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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

#461

Post by rootsudo »

fsflover wrote: post #448
segphault wrote: post #432

Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't h…

So what are your suggestions? Let Mozilla die and enjoy Google monopoly in the web? No, thanks. I prefer a non-profit organization which " failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure ". By the way, consider donating to Mozilla if you want them to (be able to) listen to you.

Ironically, Google supports the Mozilla project

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-i...

Which means as Mozilla dries up, its only support is "Google."

Meaning, soon to you, a chromium firefox based browser no different as to Edge, Brave or whatever else is out there.

tl;dr Mozilla is propped up by Google. Google is no bueno.

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

#462

Post by Apocryphon »

mistrial9 wrote: post #456
wmf wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is there any evidence anywhere that Mozilla's decline is caused by labor regulation?

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

#463

Post by nugget »

segphault wrote: post #432

Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't h…

Like an addict, Mozilla became dependent upon the revenue they earned from their Google and Yahoo search deals. Search compliance requirements then prevented them from innovating in the areas you mentioned (and others). Mozilla had an opportunity to reduce the search dependency and transition to a subscription business around 2014-2015 when the paid consumer VPN market started to scale, but based on the internal incentives present at the time, they found the search money too lucrative to resist.

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

#464

Post by anoncareer0212 »

ZekeSulastin wrote: post #442
ldiracdelta wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may wish to consider Brave. https://brave.com/

The browser built around ad replacement and blockchain payments? Seriously?

occassionally I am reminded exactly how vapid the discourse are open source has gotten - 20 years ago, there used to be discussions, now it's just 'google is SELLING EVERYONES DATA' instead of 'telemetry makes me uncomfortable'

when someone suggests X, instead of 'honestly, I think what I'm looking for is something free as in beer - no charge, no revenue' 'ugh X is no alternative, they do also make money in a way I don't like!'

the thing is, 20 years ago I was 10 and just trolling around slashdot, there shouldn't be _weaker_ arguments at 30

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

#465

Post by codemonkey-zeta »

missedthecue wrote: post #451
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.

Exorbitant executive pay is a sin incapable of restitution wherever it occurs, much more today than at any point in the past. The leaders of nonprofits especially should be ashamed to accept such pay. Developer compensation generally is not exorbitant to nearly the same degree, so this comparison feels unfair.

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

#466

Post by traskjd »

zobzu wrote: post #386
ngokevin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd also because those search engines have long-term contracts to the tune of like $350-$500M a year, and Google seems to be doing okay.

The contract ends start of 2021 IIRC and Firefox market share has been dropping and will continue dropping (specially now after this news). Which means I'm sure they are planning for a large reduction in revenue, like 50% or whatever. These contracts are usually on a 3-6 year basis..

While I get the intent, as noted on the thread about their version 2 script blocker: what better way to hobble what tiny share you have by not allowing site owners to know FF users exist?

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

#467

Post by yborg »

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…

The "new focus" isn't that new, it's been the same since Baker became CEO, and it's a focus on making Mitchell Baker really, really rich.

Mozilla's privacy branding is in direct conflict with Baker's vision of some kind of corporate entity that can pay her a lot of money. Apple can do this because they are filthy rich themselves, Mozilla's puny market share means that increasing their revenue will require them to use the most valuable coin in the Internet realm, which is user data.

I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. Another thread mentioned Mozilla Firefox becoming a skin on Chromium ... Microsoft basically has validated this approach, and I can see Baker eliminating most of the rest of their engineering core to do the same.

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

#468

Post by infamouscow »

pcwalton wrote: post #428
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 multiple implementations, see mrustc.

How exactly do you know which implementation is correct without a document to point to?

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

#469

Post by progval »

pcwalton wrote: post #428
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 multiple implementations, see mrustc.

mrustc doesn't support all of Rust, its only purpose is to bootstrap the normal Rust compiler; and it only works on x86 and x86_64 Linux and isn't very much optimized (eg. needs about 10GB of RAM for the final linking).

And it's lagging behind by a year or two (which is about 15 intermediate releases of the Rust compiler you need to compile to get the current one); because it only has a single developer and keeping up is a huge amount of work.

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

#470

Post by rl3 »

xfour wrote: post #429
__s wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Servo showed there was plenty of room for browser perf beyond optimizing JS engines Mozilla getting rid of their main product's most relevant R&D makes me fear they'll eventually announce Firefox replacing its internals with chromium

Can’t say I’m surprised there wasn’t much movement on that project in a coordinated fashion it had all the makings of a project without adequate staffing to complete its vision.

Can you elaborate on this? Because I remember the day Firefox became fast with an incredible amount of fondness, and that moment owed in large part to Servo.
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