14 ms·

Firefox Bugzilla: Remove Pocket Integration

357 points by toggle 11y ago

sp332 11y ago
This bug report is not really clear. Does the submitter consider it bloat, or a privacy violation, or what? It should be obvious that the way it appears in Developer Edition (two releases ahead of "release") is not the way it will appear in the final version. This report should be about the way the feature is explained to the user, or about how hard it is to disable the feature, so that it can be improved.
- yarrel 11y ago
  "Mozilla's recent integration with Pocket, a proprietary third-party service, is a mistake." This seems perfectly clear. The obvious improvement is to remove it. What is wrong with Mozilla at the moment?
  - sp332 11y ago
    I guess I'm just missing the point. The recommended action is to move Pocket to an extension that might even be shipped with the browser. I just don't see how it's different from "integrating" with the browser in that case. If the privacy implications were better explained and it was easier to disable, what would the problem be?
    - pc2g4d 11y ago
      An extension can be removed completely. An integrated feature, even if disabled, still adds complexity to the running software.
  - bhrgunatha 11y ago
    > What is wrong with Mozilla at the moment? I keep asking myself the same question. With so many releases of firefox I seem to have to spend my time searching for a way to remove or disable many of the features they push. I think the problem is this: browsers are quiet mature in terms of features, so now to innovate they need to force features that don't really belong in the browser. Either fix the pitiful state of bookmark management in your browser or let the add-on take the burden.
- mhurron 11y ago
  > It should be obvious that the way it appears in Developer Edition (two releases ahead of "release") is not the way it will appear in the final version It appears that it looks that way in release as well. (Showed up in 38.0.5 on my Mac this morning, not in 38.0.1 on my Fedora desktop) I do agree with the bug report, it's inclusion in the core product is a bug that should be removed. An extension is the right place to put this.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  What's about Developer Edition? I have "regular" edition, and after the recent update it greeted me with a page about Pocket integration being built-in. While I do use Pocket, I honestly don't like the direction Mozilla took.
  - sp332 11y ago
    It was mentioned in the middle of the bug report. I didn't realize the feature had shipped already.
- Albright 11y ago
  At least in my opinion, it's unnecessary bloat - just like that video chat thing they added a couple months ago. Remember when Firefox, the lean, scrappy browser, first came out and ran circles around the bloated Netscape browser/HTML editor/IM client/mail client/newsreader? The Firefox team seems to have forgotten. If anyone is maintaining a "Firefox: Browser Only Edition" fork, I'd love to know about it so I could use that instead.
  - RubyPinch 11y ago
    icecat, follows gnu teachings waterfox, pale moon, also exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-bas...
    - dblohm7 11y ago
      I know for a fact that Pale Moon stripped all test suites from their fork of the code. Any modifications that they have made to the browser are not fully tested. Caveat emptor.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    Neither Hello nor Pocket will add performance bloat AFAICT. Hello leverages existing web features (webrtc), and Pocket I just an API call. With the customizable UI you can put these things out of sight too. Firefox does have bloat, but these two are very minor compared to the bloaty bits.
  - drummer32 11y ago
    This is not about bloat. Mozilla was already developing read-it-later functionality for Firefox. In fact it's already on mobile versions. Hello and Pocket have almost no overhead because they are just APi calls to external services. This is about Mozilla endorsing thrid-party proprietary services.
bharad 11y ago
I am a Firefox user and also a Pocket user. I am on the same lines as the author. Pocket should not be bundled into Firefox. It should be an extension (hint: featured extension).
MisterWebz 11y ago
It is so unlike Mozilla to introduce something like that, I ran a virus scan and checked what programs had been installed recently -- I assumed it had been put there in the same way that IE users used to get the Ask Toolbar installed. Exactly how I felt. What the hell were they thinking? I'm generally very supportive of Mozilla, I even supported their initiative to put advertisements on Firefox's start page. But bundling stuff like Pocket and Hello with Firefox is just ridiculous. Why not make it an official extension? That way users can easily disable or remove it.
- sp332 11y ago
  Is there a practical difference between disabling the features and just ignoring them?
  - pc2g4d 11y ago
    Memory and CPU utilization for starters
    - dblohm7 11y ago
      Firefox makes extensive use of lazy initialization for a lot of its code. You typically don't pay the price for those features unless you actually use them.
    - Manishearth 11y ago
      A button that does an API call consumes very less resources until clicked.
- brador 11y ago
  Was money on the table to integrate Pocket into Firefox? Like with the default search engine payments Mozilla receives.
  - IshKebab 11y ago
    Almost certainly.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
pc2g4d 11y ago
A nicely written complaint about the inclusion of Pocket in the Firefox browser. The tone was respectful, but clear about the philosophical and technological flaws in the inclusion of Pocket.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  I agree, it was very well written. I wish all requests from users were this respectful.
ethana 11y ago
What I don't understand is that Firefox also include its own read later service that sync to Firefox users account. Are they planning to drop its own implementation and partner with Pocket?
- sp332 11y ago
  It has a read later service? There's a new Readability button but it doesn't seem to sync anything. Edit: according to chimeracoder, there was one in Nightly for a little while but it was removed.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  I answered this on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/388ryl/pocket_and_hello_look_like_ways_to_get_sponsors/crtlabs http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/388ryl/pocket_and_h...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- hobarrera 11y ago
  They already have the infrastructure and the tech. It'd just be like syncing bookmarks. Only less metadata. I can't think this would take more than a couple of days to implement for someone already on that proyect.
jkaptur 11y ago
I really like both Firefox and Pocket, but I can't imagine a good reason for them to be integrated at this level. I searched for what justification has been offered and found [1]. I'd love to read something more informative and convincing. [1] http://www.planet-libre.org/?post_id=18514 http://www.planet-libre.org/?post_id=18514
