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Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

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Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#241

Post by alcoholic_byte »

fastball wrote: post #80
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…

I don't use FF because I still find SpiderMonkey (its JS engine) to be slower than V8.

Firstly, the question of browser superiority and choice is not just about speed. You wouldn't want to choose an operation procedure A) over B) simply because A is faster as A has a mortality rate 30%higher that B. Secondly, the web is not high-end-gaming so a few ms more or less don't really matter IMHO. Also note that Alphabet might slow their service down deliberately, because you are not using their browser. Lastly, to finish off with a strong argument, I want you to look at https://arewefastyet.com/win10/overview?numDays=60 . It always depends on the benchmark and circumstances, as I havn't checked other OSs on that site.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#242

Post by Vinnl »

sfvisser wrote: post #63
mrweasel wrote: post #46

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…

It makes so much sense for the EU to start investing in an open web and open source software. A relatively cheap option to move towards a society with better data protection and online civil liberties. I’ve never took the time to really dig into the details of what the EU is exactly doing right now, but it seems regulation is higher on the list than investment and innovation.

They've actually funded quite a few projects through their Next-Generation Internet initiative [1] [2]. Relatively small grants, but many, and available without too much red tape, which I think is a huge boon in getting projects off the ground - if just a few of those are a success, so is NGI.

(Disclosure: I'm the recipient of one of those grants.)

[1] https://www.ngi.eu/ [2] https://mastodon.xyz/@NGIZero

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#243

Post by fulafel »

rjzzleep wrote: post #66
mrweasel wrote: post #46

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…

EU research grants have an incredibly high documentation burden and Europe in general still has a problem considering software development as research. It's usually everything that leads up to the development and then the development itself is mostly an afterthought.

Depends on the funding program nature, and grant structure (eg is there a research consortium). Not necessarily that high.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#244

Post by pjmlp »

jefftk wrote: post #190
pjmlp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope it was pretty great actually, then Microsoft thought they had won the war.

Initially, IE6 was much better than the competition. But it was still buggy, and had some very weird rendering behavior. Over time, other browsers became much less buggy, but IE6 was still around. That's how IE6 came to be viewed, in retrospect, as a very buggy browser.

Should we have a look at Chrome's bug database?

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#245

Post by gregors »

alcoholic_byte wrote: post #233
neverminder wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had an untechnical family member say unprompted last week they want to move away from Chrome but couldn’t use Firefox Mobile because it’s too slow. At the same moment Mozilla leadership was sacking its staff working on parallelising the browser engine. That's because Firefox is slow. I'm saying this as someone who's been using it as the main browser for at least a decade. My latest personal anecdote. Firefox trac…

Cannot verify and I am on Linux for a couple of years and on different hardware during those years. Arch-distribution, so maybe the defaults are what is different here?? Browsing, scrolling(with trackpad and without) startup time, etc. all fine. One thing that I find interesting to always ask: Performance under what circumstances? There are users who have literally 200 tabs+ open and then they complain that everythin…

If users have 200+ tabs open and are experiencing slowness, I'd suggest that altering the users behavior isn't a fix. To me that's pure failure from Product designers to realize that "they shouldn't do that" doesn't cut it. Fix it.

Spending time and money on solving these issues isn't going to generate new revenue. I find it hard to believe engineers wouldn't want to try fix performance issues. I find it easy to believe leadership at Mozilla would find it unimportant.

edit: clarification

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#246

Post by slightwinder »

quicklime wrote: post #237
slightwinder wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are spending less money for ads, some even went bankrupt. People also have less money to spend, or are just careful not wasting it in uncertain times. Though, yes, in most countries it normalizes, but the dent in income is visable.

And yet, Google’s revenue only decreased by 2%, and Facebook’s increased by 11%. I can see Google making an argument not to increase the amount of money they pay to Mozilla this time, but not to decrease it.

Not really? Revenue in Q1 and q2 for Alphabet were sinking. What went up were other areas than advertisment, as also they were doing some budget-savings, to reduce the actual fall of revenue, saving some costs at the end.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#247

Post by avasthe »

ksec wrote: post #153
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…

>The reason Firefox has lost market share in my opinion is because: My opinion is that none of those actually matters. The "one" single reason Chrome won market share was the same playbook how Google Search Engine Started. Speed. I watched hundreds of users, given the choice, or doing so themselves installing / using Chrome by their own selection. It was faster. The user experience was far better. You could advertise…

This.

To win over non tech people, there should be at least one "killer feature" out of the box.

In case of Google Chrome it was speed.

In case of Google search, it was quality of results.

In case of whatsapp, it was availability on all kinds of devices.

Etc..

Or enforced by organization etc.. that's different thing.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#248

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#249

Post by Dahoon »

emteycz wrote: post #222
kwanbix wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really measure the speed difference? I doubt it was that much. It was mostly about perception.

I really want to like and use Firefox, but the difference (on a top-end computer) is very noticeable and annoying. Perhaps Firefox should work on their perceived speed, if that's the difference.

So you didn't measure it. Worthless opinions as to me on my gaming pc chrome is most definitely slower. Both are opinions and worthless without numbers.

Re: Mozilla’s Uncertain Future

#250

Post by chowells »

fartcannon wrote: post #179
Lammy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Oh jees, is that what's happening? If they're only building for telemetry data, theyre screwed. Gonna end up with a browser for people who think the internet is a series of tubes.

You believe developers don't understand telemetry and leave it enabled because it helps development of the tools they use?

This whole anti-telemetry outrage is so manufactured and boring.

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