My perspective is this: Mozilla (to my knowledge) isn't getting rid of the developer tools in the standard Firefox. Those will still be there for people who want to get into development, and while their features will seem comparatively limited, thats actually a good thing. They're getting access to a concise set of tools that isn't overwhelming, and the same set of tools that millions of people use for development every day. Then, if they want to take their development to the next level, they have a whole new set of tools that can help them do that.
This isn't widening the gap between a user and a developer, since they aren't getting rid of the 'middle ground'. It's just giving the developer more breadth with a better tool.
That's correct, the devtools will remain in mainline Firefox ( source: I'm the PM ). We are starting to add in guards against things lke self-xss in mainline though, and dev edition will not have these sorts of things.
Makes sense--I just think it may be slightly easier to get users to become developers with a default of everyone having the same easy access to the best tools.
This isn't widening the gap between a user and a developer, since they aren't getting rid of the 'middle ground'. It's just giving the developer more breadth with a better tool.