- sp332 11y ago
  Thank you, that link answers a lot of questions.
- azakai 11y ago
  I think the reason is to make them available to users. If they were in an addon, most users would never hear about it, and even if they did, many users don't know how to install addons. There is data showing that Firefox users like the feature and benefit from it. Given that, adding it to the browser makes sense.
  - hrjet 11y ago
    By that logic, why not bundle all the popular addons with Firefox? Why only a chosen few?
    - hosay123 11y ago
      Because they're looking for new revenue streams outside of the Google agreement, which stops paying out quite soon. It's a pretty slippery slope, but I don't mind the tradeoff they're making in this case. Certainly beats them taking Adobe money (or cash equivalents) to bundle Flash, which is exactly what Chrome does (faster security updates blah blah yes I know, but a better extension update mechanism could work just as well)
      - dblohm7 11y ago
        > Because they're looking for new revenue streams outside of the Google agreement, which stops paying out quite soon. The Google agreement is already gone. Mozilla partnered with Yahoo in the US starting in December 2014. And again, Mozilla is not taking money in return for this integration.
firasd 11y ago
This trend of Firefox increasingly bundling more services and features is an interesting paradox considering that Firefox started as a quiet project to make a slimmed down, no frills browser in comparison to the main Mozilla browser. I’ve recently resumed using Firefox as my main browser partly driven by support of the project but also because Chrome was taking too much RAM and causing performance issues. Of course, when Chrome first came out it was a very slimmed down browser that used a lot less RAM compared to Firefox. Everything moves in cycles…
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Phoenix/Firefox was Mozilla's own lightweight alternative to SeaMonkey. Then Chrome was the lightweight alternative to a memory-hogging Firefox. Now Chrome is seen as sluggish and a memory hog. Where do we go next?
  - wvenable 11y ago
    Servo, when it's done. And from there, who knows!
    - cpeterso 11y ago
      btw, browser.html is a Servo experiment with "future UI paradigms": https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/ https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/
      - Touche 11y ago
        It says right on the page that it doesn't use Servo.
        Manishearth 11y ago
        https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell does though
maqr 11y ago
What's the best way to make this more prominent for Mozilla to see? I made a bugzilla account and added my name to the CC list, but is there anything else I can do to help this get more recognition?
- sp332 11y ago
  It hasn't even been triaged yet. I'd wait to see what the devs' initial response is before worrying that it's not getting attention. Edit: ah, here we go https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172126#c2 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172126#c2
  - fredoralive 11y ago
    I do love the way Mozilla basically say "Bugzilla isn't the place to discuss things like this, you should discuss this down in Usenet, behind the sign that says 'beware the leopard'" for any controversial decision.
    - dblohm7 11y ago
      Umm, it has always part of the general Bugzilla etiquette guidelines. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
      - fredoralive 11y ago
        Mozilla is all about the web, except our governance discussions which use something that isn't the web and hasn't been relevant for about 15 years. The basic problem for me is that Usenet doesn't usually turn up on a vanilla Google search, websites do. If Mozilla really is open it should really use something more appropriate to the 21st century to decide policy and governance.
        dblohm7 11y ago
        Mailing lists are essential forums for a huge number of open source projects. We're not the first to use them and we aren't going to be the last. I agree that it's perhaps not "webby" enough but that's what we've been using since the beginning and it's what we're using right now.
scott_karana 11y ago
Add yourself to the CC list to endorse this ticket, without cluttering up the thread with needless "I agree" posts! :-)
- mordocai 11y ago
  Done, thanks for the tip. I wasn't sure the best way to show that I agree with the bug. I also voted for the bug.
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    When you add yourself to a bug's CC list, every other person CC'd on the bug is sent a "bugmail" notification that you are now CC'd. If you just vote for the bug, you can receive bugmail notification without spamming all the other CCs. That's what I do. :)
- me_bx 11y ago
  Too bad I'm reading this after commenting. I saw the CC list, but I assumed this would subscribe me to email notifications about this bug, which I don't want to receive. I'd like to fix this, but it seems like cutting-edge bugzilla doesn't have a "delete comment" feature...
  - mccr8 11y ago
    Yes, the CC list will subscribe you to email notifications about the bug, and does not really indicate support, only interest in receiving email notifications about the bug.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  Actually the "vote" link should be used for endorsement.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chimeracoder 11y ago
Since all of the comments on this page so far seem to be opposed to the integration: I love Firefox's "Reader View". It's the only way that some pages are readable on my desktop or mobile device, because so many websites try to hijack scrolling, insert modal overlays and ads, or do all sorts of things that make it unbelievably frustrating to just read static text. On the other hand, Reader View lacks a sync feature. There was one for a few days in Nightly, but it was buggy for the short time it existed, and it was removed. I was hoping Firefox would improve the sync feature and bring it back eventually, but in all honesty, this is way better. The work that goes into making a seamless, syncing reader view is not trivial[0], and it makes more sense for Mozilla to focus on building a browser than to reinvent the wheel when Pocket already exists and works incredibly well with the same use case. As for whether this should be "bundled" into the browser vs. an extension: I agree that it would be nicer philosophically if Pocket were a preinstalled extension. On the other hand, Firefox Hello is literally a preinstalled extension with no special integration or privileges (other than being preinstalled), and still some people made the same complaint about it when it launched[1]. So I take that complaint with a grain of salt. And as for the performance impact of either, I'd have to see some data demonstrating that this actually leads to an appreciable (let alone measurable) increase in memory or CPU usage to be convinced that simply not using it is not an acceptable alternative. [0] it may look that way, but there are a lot of corner cases [1] From what I understand, Firefox Hello is simply an extension that leverages WebRTC features already built into the browser to enable video chat (with the assistance of a service provided by Telefonica, which assists in the routing).
