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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

civilityandtruth.com

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Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#131

Post by wyclif »

pjmlp wrote: post #35
moksly wrote: post #22

This is completely anecdotal, and maybe I’m the only one, but native browsers have become so good that I’ve gone from decades of using Netscape/Firefox/opera/chrome/whatever to mainly using Edge and Safari. I don’t really need to share a profile between my browsers as I use windows at work and Mac/iOS for personal use. We’ve gotten to a point in time where the browser is simply really good, and I think that simply ma…

They abandoned it because Edge team got tired to play catch-up, while still fixing IE 11 bugs. Slowly but steady we will start seeing ads for Chrome developers instead of Web developer, ChromeOS has won.

Just the other day I saw a job opening for a "Chrome developer." First time I've seen that, and I thought to myself, "wow, we've really turned a corner..."

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#132

Post by Lammy »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #55
Brakenshire wrote: post #29

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…

I left FF several times for being slow, being a memory hog, dropping extensions, not adding power features (vertical tree tabs) and come back from Chrome for ideological reasons. I might not be the core audience or user group, but I have not left because of i.) - iv.).

> not adding power features (vertical tree tabs)

They made a pretty huge deal about the Tab Groups (aka Panorama) feature of Firefox 4 in 2010; designed by Aza Raskin! https://web.archive.org/web/20101105212333/http://www.azaras...

But then it was removed in 2016 because few people really used it (or few people who had telemetry enabled, at least): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#133

Post by fmajid »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #24
DarthGhandi wrote: post #11

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!

Mozilla had a lot of useless parasites. None of the mouth-breathers who organized the witch-hunt against Brendan Eich had any meaningful contributions to Firefox or Thunderbird, they used to work on irrelevant projects like OpenBadges. They seem to be gone, but I suspect they are laying off the wheat and keeping the sycophantic chaff. There are only 263 contributors listed on Mozilla’s git repo, and many are not employees.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#134

Post by asddubs »

dependenttypes wrote: post #119
asddubs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and the last one is to reduce attack vectors

Ah yes, the good old walled garden approach. Not very "open", is it?

i mean I don't like it either, but I do believe them in this instance that it's mostly in service of not letting installers just sneak in a toolbar

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#136

Post by eyko »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #92
harshitaneja wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which non-standard features?

Using google properties is a bit of an easy jab, but: Youtube using polymer/shadowdomv0 and absolutely destroying performance on Firefox is a an easy example. Google Earth used non-standard APIs. Otherwise, have a quick search for "non-standard" on MDN, and see how many of those Chrome implements.

But both of those are Google products. Yet here we are in a thread blaming an entire generation of web creators and users.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#137

Post by sciurus »

The_rationalist wrote: post #124

How is it legal that the financial report of 2019 is unavailable? It's at least a big red flag, I doubt they did such a practice the other years.

I think about a year of lag is normal, e.g.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/11/21/state-of-mozilla-20...

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/11/27/state-of-mozilla-20...

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#138

Post by eitland »

outadoc wrote: post #40
causality0 wrote: post #2

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…

> Without that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix videos,

OK, this is just plain wrong IMO.

Speed is a major thing for me and I never had issues with it, even with 400+ tabs. I can go as far as understanding that not everyone was as lucky as me but it seems the speed issue is given too much weight.

> and not have any extensions left because no one wants to create an extension from scratch just for Firefox.

There seems to be fewer real extensions now than before. Yes: more websites packed as extensions, less working TST, Scrapbook etc.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#139

Post by jacknews »

The google contract seems totally at odds with mozilla's privacy focus.

And there seem to have been too many off-target projects recently.

IMHO, they should keep a focus on privacy, and the core browser, adding VPN and perhaps CDN services, all bundled as a subscription. Maybe also ad-free search; perhaps duckduckgo should buy mozilla, or vice-versa? I think a lot of people would be willing to pay for a 'safe, private portal' to the internet.

I think advocacy alone is almost worthless when it comes to defining standards and ensuring they're open. You have to have code (and users) in the game.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#140

Post by gspr »

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #94
causality0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my point. Mozilla used a rational numbering scheme where the larger the change, the larger the increment, with full integers being reserved for major changes. Then Chrome started changing its integer every few weeks and Firefox upended its own scheme to keep from looking unfashionable.

For a rolling-release model like this a scheme could include the date released, e.g. Firefox 20.07.x which is also used by Linux distros. Right now version numbers are pretty useless.

Version numbers aren't useless. It's just that there's an insane fad going around that only the latest iteration of something is suppose to be used.
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