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Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#71
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything you could imagine he could be doing with personal contributions that you would consider worth "attacking" him over (at which point I guess we could reverse engineer that you consider that activity notably "worse" than what Brandon Eich actually did) or do you feel like there is nothing that someone could be doing in their "personal" lives that should cause them to not be a good public face of a proj…

The world is a big place - we don't all share a monolith of values. There can be some claims made to natural law or objective truths. However; Your truth is not mine, Plato's cave, etc. Ask yourself why there is no outrage at every company that posts rainbow flags on US brand pages but refuses to do the same on their UAE brand pages. In a nutshell: I am glad that the Christian monks kept the work of all those 'evil p…

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Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#72
post #50
post #5

I may be the odd one but I dropped FF after the drama over brendin eich and his support of prop 8. I just did not feel the same after seeing how he was attacked for his personal contributions. There was just some hateful stuff that came from both sides that really uncovered some toxic personalities in the FF legion.

The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success. They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with friends like that.

So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay; and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay people and wants to make their lives harder, donating to a political cause that deeply affects gay people. Remember: that's what is at stake here... Mozilla is a tech company, and Brandon Eich was their CTO, acting as the public face of the company and as a leader internally; asking them to continue to support him is not some academic question of whether to leave his name on a plaque somewhere... it is a very practical daily question of them having to read e-mails and take direction from someone who actively--and fairly directly... prop 8 wasn't some extremely indirect mechanism or one with a ton of tradeoffs--works to undermine the lives of either themselves or someone they care about.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#73

The big issue I see with Firefox is that they lost a lot of power user's when the removed XUL extensions and the underlying engine doesn't have good third party wrappers like QtWebEngine (that I know of) so creating reskined browser's is pain. I don't pick a browser for the Firefox or Chromium engine (unless a site needs it), I pick a browser based on the UI and configuration management. So I use Qutebrowser that is…

The end of XUL was necessary to make Firefox faster. Doenload an old XUL Firefox version and surf the web. If you don't notice a difference in page load speed, startup time, and overall responsiveness, you might have a very, very fast computer, which most people around the world don't have.

The 3 or 4 thousand power users that needed native interop were (and still are) of no interest compared to the then bad performance of Firefox in relation to Chrome. Even HN was full of people who complained about Firefox' performance. Now it's full of people who recommend to give Firefox another shot because it's fast again.

Firefox is also currently the only browser where uBlock Origin can use all of its features, Chrome is intentionally limiting APIs. Are people using Firefox because of it? No. So XUL add-ons would not have helped Firefox.

If you still want XUL, there are many forks out there that claim to support it.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#74
Arbitrarily removing access to about:config (in Android) must account for a loss or two. I personally perceive it as a flagrant expression of contempt for their users. I keep Nightly around, but fully reciprocate perceived contempt and hope such losses grow.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#75
post #34

I try to use it as my daily driver, but it really sucks. Audio issues, logged out of everything issues, auto fill issues, it just doesn’t work in Firefox issues. Containers made me want to like it, but cmon.

If you want to help, report the sites you have issues with here: https://webcompat.com/

Why bother the current version hangs constantly forcing a re-launch to get it moving again, has been a known issue since the new updated version which is quite old now. They removed about:config and most addons.

May they burn on the pyre they have built. This is what happens when MBAs fire the engineers and chase the bottom line.

Obviously us users are using it wrong.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#76
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>only Safari is able to stop this madness now Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely will not be stopping anything. It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.

I’m guessing a huge percentage of the lost users switched to Brave since it had 25 million as of February and is affiliated with Brendan Eich. https://brave.com/25m-mau/

I’m guessing a huge percentage now spends more time browsing on their iPads instead of Desktop/Laptop…

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#78
post #72
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success. They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with friends like that.

So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay; and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay people and…

I'd work for someone who voted to raise my taxes. That is years of my life's work redirected to causes I don't agree with. Worse than someone being against me getting married. If I could swap marriage rights for lower taxes, I wouldn't be married. It is more symbolic these days than practical.

I think the gays can cop it.

> you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay

At least one of those is true.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#79
post #72
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success. They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with friends like that.

So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay; and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay people and…

Some in the world are capable of working without being emotionally incapacitated by the thought that those they work with don't agree with all that they believe in.

Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have been left at the door. Instead it wasn't and so Firefox happened and then Brave happened.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is a big place - we don't all share a monolith of values. There can be some claims made to natural law or objective truths. However; Your truth is not mine, Plato's cave, etc. Ask yourself why there is no outrage at every company that posts rainbow flags on US brand pages but refuses to do the same on their UAE brand pages. In a nutshell: I am glad that the Christian monks kept the work of all those 'evil p…

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> I am not asking the world: I am asking you, an individual human who assuredly stands for something (and hell: we know you at least stand for this, as you decided to stop using Firefox over it ;P).

How about standing for leaving politics at the door of the work environment and freedom of expression?

> FWIW, I would presume the answer is "because most people don't realize that companies might be doing that"; however, I also take issue with the example: not going out of your way to display support for something is, in fact, different than actively taking action to undermine it... someone who doesn't show a flag might still support something, but someone who actively donates against something clearly doesn't.

Once you've gone out of the way to show it on one account, going out of the way to not do it on another is essentially the same thing and hasn't drawn ire.

> You do realize that no one has suggested deleting all the copies of Firefox,

You're feigning ignorance and creating a strawman. The movement that forced Eich out advocates for censorship and destruction of ideas and information. You were the one who made up the story about deleting all copies of Firefox.

> Remember both that CTO is a a very public position for an organization like that

Now that is an argument. If the organisation has made efforts to climb into bed with a modern religion and the CTO commits a sin then yes, removal makes sense but it should never have got to this point.

> By saying that you have decided to stop using Firefox because the employees of Firefox should not have revolted against Brandon Eich, you are thereby not only cancelling the work of a number of people you disagree with

No "cancelling" as you put it and most likely as the person you are replying to understands it involves mob justice forcing people out of careers and forcing the removal of ideas from platforms. Deciding not to use something is a personal choice.

> Truly: all of your fretting over people destroying the work of the "evil pagans" is off topic, whether it makes you feel better to frame it like that or not.

When you make a three paragraph strawman argument it can seem that way but while "your truth" may be that it is unrelated, the reality is different.

> Ummm... are you missing that Brandon Eich made the first move here, taking action against gay people by fiscally

He expressed his political opinion through excepted channels. He didn't incite a mob. Again there's an argument he couldn't be at the head of an organisation with the religious connections it has but again it should never have got to that stage.

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