- abrowne 11y ago
  I don't mind using Pocket as the backend, but I want it to work more like Android's Reading List (and the reading list that was available briefly in desktop Nightly). I want articles to • be readable (and savable) offline; • open in Firefox's Reader View, not Pocket's site; • sync with Android Fx's Reading List, not (just) the Android Pocket app.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    I want all of those same things too. I imagine that this is just the first step to getting all of those things working, since doing basically any of that well requires sync working. Now that Pocket is providing the sync (which is the hardest part), the rest is much easier to implement.
mordocai 11y ago
This bug report has been closed, we have been told to report this elsewhere. There are already many posts on their feedback forum, I haven't seen one on their governance forum.
Animats 11y ago
I keep turning all that stuff off, and wonder if I missed anything. I don't want Firefox "social integration". I don't want "Pocket" in the browser. I don't want "Hello" snooping on my contact information. I don't want Yahoo (Yahoo? They just resell Bing) as the search provider. Someone may have to fork Firefox. It's still open source, more or less.
- dblohm7 11y ago
  Hello snooping on your contact information? Where on earth did you get that idea from?
  - ploxiln 11y ago
    He probably just assumed it did, like all other chat services. Whether it does or doesn't, if it's not installed, then you don't need to worry about it. I'm quite annoyed that firefox is adding more cruft, more buttons, more features. Just like phones and operating systems, I now first go to the hidden places necessary to turn off apps/buttons/features that aren't needed and needlessly clutter and the interface, slow down the system, and cause unexpected issues. Then I add the extensions required to get the power-user settings/tweaks which actually should be there. It is VERY FRUSTRATING that the trend is solidly in the direction of removing "scary" relevant settings and adding crap features, and in many areas, there is no longer a good option for people like me who know what the fuck they're doing. Modern "products" waste more and more of my time.
  - Animats 11y ago
    From the Mozilla web site. It's difficult to find, though. Mozilla has a Firefox Hello Terms of Service: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox-hello/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox-hell... which claims to link to the Firefox Hello privacy terms, but actually links to the main Mozilla privacy page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ which, in a sidebar, links to the Firefox Hello privacy policy: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-hello/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-hello/ which links to the TokBox privacy policy: https://tokbox.com/support/privacy-policy https://tokbox.com/support/privacy-policy which says: "We use the information we collect from you in the following ways: ... To organize and carry out TokBox’s marketing or promotional operations/offers, contests, games and similar events." One of Hello's basic functions, at least in its mobile forms, is to cross-reference your phone contacts and Facebook contacts. See "Review: “Hello” Facebook Dialer, Bye to Your Privacy?"[1] So, yes, it snoops on your contact information. [1] http://www.xda-developers.com/review-hello-facebook-dialer-bye-to-your-privacy/ http://www.xda-developers.com/review-hello-facebook-dialer-b...
ta0967 11y ago
mozilla, meet sourceforge.
pc2g4d 11y ago
The Bugzilla ticket has been closed and people are instead being pointed at a corresponding post on the Mozilla Governance mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.governance/2PYq2w8tejs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.governance/2... That's probably the most productive place to directly contribute to the official conversation. BUT it also seems that the Pocket integration wasn't previously discussed on that mailing list. At least, that's what my cursory search seems to show: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.governance/pocket https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.governanc... It makes me wonder whether mozilla.governance is really where these sorts of decisions get made.... (Note: cpeterso already posted the mozilla.governance link but I felt it deserved a top-level entry.)
- gluxon 11y ago
  It was brought up in the Firefox Dev mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kUuIQ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kU... I do agree that the discussion should have been in the Mozilla Governance mailing list though.
Siecje 11y ago
What is the difference between using Pocket and a bookmark?
- DonGateley 11y ago
  Indeed! I've asked this a couple of places and got no answer. If it is functionally equivalent to dragging the address to a bookmark-bar folder called Pocket I become very suspicious of motives.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    I was similarly confused, and still kinda am confused. Many people seem to find it valuable beyond bookmarks, but I don't really get it. What I have been able to glean is that it re-renders the pages you save to your pocket in a more "readable" way, and it looks more like a newspaper or magazine or Medium blog post. Less clutter, more focus on content, at least that's the goal. I have my doubts about this being valuable enough to make it a standard feature. I did whatever one has to do to opt-in when it showed up in the Developer version...I thought it was a new Mozilla thing, which I'm always willing to check out. I was disappointed, and surprised, that it was not a Mozilla thing. That wasn't made clear, I don't think, in the description of what I was opting into. I feel a little misled by it, actually, and I don't think it's something I want to use going forward, but I'm not sure how to opt back out. The UI is confusing, to me.
- abrowne 11y ago
  A reading list, be it a feature or service, has a workflow suited to easily add and remove articles and view them as a simple list. You can do this with bookmarks — and I do at the moment because it's the best way I've found to sync between Fx on desktop and Android — but there's more friction when managing articles.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  Surveillance of the users' reading lists, obviously. Thats what a very large part of the computer industry means when they talk about "monetizing" all of the "big data" they suddenly have. Go back over the last ~decade of goods and services made by internet-related businesses, and you can see a clear trend towards turning features that used to be stand-alone (browser bookmarks), into "free" services. Often this makes the product mildly worse (latency, uptime), which is then lampshaded with a minor feature like bookmark-syncing (which could be done in other ways that do not betray the contents to a 3rd party). If you have any doubt about anything I just said, I recommend watching the talk I've been suggesting lately by Aral Balkan ( https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... ). If it wasn't obvious why Pocket was being pushed instead of improving bookmarks, then Aral's talk might just terrify you.
