Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 970 posts

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#921

Post by mmooss »

waz0wski wrote: post #920
mmooss wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who provides resources to the Es and Ds? Who hires new ones? Who raises money from investors and banks, and ensures you have cash flow and ROI? How do you manage 100 Es and Ds without a PM? Small teams are more efficient but (obviously) can't produce at scale. When you scale up, there's enough HR or finance or marketing, or PM, etc. work for full-time specialists. And larger orgs need bureaucracy - if you have a way…

What you call scaling up sounds more like monetization. Others (especially customers) might call it enshittification instead. Youtube is a great example of how bad it can get. Why Mozilla won't let people financially contribute directly to Firefox development and continues to pursue these stupid monetization paths is a mystery.

I mean scaling up - growing the organization.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#922

Post by aaron_m04 »

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…

> 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.

Can you please elaborate on this need to make a big profit? Where does the need come from?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#923

Post by safety1st »

matwood wrote: post #771
safety1st wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The broader discussion but especially this little exchange reminds me of a similar situation with Ubuntu. At one point they were the darling of the desktop Linux space and much beloved by an online community of highly principled people who didn't pay them anything. Those same people then utterly blasted them when they tried a few monetization/promotion features that fell flat, like the Amazon lens in Unity. I had no…

> There is also a whole strain of thought in SaaS which says don't ever have a free version because those guys always end up being the biggest complainers. Not just free, but also cheap. I have found the less someone pays the higher the likelihood they are a problem customer.

Look at them all downvoting us for saying it. It's like a force of nature, the reaction to comments about it proves that it's true - the complainers sure enough come onto the free forum and blast down comments about it :)

I like free stuff as much as the next guy but I think this is just some fundamental aspect of psychology, like you don't value something as much if you didn't pay for it. Within our business we see this all the time, customers who pay a lot tend to be satisfied and limit their criticism to the things that really matter, customers who pay a little or are just proposal shopping will take up a huge amount of time and have a lot of minor complaints. I have heard about this at many other businesses

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#924

Post by fsflover »

prmoustache wrote: post #571
fsflover wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. Today, we have Mobian, postmarketOS, PureOS and many more GNU/Linux OSes for smartphones.

Back then Firefox was a brand with decent recognition.

Isn't Debian today also such a brand? Mobian is just Debian with minimal changes to run on mobile.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#926

Post by gwd »

palata wrote: post #828
gwd wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying, "Nobody wants Adwords; people want Chrome." True but besides the point. Salaries have to be paid somehow. Some options I can think of for paying salaries: - Go the Wikipedia route, stay entirely free, and beg for donations on a regular basis - Start charging for Firefox; or for Firefox Premium - Use Firefox as a loss-leader to build a brand, and use that brand to sell other products (which is esse…

> That's like saying, "Nobody wants Adwords; people want Chrome." Bad comparison, but I understand your point. > Salaries have to be paid somehow. I would be interested in knowing how much of what Mozilla does brings money. Isn't it almost exclusively the Google contract with Firefox? As a non-profit, Mozilla does not seem to be succeeding with Firefox. Mozilla does a lot of other things (I think?) but I can't name o…

> Bad comparison, but I understand your point.

I'm not sure why you think so; it seems pretty close to me. Chrome and Firefox are exact competitors; both require a large amount of development investment. Neither one are being charged for, which means their development needs to be supported some other way.

The people using Chrome don't want Adwords, but it's Adwords that is paying for Chrome's development. People using Firefox don't want email or Mozilla certificates or what-not, but something needs to fund Firefox's development.

> ...if Chrome was split from Google, would it be profitable?

They'd have to figure out a different business model, wouldn't they?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#927

Post by palata »

gwd wrote: post #926
palata wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's like saying, "Nobody wants Adwords; people want Chrome." Bad comparison, but I understand your point. > Salaries have to be paid somehow. I would be interested in knowing how much of what Mozilla does brings money. Isn't it almost exclusively the Google contract with Firefox? As a non-profit, Mozilla does not seem to be succeeding with Firefox. Mozilla does a lot of other things (I think?) but I can't name o…

> Bad comparison, but I understand your point. I'm not sure why you think so; it seems pretty close to me. Chrome and Firefox are exact competitors; both require a large amount of development investment. Neither one are being charged for, which means their development needs to be supported some other way. The people using Chrome don't want Adwords, but it's Adwords that is paying for Chrome's development. People usin…

> They'd have to figure out a different business model, wouldn't they?

Doesn't mean that there exists a business model that would be profitable, does it?

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#928

Post by account42 »

mgbmtl wrote: post #68
miki_oomiri wrote: post #39

If I were the CEO, I would: - focus 100% on Firefox Desktop & Mobile - just a fast solid minimalist browser (no AI, no BS) - other features should be addons - privacy centric - builtin, first-class, adblocker - run on donations - partner with Kagi - layoff 80% of the non-tech employees I worked for them for many years, I guarantee you that Mozilla will be fine without all the non-sense people, just put engineers in c…

Donations only get you so far. Take a mid-sized project, that needs $500k per year (a few devs, very modestly paid, zero expenses). It's a lot of money. It requires a huge user base. Say you have 500k users, and 5% donate $25 per year (I'm optimistic). And that's just $500k US, a few devs, zero expenses. A project that size probably has audit requirements, hosting costs, accounting, legal, trademarks, etc. I see fina…

Oh no a nonprofit has to do nonprofit things. Can't be done, I tell you. Impossible.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#929

Post by account42 »

mmooss wrote: post #921
waz0wski wrote: post #920

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call scaling up sounds more like monetization. Others (especially customers) might call it enshittification instead. Youtube is a great example of how bad it can get. Why Mozilla won't let people financially contribute directly to Firefox development and continues to pursue these stupid monetization paths is a mystery.

I mean scaling up - growing the organization.

That should not be a goal of a nonprofit. The goal should be to make a browser, not a vehicle to justify the CEO's obscene salary.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#930

Post by account42 »

robinhood wrote: post #375
miki_oomiri wrote: post #39

If I were the CEO, I would: - focus 100% on Firefox Desktop & Mobile - just a fast solid minimalist browser (no AI, no BS) - other features should be addons - privacy centric - builtin, first-class, adblocker - run on donations - partner with Kagi - layoff 80% of the non-tech employees I worked for them for many years, I guarantee you that Mozilla will be fine without all the non-sense people, just put engineers in c…

No. Kagi uses Google results behind the scenes. Partner with Duckduckgo, yes. Or others. But please stop fueling Google, even indirectly.

DDG uses Bing instead, that's not really any better. Ideally a Browser should not partner with any websites. It's always been a deal with the devil even when Google was not as evil.
Post reply on HN