I think reasonable criticisms were made regarding some of those, like Pocket.
However, Australis for example was a large redesign of the UI. I'm not sure how you can support an opt-out, as that would mean supporting two codebases - two different and separate UIs, at once.
Regarding bundling of DRM, it isn't bundled, but it is downloaded on demand. This is a sad thing even so, but Google, Microsoft and Netflix just left other browsers no choice when they invented, standardized and shipped EME DRM. Mozilla fought DRM, but lost.
Australis wasn't necessary at all, though. It broke my ability to keep tabs on the bottom, it forced the refresh button into my URL bar (the opposite end of my other navigation buttons ... making it much more annoying to use), it killed my stop button, it took the bookmark icon out of my URL bar, and it broke my ability to see full page titles.
None of this enhanced anyone's productivity: it was change for the sake of change. That sort of thing is fine, but you should always offer a simulation of the behavior people are used to when you have millions of users. And if you don't have the manpower, then maybe reconsider making unnecessary changes in the first place ... nobody was abandoning Firefox because its UI stayed the same. Microsoft understood this at least until Windows 7, which you could easily make look and feel very much like Windows 95. But sadly the new trend in tech is to constantly force superfluous UI redesigns on users all the time with no opt-out. You see it with Google Mail, Skype, Windows, iOS, Android, Firefox, Gnome 3, on and on.
It's not just people hating change: there are people with disabilities that learn how to use this software, and changing things because some designer decided the UI "needed a refresh" can really destroy someone's entire workflow.
It would have even been okay if they had made it a bit more flexible in configuration, but they didn't. We lost a lot of control over how the UI operates. And so now I have to use yet another extension (Classic Theme Restorer), which is a bit buggy and might be discontinued at any point in the future.
And thanks for the correction on the DRM. But I wouldn't say they lost, I'd say they caved in. They weren't forced to support it, they chose to for the sake of their market share.
I don't know if you're willing to consider it evidence, but I think Apple's success is in large part due to their software and their UI's. iOs in particular.
Also, user interfaces might be closer to fashion than you would think! If you consider Windows XP's look. Imagine Windows 10 looking like that. Or consider Windows 8's different looks compared to Windows 7's. Or Google "material design" on Android Lollipop. Dang, this is exactly like fashion! :D
Yep, this is what I think too. The Pocket and Hello case could at least have a disable option, even Google allows you to disable the new features that it brings in Chrome like Google Now and more recently the "Ok Google" hotword detection.
However, the Australis case is much more complicated. An UI is tons of code, if Mozilla opted too maintain two different codebases they would need to update both everytime they added a new feature. This would be a maintenance nightmare, to say at least. I think it's ok to have this feature as a separate extension, maintained by people that actually care about the older interface.
> The Pocket and Hello case could at least have a disable option
I really don't think burying an opt-out option justifies these things.
This is the same tactic used to push malware in installers, Ubuntu's farming your search results to Amazon, and many of the new Windows 10 privacy intrusions. "You can opt-out (if you know you need to (and you know where to look (and you know about the gotchas like it only applying to enterprise customers)))"
If they were honest, these things would be opt-in. But they're not, because that wouldn't make them their money. (and if you really believe someone at Mozilla isn't getting paid for Pocket integration, then I have a bridge to sell you.)
If you don't want to use it, don't. You can't compare a feature you don't use to malware, which actively causes things to happen that you didn't want to happen. Nothing happens if you don't use the Pocket button.
For some reason, everybody feels like they should have a say in the direction of large Free SW projects, even if they have never contributed.
Some criticisms of Mozilla are fair (even if blown out of proportion, like the Pocket issue), but one can not expect a project to make development even more complex by adding a "revert it because this one guy doesn't like it" button for each change or feature.
As a software dev that's received plenty of criticism as well, I'll just say that when I post detailed complaints about things I don't like, it's not because I want to harm or destroy their software. If I truly hated their software, I wouldn't be using it or talking about it at all. For all of Mozilla's faults, the only real cross-platform alternative (Chrome) is even worse. That one forces silent updates, won't let me download and run older versions, won't let me disable WebRTC, was the inspiration for the new Mozilla UI I dislike, sends a lot of data back to Google, etc.
The problem with not complaining is that when everyone does it, the developers have no idea why 30% of their market share is gone, yet everyone who remained is still happy with the changes.
