[guardian-dev] why Firefox needs GCM

[Nathan of Guardian]

Yeah, but this perception always irks me:

"Firefox for Desktop runs its own custom push service called `autopush`
that keeps long-lived Web Sockets open.  As you surely know, that's not
viable on a phone"

Holding open a socket that has no data traversing it consumes almost no
power. GSM is essentially doing this themselves, how else does it work
on a wifi only device like a tablet?

Perhaps a patch could be written for Fennec/Firefox to use the autopush
desktop service?


On 12/14/2017 03:39 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
> 
> Finally, an answer to why Firefox needs GCM push services:
> https://forum.f-droid.org/t/making-it-easier-for-f-droid-to-package-mozilla-firefox/1649/13
> 
> 
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: [F-Droid Forum] [Apps] Making it easier for F-Droid to package
> Mozilla Firefox
> Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 18:33:53 +0000
> From: Nick Alexander <forum at f-droid.org>
> 
> [quote="hans, post:12, topic:1649, full:true"]
> @nalexander about Google Play Services, what is the push stuff used for?
>  I never understand why Firefox needed its own push services.  But I do
> understand why push requires GCM on Android.
> [/quote]
> 
> This I can answer, 'cuz I built most of this integration for Fennec :)
> The Firefox product family wants push services to support the [Web Push
> HTML5 spec](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API).
> This is a big part of the Progressive Web Apps initiative that aims to
> make developing rich App experiences possible using the Web Platform.
> Firefox for Desktop runs its own custom push service called `autopush`
> that keeps long-lived Web Sockets open.  As you surely know, that's not
> viable on a phone -- the OS is best positioned to do that work,
> potentially using side-channels from existing (carrier) channels.
> Therefore, Firefox for Android uses an `autopush` bridge to Google Cloud
> Messaging (and eventually will have to migrate to Firebase Cloud
> Messaging), and Firefox for iOS uses an `autopush` bridge to Apple Push
> Notification Service.
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev
> To unsubscribe, email:  guardian-dev-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org
>