ChrisGranger 11y ago
This page http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-how-to-disable-pocket-for-firefox http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-h... purports to tell you how to disable Pocket for Firefox, yet all it does is remove the button from the toolbar. Searching "pocket" in about:config reveals numerous preferences that can be edited, including browser.pocket.enabled which remains set to true after following Pocket's instructions.
gcb0 11y ago
why stop there? - telefonica service for voice chat. - google scam site checker, phone-home component for every site you visit - google services (the things responsible for ads no less) just so you can stream videos on android (can't even build firefox without including that SDK) - adobe binary blob for DRM on netflix. (who even uses netflix on the browser?)
- Spittie 11y ago
  >- google scam site checker, phone-home component for every site you visit I don't really like it either, but that's not how it works. Firefox downloads an updated list of "non-safe" sites from Google every 30 minutes or so, and check sites against the local copy. A site get sent to Google only if there is a match in the local copy, to check that it's still "blacklisted" https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work#w_how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work-in-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m... >- google services (the things responsible for ads no less) just so you can stream videos on android (can't even build firefox without including that SDK) It's for casting videos to a Chromecast, not for streaming videos. It seems to be possible to build Firefox without it, F-Droid does so: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fennec&fdid=org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fennec&fdid=... >- adobe binary blob for DRM on netflix. (who even uses netflix on the browser?) I don't like it neither, but I think a small blob for DRM is better than a whole closed addon. It's awful that it got pushed to every installation tho, instead of displaying a "download" button on Netflix and similar sites. As for your question, it seems that tons of people do so.
  - gcb0 11y ago
    OK so they advertise some sites you visit to Google, not all as i said. removing Google services: fdroid goes to great pains to do that. i was actually doing that myself before. have you ever tried? it's hours and hours wasted changing code and scripts that were originally made optional but for some reason they drippe dropped the checks (I'm still to have enough time to track the commits that did this) drm:agree with you there, no excuse not to be a download.
GeorgeHahn 11y ago
What happened to the native Reading List? It was in Nightly for a time, but it appears to have disappeared recently. I love Pocket, but I was looking forward to migrating to a setup where my data was kept private.
zobzu 11y ago
Fuck yeah. Remove this crap. Never do it again. Colleague working at mozilla showed me an internal email where the CEO says they checked metrics and Tiles and Pocket did not affect Firefox, and that their survey indicates people are okay with it. This seems like total bs... I don't know anybody - including fx devs - that think its a good idea. In fact earlier versions of fxnightly had their own, not-pocket version that used sync as a backend.
anonymousab 11y ago
Why couldn't it have been a bundled extension? Heck, add the option to turn it on to the update page. At the very least it would allow people to remove it easily and entirely.
netdog 11y ago
A remembrance of Zawinski's law seems apropos here.
imrehg 11y ago
> Bugzilla is not for discussion of product decisions. That sounds like a very arbitrary distinction, and an argument of convenience. Every line of code that gets into a software is a product decision one way or another...
paulmd 11y ago
I did my part: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172218 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172218 Even though it will cost me a buttload of time to rebuild all my cookies: fuck Mozilla, when did they turn into SourceForge?
SwellJoe 11y ago
I opted-in on the basis that I thought it was a Mozilla thing. I'm always willing to try new Mozilla things because I trust Mozilla completely. Or, at least, I did trust Mozilla completely. I didn't know I ever had to read the fine print with anything from Mozilla, and it turns out I was wrong. Which, I think is why so many people feel so strongly about it. At least, it's why I feel uncomfortable with this decision. It was not at all clear to me that Pocket was a third party service; I'd never heard of it, and the text describing what I was opting-in to didn't (that I recall) explicitly state who ran the service or that it was not a Mozilla service. I don't want to go overboard about this; this isn't like SourceForge shipping malware. And, I don't want to make it seem like Mozilla isn't a provider and organization that I trust. But, this chips away at my trust. I feel misled, and I never thought I would feel that way about something Mozilla would do, which maybe makes it worse.
kozukumi 11y ago
I want to love Firefox like I used too but shit like this keeps putting me off. It is the little things that are annoying me now. Pocket integration without asking. Lack of a decent EN_GB dictionary (and I have to go and hunt for the damn thing myself). It is just depressing the state of browsers today. Sure they are more standard compliant but they all suck.
CarloSanta4 11y ago
I don't like the latest trends at Mozilla at all. I used to use Firefox for privacy. It was small and fast and stable. I don't want to disable all the bloatware like share, sync, Mozilla account, tab ads, pocket, chats whatever. Mozilla is on a big sellout trip. When Mozilla is not different to Google we can equally use Chrome - it's better anyway.
junto 11y ago
Before you know it they'll be bundling in Java, ActiveX and Ask toolbar.
omouse 11y ago
Okay, develop a free/open source version. This is how it's been done in the past; you use a proprietary version of something until there's a free software version and then you work on the free software version until it's good enough. Mozilla is in a heated competition with Google and other proprietary players. It isn't a niche product, it isn't made for a small part of the population. If adding Hello or Pocket to the browser gets more people to use Firefox or stick with it and spurs people to create free/open source replacements then it's alright. The only thing I dislike is the underhanded way these changes have showed up. As if they knew the loud minority of users/devs wouldn't like it.
Mintwaxed 11y ago
No one needs Pocket. To save anything for later viewing, simply drag & drop the URL's icon to your desktop. When you are ready to read, click the icon.

