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

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

#491

Post by djmobley »

jboog wrote: post #469
sangnoir wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you'll be able to attribute that quote to me. Eich fucked up, and should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity on the one hand and be a bigot on the other. I have a problem with characterizing Brendan Eich as a bigot for donating to a non-fringe political group. IIRC, the proposition campaign he donated to had close to a 50/50 split in support for/against. Eich's ouster cryst…

The leader of a large tech company was the government to ensure his gay and lesbian employees can never legally get married, despite straight employees enjoying all the personal/financial benefits of marriage. I don't care if it had 50/50 support. It's dead wrong. 50 years ago there were places in the US where interracial marriage had 50/50 support or less. Still dead wrong.

> It's dead wrong.

Says who? 50% of voters?

The employees of any large organisation are bound to have differing views, particularly on divisive political issues.

Why should somebody be forced out of a role because their views differ with those of some of their employees?

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

#492

Post by rvba »

roenxi wrote: post #161
Jonnax wrote: post #13

There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid. And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. Their executives are clearly failures. But with such high pay, they're cashing out. Buying themsel…

That chart shows a pretty beautiful 10 year trend. Yep, they are on a sinking ship. 'Failures' on the other hand - that is a loaded word. They are failures, they have failed at making Firefox popular. But what needed to happen to build an alternative world where they succeeded? The browsers that succeeded were Chrome and Safari - browsers sponsored by the owners of the two major platforms for accessing the internet,…

> Charities aren't innovation engines

The unique selling point of Firefox (and especially: mobile Firefox) was ability to heavily customize it and use third party extensions.

Those extensions were the ones bringing in the innovation -> most ideas came from third parties (on a side note: usually for free, since extensions are hard to monetize). The system just worked and gave many popular extensions like Tab Mix Plus, Ad-Block, Noscript... through basic customization extensions like Classic Theme Restorer (have you ever setup new browser for a grandmother who does not need 50 options everywhere when you right click? can you even do this now in new Firefox? or the new extension model does not allow it) through countless small extensions that changed users' workflows how they wanted. This ecosystem is all gone.

Developers inside of Firefox completely ignored it - they killed the old extension system because they didn't like it, while they did not provide anything that is even 25% as good. I understand that creating a new, better system is hard, but that is their job and core product. Firefox could have been providing the framework on which extensions would sit. Also, they earned 500 million dollars per year, for years; had over 1000 employees. They couldnt find people who could solve hard problems?

Or maybe it is a failure of project management: developers ignored hard problems, they preferred to work on new, shiny green-field projects. Those new toys are great: they boost the CV, allow to play with new technologies, often are left in half baked state so you dont care about bugs. They also have no users, so nobody will complain, basically no accountability for a project that is never finished and killed after 1-2 years. We saw many of such side projects in Firefox - all shifting away resources from the core product that is neglected.

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

#493

Post by jacquesm »

roenxi wrote: post #161
Jonnax wrote: post #13

There's a quote from the CEO saying that they looked at the market and felt like they were being underpaid. And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. Firefox has a problem. It gets most of its revenue from Google. They need a different revenue stream but their ideas haven't worked. Their executives are clearly failures. But with such high pay, they're cashing out. Buying themsel…

That chart shows a pretty beautiful 10 year trend. Yep, they are on a sinking ship. 'Failures' on the other hand - that is a loaded word. They are failures, they have failed at making Firefox popular. But what needed to happen to build an alternative world where they succeeded? The browsers that succeeded were Chrome and Safari - browsers sponsored by the owners of the two major platforms for accessing the internet,…

No, they succeeded at making it impopular. FireFox was popular they had a shot at cementing market dominance. The were more popular than Chrome and MS's product combined.

But now they are a fringe browser, that already has problems keeping up with the developments on the web.

Note that for Google they are only a fig-leaf in their upcoming anti-trust case. Note that Google pulled a lot of underhanded tricks to get people to switch to Chrome and paying FF may have been just enough to keep Mozilla quiet about this. If it had been a for-profit situation and with a different source of revenues for Mozilla then there is a fair chance Mozilla would have made a case for anti-competitive behavior by Google.

So that money may have acted to Google's benefit in more than just one way.

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

#494

Post by Consultant32452 »

ahelwer wrote: post #480
mywacaday wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, wasn't aware of the details. While I 100% disagree with him on marriage equality I don't understand why he was driven from his role that has nothing to do with Proposition 8. Why did his freedom to support a cause with his own money result in him having to resign, seems anti-democratic to me.

I don't know, man. It's easy to get all abstract with phrases like "support a cause" but we live in a concrete world. Mozilla employs a lot of gay people. Prop 8 was viciously homophobic, both in concept and especially in execution of its campaign. How would you feel going to work knowing your boss's boss thinks you don't deserve rights?

Doesn't basically everyone feel they are being denied some basic human rights all the time? Progressives are being denied healthcare rights. Libertarians are being denied property rights. etc.

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

#495

Post by gadders »

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.

I realise some people didn't agree with his politics, but I wonder what the trajectory of the company would have been under Brendan Eich.

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

#496

Post by rattray »

drenvuk wrote: post #15

Shit like this pisses me off. I care for Firefox and the team behind it but how do you get rid of these vampires sucking the company dry? You've got executive pay going up, usage going down. Pivotal leaders being ousted, good workers being released, good features being removed and shit features being added. It's like managers and executives somehow dig their bureaucratic teeth into a successful company/project and th…

Lots of people on this thread are complaining about Mozilla doing too many "unrelated side projects".

Honestly as a dev that sounds to me like a culture where engineers are too able to run free. If anything.

But of course swiftly kicking people out to staunch the bleeding - as happened recently - can cause a lot of pain and backlash too. New executives usually cause strategy/org thrash which sucks for everyone at the bottom.

Just saying these things are hard. Executives have to make decisions that suck, doesn't mean they're vampires. May be very painful for them too.

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

#497

Post by rawbot »

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.

Out of all the Smart TVs I've tried (Samsung, Sony, LG), webOS is probably the best in user experience. Naturally, more expensive TVs with better processors run smoother, but my budget UHD TV from LG with webOS 3.0 ran pretty great.

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

#498

Post by gadders »

jacquesm wrote: post #482
austincheney wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously they had appointed an excellent CEO from within that is universally well respected for his technology contributions and then they fired him after 11 days without cause. Now that guy is a CEO at a different company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

That's been broadly discussed elsewhere in this thread already. And no, he wasn't fired.

He was cancelled.

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

#499

Post by jacquesm »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #494
ahelwer wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, man. It's easy to get all abstract with phrases like "support a cause" but we live in a concrete world. Mozilla employs a lot of gay people. Prop 8 was viciously homophobic, both in concept and especially in execution of its campaign. How would you feel going to work knowing your boss's boss thinks you don't deserve rights?

Doesn't basically everyone feel they are being denied some basic human rights all the time? Progressives are being denied healthcare rights. Libertarians are being denied property rights. etc.

[flagged]

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

#500

Post by rattray »

antonyh wrote: post #306

I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, not into fat cats wallets. I'd also pay to remove junk like Pocket, or rather I'd consider paying for Pocket as a separate service. It irks me that it's forced into my browser. I want to be free of Google. This includes Chromium which has too much of Google included. Mozilla is the last hope of a free (as in speech) internet. On iOS Apple have e…

Honest question - do you?

I assume it's easy to set up a monthly donation.

Or would you rather they start demanding or pleading for money?

EDIT: To be fair, I don't either, and I do use FF. I donate to wikimedia and the internet archive but not Mozilla.

I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs".

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