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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

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

#331

Post by Hyperboreanal »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #157
theandrewbailey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me repeat myself: > All I ever wanted from Mozilla was a browser Firefox is the best alternative to a Chromium/Google dominated web. As long as Firefox isn't kicking ass and being used by, say, 20% of web users, I argue that Mozilla shouldn't be doing anything else. This is especially prudent when a large part of Mozilla's (and therefore, Firefox's) funding is in jeopardy. So, yes, I have a problem with Mozilla d…

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It does entitle you to warn others not to waste their money by donating unless they're big fans of feminist African studies

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

#332

Post by gigatexal »

Kwpolska wrote: post #323
gigatexal wrote: post #307

Marc Andreesen owes his riches to Netscape whose ashes became Mozilla. I don’t understand why he doesn’t give the Mozilla foundation and endowment such that the interest on the endowment would fund work solely on the browser. They could then just work on the browser and nothing more. No need to do marketing, have a venture arm, millions for management, etc. it could be a group of 10 or 20 really awesome engineers and…

I don't want my browser to be dependent on Marc Andreessen. And he doesn't want to do things useful to humanity anyway.

Right. The money would be a gift to a foundation where he couldn’t control it. A no strings attached 100% tax deductible gift to the foundation with the only strings that they focus on the browser and survive on the interest, and lay off unnecessary management (10-20 dedicated web engineers and a PM and an HR person what else do you need).

But do you also want the browser beholden to the parent company of its direct competitor?

This is a fantasy land hypothetical of course as we know exactly the kind of guy Marc is, he’ll want a say.

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

#333

Post by notpushkin »

Kwpolska wrote: post #321
notpushkin wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s one feature on LinkedIn that doesn’t work in Firefox (you can’t reorder skill list in your profile – dragging doesn’t do anything). That was the only time I’ve opened Chromium in the past couple of years, though – apart from testing my own websites, of course.

Drag and drop controls exist on the Web for decades. How did Microsoft mess theirs up so that it doesn't work on Firefox? (I actually had that exact issue yesterday; I managed to do it on the Android app, and didn't think this was an issue with Firefox specifically.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#334

Post by sfink »

jisnsm wrote: post #23
j_maffe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is much larger than the browser.

And I don’t care about anything but the browser. They should stop wasting money on things that I don’t care about.

The government should stop wasting money on things that I don't care about.

(Especially the regulatory things that apply to me personally.)

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

#335

Post by Hyperboreanal »

yummypaint wrote: post #49
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…

Considering how much money is routinely set on fire by the US tech industry, this is a bargain for the best web browser currently in existence. What alternative do you suggest? Google and Microsoft are certainly worse. Firefox is vastly superior to the offerings of these multi billion dollar companies. Chrome and edge are exactly the prisons that these companies designed them to be. What specifically should laypeople…

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

#337

Post by notpushkin »

sfink wrote: post #327
notpushkin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good idea. I don’t think I should change the petition now that it’s signed by a significant number of people, but I agree targeted donations could help somewhat (although mainly I think we need to urge Mozilla to direct its other income into Firefox development, too).

This is a good idea on paper. But it turns out that having a for-profit corporation (as Mozilla Corporation is) accept donations, especially donations earmarked for certain purposes, is understandably tricky from a regulatory and tax standpoint. You can do it, but it comes with lots of rules and restrictions, and constrains the company in weird ways that kind of make sense, since it's kind of similar to money launder…

No idea about earmarked donations, but I don’t think Corp would have any problem with donations in general. Designate it as “sponsorship fee” if you must.

But yeah, part of the problem is probably the fact that the Mozilla Foundation isn’t the one employing Firefox devs.

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

#338

Post by hgomersall »

derkster wrote: post #240
brooke2k wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never once had an issue with a website that was solved by opening it in Chrome instead. and I switched to firefox like three years ago. If firefox is so much less supported, I'm not seeing it at least

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…

The Teams web interface is better under Chromium. At least it was and I haven't tried it with Firefox recently - I use chromium like a Teams app.

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

#339

Post by ItsBob »

summerlight wrote: post #174
ItsBob wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know they have way more than that but I'd argue that you don't need that many. Hypothetically, if I was given the money and asked to build a team to fork Firefox I'd be more focused. Way more! The current devs work on stuff I'd scrap like Pocket, telemetry, anything with AI, and so on. I bet there is a load of stuff in there that I'd want out! There's probably a bunch of things in Firefox Labs they're working on to…

You severely underestimate the engineering cost of modern web browser. Assuming a sufficient value-addition fork, a team of 20 cannot even catch up the Chromium upstream. Good luck coming up with a new engine compatible with Chrome; MS tried it and finally gave up.

Not sure where the Chromium part comes in but I'm talking about Firefox here.

Anyway, all the heavy-lifting is done: The JS engine, the CSS engine and so on.

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

#340

Post by darkwater »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #85
jillesvangurp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 products that flop, monetization schemes that fail, etc. Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people who donate to them know tha…

> Mozilla funds things that are wildly not Firefox-related, like feminist AI conferences in Africa.

Good. I'm going to donate some money then (to both parties).

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