357 points by toggle 11y ago

sp332 11y ago

This bug report is not really clear. Does the submitter consider it bloat, or a privacy violation, or what? It should be obvious that the way it appears in Developer Edition (two releases ahead of "release") is not the way it will appear in the final version. This report should be about the way the feature is explained to the user, or about how hard it is to disable the feature, so that it can be improved.

yarrel 11y ago
"Mozilla's recent integration with Pocket, a proprietary third-party service, is a mistake." This seems perfectly clear. The obvious improvement is to remove it. What is wrong with Mozilla at the moment?
- sp332 11y ago
  I guess I'm just missing the point. The recommended action is to move Pocket to an extension that might even be shipped with the browser. I just don't see how it's different from "integrating" with the browser in that case. If the privacy implications were better explained and it was easier to disable, what would the problem be?
  - pc2g4d 11y ago
    An extension can be removed completely. An integrated feature, even if disabled, still adds complexity to the running software.
- bhrgunatha 11y ago
  > What is wrong with Mozilla at the moment? I keep asking myself the same question. With so many releases of firefox I seem to have to spend my time searching for a way to remove or disable many of the features they push. I think the problem is this: browsers are quiet mature in terms of features, so now to innovate they need to force features that don't really belong in the browser. Either fix the pitiful state of bookmark management in your browser or let the add-on take the burden.
mhurron 11y ago
> It should be obvious that the way it appears in Developer Edition (two releases ahead of "release") is not the way it will appear in the final version It appears that it looks that way in release as well. (Showed up in 38.0.5 on my Mac this morning, not in 38.0.1 on my Fedora desktop) I do agree with the bug report, it's inclusion in the core product is a bug that should be removed. An extension is the right place to put this.
drdaeman 11y ago
What's about Developer Edition? I have "regular" edition, and after the recent update it greeted me with a page about Pocket integration being built-in. While I do use Pocket, I honestly don't like the direction Mozilla took.
- sp332 11y ago
  It was mentioned in the middle of the bug report. I didn't realize the feature had shipped already.
Albright 11y ago
At least in my opinion, it's unnecessary bloat - just like that video chat thing they added a couple months ago. Remember when Firefox, the lean, scrappy browser, first came out and ran circles around the bloated Netscape browser/HTML editor/IM client/mail client/newsreader? The Firefox team seems to have forgotten. If anyone is maintaining a "Firefox: Browser Only Edition" fork, I'd love to know about it so I could use that instead.
- RubyPinch 11y ago
  icecat, follows gnu teachings waterfox, pale moon, also exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-bas...
  - dblohm7 11y ago
    I know for a fact that Pale Moon stripped all test suites from their fork of the code. Any modifications that they have made to the browser are not fully tested. Caveat emptor.
- Manishearth 11y ago
  Neither Hello nor Pocket will add performance bloat AFAICT. Hello leverages existing web features (webrtc), and Pocket I just an API call. With the customizable UI you can put these things out of sight too. Firefox does have bloat, but these two are very minor compared to the bloaty bits.
- drummer32 11y ago
  This is not about bloat. Mozilla was already developing read-it-later functionality for Firefox. In fact it's already on mobile versions. Hello and Pocket have almost no overhead because they are just APi calls to external services. This is about Mozilla endorsing thrid-party proprietary services.

bharad 11y ago

I am a Firefox user and also a Pocket user. I am on the same lines as the author. Pocket should not be bundled into Firefox. It should be an extension (hint: featured extension).

MisterWebz 11y ago

It is so unlike Mozilla to introduce something like that, I ran a virus scan and checked what programs had been installed recently -- I assumed it had been put there in the same way that IE users used to get the Ask Toolbar installed. Exactly how I felt. What the hell were they thinking? I'm generally very supportive of Mozilla, I even supported their initiative to put advertisements on Firefox's start page. But bundling stuff like Pocket and Hello with Firefox is just ridiculous. Why not make it an official extension? That way users can easily disable or remove it.

sp332 11y ago
Is there a practical difference between disabling the features and just ignoring them?
- pc2g4d 11y ago
  Memory and CPU utilization for starters
  - dblohm7 11y ago
    Firefox makes extensive use of lazy initialization for a lot of its code. You typically don't pay the price for those features unless you actually use them.
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    A button that does an API call consumes very less resources until clicked.
brador 11y ago
Was money on the table to integrate Pocket into Firefox? Like with the default search engine payments Mozilla receives.
- IshKebab 11y ago
  Almost certainly.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

pc2g4d 11y ago

A nicely written complaint about the inclusion of Pocket in the Firefox browser. The tone was respectful, but clear about the philosophical and technological flaws in the inclusion of Pocket.

dblohm7 11y ago
I agree, it was very well written. I wish all requests from users were this respectful.

ethana 11y ago

What I don't understand is that Firefox also include its own read later service that sync to Firefox users account. Are they planning to drop its own implementation and partner with Pocket?

sp332 11y ago
It has a read later service? There's a new Readability button but it doesn't seem to sync anything. Edit: according to chimeracoder, there was one in Nightly for a little while but it was removed.
dblohm7 11y ago
I answered this on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/388ryl/pocket_and_hello_look_like_ways_to_get_sponsors/crtlabs http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/388ryl/pocket_and_h...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
hobarrera 11y ago
They already have the infrastructure and the tech. It'd just be like syncing bookmarks. Only less metadata. I can't think this would take more than a couple of days to implement for someone already on that proyect.

