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"Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

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Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#41

Post by lucasmullens »

protomyth wrote: post #32

Firefox doesn't have the developer tools that Chrome does so developers use Chrome to develop with meaning their websites work better in Chrome so Firefox is playing catch-up or just plain looks worse keeping adoption of Firefox lower. Mozilla solves the problem by killing development of developer tools insuring Firefox is an afterthought. Is there anyone in Mozilla management that has a technical bone in their body?

I'm sure management understands those teams are important. Who should they have cut instead?

These are hard decisions. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#42

Post by est31 »

burtonator wrote: post #10
condercet wrote: post #2

Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business strategy.

The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser. They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway. It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market…

> Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can always be forked.

It takes more to maintain a Chromium competitor than its source code. You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.

If Google decided to close the source code in 2030, nobody would be able to do anything about it. Mozilla would have laid off its last engineers by 2025 and they'd have found new jobs by now, having 5 year old outdated knowledge about how browsers work. Even if you have engineers with the required knowledge, you still need to organize them, etc. All of this takes time, and gigantic investments.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#43

Post by thayne »

ChrisSD wrote: post #17
varbhat wrote: post #14

What's the focus of Mozilla now given the layoffs of Rust,MDN,Wasmtime and Servo? Is Mozilla/Firefox becoming VPN company?

They're refocussing on the user experience of the browser. They're stopping their more developer friendly endeavours and research projects such as servo. The VPN client and Pocket are just ways to make money to fund browser development. Firefox itself does not and can not make money (and not from lack of trying). It turns out people don't want "ads", "nags" or "suggested content" in their browser.

In the long run, these changes will hurt the user experience of firefox. If you ignore developer tools and similar, then developers will be less will be less willing to develop for and test on your browser, especially if your browser already only has a minority of user share. And it doesn't matter how cool your chrome is, if websites don't work in a browser, user's aren't going to use it.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#44

Post by [deleted] »

protomyth wrote: post #32

Firefox doesn't have the developer tools that Chrome does so developers use Chrome to develop with meaning their websites work better in Chrome so Firefox is playing catch-up or just plain looks worse keeping adoption of Firefox lower. Mozilla solves the problem by killing development of developer tools insuring Firefox is an afterthought. Is there anyone in Mozilla management that has a technical bone in their body?

[deleted]

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#45

Post by x0x0 »

kryptiskt wrote: post #26
ChrisSD wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla Corp currently doesn't make much money at all, hence their problems. The majority of their funds come from a recurring Google donation, which has to be renewed every few years.

It's not a donation. They pay for being the default search. They throw billions at Apple for the same, but nobody paints that as charity.

It's increasingly a charitable donation / obfuscation of their browser monopoly status since Mozilla has lost most of their leverage: Mozilla's marketshare has shrunk, and Google faces less and less competition for search. Why would Google pay for something they get for free, much less pay half a billion dollars.

See the public numbers here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

under Combined income of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#46

Post by portmanteaufu »

stu2b50 wrote: post #22
kiba wrote: post #5

Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?

They make 90% of their revenue from Google paying to have Google be the default web search on FF. A deal which is expiring in 2021 and hadn't yet been renewed.

The deal was renewed today[1], which makes the layoffs that much more baffling.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#47

Post by jtxx »

StevePerkins wrote: post #24
burtonator wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser. They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway. It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market…

For what it's worth, I agree with you. Chromium has won. It's the "Linux kernel" of web browsers. However, that DOESN'T necessarily mean that every Linux user has to run Ubuntu! I recently switched from Firefox to Vivaldi. Just because: 1. I got tired of nagging compatibility issues with websites that I can't easily do with out (e.g. bank and stock broker). 2. I dabbled with Opera once upon a time, and liked it. I do…

> I would love to have a browser that is both built on a Chromium core, AND built for privacy by a trustworthy open-source company.

what about Brave?

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#49

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

rvz wrote: post #15

This shows that open-source in general is expensive for Mozilla but cheap for the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google who own their own Web browsers and have other open-source programming languages maintained by some of their employees full time. The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe…

> "The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant sources of revenue. Maybe they should turn into a Rust consultancy of some sort. I don't know."

The odds of them being able to build a business that that replaces the several hundred million they get from Google (which is essentially pure profit, not even revenue) are essentially nil. The instant Google decides they're no longer useful, Mozilla is going to go poof.

I'm inclined to agree with others who have said they should be building their own endowment. It's almost malpractice on the part of their leadership not to.

Re: "Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla

#50

Post by caeril »

burtonator wrote: post #10
condercet wrote: post #2

Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business strategy.

The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser. They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway. It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market…

> but Chromium is Open Source

It should be noted that the base Chromium packages still include Google-specific and Google-friendly features, such as automatically deriving your browsing profile from whatever Google account you happen to be logged into.

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