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Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

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Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#421

Post by tsoukase »

gkoberger wrote: post #275

Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community. I hope Anthony leans into what makes Mozilla special. The past few years, Mozilla's business model has been to just m…

Firemail should be the name of a free and privacy oriented email client wholly owned by Mozilla with a web and mobile app. I would sign up instantly and gradually migrate from gmail, while being assured for its sustainability.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#422

Post by gkoberger »

macspoofing wrote: post #419
gkoberger wrote: post #275

Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community. I hope Anthony leans into what makes Mozilla special. The past few years, Mozilla's business model has been to just m…

> What Mozilla is good at ... Firefox - the one thing they do not want to work on is the only thing that makes them special.

They do work on it. A lot.

But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#423

Post by NitpickLawyer »

ksec wrote: post #72
Fiveplus wrote: post #7

Does anyone else feel like the "Trust" angle is the only card they have left to play? Technically, Chrome is faster on JS benchmarks. Edge has better OS integration on Windows and comes by default. Safari wins on battery life on Mac. Firefox's only unique selling point is "We aren't a massive data vampire." If they clutter the browser with AI which inherently requires data processing, often in the cloud, they dilute…

>Technically..... Since its birth, Firefox is still the only browser that manage multiple ( hundreds or in some cases, thousands! [1] ) tabs better than any browser. And in my view in the past 12 - 24 months Firefox has managed to be as fast as chrome. While Chrome also improved on its multiple Tab browsing experience. Safari.... I dont know why this battery life argument keeps coming up because it is not the case. I…

> Safari.... I dont know why this battery life argument keeps coming up because it is not the case. It hasn't been so for at least 5 - 6 years.

Uhh, not my experience. I default any video watching longer than a short clip to safari. It is still the best browser for video IME.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#424

Post by m463 »

gkoberger wrote: post #275

Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community. I hope Anthony leans into what makes Mozilla special. The past few years, Mozilla's business model has been to just m…

> I'd focus on privacy.

I would love that. that said, right now firefox unstoppably and constantly phones home

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#425

Post by mohamedattahri »

tristor wrote: post #376
mohamedattahri wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with the founder status. Founders don’t face any competition when they get the job at their own companies, and they often have ownership to force it as an outcome if there’s ever a debate. Baker, to her credit, probably faced brutal competition to get to the top job. It’s not out there to wonder why she was picked, and the answer cannot be because « she was there from the beginning ». HN tends…

> Baker, to her credit, probably faced brutal competition to get to the top job. It’s not out there to wonder why she was picked, and the answer cannot be because « she was there from the beginning ». You are completely discounting her founder status. She wasn't "there from the beginning", she /created/ the Mozilla Foundation and led it from inception to 2025 and later orchestrated the Mozilla Foundation / Mozilla Co…

I'm not discounting her founder status. My point is that it's orthogonal to one's ability to run a company. Founders don't automatically make good CEOs. Plenty of founders step aside for professional management, and plenty stay on and struggle.

Questioning whether someone was the right fit for a role isn't an attack on their legitimacy or their earlier contributions, no matter how pivotal they were. Steve Ballmer at Microsoft had a quasi-founder status, and he received the exact same backlash and hate throughout his tenure because he was perceived as someone who "didn't get it".

If the argument is that any skepticism of a female CEO's performance must be sexist, that shuts down legitimate discussion. I'd rather focus on outcomes rather than on trying to divine each other's motives.

Lastly, Your "pause and do better" is exactly what I'm objecting to: framing disagreement as moral failure. Question Baker? Sexist. Disagree with me? You're not doing enough for the cause.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#426

Post by pseudalopex »

prepend wrote: post #383
pseudalopex wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email program.[1] Bloat and bullshit features to you are minimum requirements to someone else. [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/

Brave has about 300 employees and don’t break out engineers [0]. One of them is Brandon Eich so that counts for a bunch. Their revenue is only $52M so kinda what Mozilla would earn off their endowment. [0] https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com

Latka are not reliable. And you assumed Brave were profitable?

Brave make a Chromium fork and a search engine. Does a search engine or a web browser engine require more people?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#427

Post by rdiddly »

pseudalopex wrote: post #361
zug_zug wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you have a billion in the bank, you can collect 5% return and never touch the money. So you get $50m a year to pay enough engineers to make a browser. That's plenty of money if they recognize they need a super lean company with 0 bloat and a few highly paid experts who focus on correctness and not bullshit features.

How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email program.[1] Bloat and bullshit features to you are minimum requirements to someone else. [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/

There are about 800 unique weekly committers to the Chromium project, so that's a start at gauging the number for that project. A little harder to find that same figure for Firefox, but Wikipedia says Mozilla Corp had about 750 employees as of 2020.

Anyway, if you have $50M, you can afford 500 people at $100k, or 250 people at $200k. So you simply declare, this is how many people it takes to make a browser, and set your goals and timetables accordingly. I feel like the goals and direction might be more important than the number of bodies you throw at it, but maybe that's naïve. But when the product is mature like Firefox (or Chrome for that matter) you do have some flexibility on the headcount.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#428

Post by [deleted] »

losvedir wrote: post #113
lalaland1125 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really possible to do that when the opposing beliefs are so fundamental. Mozilla had, and has, a lot of LGBT staff. How could you expect those staff to work under and trust a CEO opposed to their very existence as equal members of society?

> It's not really possible to do that when the opposing beliefs are so fundamental. Sure it is. I've lived and worked in the Middle East and in China. People do it all the time.

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#429

Post by rapnie »

gkoberger wrote: post #275

Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community. I hope Anthony leans into what makes Mozilla special. The past few years, Mozilla's business model has been to just m…

> Instead, if I were CEO, I'd go the opposite way: I'd focus on privacy.

Where it comes to AI in that regard, I would also focus on direct human connection. Where AI encapsulates people in bubbles of tech isolation and social indirection.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#430

Post by sfink »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #94
alberth wrote: post #25

Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user? Chrome is able to capture the mass consumer market, due to Google’s dark pattern to nag you to install Chrome anytime you’re on a Google property. Edge target enterprise Fortune 500 user, who is required to use Microsoft/Office 365 at work (and its deep security permission ties to SharePoint). Safari has Mac/iOS audience via being the default on those platform (and deep platf…

> Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user? Partly me. It's the only browser where I can disable AV1 support to work around broken HW acceleration on Steam Deck. Also tab hoarders. (I migrated to Chrome 3 years ago to try and get rid of my tab hoarding)

I've been using Firefox for a long time, longer than it's had that name, and it used to be excellent for my tab hoarding habits. Specifically, it could handle a large number of tabs, and every couple of months it would crash and lose all of them. I would have to start over from scratch, with an amazing sense of catharsis and freedom, and I never had to make the decision on my own that I would never be able to make.

Now, it's no better than the others. I'm at 1919 tabs right now, and it hasn't lost any for many years. It's rock solid, it's good at unloading the tabs so I don't even need to rely on non-tab-losing crash/restarts to speed things up, and it doesn't even burn enough memory on them to force me to reconsider my ways.

This is a perfect example of how Mozilla's mismanagement has driven Firefox into the ground. Bring back involuntary tab bankruptcy and spacebar heating!

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