jkaptur 11y ago

I really like both Firefox and Pocket, but I can't imagine a good reason for them to be integrated at this level. I searched for what justification has been offered and found [1]. I'd love to read something more informative and convincing. [1] http://www.planet-libre.org/?post_id=18514 http://www.planet-libre.org/?post_id=18514

sp332 11y ago
Thank you, that link answers a lot of questions.
azakai 11y ago
I think the reason is to make them available to users. If they were in an addon, most users would never hear about it, and even if they did, many users don't know how to install addons. There is data showing that Firefox users like the feature and benefit from it. Given that, adding it to the browser makes sense.
- hrjet 11y ago
  By that logic, why not bundle all the popular addons with Firefox? Why only a chosen few?
  - hosay123 11y ago
    Because they're looking for new revenue streams outside of the Google agreement, which stops paying out quite soon. It's a pretty slippery slope, but I don't mind the tradeoff they're making in this case. Certainly beats them taking Adobe money (or cash equivalents) to bundle Flash, which is exactly what Chrome does (faster security updates blah blah yes I know, but a better extension update mechanism could work just as well)
    - dblohm7 11y ago
      > Because they're looking for new revenue streams outside of the Google agreement, which stops paying out quite soon. The Google agreement is already gone. Mozilla partnered with Yahoo in the US starting in December 2014. And again, Mozilla is not taking money in return for this integration.

firasd 11y ago

This trend of Firefox increasingly bundling more services and features is an interesting paradox considering that Firefox started as a quiet project to make a slimmed down, no frills browser in comparison to the main Mozilla browser. I’ve recently resumed using Firefox as my main browser partly driven by support of the project but also because Chrome was taking too much RAM and causing performance issues. Of course, when Chrome first came out it was a very slimmed down browser that used a lot less RAM compared to Firefox. Everything moves in cycles…

cpeterso 11y ago
Phoenix/Firefox was Mozilla's own lightweight alternative to SeaMonkey. Then Chrome was the lightweight alternative to a memory-hogging Firefox. Now Chrome is seen as sluggish and a memory hog. Where do we go next?
- wvenable 11y ago
  Servo, when it's done. And from there, who knows!
  - cpeterso 11y ago
    btw, browser.html is a Servo experiment with "future UI paradigms": https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/ https://github.com/mozilla/browser.html/
    - Touche 11y ago
      It says right on the page that it doesn't use Servo.
      - Manishearth 11y ago
        https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell https://github.com/glennw/servo-shell does though

maqr 11y ago

What's the best way to make this more prominent for Mozilla to see? I made a bugzilla account and added my name to the CC list, but is there anything else I can do to help this get more recognition?

sp332 11y ago
It hasn't even been triaged yet. I'd wait to see what the devs' initial response is before worrying that it's not getting attention. Edit: ah, here we go https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172126#c2 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172126#c2
- fredoralive 11y ago
  I do love the way Mozilla basically say "Bugzilla isn't the place to discuss things like this, you should discuss this down in Usenet, behind the sign that says 'beware the leopard'" for any controversial decision.
  - dblohm7 11y ago
    Umm, it has always part of the general Bugzilla etiquette guidelines. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
    - fredoralive 11y ago
      Mozilla is all about the web, except our governance discussions which use something that isn't the web and hasn't been relevant for about 15 years. The basic problem for me is that Usenet doesn't usually turn up on a vanilla Google search, websites do. If Mozilla really is open it should really use something more appropriate to the 21st century to decide policy and governance.
      - dblohm7 11y ago
        Mailing lists are essential forums for a huge number of open source projects. We're not the first to use them and we aren't going to be the last. I agree that it's perhaps not "webby" enough but that's what we've been using since the beginning and it's what we're using right now.

scott_karana 11y ago

Add yourself to the CC list to endorse this ticket, without cluttering up the thread with needless "I agree" posts! :-)

mordocai 11y ago
Done, thanks for the tip. I wasn't sure the best way to show that I agree with the bug. I also voted for the bug.
- cpeterso 11y ago
  When you add yourself to a bug's CC list, every other person CC'd on the bug is sent a "bugmail" notification that you are now CC'd. If you just vote for the bug, you can receive bugmail notification without spamming all the other CCs. That's what I do. :)
me_bx 11y ago
Too bad I'm reading this after commenting. I saw the CC list, but I assumed this would subscribe me to email notifications about this bug, which I don't want to receive. I'd like to fix this, but it seems like cutting-edge bugzilla doesn't have a "delete comment" feature...
- mccr8 11y ago
  Yes, the CC list will subscribe you to email notifications about the bug, and does not really indicate support, only interest in receiving email notifications about the bug.
dblohm7 11y ago
Actually the "vote" link should be used for endorsement.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

chimeracoder 11y ago

Since all of the comments on this page so far seem to be opposed to the integration: I love Firefox's "Reader View". It's the only way that some pages are readable on my desktop or mobile device, because so many websites try to hijack scrolling, insert modal overlays and ads, or do all sorts of things that make it unbelievably frustrating to just read static text. On the other hand, Reader View lacks a sync feature. There was one for a few days in Nightly, but it was buggy for the short time it existed, and it was removed. I was hoping Firefox would improve the sync feature and bring it back eventually, but in all honesty, this is way better. The work that goes into making a seamless, syncing reader view is not trivial[0], and it makes more sense for Mozilla to focus on building a browser than to reinvent the wheel when Pocket already exists and works incredibly well with the same use case. As for whether this should be "bundled" into the browser vs. an extension: I agree that it would be nicer philosophically if Pocket were a preinstalled extension. On the other hand, Firefox Hello is literally a preinstalled extension with no special integration or privileges (other than being preinstalled), and still some people made the same complaint about it when it launched[1]. So I take that complaint with a grain of salt. And as for the performance impact of either, I'd have to see some data demonstrating that this actually leads to an appreciable (let alone measurable) increase in memory or CPU usage to be convinced that simply not using it is not an acceptable alternative. [0] it may look that way, but there are a lot of corner cases [1] From what I understand, Firefox Hello is simply an extension that leverages WebRTC features already built into the browser to enable video chat (with the assistance of a service provided by Telefonica, which assists in the routing).

