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

Mozilla's open source AI strategy

blog.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 213 posts

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#51

Post by giancarlostoro »

rafterydj wrote: post #34

I'll be contrarian to the thread sentiment and say: Mozilla has misstepped in the past, and will continue to do so, and they're partially funded by competitors for antitrust reasons, etc. That said, I can't really disagree with anything in this. As a developer (and socially conscious human) I want to move in the direction of openness.

I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding!

I would love for there to be a world where Mozilla maintains Firefox and can make for product projects that provide higher value. I also have a pipe dream of one day someone like (and if they read this, and anyone who reads this will think I'm crazy) CloudFlare just buys Firefox itself from Mozilla so it can finally be funded correctly. CloudFlare has an interesting talent pool and I'm sure there's people who work with Rust / have worked with Rust who can help fund something like Firefox. Then I would like to see them create a true open foundation whose entire bottom line goes towards Firefox, not to anything else.

Free the fox from corporate shennanigans. By my own corporate shennanigans. And CF could be swapped out with any company bold enough to free the fox.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#52

Post by freedomben »

angoragoats wrote: post #29
bluGill wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is not and never has been a browser company. They have always been a charity with a for profit arm that does a browser. However never has a browser been more than an after thought to any of the leadership. Of course what the world really needs is a browser company and so we try to pretend Mozilla is that, but they are not. Support an alternative browser (I'm not aware of any though. There are browser skin com…

I’m aware of at least two honest-to-goodness new browser projects: There’s Servo, which used to be from Mozilla, but then they abandoned it. Now I believe it’s independent after a long period of dormancy. There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist…

> There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas.

I know nothing about Ladybird or their founder, so I'm taking your word for it that they are "at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas."

Accepting the premise, this leads to an interesting philosophical discussion. I'm utterly repulsed by all those things, but I'm also repulsed by viewpoints and even personalities of some actors and musicians and such. In my younger days I couldn't even enjoy their art. There would be songs or shows I loved but couldn't listen to or watch once I knew about the musicians/actors views. However as I've gotten older, I've gotten more to a place where I'm able to separate the art from the artist and appreciate it more (still not perfectly, but I hope to get there someday).

I'm now asking myself if I could use and/or support a browser like Ladybird (assuming it's a good product, again I know nothing about it) even despite the founder's reprehensible views. I'm not sure, but I feel like I want to be able to.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#53

Post by bluGill »

freedomben wrote: post #52
angoragoats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m aware of at least two honest-to-goodness new browser projects: There’s Servo, which used to be from Mozilla, but then they abandoned it. Now I believe it’s independent after a long period of dormancy. There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist…

> There is also Ladybird, whose founder is a prolific and technically brilliant person but who is also, at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and other racist ideas. I know nothing about Ladybird or their founder, so I'm taking your word for it that they are "at minimum, a fascist sympathizer, in addition to being a supporter of white replacement theory and ot…

You will never find somebody you 100% agree with. The question is when does something become so bad you will boycott them in other areas. Still a hard question, but the framing can help.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#54

Post by dralley »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #51
rafterydj wrote: post #34

I'll be contrarian to the thread sentiment and say: Mozilla has misstepped in the past, and will continue to do so, and they're partially funded by competitors for antitrust reasons, etc. That said, I can't really disagree with anything in this. As a developer (and socially conscious human) I want to move in the direction of openness.

I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding! I would love for there to be a world where Mozilla maintains Firefox and can make for product projects that provide higher value. I also have a pipe dream of one d…

> I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding!

And then people simultaneously complain that Mozilla is reliant on Google for funding. There are not many good revenue options available for a browser other than selling search defaults - and AI may start choking off that revenue as well - but Mozilla also can't touch AI without being screamed at.

I mean, even literally this one sentence is self-contradictory. Thunderbird is not their browser. You complain that they "invest more effort into everything other than their browser" and then complain that they don't invest enough in Thunderbird.

No win situation for them in terms of public opinion.

* They can't get diversify their revenue to be less dependent on Google without doing things that people view as "distractions"

* They don't get credit when the "distractions" are for the public good, like LetsEncrypt, Rust, Opus / AV1, etc.

* They get punished for de-prioritizing "distractions" like Thunderbird and Servo and Rust because those distractions are popular.

* For years they were simultaneously being dragged for dropping the XUL extension ecosystem, and also dragged for low performance and lack of multiprocessing and a bunch of other things which were being kneecapped hard by the XUL extension ecosystem.

It's not like I love their management or anything, certainly they've made mistakes, but the narcissism of small differences hits them with full force relative to every other competitor in the space.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#56

Post by vuggamie »

mentalgear wrote: post #50

Like many here on HN, I’m skeptical, also about Mozilla, but the blog post is compelling in its plan plus there’s a new CEO in town. So I think what we can do is give them the benefit of the doubt and approach this with cautious optimism for now instead of just negativity.

The new CEO centered AI ("It's Time to Evolve Firefox Into an AI Browser") in his first communication to the community. Spawned at least three new forks and introduced people to LibreWolf.

His first communication reduced trust: "It is a privilege to lead an organization with a long history of standing up for people and building technology that puts them first."

Now let's put people first by making Firefox an AI first browser. Enzor-Demeo would have made an excellent Microsoft product manager. Too bad he didn't get the job.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#57

Post by ihsw »

dralley wrote: post #54
giancarlostoro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding! I would love for there to be a world where Mozilla maintains Firefox and can make for product projects that provide higher value. I also have a pipe dream of one d…

> I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding! And then people simultaneously complain that Mozilla is reliant on Google for funding. There are not many good revenue options available for a browser other than…

[dead]

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#58

Post by jampekka »

LunaSea wrote: post #48
morcus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that uses Firefox as my main browser on desktop and mobile, I am curious here - what exactly are the complaints with Firefox? I'm using 3+ year old hardware that was mid-range even when it was new and it seems to do everything I would want with reasonable performance.

> what exactly are the complaints with Firefox? If you are a (the) leading browser like Firefox once was, the "what are the complaints?" is the right question. If you are a minor browser like Firefox currently is (~2.5% market share), the "what is it doing better?" is the correct question.

The Firefox market share was eaten largely by the enormous and legally dubious marketing campaigns by Google and Microsoft. Hard to see how Mozilla could compete with constant forced nags and defaults in the most widely used websites and operating systems.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#59

Post by duped »

LunaSea wrote: post #48
morcus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that uses Firefox as my main browser on desktop and mobile, I am curious here - what exactly are the complaints with Firefox? I'm using 3+ year old hardware that was mid-range even when it was new and it seems to do everything I would want with reasonable performance.

> what exactly are the complaints with Firefox? If you are a (the) leading browser like Firefox once was, the "what are the complaints?" is the right question. If you are a minor browser like Firefox currently is (~2.5% market share), the "what is it doing better?" is the correct question.

> what is it doing better

adblock is the single most important feature of a web browser to me. Firefox has the best adblock support.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#60

Post by shafyy »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #51
rafterydj wrote: post #34

I'll be contrarian to the thread sentiment and say: Mozilla has misstepped in the past, and will continue to do so, and they're partially funded by competitors for antitrust reasons, etc. That said, I can't really disagree with anything in this. As a developer (and socially conscious human) I want to move in the direction of openness.

I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding! I would love for there to be a world where Mozilla maintains Firefox and can make for product projects that provide higher value. I also have a pipe dream of one d…

Sure, it's not like CloudFare centralizes enough of the internet infrastructure, let's also give them one of the few (more or less) independent browsers.
Post reply on HN