Further, I think really major software projects like Firefox and Gnome are in a different category. People's livelihoods depend on these software programs. Totally changing things around can have serious effects on people, not just those who hate change.
It's one thing to be a single developer working on a solitaire game and deciding to redesign everything; it's quite another to be a multi-million dollar company with hundreds of employees and tens of millions of users and deciding to redesign everything.
When you care about your market share, have employees that depend upon your success, and so forth ... you really should make the effort to listen to your community of users.
And let's not forget the whole reason we're having this discussion is because Mozilla just berated Microsoft for removing user choice. If you're going to criticize someone for their faults that you're every bit as guilty of, you should expect to be called out on your hypocrisy.
As I said, some of the criticisms are fair. At the same time, the kind of issues that we techies tend to complain about are largely not behind that drop in market share: the majority of those users have moved on to browsers that are worse in terms of privacy and security.
It is a tricky issue and the comparison with GNOME is apt. At the end of the day, the last word belongs to the companies and individuals actually doing the work. We on the outside can still try to convince them, of course.
Practically, it's impossible to maintain one without a proportionally large team that can spend proportionally big amount of time.
As one of most obvious examples (unrelated to Mozilla or Microsoft): there are uncountably many custom Android ROMs out there, left abandoned. And most were merely cosmetic changes or even packaging (like inclusion or removal of certain pieces by default). Usually, unless luck is that there's a large social momentum and a lot of advertising among same-minded people, fork maintainer struggles for a few versions then gives up and surrenders to the upstream way of thinking. Sad but true.
Forking usually happens when a group or individual is unable to steer the direction a project. Having to go on your own is pretty much the opposite of "having a say".
However, Australis for example was a large redesign of the UI. I'm not sure how you can support an opt-out, as that would mean supporting two codebases - two different and separate UIs, at once.
Isn't it frustrating when a major software vendor takes a product you rely on, updates the whole UI in a way that makes the product worse for you and many other people using the desktop version primarily in order to try to make it better for the tiny number of people using the mobile version, and then makes clear that if you don't go for their new version you'll also miss out on critical bug fixes and security updates for the old one within a few months?
Nope, I used Firefox LTS 24 as long as I could. But by LTS 31 (which wasn't very long), we were back to Australis.
And Firefox 24 is missing a whole lot of really critical functionality.
You really have no choice but to trust the random third-party developer of Classic Theme Restorer not to do anything malicious, and pray that he doesn't ever quit.
Sadly, I have discovered that Mozilla and I have very different ideas of what "long term" means.
The irony of my previous post is that both Microsoft and Mozilla seem to be playing the same game now, right down to sub-year "long term" support. You can't really choose whether to have those updates any more, only to defer them for a short while. Anything more than that, and you just have to give up on updating altogether, security updates included, and for a new OS that is even more dangerous than it is for a browser.
Honestly with everything becoming web apps these days, I'm starting to feel it's more dangerous for the browser than for the OS. So many zero-day exploits like the recent Microsoft OpenType bug. And of course, Flash. Enough said there.
I'm already to the point where I don't web surf on my primary development box, outside of localhost (site dev work.)
As long as your firewall seals off all unrequested external traffic (easy with pf), and you don't run untrusted desktop applications, then the only real attack vector is through your browser.
I'm not quite that strict with my main work machine, but I am very careful about what I install on it, and typically my browsing is all work related or the occasional site likely to be very safe (BBC News at lunchtime, say).
I do want to point out that the OpenType issue you mentioned is really an OS bug rather than a browser one, though. It's a good demonstration that ultimately any OS facility that is used by browsers is a potential vulnerability, and crucially it's a cross-browser vulnerability and therefore more attractive to attackers.
What I'd really like is for all my platform software -- OS, browsers, language runtimes and the like -- to focus on stability and quality, with new features taking a secondary role. But I guess that doesn't sell new and shiny to customers^Wconsumers with an Internet-era attention span. :-(
However, Australis for example was a large redesign of the UI. I'm not sure how you can support an opt-out, as that would mean supporting two codebases - two different and separate UIs, at once.
Regarding bundling of DRM, it isn't bundled, but it is downloaded on demand. This is a sad thing even so, but Google, Microsoft and Netflix just left other browsers no choice when they invented, standardized and shipped EME DRM. Mozilla fought DRM, but lost.