abrowne 11y ago
I don't mind using Pocket as the backend, but I want it to work more like Android's Reading List (and the reading list that was available briefly in desktop Nightly). I want articles to • be readable (and savable) offline; • open in Firefox's Reader View, not Pocket's site; • sync with Android Fx's Reading List, not (just) the Android Pocket app.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  I want all of those same things too. I imagine that this is just the first step to getting all of those things working, since doing basically any of that well requires sync working. Now that Pocket is providing the sync (which is the hardest part), the rest is much easier to implement.

mordocai 11y ago

This bug report has been closed, we have been told to report this elsewhere. There are already many posts on their feedback forum, I haven't seen one on their governance forum.

Animats 11y ago

I keep turning all that stuff off, and wonder if I missed anything. I don't want Firefox "social integration". I don't want "Pocket" in the browser. I don't want "Hello" snooping on my contact information. I don't want Yahoo (Yahoo? They just resell Bing) as the search provider. Someone may have to fork Firefox. It's still open source, more or less.

dblohm7 11y ago
Hello snooping on your contact information? Where on earth did you get that idea from?
- ploxiln 11y ago
  He probably just assumed it did, like all other chat services. Whether it does or doesn't, if it's not installed, then you don't need to worry about it. I'm quite annoyed that firefox is adding more cruft, more buttons, more features. Just like phones and operating systems, I now first go to the hidden places necessary to turn off apps/buttons/features that aren't needed and needlessly clutter and the interface, slow down the system, and cause unexpected issues. Then I add the extensions required to get the power-user settings/tweaks which actually should be there. It is VERY FRUSTRATING that the trend is solidly in the direction of removing "scary" relevant settings and adding crap features, and in many areas, there is no longer a good option for people like me who know what the fuck they're doing. Modern "products" waste more and more of my time.
- Animats 11y ago
  From the Mozilla web site. It's difficult to find, though. Mozilla has a Firefox Hello Terms of Service: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox-hello/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox-hell... which claims to link to the Firefox Hello privacy terms, but actually links to the main Mozilla privacy page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/ which, in a sidebar, links to the Firefox Hello privacy policy: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-hello/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-hello/ which links to the TokBox privacy policy: https://tokbox.com/support/privacy-policy https://tokbox.com/support/privacy-policy which says: "We use the information we collect from you in the following ways: ... To organize and carry out TokBox’s marketing or promotional operations/offers, contests, games and similar events." One of Hello's basic functions, at least in its mobile forms, is to cross-reference your phone contacts and Facebook contacts. See "Review: “Hello” Facebook Dialer, Bye to Your Privacy?"[1] So, yes, it snoops on your contact information. [1] http://www.xda-developers.com/review-hello-facebook-dialer-bye-to-your-privacy/ http://www.xda-developers.com/review-hello-facebook-dialer-b...

ta0967 11y ago

mozilla, meet sourceforge.

pc2g4d 11y ago

The Bugzilla ticket has been closed and people are instead being pointed at a corresponding post on the Mozilla Governance mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.governance/2PYq2w8tejs https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.governance/2... That's probably the most productive place to directly contribute to the official conversation. BUT it also seems that the Pocket integration wasn't previously discussed on that mailing list. At least, that's what my cursory search seems to show: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.governance/pocket https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mozilla.governanc... It makes me wonder whether mozilla.governance is really where these sorts of decisions get made.... (Note: cpeterso already posted the mozilla.governance link but I felt it deserved a top-level entry.)

gluxon 11y ago
It was brought up in the Firefox Dev mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kUuIQ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firefox-dev/B3jJq_kU... I do agree that the discussion should have been in the Mozilla Governance mailing list though.

Siecje 11y ago

What is the difference between using Pocket and a bookmark?

DonGateley 11y ago
Indeed! I've asked this a couple of places and got no answer. If it is functionally equivalent to dragging the address to a bookmark-bar folder called Pocket I become very suspicious of motives.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  I was similarly confused, and still kinda am confused. Many people seem to find it valuable beyond bookmarks, but I don't really get it. What I have been able to glean is that it re-renders the pages you save to your pocket in a more "readable" way, and it looks more like a newspaper or magazine or Medium blog post. Less clutter, more focus on content, at least that's the goal. I have my doubts about this being valuable enough to make it a standard feature. I did whatever one has to do to opt-in when it showed up in the Developer version...I thought it was a new Mozilla thing, which I'm always willing to check out. I was disappointed, and surprised, that it was not a Mozilla thing. That wasn't made clear, I don't think, in the description of what I was opting into. I feel a little misled by it, actually, and I don't think it's something I want to use going forward, but I'm not sure how to opt back out. The UI is confusing, to me.
abrowne 11y ago
A reading list, be it a feature or service, has a workflow suited to easily add and remove articles and view them as a simple list. You can do this with bookmarks — and I do at the moment because it's the best way I've found to sync between Fx on desktop and Android — but there's more friction when managing articles.
pdkl95 11y ago
Surveillance of the users' reading lists, obviously. Thats what a very large part of the computer industry means when they talk about "monetizing" all of the "big data" they suddenly have. Go back over the last ~decade of goods and services made by internet-related businesses, and you can see a clear trend towards turning features that used to be stand-alone (browser bookmarks), into "free" services. Often this makes the product mildly worse (latency, uptime), which is then lampshaded with a minor feature like bookmark-syncing (which could be done in other ways that do not betray the contents to a 3rd party). If you have any doubt about anything I just said, I recommend watching the talk I've been suggesting lately by Aral Balkan ( https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... ). If it wasn't obvious why Pocket was being pushed instead of improving bookmarks, then Aral's talk might just terrify you.

