2012年9月1日 星期六

Going no where after Mozilla's desicion of drop Firefox Home out of iOS AppStore

Retiring Firefox Home | Mozilla Services

I'm really sad and feel bad on received the above message about Mozilla's decision to take Firefox Home down off AppStore. Firefox Home is the only and still working Mozilla product on iOS, it was release at 2010, the only feature is syncing bookmarks and tabs with Firefox (through Firefox Sync). The last version is 1.1.1, release at Feb 2011, and it still has 100k active users according to earlier letter from mozillian.org. After that the development is stop, but it's still downloadable until earlier today.

We can leave it and fade it out of our sight as time pass, for that it's not that kind of successful product, but I don't think it's reasonable to remove it off AppStore. Not because I'm one of the currently 100k users, neither I'd like to keep it as a prove of that Mozilla first came out of "Syncing across the desktop and mobile device", but take consider of our mission, it's not a ideal decision.

I just don't know why can't finish an alternative product first, than kill the old one? I didn't ask for putting any of our limiting developing resource on this old product, but why bother to remove it, if it still working fine across iOS6?

It’s not good of that the decision stands of Mozilla just leave the user of iOS behind. I understand that we have put our full power on Firefox for Android and Firefox OS, but saying “You could wait for our next product, we’re making something but not done yet. In the mean time, we just leave you behind” to some of our customer just make me sad and feel not fulfill Mozilla's Mission.

Leave it at AppStore and let someone who really need to find do no harm to Mozilla, and it fill in our principle and value - "Provide Choice". Even the choice is not pretty good, it’s a choice through.

We can done it in a better way: just leave it there at AppStore, provide a chance for community to maintain the project just like SeaMonkey, maybe find a way for contributor to release and uploading the result to AppStore is enough. We'd really limit resource on our own, but I believe that our global community can definitely help.

Until the day we release a better product on iOS, than we can all happily to take it off the AppStore, leave it into our memory.

PS. Firefox Home's clip "Get Up and Go" is still the best ads of Mozilla ever after 2 years.

0 意見: