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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

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

#971

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #547
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…

I certainly don't think the corporate doublespeak is reason to switch to Chrome, but I do think the corporate doublespeak in this announcement is just awful. When you're doing a layoff, just announce the layoff, show compassion to the affected employees, and if you want to announce other changes, do it in a separate announcement. Putting stuff about the fight against systemic racism in the opening paragraph of a layo…

[deleted]

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

#972

Post by Shorel »

GuB-42 wrote: post #692
renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I also hate the privacy argument. Anyone can write super-private software, it just needs to do nothing. Anyone can do better than Google when it comes to privacy, especially if you define "privacy" as "don't do what Google is doing". It is almost a tautology: we first define Google as the opposite of privacy and then market yourself as private by not being Google. In order to drive the point, you add some kind of blo…

> Firefox even lost most of its identity by discontinuing XUL (for good reasons, I know) and updating its UI to look more like Chrome.

Firefox lost most of its identity by updating its UI to look more like Old Opera. And it has been copying Opera since it was called Phoenix.

This is also the reason I use Firefox. It is the browser that more closely resembles Old Opera.

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

#973

Post by Shorel »

jiggawatts wrote: post #662
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 'closed wontfix dontagree' attitude, or letting important requests sit there open for over a decade -- some with tens of thousands of comments -- is what killed Firefox more than anything. In the enterprise world, Firefox lacked a few, small, but critical features: 1) MSI Installers 2) Group Policy Administrative Templates 3) Proxy configuration from Windows 4) Enterprise PKI integration Some of these are support…

The same reason MySQL is one or two orders of magnitude more popular than PostgreSQL.

Thinking it is a good idea to leave Windows users behind. You don't hurt Microsoft by doing that, you hurt yourself.

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

#974

Post by Shorel »

dependenttypes wrote: post #688
jiggawatts wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'closed wontfix dontagree' attitude, or letting important requests sit there open for over a decade -- some with tens of thousands of comments -- is what killed Firefox more than anything. In the enterprise world, Firefox lacked a few, small, but critical features: 1) MSI Installers 2) Group Policy Administrative Templates 3) Proxy configuration from Windows 4) Enterprise PKI integration Some of these are support…

> MSI Installers Why was that important? I was under the impression that exe and msi installer had no real difference between them. Obviously I am incorrect but I am wondering why.

MSI installers can be automated with PowerShell. They can be pushed system wide in a Domain.

I am sure there are other reasons, but these two are the important ones.

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

#975

Post by themacguffinman »

JohnBooty wrote: post #969
themacguffinman wrote: post #848

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I can have the rug pulled out from me in six months? This reasoning is silly and bizarre. What, exactly, is the massive risk you're taking when you use a VPN that could go away at some point? Not only is a VPN a commodity that many other service providers can easily fill if the worst was to happen, Mozilla's VPN is just a rebrand of Mullvad which would be a cinch to switch to. So much for trusting Mozilla and ca…

You are factually correct, of course - of all their random, scattered efforts, the "cost" of finding another VPN provided and switching to it is not large. I still disagree greatly with your conclusions. What, exactly, is the massive risk you're taking when you use a VPN that could go away at some point? I didn't say it was "massive." I In reality, the cost to me would be "only" a few hours of research to find a suit…

> I do support them financially via donations

As someone else mentioned, apparently this goes to the Foundation which funds other social causes instead of the Corporation that develops Firefox. Donations won't actually help Firefox much at all. To support the Corporation directly, you'd need to pay for one of their paid products like Pocket or their new VPN.

> This doesn't follow. Mozilla has a history of introducing and subsequently shuttering many services, so therefore I don't care about "privacy and security?"

It follows like this: here's a great privacy & security product you claim is "ideal" for you, made by a company you "trust 100x more than the competition". But it's somehow not worth it to you as someone who cares about privacy & security?

The speculative risk of a couple of hours every year (but in practice, more like 20 mins to switch to Mullvad, which even if you didn't know about before, you know now) is more valuable than what appears to be - by your own words - one of the best privacy & security products to come along in a generation?

Empty praise. Deep concerns for privacy & security that are conveniently not reflected in product choices. Honestly, it's a mystery why Mozilla devs even try to cater to this crowd. They talk up a storm about caring about privacy & security yet when a great product comes around, there's always another reason not to use it. Always another reason why it doesn't measure up. With friends like these, who needs enemies.

