Past-projects
From MozillaWiki
This article is a stub. You can help MozillaWiki by expanding it.
Past projects is a list of past Mozilla projects that have either been spunout or turned into community projects or in some cases closed down.
Contents
Summary
This section is a stub. Please expand this summary table with specific links and dates when available. Alphabetical:
| Product | Transition Date | Destination |
|---|---|---|
| Firefox Reality | 2022 February | Igalia Wolvic |
| Mozilla WebThings | 2020 | WebThings Community |
| ... |
Full Table
More information, background, and reasons for various past projects:
| Product | Brief Description | Transition Date | Why sunset? | Current Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla WebThings | Open source code for creating one’s own smart platform, gateway, and things using web protocols. Successor of FirefoxOS > Connected Devices. | 2020 | The market, router product ecosystem, and our Gateway implementation wouldn’t together yield something compelling commercially even though we felt it might offer distinctive value to end users. open letter from dbryant, 2020 | Transferring ownership to volunteer community. Will remove Mozilla naming/branding as part of that transition. Project lives on under WebThings |
| [DATA] Location services | ||||
| [EM] ChecknShare | ||||
| [ET] Firefox Listen (Scout) | 2018 | Project lead (Jack Moffitt) left Mozilla | https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj-vWdfFaMu/ | |
| Firefox OS Marketplace | Discovery and distribution platform for web apps (on top of Firefox OS). | 2018 | Once Firefox OS was discontinued, Firefox OS Marketplace stopped receiving many submissions. | |
| Hopscotch | A creative toolkit, empowering people of any skill level to create and remix bite-sized, visually rich content for the open web using their mobile. | 2018 | https://www.instagram.com/p/BcsrtvBH6EP/ | |
| Connected Devices | Renamed Firefox OS organization to Connected Devices to reflect the pivot to IoT connected device solutions. Prototyping the future and exploring how we can make the biggest impact in IoT. | 2017(?) | ||
| Mozilla Home Router | Possibility of making a Mozilla Home Router. | 2017 | It became clear (at the time) that a pure router play is unlikely to be a success, for various reasons, including strong competition and technology. [Jkaye, 2017] | |
| FirefoxOS | Open source operating system on smartphone and smartTV. | In early December, 2015 a decision was made to stop offering smartphones through operator channels, as we failed to deliver a phone that could win in the commercial smartphone marketplace. Despite the amazing work of our team and community in creating an impressive OS, we weren't in a competitive enough position to gain the necessary market share. [JMcCracken, 2016] | The b2g platform will remain available for volunteers, contributors and enthusiasts to improve and submit patches for further advancement of the OS stack. Some cleanup and repackaging of Firefox OS was done to create “B2G OS”, which was forked and commercialized by KaiOS. | |
| Thunderbird | Free and open-source cross-platform email client, news client, RSS, and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy was modeled after that of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. | 2015 | Thunderbird developers spent large efforts responding to changes to Mozilla technologies, while Firefox was paying a tax to support Thunderbird development. Baker said that she does not believe Thunderbird has the potential for "industry-wide impact" that Firefox does. [MBaker, 2015] | As of January 2020, the Thunderbird project will be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, MZLA Technologies Corporation. |
| MozStumbler | 2020? | Retiring Mozilla Stumbler - Q3 2020 | Example | |
| Firefox Send | Encrypted file-sharing tool | 2020 | Update on Firefox Send and Firefox Notes | Example |
| Firefox Notes | Encrypted note-taking tool | 2020 | Update on Firefox Send and Firefox Notes | Example |
| Project Shumway | Javascript-based runtime for SWF files | 2015 | Example | Example |
| Deep Speech | Open source speech recognition engine (“speech to text” or “STT”). | Sep 2020 | Impacted by Mozilla restructuring and layoffs | Being evaluated by (new) Applied Machine Learning team for potential reuse or application outside speech-based machine learning. |
| Rav1e AV1 Encoder | Sep 2020 | Impacted by Mozilla restructuring and layoffs | Mozilla was a major contributor to a broader open source community effort that is continuing, though Mozilla is no longer an active participant. | |
| Common Voice | Voice Data Contribution Site | 2020 | Transitioned from Mozilla Corporation to Mozilla Foundation | Project lives on at Mozilla Foundation |
| Firefox for Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show | Firefox Browser on Amazon products | Apr 2021 | End of Support | Example |
| Firefox Rocket/Lite | https://www.instagram.com/p/Bcxdb8JnQvE/ | |||
| Firefox Hello | Video calls / chat using FF & WebRTC | 2016. Removed in FF 49 | Lots here https://wiki.mozilla.org/Loop and in subpages | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/hello-status |
| Iodide | An in-browser data science IDE | Sep 2020 | Example | Example |
| MozCast | ||||
| A-Frame | Spun out to be maintained by Supermedium | https://aframe.io/docs/1.2.0/introduction/#what-is-a-frame | ||
| Rust | A modern systems programming language | Feb 1, 2021 | Spun out to the Rust Foundation | https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/02/08/mozilla-welcomes-the-rust-foundation/ |
| Persona | Allow people to authenticate with websites in a more private way. | November 30, 2016 | Never really got the momentum it needed to be viable? | |
| Test Pilot | A way for people to opt in to experiments | Jan 15th, 2019 | The team transitioned into service and app development, and it made less sense to maintain the separate experimentation platform. https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/adios-amigo-51bec2a00072 | https://web.archive.org/web/20190123184254/https://testpilot.firefox.com/ |
| WebReplay | Record and replay debugging for websites. | https://www.instagram.com/p/BrNwkoBg1tm/ | ||
| Firefox Aurora | We used to have a whole ‘nother train between Nightly and Beta! | April 2017 | We decided we didn’t really need it, and it was only slowing things down | https://www.instagram.com/p/BYERwjTH2yP/ |
| Mozilla Labs | ||||
| Better Web | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-better-web | 2020 | https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/03/24/try-our-latest-test-pilot-firefox-for-a-better-web-offering-privacy-and-faster-access |
Past groups
See Also
- https://killedbymozilla.com/ (independently maintained)
