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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

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101–110 of 405 posts

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#101
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They made ONE switch How many plugins work with the new Firefox on Android? > standard extension model One were Google already declared that APIs used for ad blockers are considered deprecated and might be dropped at any time? With one major browser vendor being actively hostile towards a large amount of plugins that "standard" doesn't do much. It certainly doesn't guarantee portability unless Mozilla completely ju…

About 8 currently. But they're still working on enabling more. And they haven't pushed the new version to the stable channels yet.

For some reason I can no longer start the normal Firefox on Android, even after clearing everything and reinstalling it. So I am stuck with the beta version.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#102

The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in se…

I think part of this deal must involve radically simplifying the web and reflect on the EU's sponsorship of W3C via ERCIM. We've seen web tech becoming more complicated all the time, with self-acclaimed "standardization bodies" (WHATWG) acting as fig leaf for Google's take-over of the web. Now with Firefox on the brink to drop out, like all other "browser vendors" (Opera, MS) except Google before, and failing to crea…

How would you "radically simplify" the web without causing breakage?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s business is search engine and advertising, not browser market share. Also helps with an anti-trust case.

If you don’t think Crome is a substantive part of google’s core business, I think we’re gonna talk past each other this whole time.

How does Chrome make money though?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand how that is not enough to fund Firefox and Servo for well over a decade.

The CEO needs those sweet bonuses that come from short-term revenue spikes. But hey, she's not some homophobic bigot, so everything is good, and everyone should feel perfectly safe at the workplace as they are being downsized!

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#105

The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in se…

I think part of this deal must involve radically simplifying the web and reflect on the EU's sponsorship of W3C via ERCIM. We've seen web tech becoming more complicated all the time, with self-acclaimed "standardization bodies" (WHATWG) acting as fig leaf for Google's take-over of the web. Now with Firefox on the brink to drop out, like all other "browser vendors" (Opera, MS) except Google before, and failing to crea…

I don't think it's fair to make Google particularly responsible for WHATWG and the over complicated web. The other vendors were on board and used the sentiment against XHTML from those who directly did write-once HTML, right before the web out grew their manual skill level and became capable of offering tooling. The results have naturally been a hodge-podge since WHATWG was about using the sentiments of everyone against a standard, and the results are everything in every direction except the track the W3C standard was on.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#106
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% seems like much too high a number for the group you’re talking about. I’d be interested to see some data on level of technical engagement and knowledge, but in my experience a large percentage of users don’t even have a clear idea of what a browser is. The reason Firefox has lost market share in my opinion is because: i) Chrome is pushed by Google.com, which has a near monopoly on search ii) Chrome was bundled an…

Which is why, for the life of me, I just can't see the logic of firing the Servo team.

Money and hierarchy

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#107

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

Pretty much every Firefox discussion on Hacker news you have commenters that say they just can't stand Firefox because it's 10ms slower than Chrome. Google also has been advertising Chrome heavily for the last ten years. And there was a time when Firefox was undeniably significantly behind on performance.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all stoked for publicly funded open-source software, but somehow The EU and most governments seem to be pretty bad at doing this. I recall numerous initiatives that aimed to create open-source ecosystems with massive amounts of public money (billions of euros for some projects) in the past, each and every one one of them ended up as a big disaster. The latest attempt at publicly funded software is Gaia-X, the EU'…

Why would the EU give even one cent where the C level execs and board members collect cushy pay-cheques and fire the "hard" skilled people? Who appoints the board of Mozilla? What will it take for them to be replaced? Can they even be replaced? It's apparent they're protecting a CEO who in any other organisation would have been canned years ago.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#109

The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market? Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in se…

I was responsible for securing the funding for such tasks from the EU for Mozilla. This can work, e.g. [https://browser.mt/]. However, the latest layoffs have basically gutted this plan.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#110
post #40

Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being different than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-scenes privacy behavior. That was a fundamental m…

> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos, and not have any extensions left because…

As a power user I am aware of more than one breaking change.

They constantly mess up my attempts to automate provisioning.

Add on installation has been messed up.

Lots of my user.js suddenly gets ignored because of breaking changes.

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