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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

#121

Post by _jal »

iaml wrote: post #91
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 don't understand why they don't just create a patreon/github sponsors/bitcoin donations for core ff/rust/mdn teams salaries and call it a day. I'm sure they'll get more than enough contributions to make it viable.

> I'm sure they'll get more than enough

How sure are you? Would you be sure enough to bet your child's health care on it?

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

#122

Post by acheron »

StevePerkins wrote: post #116
StevePerkins wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> @blub: "There's no way that a closed source browser owned by a Chinese company is least bad" You're speed-reading my comment, and getting it wrong. Vivaldi is NOT Chinese-owned. It is a group of European former-Opera developers, who were unhappy about the Chinese acquisition of Opera. > @outsomnia: "Ffox is super up to date with latest and next-gen web technologies... what do you even mean by "get with the times"?"…

You in 2005: "The web targets IE6! Firefox should acknowledge reality!"

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

#123

Post by shawxe »

From many of the comments in this thread, one might think that FAANG companies invented the concept of open source software or that software doesn't exist outside the context of a "profit model." Whatever is going on at Mozilla right now, the notion that a piece of open source software even needs to be profitable (let alone supported by a single large company) in order to continue existing is ridiculous.

I'll concede that there are unique challenges associated with developing a web browser (it's certainly a moving target) and that there need to be several people working on it full time, but is that really something that can only happen when one big company/organization is funding the project? As for Rust, maybe someone could point me in the direction of the one benevolent large company that's backing GCC/G++ or CPython or Ruby?

I'm not saying what's going on with Mozilla isn't absolutely terrible, but the notion that Firefox or Rust are going to somehow just go away (and that this is what was destined to happen all along because Mozilla is not profitable) just doesn't really make any sense.

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

#124

Post by worble »

blub wrote: post #90
StevePerkins wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great, I'll switch to them as soon as they release a Linux and Android version.

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

#125

Post by dreamcompiler »

gamblor956 wrote: post #109
Recursing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google: * Forbid alternative browser engines on their platform. * Bundle their browser in a leading operating system. * Use their massive Web properties to drive downloads of their own browser.

Microsoft and Google allow alternative browser engines. Apple does not.

On IOS. On a Mac you can run any browser engine you want.

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

#126

Post by dlivingston »

gamblor956 wrote: post #109
Recursing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google: * Forbid alternative browser engines on their platform. * Bundle their browser in a leading operating system. * Use their massive Web properties to drive downloads of their own browser.

Microsoft and Google allow alternative browser engines. Apple does not.

Only within iOS. The average person downloading Firefox for iPhone doesn’t know (or care) if it’s built on WebKit or Gecko.

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

#127

Post by hu3 »

caeril wrote: post #50
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…

> 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.

Indeed. Perhaps they could join gorces with the Ungoogled Chromium project:

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

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

#128

Post by breezest »

Barrin92 wrote: post #82

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…

These big tech are using Rust as a feature to promote their cloud business. They will/morally should help sustain the ecosystem.

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

#129

Post by chubot »

kanox wrote: post #79
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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…

> The instant Google decides they're no longer useful, Mozilla is going to go poof. People keep repeating this but couldn't Bing replace Google as the default? The "default search engine" position is actually worth money.

Also, Mozilla has had revenue from other search providers, like Yahoo:

https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla...

So I don't think their position is as fragile as people suggest. The problem is declining market share, not that they are tied to Google per se. (Of course Google is by far the strongest search engine, but it's plausible that Mozilla could survive with Bing.)

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

#130

Post by 627467 »

I'm not technical enough to understand what are the strategic implications of this.

I have been reading a lot of reactions to this that involves hitting at C-level of MozCorp (mostly around their pay, but also perceived lack of focus?) so I wanted to understand what are the strategic changes that management is enacting.

Is building a web-based platform not a priority for Mozilla anymore? What is? Or is it that the layer of intervention on the web platform has shifted to other things, other than rendering engine and documenting it's capabilities?

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