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Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#821

Post by mcv »

ashwagary wrote: post #559
sebmellen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…

Atleast 200% of that payrise makes sense due to inflation. Value of the dollar halved during the past ~10 years.

That would make sense if all the lower wages got the same raise.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#822

Post by vegai_ »

generalizations wrote: post #487
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.

>Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.

A continuously increasing revenue seems to be what they're getting currently.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#823

Post by subsection1h »

3371 wrote: post #749
bentcorner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.

I've been using Firefox straight for 10+ years and tried all major vertical tabs extensions and now I recommend Sidebery to everyone.

Sidebery is great, but I had to switch back to Tree Style Tab because I hate animations, and while Sidebery is impressively configurable, not all animations can be disabled (https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery/issues/517).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#824

Post by account42 »

twblalock wrote: post #387
autoexec wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High salary and a golden parachute would be required to attract anyone good enough to succeed. I'm not sure if the best way to get someone to save a dying product is a golden parachute which rewards them for running it straight into the ground. You have to make sure they're not risking everything to keep Firefox going, but ideally they'd have some skin in the game so they don't have an incentive to just loot whatev…

It's not a reward for failure, it's an insurance policy. Here's a CEO job offer: take on a nearly impossible task, for a salary that is far below the market rate. If you fail (and you probably will!) it might damage your career and make it harder for you to find another job. If you succeed, you will get prestige, but you still won't get a lot of money. What kind of executive would accept an offer like that? A golden…

> What kind of executive would accept an offer like that?

One that cares about Firefox more than about making insane amounts of money that are so far past what you need to live a comfortable live.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#825

Post by throwawayvibes »

Klonoar wrote: post #511
StillBored wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the layoff where they got rid of all the rust people? Its going to sound harsh, but they are loosing market share to browsers that didn't have to invent a new language to write a browser in. So, getting rid of those people was probably a positive impact for firefox since they were mostly just yak shaving instead of actually improving the end product. The users don't care if you wrote it in C++ or fortran as…

This feels like a gross mischaracterization of the intent and work that went into Servo. You say this as if nothing else was being done on Firefox concurrently even though this is demonstrably false - and in fact, portions of Servo were integrated into Firefox (see: Quantum). Firefox keeps losing on technical merit because it is fundamentally impossible to keep up with Webkit and Blink, which are all backed by massiv…

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#826

Post by subsection1h »

garciasn wrote: post #556
bentcorner wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.

I'm glad this exists (although it appears there are extensions in other browsers that do the same thing) but I never have more than 10 tabs open, so it's not something that would make me switch.

> I never have more than 10 tabs open

How is that possible? Do you never compare things? Or do you only compare things for which there are fewer than 10 alternatives?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#827

Post by account42 »

freeopinion wrote: post #663
stjohnswarts wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fork in no way solves this because you can't for the devs who mozilla is paying. Firefox is a huge project requiring devs with lots of experience in the technology who also like to be compensated. You can't fork firefox, you have to change the leadership or nothing else will change.

Sure. Bullet point #1: Funding. Next?

It's related to funding, but recognition is really important. Actually forking (as opposed to the GitHub fork button) is generally seen to be hostile and and will split the community (see e.g. ffmpeg vs. libav). This means that getting a fork to succeed is much harder than it would have been for the original project. For example if the Mozilla foundation went after government grants and donations for funding Firefox instead of trying to monetize the browser they'd probably have much more success than any unproven fork could ever dream for.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#828

Post by account42 »

twblalock wrote: post #352
pstuart wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? This isn't GM -- it's a web browser. An important one, but even a paltry $1M should be enough to draw in the right talent.

$1m is senior engineering manager compensation in the valley at several companies just a short drive away from Mozilla’s offices. It’s far below CEO compensation. Anyone who is capable of succeeding as the CEO of Mozilla would be giving up millions of dollars they could easily make elsewhere in the valley if they took only $1m as their comp.

> in the valley at several companies just a short drive away from Mozilla’s offices

Does Mozilla need to be "in the valley"?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#829

Post by wyclif »

Jayakumark wrote: post #164
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...

A big part of the problem IMO is that Mitchell Baker is a lawyer, not a technologist or engineer. She does not understand how software companies are supposed to function.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#830

Post by mcv »

Permit wrote: post #227
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion Why stop there? Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?

> Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?

Aren't they? Do Mozilla developers work there just to get rich, or because they care about open source?

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