Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up • Hacker News Board

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

#661

Post by luckylion » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

rattray wrote: post #500

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".

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

But what would that change? You're not donating to the makers of Firefox, you're donating to the entity that owns the makers of Firefox. They'll spend the money on whatever they find interesting or lucrative or politically wise. Firefox might or might not be among them.

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

#662

Post by 6510 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

I'm not much of a FOSS developer but it use to be that if I needed something I would just write an extension or a greasemonkey script. It would mature and others would use it. I couldn't get my web extensions to work properly then they got rejected then I got bored with it. It wasn't good enough to replace the hundreds of truly fantastic extensions we had before. I cant even remember the names!

User.script didn't get the love it needed to build a single community. I never upload anything anymore.

The way a website should look is entirely different from the way it should look for those regularly using the website. It says Hacker news at the top of this page. It consumes space on my screen. (This isn't a thing worthy of discussion. I just remove it, others can use the script. In top down design hierarchies this kind of stuff takes endless arguing with people who never tried to use it like that but, from a position of ignorance, seem to want to dictate how you use your computer then enforce it. There is nothing FOSS about this aditude)

There continue to be lots of FOSS projects that would benefit greatly from browser integration.

I was skeptical about Opera's build in bittorrent client at the time. I couldn't imagine such a thing running un-managed. I couldn't have been more wrong. I looked what it was doing after a while and (while not downloading) it was seeding a hundred files in small groups (4-6) at a time, 1-3 kb upload speed. Perfect for rare blocks. It was a tribute to the swarm rather than the parasite I expected it to be.

In stead of webtorrents something like:

would do the trick just fine. The legacy central planning circus would continue to work while the open world of FOSS could move on.

I could think of a dozen such examples...

Take how hiding complexity is the norm nowadays. Firefox could in stead be an entry point to learn managing a database.

Distributed search is also doable if you have this many clients. If webmasters can expose their site search they would do it. Ranking is the only puzzle.

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

#663

Post by ppf » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #301

ppf wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>should have realized that you can't be leading a flagship of diversity And there was me thinking he was just leading browser development.

That is one of the core problems Mozilla has to solve. Are they a browser manufacturer or some 'force for good' (or just there to fatten Bakers' piggy bank on the way down).

It's quite clear they have decided they are a 'force for good'. It just so happens to also be very benefical to the bank balances of upper management.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

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

#664

Post by boca_honey » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

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…

I'm not a native english speaker, and I'm curious. Mozilla's CEO is a woman. Why are you referring to her as they? I know about the gender pronouns debacle... But isn't it OK to call her a woman?

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

#665

Post by coldtea » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

jboog wrote: post #470

coldtea wrote: post #331

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 Who asked Mozilla to be a "flagship of diversity"? What we wanted off them, and what their mission statement was, is a FOSS browser that supported the open web. Plus, one can be/believe whatever on their personal life, as l…

The CEO of the company spent his personal money so that his gay and lesbian employees could be discriminated against by the government. THAT IS "bringing it in the office"

>spent his personal money (...) THAT IS "bringing it in the office"

This must be some novel notion of "bringing it in the office"...

Note the weasel phrasing "so that his gay and lesbian employees" -- to imply that he did it specifically to target his employees.

If he gave money in favor of e.g. stricter weed laws, would he have done it to target his "weed using employees" or generally society's use of weed?

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

#666

Post by roca » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #309

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…

I'm still a FF evangelist though it is getting harder by the day. Eich should have realized that his actions as CEO of a highly visible entity would be viewed in a different light than if he were merely just another nobody. Missing that was his crucial mistake, he could have made the donation anonymously, but decided to do it in his own name making it a given that this would be associated with Mozilla. That was stupi…

He wasn't CEO when he made the donations in 2008, of course. Nor was he CEO when the donations came to light in 2012. Everyone at Mozilla knew about them when he was appointed CEO.

> I suspect (based on board members' and Eichs' own statements) that it was the pressure from the employees that made him decide to resign.

I worked on Firefox from 2000 and full time from 2005 to 2016. Your suspicion is completely wrong. All employees I knew, mostly on the engineering side, were happy with his appointment or at least didn't express any wish for him to step down. That includes the gay employees I knew.

The only Mozilla group that I know of who expressed a desire for him to step down were a handful of people in the Mozilla Foundation (who would not have been part of Brendan's org since he was CEO of the Corporation). They went public with it and got a big PR splash, which I think spawned this meme that there was a clamour of Mozilla Corp employees demanding Brendan's resignation. There was not.

You have posted many comments in this thread but apparently you weren't there and you aren't aware of basic relevant facts. Please show some humility.

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

#667

Post by skyfaller » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #453

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.

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

I'll say it again: If Eich remaining CEO would have resulted in Firefox bundling a cryptocurrency (not to mention ads) like Brave does, then I'm really glad Eich left.

I'll also note that Brave went for Chrome's Blink engine, and while that calculus might have been different if he were running Firefox, it doesn't give me confidence that he would have preserved the Gecko engine.

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

#668

Post by rrrazdan » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

jeltz wrote: post #513

culturestate wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a problem that she is both on the board and CEO, which effectively makes her impossible to hold to account Is this really a problem? The CEO is often a director, and even as chairwoman I doubt anything in the bylaws prevents the board at large from removing her if they wanted to. Instead, it seems like the board itself is the issue, since they allowed Mozilla to stray so far from its core mission.

Is that common in the US? Because here in Sweden it is regarded as bad practice for medium sized companies and up. The CEO is almost never part of the board here except for in tiny companies.

Indian here. Extremely common for the CEO to be part of the board. In fact the CEO equivalent "Executive head of company" designation in India before globalization made use of CEO fashionable was 'Managing Director'.

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

#669

Post by 0x262d » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #39

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…

> And they can't reduce their salary now because it'd be unfair on their families. This kind of bullshit infuriates me to no end.

really makes me want to commit more time to the class war.

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

#670

Post by rattray » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #661

rattray wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs". But what would that change? You're not donating to the makers of Firefox, you're donating to the entity that owns the makers of Firefox. They'll spend the money on whatever they find interesting or lucrative or politically wise. Firefox might or might not be among them.

Sure, they could fuck it up. Lots of people fuck obvious things up, and Mozilla hasn't been lucky in several of their recent investments.

But if serious money came in through donations, and everyone put "for firefox, keep it simple and good" in their donation box, they'd have to be particularly braindead to put that money elsewhere.

That being said, now that I do some math, it'd take 3.7mm people each donating $10/mo to match their 2018 revenue of $450mm/yr. Which does sound difficult to achieve...