Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona
I hate that the best user experience for logins is "Login with facebook" or "Login with Google". I don't want to impose that privacy failure on my users, but I also don't want to impose the annoyance that is "Sign up with a username, email address, and password". Offering all of the options is also a compromise that complicates the user experience.<p>Now, here's the sad thing, for me: I didn't even know Persona <i>existed</i> until its demise was being discussed on HN and reddit. Persona is exactly what I want for my users and my sites; and for my own use of the web. And, I didn't even know it was an option until it stopped being an option.<p>In short: I strongly agree. Mozilla has to focus resources on areas where it can have the biggest impact on privacy and the open web. This is one of those areas.<p>I hated to see Thunderbird dropped from the Mozilla roster, as it is my mail client of choice, but I understand where they're coming from. I hated to see FirefoxOS end, but I never got to use it, and it seems to have been doomed from the get-go by poor market fit and difficulty competing with the three biggest tech companies in the world in a market where money and influence play a role in which devices get into users hands. But, Persona is exactly the right kind of thing for Mozilla to be doing, and there's no reason they can't do it effectively, and without a huge amount of resources.