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

#976

Post by Shorel »

eloisant wrote: post #921
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…

I think the issue is multifold, but basically from what I've seen (including having multiple friends at Mozilla and visited their HQ multiple times), Mozilla is run exactly like any other Silicon Valley company. Sure, there is no shareholders so there is this freedom, but people working there were basically hired after working in other tech companies, and they just work as they did in other tech companies. The fact t…

> before accepting that the UX introduced by Chrome when it was released was superior

Both UX are still below Old Opera. Firefox is closer but still falls short.

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

#977

Post by SilasX »

strken wrote: post #847
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…

My standards for Mozilla are: 1) Make a good browser. Get market share. Use it to push the envelope for what can be done on the web. 2) Respect user privacy. 3) Don't spam me with push notifications, in-browser advertising, or any other marketing communications unless it helps goals 1 or 2. 4) Don't spend most of your money on projects that aren't your browser. Mozilla keeps getting into partnerships that send data t…

Okay, I've changed my mind [1]. Your comment is the one I give 1000x endorsement to.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24127377

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

#978

Post by pseudalopex »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #958
slavak wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, it was _not_ a single political donation. I'm Jewish. If it came out that the new CEO of my company made white supremacist statements half a decade ago, without any indication they had changed their position since, you better believe I would refuse to continue working for that company until and unless they were no longer CEO. This isn't a disagreement about the marginal tax rates to apply to millionaires, or…

This seems like a "my way or the highway" or "black and white" argument, coached in language suggesting that you don't need to make inroads for peace, for the sole reason that your side is inherently right and theirs is inherently wrong. This idea of firing or ostracizing people without attempting to reform them first is a shoot first, ask questions later, knee-jerk sort of morality. If you end someone's means of mak…

Nobody ended Eich's means of making a living, ostracized him from society, or denied his humanity. He remained Mozilla's CTO after his donation became widely known in 2012. There wasn't any significant protest until he was promoted to CEO in 2014. He wasn't fired and still reprimands people who say he was. He's been another browser company's CEO since 2015.

Eich probably could've defused the situation if he just apologized. Instead he wouldn't even say he wouldn't do it again.[1]

People didn't refuse to follow Eich just because they could. They didn't even refuse to follow him just because he hurt people. They refused to follow him because he still thought what he did was right 6 years later.

Jews were oppressed because of who they were. Eich faced a choice because of what he did.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm...

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

#979

Post by slavak »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #958
slavak wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, it was _not_ a single political donation. I'm Jewish. If it came out that the new CEO of my company made white supremacist statements half a decade ago, without any indication they had changed their position since, you better believe I would refuse to continue working for that company until and unless they were no longer CEO. This isn't a disagreement about the marginal tax rates to apply to millionaires, or…

This seems like a "my way or the highway" or "black and white" argument, coached in language suggesting that you don't need to make inroads for peace, for the sole reason that your side is inherently right and theirs is inherently wrong. This idea of firing or ostracizing people without attempting to reform them first is a shoot first, ask questions later, knee-jerk sort of morality. If you end someone's means of mak…

In addition to everything pseudalopex said below, which I agree with 100%, I'll just add that, yes, some things absolutely are and should be black-and-white, my-way-or-the-highway. Particularly, issues of human- and civil-rights.

The opposition to Eich was not because of some unpopular opinion he held at some vague point in the past. He wanted to ban same-sex marriage in 2008, and all indications are he still wanted that in 2014. Eich had ample chance to easily diffuse the situation by clarifying his beliefs; instead, he provided vague platitudes about inclusiveness and leaving his personal opinions at the door.

I'm sure there's plenty of companies that wouldn't mind having an anti-gay-marriage CEO. Hell, most people could stomach working with someone with those views; remember Eich was chief technologist and a Mozilla board member from the start, and CTO from 2005, which Mozilla's LGBTQ employees obviously tolerated. But I'm sorry, I have very little trust that a company can maintain a certain set of values, when I know for a fact its Chief Executive Officer holds diametrically opposite views. Management shapes every aspect of a company, so the personal opinions of the person holding the highest position in that chain matter.

There is nothing unethical about acting this way. This is not denying Brendan Eich his humanity (unlike what his views do to others). Being CEO of Mozilla is not a basic human right that he is being denied.

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