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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#451

Post by missedthecue »

zobzu wrote: post #376

Mozilla 2010: "join us, don't work for the man, work for mankind!" (this was their actual slogan) Mozilla 2020: "well actually, work for the man" (or woman in this case) Sadly, even with Mozilla Foundation getting 40M in donations they need the Corporation to pay the bills (including Mitchell Baker's 2.5M/y salary) The fact that this makes it less likely Firefox continues to be competition for Chrome is bad news for…

This forum would be in uproar if the firm was offering their software devs $30k a year, but offering competitive pay for executives and managers is a sin incapable of restitution for some inconsistent reason.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#452

Post by geoelectric »

wlesieutre wrote: post #374
sbahr001 wrote: post #335

I find this sad, Mozilla is really an advocate for the open web and web standards. Since web browsers are free, they can't make much. They might be able to sell something like Thunderbird; if they improve it and make it more into a service, like Hey! for example. They could also try the sponsorship model that a lot of open source projects are doing. They already have sponsors, but maybe sponsors for their open source…

If downsizing the organization and bringing some revenue in from a VPN service helps them be less financially beholden to Google, I think that's a net positive. I don't know that they would need to sell Thunderbird as a whole bundled product/service like Hey; they could launch a paid email service (in the "it's not Gmail" market occupied by Proton, FastMail, Posteo, etc.) and use that money for work on Thunderbird. N…

At the end of the day, money is money, at least to a point. Unless the search deal funding is drying up in the background, this will be nickels and dimes on top of that.

I was at Mozilla for a few years. I'm quite sure there was ideological tension with some around accepting Google's money, but I think the bigger issue was not having a diversification of funding and feeling like that one pillar could bring things down. In theory the changes in the mid-2010s to multiple international search providers should have helped with that, but the American pillar was Yahoo. I don't think that did Mozilla a lot of good after the Verizon buyout.

(All said, seems every time I comment something Mozilla, ex-upper management makes it clear in thread that the view from the ranks or my five-years-gone memory is incomplete, so take with as much salt as you need.)

Thing is, Mozilla's been talking service focus and funding diversification for awhile now. I'm not sure what they expect to change to make it more successful this time. Cutting payroll is an extension, not a solution.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#453

Post by nine_k »

jacquesm wrote: post #95

Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…

Two words for you. (1) Rust. (2) Thunderbird.

Each represents a huge value to the community.

New and untried consumer products? Well, maybe. You never know which could be a big hit.

Still it's not obvious how to make money on any of these :(

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#454

Post by gfodor »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #356
gfodor wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common refrain, but is anything but obvious. Focusing on the browser could be a losing strategy. I'd argue it probably is. The trajectory is terrible: the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) and the market share picture is bleak. The opportunity cost is huge: maintaining a web engine, one which basically just tries to keep up with the others put out by Google et al, takes armies of people that could perha…

Making a browser is Mozilla’s purpose. If Mozilla can’t do that, it doesn’t have a reason to exist and will fail. If the Feed the Children charity decides that feeding children is too hard and decides to water plants instead, I expect it will fail too.

The Mozilla Manifesto says nothing about web browsers. If you think they should throw it out and focus on making web browsers (and abandon their mission as an organization) you'll have to take it up with them I guess.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#455

Post by rvz »

prophesi wrote: post #372
solarkraft wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they may eventually be able to remove Google as Firefox's default search engine IIRC the financial woes are precisely because the contract with Google is running out. Aren't they?

That's news to me. Their contract has been consistently renewed for years, and I'd imagine that would give Google some pretty bad PR if they didn't.

Well after all these years they were soley sitting on Google's contract money and are yet to create a very competitive and revenue-generating product that users will pay for. Firefox VPN is essentially Mullvad with Firefox branding so there is no comparison with either of them.

Most of all of the products Mozilla has is either free (mostly) or not competitive enough to the point of redundancy. For the typical end-user (who really doesn't see open-source as an advantage) Pocket can be replaced with Chrome Bookmarks and ultimately, Firefox can be replaced with Chrome.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#456

Post by mistrial9 »

wmf wrote: post #390
sbahr001 wrote: post #335

I find this sad, Mozilla is really an advocate for the open web and web standards. Since web browsers are free, they can't make much. They might be able to sell something like Thunderbird; if they improve it and make it more into a service, like Hey! for example. They could also try the sponsorship model that a lot of open source projects are doing. They already have sponsors, but maybe sponsors for their open source…

Mozilla made over $500M revenue in 2017 and $451M in 2018. Apparently the decline has continued, but it should still be enough to develop a browser. I would guess that Firefox is profitable but all of Mozilla's other things are dragging them down.

the American system of employment is demonstrably broken; Mozilla in SF is bound by hundreds of contradictory and expensive rules for employment, originally designed to make safety and stability for workers, that are now spaghetti-code and are routinely worked around using international channels

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#457

Post by brundolf »

lenkite wrote: post #416

So this affects rust-lang too I guess ? I found it strange that people started trusting a language with no open standard and one implementation.

Rust has gained so much traction at this point with other major companies (Cloudflare, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc), because of the unique value it offers, that I assume it would have to be picked up if it got dropped by Mozilla.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#458

Post by SilasX »

sbahr001 wrote: post #335

I find this sad, Mozilla is really an advocate for the open web and web standards. Since web browsers are free, they can't make much. They might be able to sell something like Thunderbird; if they improve it and make it more into a service, like Hey! for example. They could also try the sponsorship model that a lot of open source projects are doing. They already have sponsors, but maybe sponsors for their open source…

They get a fortune from Google and still don't let me customize the controls except by a new API that doesn't take effect in a tab until the document has loaded. They just need to manage what they have better.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#459

Post by aborsy »

The free open source software approach has its own limitations. Developers and companies need to make money to be viable. Software is a class of product; it takes work and resources and simply can’t be all free.

This is going to be a problem going forward. I feel bad seeing developers sometimes begging for donations. Why should software be free?

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