Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

calpaterson.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#371

Post by scarface74 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #260
shp0ngle wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Native is by nature faster, which makes sense on the resource sensitive devices. webOS (the Palm thing) did the same mistake, I think. It makes sense on desktop, and even there people keep complaining about Electron performance.

I have an LG WebOS television and it runs extremely smoothly. VS Code is an electron app and nobody complains about its performance. Ultimately webOS didn't lose because it was web tech. It lost because Android and iOS already captured the market. Windows Phone was a .NET runtime with similar performance to Java, but it failed to capture the market even with billions in Microsoft subsidies.

It’s easy for an “OS” to run smoothly when all it does is stream video with specialized dedicated hardware.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#372

Post by lucideer »

habosa wrote: post #346

So I think we can all agree that Mozilla's path to success is not obvious and running it is strategically harder than running most companies. You have to find a way to make your free product compete with Google / Microsoft without compromising your core values and also paying your bills. I am not defending this CEO's pay but I am just curious: how much do people on HN think the CEO of Mozilla should be paid? It's got…

> It's got to be enough to attract someone with extensive management experience at a high-functioning tech company so to me the absolute floor would be like $500k unless the person is retired and doing it for fun/charity.

> Or do people not think they need a particularly qualified CEO and would be fine with a more democratic governance model?

This line of logic is so prevalent in the world, and isn't evidence-based. The idea that a desire to be compensated a specific amount always correlates with competence & that advertising a position with a higher salary will tend to attract people with a higher competency.

This thinking is likely to have some truth below a certain threshold, at which point people don't have sufficient income to live comfortably and as such have a need-based approach to raising their own salary. This rarely applies at CEO-level.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#373

Post by albertzeyer »

patrec wrote: post #158
jacquesm wrote: post #100

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. That must be a real comfort to all the people they laid off. This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

Do you see any realistic chance of this happening? Generally if a company is captured by a parasitic leadership sucking it dry, that's it, right? Is there anyone on the board whose interests are more aligned with keeping Mozilla alive (probably hard to do at this point) than feasting on it whilst there is still something left to feast on? Presumably you'd need a few such people.

Firefox and co are open source projects. Couldn't you just create a new company, "Next-Mozilla" or so, and fork off the projects, install a new CEO, take over the developers? You would have to use a new branding, i.e. they cannot reuse the trademark, and they have to make sure that enough people (developers and users) will switch over. But with such bad press, this might not be too hard, if there is one focused attempt for this. Financing is another issue initially, but at some point they would get a similar Google deal. And otherwise, financing like Wikimedia or Internet Archive (mostly donations, right?).

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#374

Post by mongol »

jacquesm wrote: post #324
stef25 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other Is it ridiculous to suggest we should just ignore what people think and do in their private lives? I both fully support gay marriage and couldn't give a rat's ass about what the maker of my browser thinks about it (Eich donated 1000$ to Prop 8, 12 years ago). The real problem is that you can pay to hav…

It's not about you and me. It is about Eich's ability to effectively lead Mozilla while being on the record about this stance regarding gay marriage. How many of Mozilla's employees are gay and/or in favor of gay marriage? If you alienate roughly 55% (possibly much more) or so of a group you are supposed to lead you have just made your life quite impossible. Eich probably did the right thing to resign, he would have…

I see your point but seen in historical light, if he would have more successful (than current management) in bringing Mozilla profit, the same employees might still have their jobs.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#375

Post by Fl8ixIDN »

lightgreen wrote: post #148
ekianjo wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Mozilla have a board? Who gets to fire the CEO in this organization?

Seems like Mitchell is both CEO and board member https://wiki.mozilla.org/Board is that even legal?

Common in the US, but viewed as bad corporate governance elsewhere. A separation of the roles has been a recommendation in the UK Corporate Governance Code since 1992, for instance.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#376

Post by rv-de »

jansan wrote: post #292
findthewords wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible that non-profitness does not inherit to a child company? Seems like a conflict of interest.

And why should anyone contribute to an open source project of a for-profit company without being compensated?

what idiots downvoted this very reasonable statement?

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#377

Post by jacquesm »

albertzeyer wrote: post #373
patrec wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see any realistic chance of this happening? Generally if a company is captured by a parasitic leadership sucking it dry, that's it, right? Is there anyone on the board whose interests are more aligned with keeping Mozilla alive (probably hard to do at this point) than feasting on it whilst there is still something left to feast on? Presumably you'd need a few such people.

Firefox and co are open source projects. Couldn't you just create a new company, "Next-Mozilla" or so, and fork off the projects, install a new CEO, take over the developers? You would have to use a new branding, i.e. they cannot reuse the trademark, and they have to make sure that enough people (developers and users) will switch over. But with such bad press, this might not be too hard, if there is one focused attem…

How will you pay for this? Without critical mass you are not going anywhere. FireFox had critical mass, and lost. You won't be able to recover that position without some extremely deep pockets even if you start off from what is there today.

I am not convinced that even if Mozilla/FF got a competent CEO tomorrow and started executing 'just so' that they would be able to recover from their slide, a newcomer would have it harder.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#378

Post by lopis »

baud147258 wrote: post #179
flatfilefan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary I kinda see the point in the pocket and send to bridge the gap between desktop and mobile for the users that own both. But the small brainless degradations of the UI in Firefox make me worry about its future. For example it’s not possible to permanently add exclusions to the privacy shield. Because of it the sites are often broken. And this is a feature that is directly user facing on the main screen!

What does Pocket do? And how is it different from synchronizing favorites/tab between two browsers?

Pocket is like a mix between Bookmarks and a TODO list. I don't bookmark random articles I want to read later. I add them to Pocket.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#379

Post by toyg »

habosa wrote: post #346

So I think we can all agree that Mozilla's path to success is not obvious and running it is strategically harder than running most companies. You have to find a way to make your free product compete with Google / Microsoft without compromising your core values and also paying your bills. I am not defending this CEO's pay but I am just curious: how much do people on HN think the CEO of Mozilla should be paid? It's got…

It depends very much on one’s view of CEOs’ skills and their actual importance to running a company.

Re: Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up

#380

Post by bonoboTP »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #350

An honest question: we're seeing many "independent" browsers that are basically a wrapper around Chromium (Brave, Vivaldi, even Edge now) -- does anyone know why there aren't any (that I know of) similar initiatives based on Firefox?

There are a few, like GNU IceCat or the Tor Browser.
Post reply on HN