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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

mozillapetition.com

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Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#261

Post by nextos »

whyenot wrote: post #245

I donated a lot of time, code, and at least a little money to early Mozilla and Firefox. They were a lot more dynamic and engaging when they were a small nonprofit. Now it feels like thanks to Google money they have become fat and lazy. Unable to take risks because it might threaten their income stream or their relationship with Google. It makes me sad and angry to see what they have become. Maybe a diet will help, b…

I guess it's the usual lifecycle most organizations go through, and generous funding has accelerated the process. The only upside is that, in theory, anyone could fork Firefox and continue development within a healthier structure. It's a critical project for the Internet. Hopefully, Ladybird will be viable soon, adding a bit of redundancy. Else, we risk becoming a Chrome monoculture.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#262

Post by whatshisface »

Suppafly wrote: post #253
internetter wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of Mozilla's $653 million in 2023 income, $496 million was spent, but only half was on development ($260). Fair enough. But realize mozilla does not exclusively develop a web browser. Instead, they also make Pocket, Firefox Relay, Firefox VPN, Mozilla Monitor, AI products, ect. So probably only 1/3rd of their income is going to browser development, which is pretty bad.

>So probably only 1/3rd of their income is going to browser development, which is pretty bad. Only because you assume that they should only be working on browser development.

They were expressing their own opinion, that's not an assumption. The relevance of opinion to nonprofit organizations is mediated through donation or other forms of support.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#263

Post by derkster »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #251
derkster wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been bringing this up in every single thread about Chrome and Manifest V3 pops up. I'm been using Firefox, 100% of the time, on three different operating systems, for probably six years at this point. I can remember a single time I had to swap to Chrome for something, and it was three years ago, and involved some flavor of WebAssembly, I believe. If anyone can point out a current website that is acting up under…

Snyk

Any feature specifically? I added a project+repo, and it scanned and reported successfully - but this is only the free tier.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#264

Post by afavour »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #56
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #27

Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case. Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023 [0][1]: > Expenses 1. Program 'Software Development' 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M 2. Management 'General and Administrative' : 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs. Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses. Let's ignore inflation and COL and…

In this landscape I'm curious if any amount of money can overcome the oligopoly advantages of owning the OS (with no anti-trust enforcement) or owning the most popular web properties. Even if every cent for the past ten years went to browser dev alone, would that have made a difference? Do regular users even know the difference between one browser and another? Or is it only the icon they recognize, if even that?

Yeah, this is my takeaway as well. Folks in this discussion are saying “why can’t Mozilla just focus on making Firefox” and my response would be “because that’s the path to eventual death”.

Firefox is, what, 3% of the browser market today? It isn’t because it’s a bad browser. It’s because people are using OSes with tightly integrated browsers they never think to change. Making Firefox faster or adding vertical tabs or whatever the demand of the day is won’t change that.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#265

Post by joshuaturner »

zwayhowder wrote: post #184
bdangubic wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just curious - why not use browser profiles available in Chrome/Brave…?

It's not even on the same level. Container tabs as the name implies are all in the same window, and you can program them, for example always open up google.com domains in my Google container, while opening amazon.com in my shopping container. This keeps the cookies separate and means you are tracked less. Yes you can manually do this with Chrome profiles, but before this feature was introduced into Firefox I had a do…

And then you can use specific proxies (via your VPN) per container, it's a game changer for consuming media

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#266

Post by mmooss »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #50
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #27

Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case. Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023 [0][1]: > Expenses 1. Program 'Software Development' 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M 2. Management 'General and Administrative' : 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs. Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses. Let's ignore inflation and COL and…

The good news is that development could easily be funded by donations. It's only a few million. Enough to keep a few dozen people employed. The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial produ…

> The good news is that development could easily be funded by donations. It's only a few million.

It's $260M.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43341830

Where do you get "a few million"? Do they only have less than 20 developers? Why denigrate Mozilla?

> If you look at Rust, created by Mozilla, they are set up in a more sane way. There's a foundation. It's well funded with sponsorships from the big companies that use and depend on Rust.

Firefox isn't used by companies, but by consumers.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#268

Post by mmooss »

75902846575 wrote: post #144
nativeit wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Do the people in Zambia deserve an open, equitable web any less than Americans or Europeans do? They deserve an open, equitable web as much as we all do. I'm afraid that Mozilla's tendencies to waste money on such projects instead of using it to improve their main product aren't helping though.

How do you suggest spreading an open web? Just release Firefox and the web will open up?

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#269

Post by mmooss »

whyenot wrote: post #245

I donated a lot of time, code, and at least a little money to early Mozilla and Firefox. They were a lot more dynamic and engaging when they were a small nonprofit. Now it feels like thanks to Google money they have become fat and lazy. Unable to take risks because it might threaten their income stream or their relationship with Google. It makes me sad and angry to see what they have become. Maybe a diet will help, b…

One one hand, they are criticized for taking risks - being risks, inevitably many don't work out - including their AI project. On the other, now they don't take enough risks.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#270

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

chii wrote: post #238
JoshTriplett wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is the underdog, though; they're just not acting like it anymore.

I wouldn't call an underdog someone who takes their competitor's money. In sports, that might even be called throwing.

They went form 90%+ market share down to 9%- since taking Google money.

The allegation of throwing is too light. They’re complicit in covering for Google’s obvious monopoly.

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