"Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by houreaction » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

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…

so basically google controls the web? great.

>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.

What does it matter if chrome has a large market share, so long as mozilla is profitable? Also, abandon a perfectly good browser for no reason?'

>It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market and building consumer products and less on infrastructure. >FF as needed back when all the browsers were proprietary.

chrome is still proprietary! and there are dozens of chromium forks already! why in the world would anyone want another chromium fork?

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

#82

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

I always wondered how Rust at Mozilla was sustainable. Maintaining an ecosystem like that and bringing it into an already complex project like a browser is a huge undertaking that probably has eaten up significant amount of manhours.

At a Microsoft sized company I'd get it because they can basically blow billions on that sort of thing but I always wondered if it actually took time away from improving Firefox or other products.

I can't imagine that from a standpoint of time investment and technical improvement Rust ever made sense for Firefox to be honest.

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

#83

Post by SilasX » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

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…

I think it shows that Mozilla blew all their (quite significant) funding on quixotic adventures that had little to do with their core mission of an open internet where users controlled their experience.

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

#84

Post by shi314 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:03 PM UTC

ChrisSD wrote: post #65

yulaow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood the exact opposite, that they are moving out from the "focus on the firefox browser" mantra because it is not a competitive strategy anymore and they want instead to find and build new products.

They need to find a build new products to actually make a decent income. Firefox alone doesn't do that. They are still committed to the core browser.

When their other products sell, they would probably just use a chromium fork with FF branding and some tweaks to make it resemble FF to sell nostalgia like Ubuntu.

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

#85

Post by outsomnia » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #73

jtxx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I tried them for a little while. Unfortunately, Brave's sync service just flat-out doesn't work. To the point where they have it disabled by default, and you have to crack open advanced settings to see if it will actually work reliably for you (SPOILER ALERT: It won't). I think they were too focused on making it "blockchain-based" and "crypto-trendy", and just can't build something sensible that works. THIS is the va…

> and it's dying because the Internet is simply moving on away from it. > love to go back to Firefox if they would get real with the times

Ffox is super up to date with latest and next-gen web technologies... what do you even mean by "get with the times"?

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

#86

Post by mvn9 » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

portmanteaufu wrote: post #46

stu2b50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Then it was a negotiation tactic. Mozilla showed that they don't desperately need the money because they are willing to cut all expenses. Thus, Google can't play the 'take whatever we offer or you will be bankrupt in 2021'-card. Firing the developers should have led to a better deal and they can now silently rehire them back.

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

#87

Post by monocasa » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #7

I wonder if someone is going to pick up the mantle that Mozilla dropped. One of the FAANGs, maybe Oxide?

The ideal for me would be that a single company doesn't, but instead there's a proper foundation with a lot of members.

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

#88

Post by lostapathy » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

thomascgalvin wrote: post #34

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…

For Apple, Microsoft, and Google, their open source activities are all loss leaders for their profitable ventures. Apple sells hardware, and most of their software offerings, like MacOS, their office suite, and Safari, and given away to convince people to buy that hardware. Also, it's not like they're spending a whole lot of time making Sarafi the best browser around. Microsoft's web browser was created (and bundled)…

Is open source a loss leader for Apple, really? Or is it something they mostly get for free, but have to contribute a little back to shape it how they want?

The point I read from GP, at least, was that open source is cheap for these big corps because they get a ton of benefit for it, but non-profit (either orgs or individuals) are bearing the brunt of the cost.

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

#89

Post by dralley » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

portmanteaufu wrote: post #46

stu2b50 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That article doesn't mention what the terms of the deal are. Mozilla has lost marketshare since the last time the deal was made, it's possible that the funding was cut as well.

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

#90

Post by blub » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

StevePerkins wrote: post #73

jtxx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I tried them for a little while. Unfortunately, Brave's sync service just flat-out doesn't work. To the point where they have it disabled by default, and you have to crack open advanced settings to see if it will actually work reliably for you (SPOILER ALERT: It won't). I think they were too focused on making it "blockchain-based" and "crypto-trendy", and just can't build something sensible that works. THIS is the va…

Safari doesn't spy on you and is a pretty good browser. There's no way that a closed source browser owned by a Chinese company is least bad. That's easily the least trustworthy option.