Live data from Hacker News

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

calpaterson.com

971–980 of 1001 posts

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

#971
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…

Executive running Government firms often have no reasons to compete with the evolving market. Sometimes it is incompetence, other times its malice.

I don't know what it is for sure but seems like its malice. No one knows what deals they are making with the devil under table.

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

#972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try the very latest release (81). I wrote earlier[0] that FF79 was too slow to start, buggy on tab switches, and missing most recent sites on the new tab. That's all been fixed as of FF81 as far as I can see. I also really like the new swipe-url-to-switch-tabs feature =D [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24280554

The last update seems to have added yet another unnecessary click to access a pinned site (whatever it's called). It used to be "click on the url bar -> click big site preview", now it's "click on the tab counter -> click the plus icon -> click to dismiss some overlay -> click small site icon". Thanks Mozilla, I hate it.

Yeah, it's not great. But you can get to "new tab" by longpressing the tab counter thingy. Yep, I noticed it by accident.

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

#973
post #391

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

We're talking costs, not pay. You have to pay taxes and provide various benefits to meet the legal requirements of employing someone.

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

#974
post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 total cost of an employee is quite a bit more than the pay, but yeah seems high?

Depends on the country and depends on the state. E.g. in California the basic overhead in terms of taxes payed by the employer is slightly below 10%. Then the personal income tax is 13%. You have to include other costs like matching 401k, medical premiums, other operational costs associated with each employee. $200k doesn't seem that outrageous from the employer POV since the employee is left with around $120k at the end of the day.

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

#975
post #83

I'm two fences on Firefox doing "too many unrelated things" as the article suggests. Firefox OS has been pretty much unsuccessful, but it sort of made sense? It started to be made when Firefox was still on top on desktop, but mobile started eating its lunch; and it was clear that Firefox need to do something about it, or the future will be all Chrome and Safari, on the two locked-down platforms. Which eventually happ…

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…

> We can’t even get developers to use FF

That's a side effect of not listening to developers.

---

Dramatization:

  Web Developer: I need non-standard feature that works in IE and Chrome
  Firefox: But that's non-standard, you'll be able to use standard alternative in the future
  Web Developer: When?
  Firefox: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's still in draft
  Web Developer: But I need to finish my project this quarter
  Firefox: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  Web Developer: -webkit-something: 1
* 3 years later *

  Firefox: The web is full of -webkit-something and everyone thinks Firefox is broken because we support the standard something but not -webkit-something
  Firefox: Please remove the -webkit- prefix
  Web Developer: I don't support that project anymore
  Firefox: But you only need to remove the -webkit- prefix
  Web Developer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
* 1 year later *

  Firefox: We will support -wekit-something because nobody fixes their websites for Firefox even when they only need to remove the -webkit- prefix
  Web Developer: So you're telling me that we can get away with not supporting Firefox and you'll eventually follow suit?
  Firefox: That's not what I meant
  Web Developer: -webkit-something-something: 1
---

To be honest I think that Firefox has already crossed the point of no return, in the past Firefox used to have a share of about 30% of the market and supporting Firefox was justified even if that meant writing twice the lines of code, but nowadays the share is less than 3%. Firefox doesn't have enough resources to compete against Chrome with features, and people doesn't care enough about security to justify a broken web for the sake of security.

I don't know whether it's a good idea or not, but rather than pitching Firefox for the mainstream web, I would push Firefox to become the de-facto browser for security sensitive scenarios (ex. online shopping, online banking, taxes, etc.). Supporting a subset of the web makes more sense in a resource-constrained scenario especially because the Servo experiment and the Rust project exist to tackle the security issue.

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

#976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had one of those. He was chased out for making $3,100 in donations the wrong political causes.

This cant be true because cancel culture does not exist, I am being told.

The cancel culture surely goes both ways here - Eich was working actively to cancel the marriages of certain people he didn't like. So people cancelled the browser in retaliation and he had to quit his job (or was forced out, who knows).

Most people would probably think it is worse to get their marriage annulled than to lose a job, but YMMV.

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

#977
post #958
post #575

> Out of curiosity, do you know of any companies in your field where the CEO believes you personally don't deserve rights? Would you work for that company? Tim Cook supports gun control. I wouldn't work for Apple, but the CEO's position on gun control isn't part of that decision.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24565466 .

[deleted]

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

#978
post #965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest Android Firefox update also disabled several of the addons I was using, as apparently they are now incompatible until the addon developers do some extra work to fix whatever backward incompatibility Mozilla introduced with the latest version.

I had the same issue - I think it was dark reader that stopped working.

[deleted]

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

#979

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Eich resigned. He doesn't like people saying he was fired.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12590287

Nobody likes to say he is fired (it's bad when looking for a new job).

No company likes to say publicly it fired someone (it's bad for hiring new people).

Post reply on HN