, or who did not talk to Mozilla about what they need when Mozilla repeatedly asked for that information, are suddenly afraid that they're going to be left in the cold.
Mozilla does almost absolutely everything on public lists. This is all completely readable. The common thought was "they're not really ever going to do this, so we don't really need to present them with what we need, because we know they won't do this." So what else can Mozilla do? Nobody actually believed they were going to really set a cut off date. Everyone thought it'd just be pushed back over and over like it always has been.
There's no option to outright buy a property. I might not want a loan because I can purchase the property for list. While tax benefits factor into loan interest and what not, purchasing outright allows for a much better roi.
The other side to that argument is, people who are wronged by Gawker need at least a billionaire to be able to get their day in court.
It should concern you that it took money from an outside source to get an alledged wrong by a massive company to litigated in front of a jury. That should be very concerning.
As for Thiel and Gawker, they're both bullies, and bullies beating the shit out of each other is just fine by me.
True, but to be fair, their power has GREATLY diminished from what it was back in the days of the Robber Barons. It seems like they have a lot of control because we get to see behind the curtain now more than ever, but it's way less horrible now than then.
Remember, at one point, there was an entire plot by businesses to basically take the entire country over, and it was highly supported by members of congress and others.
So yeah. It's gotten better, but it's still way too pervasive.
There were rumblings about a company that could do this weeks ago. Snowden brought up it was possible, and likely even hit upon the method.
I think the "mysterious third party" absolutely exists. I just think that the plan all along was to compel apple to do this, and then fall back on this if Apple pushed.
Why would the company used have any responsbility? Remember, the phone is owned by San Bernadino county. They wanted it cracked. The holder was the San Bernadino Sherrifs', they want it cracked. The FBI wants it cracked. The judge issued a warrant covering the data on it, and then the all writs act compelling companies to assist if they can.
Apple could not.
Cellebrite could.
I get what you're saying, but this is having your cake and eating it too. Apple chose not to assist. The FBI found someone who could. Why would that company then have to disclose to, basically, a third party (even a third party inventor of the phone) their standard work product and trade secrets?
Somewhat agree, but Apple DID have a court order they were fighting. They did choose to fight this legally adjudicated and issued order. The owner of the phone and the law enforcement both wanted the phone decrypted.
FWIW, I agree that privacy is ignored and should be respected, but apple chose this fight. I'm glad they did, but they knew it would cost them.
Nope. The government does not have to disclose investigative techniques. If Apple wanted to help the government, they could have, but they chose not to take that tact. Expecting the government to help Apple now is folly.
Except that's not how courts work. Apple is the defendant, the government is the plaintiff. The plaintiff should always have the right to end a case/action. Allowing defendant's to continue cases allows for highly malicious actions to occur.
OH! Right :D Yes, I mean you can go on ad nauseum with it, definitely. But RMS is saying he's a better person because of this one singular thing. He's the one who makes the claim that he's better than me because he uses 100% free software.
I don't dismiss that using 100% free software is a moral good. But I do dismiss the "better than me as a person" claim because he's more ethical in just one area. (Or maybe more, but he only addresses that ONE area.)
I suspect they thought if they got that, they could converge things back on the desktop