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

calpaterson.com

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

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They could try to convince Google to sponsor them instead.

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

#412
post #275

Can't speak for others but I stopped using Firefox for the following reasons, pretty much in the order of priority. 1. When I learnt about the corporate structure at Mozilla. I simply don't drust any large corporation with matters related to privacy. 2. What happened with Brendan Eich. That just wasn't cool. What someone does in his personal time is non of my business. Virtue signalling of any sort, to me, is a hallm…

He donated money to a political cause directly against some of his employees, got called out on it and refused to compromise. I'm sure those are admirable characteristics in some situations, as the CEO of an organisation like Mozilla they're suicidal. He doesn't seem to get that even to this day, based on some tweets linked to in this chat and in the article. "Don't be an asshole" is a pretty good philosophy if you'r…

The question is whether there was any prejudice or he mistreated his employees based on their sexuality. If did he absolutely should have been fired and fired sooner. If he didn't, he seems to have kept his personal beliefs out of his professional life which is also an admirable quality. In that case, he was judged and forced to resign purely based on what he did in his own time with his own money. If we, for a moment, set aside the right/wrong of his action of donating money for a political course, then this entire saga was based on politics that is completely unrelated to Firefox. That's too much politics for a browser vendor and it kind of sets the tone as to how things at Mozilla are going to be.

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

#414

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.

WebOS is smooth but it’s also half-dead. Nobody uses it except LG, and I wonder how long even them will bother with it (I mean, to get an app in their marketplace you have to basically send in a slide deck with all sorts of bureaucracy, it looks like something a low-rent manager would come up with, they cannot be serious about long-term success). It effectively recommends not to use its local APIs, but rather consider the device as a dumb kiosk.

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

#415
post #275

Can't speak for others but I stopped using Firefox for the following reasons, pretty much in the order of priority. 1. When I learnt about the corporate structure at Mozilla. I simply don't drust any large corporation with matters related to privacy. 2. What happened with Brendan Eich. That just wasn't cool. What someone does in his personal time is non of my business. Virtue signalling of any sort, to me, is a hallm…

He donated money to a political cause directly against some of his employees, got called out on it and refused to compromise. I'm sure those are admirable characteristics in some situations, as the CEO of an organisation like Mozilla they're suicidal. He doesn't seem to get that even to this day, based on some tweets linked to in this chat and in the article. "Don't be an asshole" is a pretty good philosophy if you'r…

If you had to choose between a great open source browser run by a troubled organisation and a crappy browser run by a great organisation what would you choose? What is best for the users?

Foss folks and hackers would probably choose the latter, where as we've seen with all the FANNGS the world would choose the first.

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

#416
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure The Guardian is the best example of economic success.

Exactly. Asking for donations isn't good enough for the likes of Mozilla. From the post: > Mozilla should probably just ask their users for money. For many years the Guardian newspaper (a similarly sized organisation to Mozilla in terms of staff) was a financial basket case. The Guardian started asking their readers for money a few years ago and seems to be on firmer financial footing since. This comparison doesn't m…

The Guardian hasn't set up a paywall. It remains free without a subscription.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave (which is led by Br. E. who was fired from Mozilla) is privacy oriented.

No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027

This one is not privacy violation although it’s significant misbehaving. Thanks for sharing!

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

#418
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They could try to convince Google to sponsor them instead.

Chicken, egg.

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

#419
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…

> 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?

Mozilla IS a not-for-profit foundation it's primary goal should not be profit.

What revolts people is how much she is paid and how much she increased executive pay _WHILE_ firing 250 people of one of their most successful teams.

Also lets be honest their 'strategy' has shifted from making software people want to use to let's do a UX extreme makeover because that's how Chrome does UX.

I know I should aim for constructive criticism but the UX on the Phoenix release for Android is so annoyingly counter-intuitive it made my blood boil.

Also dropping support for pretty much all addons on Phoenix is yet a major ball drop. The whole point of Firefox is customization and add-ons, if execs fail to see that then they don't understand the product that pays their 400% salary increase.

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

#420
post #135
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t even get developers to use FF, the times I read about it here (and maybe it is a vocal minority idk) that a developer doesn’t like a certain feature. Or they are missing feature X from chrome. I think it would be a valid strategy if you do go after developers and sysadmins. So pour resources in getting parity where devs think they would switch. In general whenever I help installing software for someone, I in…

> Aka do a Blender. Blender has gained momentum by getting things right, not adding features nobody wants, or Blender sidegigs. There is a parsimoniousness about Blender that is really quite incredible. I have rarely used an app that has so successfully resisted feature-creep and bloat. E.g. unlike almost all other 3D apps, it has no radial array tool or feature. Why not? Because you can cook your own using a simple…

Isn't the screw modifier a similar thing? Also it seems quit full fledged to me tbh. And for everything else there are plugins.
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