Well, I guess the one thing that could save Firefox now is anti-trust, so it can get on iOS devices and not be bludgeoned by Google promoting chrome.
Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#522Mozilla's ace up the sleeve, which I'm sure has been a temptation to them many times - and seems more and more inevitable the more they brand themselves as the privacy browser - is to make ublock origin a default and baked-in feature out of the box. I see this as an if, not when situation. Google may pull funding immediately if they do so but the surge in users would be extreme, possibly forcing big G to reconsider o…
Why would that cause a surge of users given how trivial it is to add it to an existing install today?
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#523Mozilla should have a Mozilla club. Today, you can go to https://donate.mozilla.org/ and you can donate monthly, but you get nothing for it except the warm glow of helping Mozilla.
Instead, Mozilla should have a private Discord for dues-paying club members, where participants have direct access to Mozilla decision makers, who should show up on a regular basis and do AMAs.
Furthermore, the Mozilla club should nominate a user ombuds who can sit in on Mozilla's board meetings.
Throughout this thread, I see folks criticizing Mozilla for not writing code / fixing bugs they care about, without providing a constructive way for Mozilla to fund their favorite initiatives. I think a Mozilla club could cut some of these tricky knots.
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#524Why does Mozilla even develop their own browser? There is inherently nothing wrong with everyone using Chromium as a foundation. Mozilla could use Chromium as renderer while still doing all the privacy preserving stuff they do. There is absolutely no correlation between the rendering engine and privacy. And they few interlinks (fingerprinting, etc.) can very likely be addressed through patches that are rebased over Chromium.
Firefox with its own renderer is dead anyway on iOS already, where everyone is forced into Webkit. It seems like a loosing battle to spend so much money on something that doesn't give the average user ANY benefit whatsoever. Yes, Chrome will be a monopoly, but Microsoft already bought into that monopoly. What's the point of fighting a loosing battle? Focus on integrating Chromium and make it into a rock solid privacy-first browser.
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#525This announcement is very strong in corporate speak. Main takeaway is that they’re out of money and need to are going to focus on making money?
Making a browsers requires developers, developers cost money. Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.
> Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.
I'd love to donate but only for the browser, not for that other stuff. And that seems to be the main problem here: They make tons of money, but there not investing it where they make the money with.
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#526Over 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…
> Over the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem
So what do you suggest one use as a browser then? Don't you dare say Chrome or Brave.
Firefox is the best of the worst. Yeah, it would be good if they were better, but I am not going to be moving to Chrome or Brave anytime soon.
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#527Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole thing is open source, isn't it? I wonder if anybody else is interested in having it developed. Maybe if a couple of star developers currently being laid off, or redirected to other stuff, started to put more effort into it, and the community started supporting them with donations, that could speed things up? Firefox is widely popular, and its popularity is also wide among the techs-savvy, well-paid people.…
How can I donate some money that is specifically for Firefox development? I do not really care for or like the other products that Mozilla is developing, like VPNs etc but rather, I would like for my money to be used towards browser development.
Exactly. Somebody should organize a fund for that, add an easy subscription solution, like Patreon, make it widely known, and sort out all the legal and tax issues.
(Unfortunately, I don't see myself doing that. At least not yet.)
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#528The CEO mentions that COVID devastated their revenue but doesn’t elaborate. Did COVID somehow impact their market share? Are fewer people buying and as such they get less rev share? Something else?
Yeah that's interesting. I thought nearly all of Mozilla's revenue came from Google to default to their search engine. I wonder if COVID is just an excuse to do this now.
Edit: Another comment seems to have some details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24123945
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#529Over 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…
"new focus", "new mindset", "organizing ourselves differently", "new structure", "thinka bout a different world". These are all euphemisms for death.
Why don't corporations simply be straightforward and say "We are facing imminent death and we need your financial assistance if you don't want a Google-monopolized world"?
This "changing world" fluff is a huge turnoff for people actually wanting to help Mozilla's mission.
Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
#530Over 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.
For what it’s worth I just signed up for the VPN service today. Hopefully that helps a bit.