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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

#681

Post by fcantournet »

boca_honey wrote: post #664
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?

because they are talking about exec and they're are more than one exec

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

#683

Post by boomboomsubban »

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.

>This CEO needs to go, needs to be replaced by someone who is well versed in technology instead of in law.

Baker was officially appointed CEO in April, though has been doing the job since December when Chris Beard resigned.

I'm very confused as to how everybody seems to have missed this. I had the first couple hundred posts opened and can not find a single mention of Beard

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

#684

Post by _hzrk »

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…

It is strange that corporations like Mozilla give me some communism flashbacks. In the communist times of Romania, the earnings were privatized (meaning that the party took all the profits and stored them abroad in fiscal paradises) while the losses were socialized and the party imposed austerity measures on the proletariat[1] because of their management failures. I draw a parallel between what happens with the raise of their executives salaries and the layoffs that affected the engineering department. Nassim Taleb wrote a good article about Corporate Socialism[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_austerity_policy_in_Roma... [2] https://medium.com/incerto/corporate-socialism-the-governmen...

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

#685

Post by Tom4hawk »

TheArcane wrote: post #567
bambax wrote: post #253

> Mobile browsing numbers are bleak: Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads. This is true, and indeed very strange. I use FF on mobile and it works perfectly. So Mozilla's problems aren't only technical, there's also a question of market aw…

Is there a unique value proposition to use Firefox on iOS, since due to Apple policy, they can't have addons? Even Firefox Focus' content blocker works on Safari and not the main Firefox app

The only reason to use it on iOS is to synchronize your profile with Firefox Sync.

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

#686

Post by detaro »

roca wrote: post #680
marcthe12 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well web browsers are to complex to maintain by part time Dev unless you have an upstream to rebase on or do not mind in implementing new stuff. You need at least 10 to 20 full time Devs at the minimum and that's if you libaries for all web APIs which clearly Firefox and Chrome are not doing. I wish there was a way to browser modular frankly.

To sustain an independent, cutting-edge, competive browser engine you need several hundred excellent engineers working full-time, at least. No-one's been able to do it with less.

Is there good data on that from any of the vendors? I'd be very curious how the effort is distributed among various pieces.

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

#687

Post by roca »

Jowsey wrote: post #391
DominikD wrote: post #264

I feel like the only thing that can save Fx at this point is a community-funded, community-led fork. The only problem is: this project would need a lot of monies, so unless there's a corporate sponsor (or sponsors) it's unlikely to happen. And corporate sponsorship would require some sort of incentive that makes the investment worthwhile but at the same it it can't compromise the spirit of the project. Let's say that…

In what world is the average pay of a developer 200k/year? I'm pretty sure you could quarter that, which would make the project much more viable

The average Mozilla Gecko engine developer can quit and get a job at a big tech company making a lot more than $200K a year, definitely if they live in the Bay Area, and probably even if they don't.

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

#688

Post by rvz »

lkdsajflkfdsjg wrote: post #416
rvz wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Replace 'Guardian' with every other online news publisher and you will also get to my disclaimer on where I said 'nearly', especially on subscriptions.

The Guardian knows that they will eventually add paywalls and require subscriptions just like every other publisher as everyone knows 'donations' are not sustainable to fund their 'journalism'. It's all about subscriptions, paywalls, etc.

EDIT: To downvoters: Oh so donations 'are sustainable' for the likes of the Guardian, such that they are still asking their users for years to donate whilst ramping up the registrations and adding a soft pseudo-wall on their content, and the suggestion is to get Mozilla to also ask its users for donations?

What happens if Google decides NOT to renew that contract in the future due to Mozilla's declining market share?

Explain how surviving off of user's 'donations' is sustainable for Mozilla to survive, given that Google is its direct competitor and offers a browser for free (and a similar one without the Google stuff is also free).

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

#689

Post by roca »

DominikD wrote: post #264

I feel like the only thing that can save Fx at this point is a community-funded, community-led fork. The only problem is: this project would need a lot of monies, so unless there's a corporate sponsor (or sponsors) it's unlikely to happen. And corporate sponsorship would require some sort of incentive that makes the investment worthwhile but at the same it it can't compromise the spirit of the project. Let's say that…

If that "fork" was to survive as an independent browser engine with competitive performance and features you'd need at least 10x that number of developers.

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

#690

Post by roca »

detaro wrote: post #686
roca wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To sustain an independent, cutting-edge, competive browser engine you need several hundred excellent engineers working full-time, at least. No-one's been able to do it with less.

Is there good data on that from any of the vendors? I'd be very curious how the effort is distributed among various pieces.

No, it's hard to get. Also tricky is what counts as "the engine" varies from project to project. E.g. Webkit doesn't cover as much functionality as Gecko or Chromium, e.g. the HTTP stack is separate.
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