ChrisGranger 11y ago

This page http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-how-to-disable-pocket-for-firefox http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-h... purports to tell you how to disable Pocket for Firefox, yet all it does is remove the button from the toolbar. Searching "pocket" in about:config reveals numerous preferences that can be edited, including browser.pocket.enabled which remains set to true after following Pocket's instructions.

gcb0 11y ago

why stop there? - telefonica service for voice chat. - google scam site checker, phone-home component for every site you visit - google services (the things responsible for ads no less) just so you can stream videos on android (can't even build firefox without including that SDK) - adobe binary blob for DRM on netflix. (who even uses netflix on the browser?)

Spittie 11y ago
>- google scam site checker, phone-home component for every site you visit I don't really like it either, but that's not how it works. Firefox downloads an updated list of "non-safe" sites from Google every 30 minutes or so, and check sites against the local copy. A site get sent to Google only if there is a match in the local copy, to check that it's still "blacklisted" https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work#w_how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work-in-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m... >- google services (the things responsible for ads no less) just so you can stream videos on android (can't even build firefox without including that SDK) It's for casting videos to a Chromecast, not for streaming videos. It seems to be possible to build Firefox without it, F-Droid does so: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fennec&fdid=org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=fennec&fdid=... >- adobe binary blob for DRM on netflix. (who even uses netflix on the browser?) I don't like it neither, but I think a small blob for DRM is better than a whole closed addon. It's awful that it got pushed to every installation tho, instead of displaying a "download" button on Netflix and similar sites. As for your question, it seems that tons of people do so.
- gcb0 11y ago
  OK so they advertise some sites you visit to Google, not all as i said. removing Google services: fdroid goes to great pains to do that. i was actually doing that myself before. have you ever tried? it's hours and hours wasted changing code and scripts that were originally made optional but for some reason they drippe dropped the checks (I'm still to have enough time to track the commits that did this) drm:agree with you there, no excuse not to be a download.

GeorgeHahn 11y ago

What happened to the native Reading List? It was in Nightly for a time, but it appears to have disappeared recently. I love Pocket, but I was looking forward to migrating to a setup where my data was kept private.

zobzu 11y ago

Fuck yeah. Remove this crap. Never do it again. Colleague working at mozilla showed me an internal email where the CEO says they checked metrics and Tiles and Pocket did not affect Firefox, and that their survey indicates people are okay with it. This seems like total bs... I don't know anybody - including fx devs - that think its a good idea. In fact earlier versions of fxnightly had their own, not-pocket version that used sync as a backend.

anonymousab 11y ago

Why couldn't it have been a bundled extension? Heck, add the option to turn it on to the update page. At the very least it would allow people to remove it easily and entirely.

netdog 11y ago

A remembrance of Zawinski's law seems apropos here.

imrehg 11y ago

> Bugzilla is not for discussion of product decisions. That sounds like a very arbitrary distinction, and an argument of convenience. Every line of code that gets into a software is a product decision one way or another...

paulmd 11y ago

I did my part: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172218 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172218 Even though it will cost me a buttload of time to rebuild all my cookies: fuck Mozilla, when did they turn into SourceForge?

SwellJoe 11y ago

I opted-in on the basis that I thought it was a Mozilla thing. I'm always willing to try new Mozilla things because I trust Mozilla completely. Or, at least, I did trust Mozilla completely. I didn't know I ever had to read the fine print with anything from Mozilla, and it turns out I was wrong. Which, I think is why so many people feel so strongly about it. At least, it's why I feel uncomfortable with this decision. It was not at all clear to me that Pocket was a third party service; I'd never heard of it, and the text describing what I was opting-in to didn't (that I recall) explicitly state who ran the service or that it was not a Mozilla service. I don't want to go overboard about this; this isn't like SourceForge shipping malware. And, I don't want to make it seem like Mozilla isn't a provider and organization that I trust. But, this chips away at my trust. I feel misled, and I never thought I would feel that way about something Mozilla would do, which maybe makes it worse.

kozukumi 11y ago

I want to love Firefox like I used too but shit like this keeps putting me off. It is the little things that are annoying me now. Pocket integration without asking. Lack of a decent EN_GB dictionary (and I have to go and hunt for the damn thing myself). It is just depressing the state of browsers today. Sure they are more standard compliant but they all suck.

CarloSanta4 11y ago

I don't like the latest trends at Mozilla at all. I used to use Firefox for privacy. It was small and fast and stable. I don't want to disable all the bloatware like share, sync, Mozilla account, tab ads, pocket, chats whatever. Mozilla is on a big sellout trip. When Mozilla is not different to Google we can equally use Chrome - it's better anyway.

junto 11y ago

Before you know it they'll be bundling in Java, ActiveX and Ask toolbar.

omouse 11y ago

Okay, develop a free/open source version. This is how it's been done in the past; you use a proprietary version of something until there's a free software version and then you work on the free software version until it's good enough. Mozilla is in a heated competition with Google and other proprietary players. It isn't a niche product, it isn't made for a small part of the population. If adding Hello or Pocket to the browser gets more people to use Firefox or stick with it and spurs people to create free/open source replacements then it's alright. The only thing I dislike is the underhanded way these changes have showed up. As if they knew the loud minority of users/devs wouldn't like it.

Mintwaxed 11y ago

No one needs Pocket. To save anything for later viewing, simply drag & drop the URL's icon to your desktop. When you are ready to read, click the icon.