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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

#401

Post by DoingIsLearning »

calcifer wrote: post #395
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again not diminishing Firefox's efforts but it's difficult not to compare with other _leaner_ open-source projects. As an example the Linux foundation [0] had 270M in expenses in 2023. Of which even we aggregate international operations and corporate operations the expenditure is less than 21M in G&A equivalent activities. [0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/hubfs/Reports/lf_annualrepor...

The Linux Foundation is neither a project nor open source. It's an industry trade group. I don't think there is any feasible comparison.

Fair point actually, governance wise the industry partners are probably not a huge expense because they want a seat at the table anyway.

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

#402

Post by notpushkin »

1023bytes wrote: post #377
weinzierl wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a new browser will rise from Firefox's ashes. Perhaps we should call the fork Phoenix?

Zen Browser is pretty cool and it's not just a fork

There’s also Waterfox and Librewolf (which are more vanilla).

There’s a problem, though: there’s little to no core development happening in any of these forks. If Mozilla comes crashing down, somebody will have to pick it up.

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

#403

Post by account42 »

loeg wrote: post #230
BearOso wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is more "Do these events and keynote speakers in Zambia have anything to do with browser development?" This isn't supposed to be a generic non-profit charity, it's a non-profit for supporting web browser development. If only 5% of the funds are going toward the browser or related technology, the organization is corrupt.

"Corrupt" is too strong. Just unfocused. You can say it is disqualifying for making donations personally, and I think that is a pretty reasonable take. Many people have exactly the same quibble with Wikimedia.

Leadership focusing on their own agenda instead of the mission of the nonprofit is a form of corruption.

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

#404

Post by noxer »

Sayrus wrote: post #147
noxer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you asked the people who pay in the end (the taxpayer) if they want that? The very last thing I want my taxes to go to is anything that has "no strings attached". Its by definition a gift and gifting taxes should be a crime.

Then taxes could be used to pay government employees whose job is to contribute on a specific project. That could apply to Linux, a browser, maybe AOSP. Sure it'd require funding, but spent on employees within said countries you get it back and it does give Europe as a whole the ability to contribute its vision, both positive and negative.

Whether the people are employed by the government directly or a different entity isn't relevant at all, the relevant part is taxes being used for something that has an undefined benefit for the people who are forced to pay for it. (And in case of "no string attacked" even has an undefined goal.)

>give Europe as a whole the ability to contribute its vision

Who's vision? The peoples vision? Or the vision of bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists etc.

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

#405

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

vlad-roundabout wrote: post #356
iteratethis wrote: post #79

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

Even better than Brave is a "no-name" browser like Ungoogled Chromium made to protect actual privacy, not the interests of some company!

No thinly-modified version of Chromium is going to save us from Google having almost unilateral power over the implementation of web standards, creating a browser monoculture. None of these forks is making substantive changes to the browser engine; it's often just Chromium with a few configuration tweaks and cosmetic enhancements.

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

#406

Post by account42 »

econ wrote: post #289
afavour wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

The thing I think will bring in users is search. Full text history search with some modest depth crawling for the domain and external links. The easy Google money makes it unattractive. It will take some time for enough users to be blown away by how useful this is. I wrote a simple user script one time that subscribes me to all discoverable rss feeds I run into while browsing. It seemed rather random but I was blown…

A good start would be to not delete old history without warning like Firefox does now.

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

#407

Post by freeAgent »

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…

There’s nothing to prevent them from allowing people to donate without a tax deduction AFAIK, but they don’t allow it. In the US, most donations no longer actually get deducted from taxes anyway due to the greatly increased standard deduction since 2017. I think something like 85-90% of people now just use that and don’t itemize.

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

#408

Post by trelane »

Kwpolska wrote: post #329
trelane wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing is already the default, if you use Windows.

[citation needed] Why would Google pay to be the default if the majority of users would have a different engine?

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/windows-11-h...

If you mean for firefox specifically, that's Google. But, since it's firefox instead of Edge, you've already left the defaults far behind.

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

#409

Post by greenchair »

iteratethis wrote: post #79

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

good points. I use it for a very specific plugin which the author only makes available on that platform.

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

#410

Post by myvoiceismypass »

account42 wrote: post #397
delusional wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> like feminist AI conferences in Africa. According to their 2023 form 990 (the 2024 one isn't published yet) those sort of donations are usually on the order of 15k. You don't get much browser for that money.

15k is a sofware developer salary for over a quarter of a year in many parts of the world. That's actually quite a bit of browser.

And Mozilla HQ is in SF
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