421–430 of 949 posts
Chromium is a better browser and it's open source (BSD, GPL etc). They should take advantage of the license. The argument for browser diversity doesn't make sense to me when chromium is open source and hard forks are always possible.
They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…
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> - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian
> - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox.
> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
> - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period.
All of these are good suggestions if the problem is that Firefox is running out of money or has too few resources. But that's not my impression at all!
Google's strategy with Chrome demonstrates how valuable it is to develop other compelling services that use cutting-edge standards supported by your browser. Google does it in a way where they freeze out other compatible browsers, but Mozilla does not have to. I would say that the number one thing that Mozilla can do to support the web is to make web standards meaningful again - and the best way to do that is to develop things aside from web browsers to demonstrate the value of those standards.
> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives.
I don't think Mozilla having non-Firefox projects harms Firefox. I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center, with many other ongoing projects.
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You'd think that there are even qualified people who would do it for (almost) free, just for the chance of building a resume...
As a professional that gets offers like this ("it will be good for your portfolio") I hate this comment. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
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Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…
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The subtitle of the question was "What would you do if you were in charge of Mozilla? How would you save Firefox?" My answer is an attempt at addressing these two questions. My goal wasn't to make Mozilla more profitable, but to ensure that it's focused on what should be its core mission, rather than the mire of sideshows that they engage in at the moment. Also, I don't care how Mozilla the amorphous blob of a corpor…
As a regular end user why do I care about what Mozilla's mission is? Apple makes shiny devices, Google gives me great free services, and in return I use their (perfectly great) browsers. What is one single reason to use Firefox? As long as these large companies continue to put effort into their browsers (which Microsoft didn't do with IE), users are simply never going to switch, the same way no one is using desktop L…
2005 called, they want their Google-enthusiasm back.
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> I would call it usable, but not "very usable". For normal people, Chrome(ium) UX is better. I can't imagine why you would say this. Could you point out some concrete examples of better UX?
The hamburger menu, for one. It's extremely unintuitive. Not the fact that it uses a hamburger icon, but that even simple things like accessing the full list of my bookmarks involve multiple clicks. If you know the keyboard shortcuts then it's not a problem, but I want common UI items to be accessible from the UI. Besides that, the UI is just sluggish a lot of the time. It feels that Chrome(ium) has a far better late…
1) become absolutely trustworthy again 2) become the power user's choice again
To me, 1) means absolute control over updates and network connections. Become the antithesis to the patronizing "Ask me again later" school of thought which has become so sickeningly widespread over the last few years, and instead accept that "no means no", whether you disagree or not.
And I don't have to mention "partnerships" with entities like Cliqz or sneaky downloads of marketing extensions.
2) - Firefox tried to appeal to average users and failed, losing a lot of what made it appealing to the power users and evangelists in the process. Reversing that will be painful, because it means allowing people to shoot themselves in the foot, and accepting that some people will do that occasionally.
Making a useful power user browser means accepting that a lot of its value will be created by other people, and supporting that with a deep and comprehensive extension system, instead of clinging to Googles table scraps. Having a useful extension system also means the ability to install from any source I want, no Ifs and Buts.
All of these are risky. Useful tools often are. Give Firefox back its USP and a reason to exist, because "it's not Blink" on its own simply isn't good enough... even if maybe it should.
Enable battery status(Important for kiosks), web midi, web USB, web bluetooth, all of it. Just put it behind an option. Stop trying to keep useful web app functionality out of the web. I don't want to support that.
Start innovating and give us features nobody else has.
Integrate with Yggdrasil to trust 200: URLs on the tunnel as secure contexts(Or let people set a whole interface to be secure).
Bring back FlyWeb, immediately. When flyweb died was a key moment that made me lose all interest in FF.
Give us a way to package a website into a manually installable and redistributable "Box", that can be trusted as a secure context, with a manually selectable data folder, so it all just works like a traditional app. Like Web Bundles, but manually installed and treated as secure, with services that can run in the background all the time, etc.
Don't just lag behind or catch up to chrome, support everything they do, go past them and make web apps truly a replacement for desktop apps.
Stop trying to kill everything that can be used for tracking and let the user decide on a site by site or app by app basis.
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"What is one single reason to use Firefox?" Better ad blocking.
Is it better than Chrome + uBlock Origin/Privacy Badger/Ghostery?
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They could pivot to compete with the Big Tech conglomerates in general. Provide their own suite of integrated tools, search engines, communication platforms, and so on. But with a privacy-focused and ad-free approach. DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. They could go further, and remain relevant and viable in the way that DDG is, even if they never again are the most popular browse…
They get most of their money from advertising deals with those major companies (such as by putting google in as the default search engine). Competing against them would likely result in those companies removing the advertising dollars and tanking the business.
Google paying Apple massive amounts of money to keep Google Search the default search engine on their devices doesn't seem to be affected by the fact that Pixel phones (or Android as a whole) and iPhones are competing. Though I gotta admit that it could be because Google doesn't have the overwhelming winner position in that market, as opposed to the web browser market.
However, I still find Google pulling the funding unlikely, given (afaik) the reason for Google "financially supporting" Mozilla is exactly because Google is afraid of being legally called out as a monopoly in the web browser market. The only point at which I can see Google pulling that funding is if Mozilla ends up on the same level as Chrome in terms of posing a danger to Google's dominance. At which point, Mozilla has already won and doesn't need Google that much to sustain itself, so I wouldn't pose it as a strong concern.