Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products • Hacker News Board

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

#751

Post by grey_earthling » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

yborg wrote: post #467

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…

> I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward.

It doesn't have to be a hard fork.

A new community could do a soft-fork of the Firefox codebase, like Ubuntu does with Debian. (Or even like Seamonkey!)

There have been several attempts at this, but they never consolidated into a clearly-presented single alternative (like LibreOffice, Ubuntu, or Glimpse image editor).

If there is enough interest in maintaining a viable browser that isn't controlled by a large corporation, would funding for the new project emerge from the likes of Red Hat?

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

#752

Post by gameswithgo » Tue, Aug 11, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

to be fair, i am the redditor who mentioned to double speak, but i didn’t say fuck mozilla and im not switching to chrome.

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

#753

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #743

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…

Mozilla has a lot of obvious extra products they could start that generate real profit. They could start selling a paid mozilla account subscription that gives you a vpn/mail/IM They have already started this with products like Mozilla Send and Lockwise. No one is willing to pay for a browser but they are willing to pay for these extra services that plug in to the browser.

Send is DOA.

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

#754

Post by Macha » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

Those standards and the faith in their adhering to them are _all Mozilla has_. I use Firefox on all my devices, even mobile, but it's hard to argue that on a pure tech perspective, Chrome is the superior browser.

The reason I use Firefox is I still trust Mozilla more than Google, but the more Mozilla erodes that, the less they have to offer - the browser is not improving technically at the same rate Mozilla is diminishing reputationally.

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

#755

Post by Igelau » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #339

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

> DDG with their favicon service (which HN billed as some sort of nefarious tracker)

That was a pretty blatant exposure risk for something trivial, and the employee who responded on it was shockingly inept. At some point the amount of stupidity becomes so incredible that Hanlon's Razor breaks down.

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

#756

Post by baud147258 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #204

jacquesm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a losing strategy because this is a rearguard action. There are only losing strategies, nothing will turn Mozilla around to be some kind of powerhouse besides what it already is. And that's fine . It doesn't need to be the next singing, dancing platform with bells and whistles. It's a tool. It should do one thing and do that one thing well. FireFox is not a failing product, it is the only product they have…

Your two claims (Mozilla can't do anything other than Firefox, Firefox is not failing) are easy to provide counter-evidence to. You're making strong statements here as fact that are not only subjective but which run against evidence.

> Mozilla can't do anything other than Firefox

Do you have example of this?

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

#757

Post by Stupulous » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #695

war1025 wrote: post #683

> I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. I think that train started rolling when they forced Eich out as CEO. Ever since then, Mozilla seems to be less about best-in-class technology, and more about virtue signalling.

They forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.

That's not a fair point about virtue signalling. I get the motivation there, the term rubs you the wrong way (me too) because it's frequently used by the wrong people, and you're trying to either help the guy write or write off his arguments. But there's no guilt by association. There's nothing inherent about 'virtue signalling' that makes it bigoted, and if corporations found a way to make money by pretending to be bigoted, the scale would tilt in the other direction.

Free speech and anti-corporate attitudes are traditionally liberal values. Nowadays, you see arguments from bigots that oppose corporate power over free speech. We shouldn't be forced to withdraw our positions on free speech or corporate power just because they're associated with bigotry now. The idea of expecting others to do so is apalling to me, even if I'm not on board with the virtue signalling stuff specifically.

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

#758

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

blihp wrote: post #431

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

You get flogged for things for-profit companies don't because Mozilla claims the moral high ground and then leaves something to be desired in its actions and results. The rather dodgy non-profit/for-profit hybrid while effective from a business standpoint, doesn't help your cause: while originally presented as the for-profit serving the non-profit, the reality appears to be the other way around.

Non-profit doesn’t mean non-revenue, so there’s nothing dodgy about them trying to sell a few things. Nothing “hybrid” about it.

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

#759

Post by anonymousab » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

icefo wrote: post #748

anonymousab wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the feeling of getting kicked in the shins by a diva designer every-other update has risen dramatically in the past few years, as has the prominence of (at least the feeling of) 'closed wontfix dontagree' issues for common and longstanding gripes on the bug tracker and GitHub. The unfortunate nature of a bad feeling is that it will outweigh a positive feeling from another change of equal consequence. I would…

The last update of Firefox mobile really made wonder how it passed QA. The navigation bar on the bottom is an interesting expiriment but still I quickly moved it back up. The new tab layout is worse. Each tab need much more space so you can display about half the number of tabs on the same space. The top sites when you opened a new tab also disappeared. It seems you can put bookmark or something to replace them but t…

> The last update of Firefox mobile really made wonder how it passed QA

They had it as a separate app, as it was (seemingly) a rewrite that uses GeckoView. So having less features and unstable features was somewhat expected for users that went out of their way to install it.

Naturally, a lot of the old features weren't supported, and some were likely feeling like unmaintainable legacy code in the old version (Fennec) to begin with. So a rewrite may have made sense, for where the products were at and where they wanted to go. At least, in my opinion.

But for whatever reason, they decided that they had reached an acceptable level of feature and usability parity as to replace the old version with the new one (Fenix) in the play store. Somewhat forcibly moving all of the current users onto the new browser, silently for auto-updaters and update-all-ers. The downgrade path for those who want or need the old version is... well, I didn't see any documentation when I googled, so presumably it's "install the old APK and hope things work".

It's a cynical and somewhat egotistical approach to software development, disappointing to see from Mozilla and yet another entry on the list.

At this point, I would not be surprised if they find the idea of the extension whitelist - rather than a more open platform as is the desktop and was Fennec - far too appealing to move away from in the future.

That's somewhat doom-and-glooming, but many months ago I had thought they wouldn't end up trying to shove Fennec users onto Fenix in this way, and yet... here we are.

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

#760

Post by betterunix2 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 12:09 AM UTC

terminalcommand wrote: post #598

betterunix2 wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The fact that they've chosen to focus on revenue instead says everything you need to know about how far Mozilla has fallen. " Maybe you have not noticed that money actually matters? Mozilla maintains a global infrastructure for serving Firefox updates and new installs; they have to pay developers to keep up with bugs, vulnerabilities, and new web standards; they have to pay lawyers to deal with the various legal iss…

Having to pay lawyers for legal issues shouldn't be a reason to lay off 250 employees. It certainly can cost a lot, if they are getting service from top-legal firms, working on billable hours. But they can choose to stick retain lawyers for important matters such as IP-rights, etc., get help from the community for other legal matters and work. For example debian has the debian-legal mailing list, where a lot of lawye…

"If an OSS community like Debian can manage this, why shouldn't Mozilla be able to do it."

Debian receives hardware to test and develop on, infrastructure, and other non-monetary support from various corporations that view Debian as a project with strategic value to their businesses. Debian also benefits from only having to package software and forward bugs to the appropriate upstream maintainers -- including Mozilla. I mentioned the lawyers at Mozilla only as an example of something they actually do need money to pay for, and I strongly suspect that Mozilla's legal team has more work to do than Debian's but do not have any first-hand knowledge. Technical work is probably a larger expense for Mozilla than legal, just by the nature of developing and maintaining a web browser that has to support the modern web (which is more application runtime than document delivery).

"Mozilla can go public"

At which point they will be beholden to their shareholders and will have to be even more revenue-focused, which is what I was replying to in the first place.