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Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

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Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#61

Post by trolleski »

mittensc wrote: post #10

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report. > The nonprofit, also the parent of Firefox, is investing in artificial intelligence startups that are working on safety and governance issues in AI. Why?, they want to go bankrupt?, do they like burning money? I would understand investing in AI Tech... Brilliant if they u…

But compromised Mozilla's solution will then be passed as 'independent' so that a corrupt government can accept it without officially kneeling to BigTech. Publicity stunt a'la foundation.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#63

Post by input_sh »

dotBen wrote: post #31
dralley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charitable entity known as the Mozilla Foundation and the development entity known as the Mozilla Corporation are not the same. Nothing wrong with the foundation doing these things with their spare cash, it literally does not impact Firefox at all.

The concern, I think, is that their spare cash is dwindling and thus financial prudence might be beneficial - especially for those who rely on the core Mozilla propositions like Firefox.

> is that their spare cash is dwindling

They're an NGO, you can just... look this up, it's public.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#64

Post by zb3 »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #40

Conspiracy theory time? Conspiracy theory time. I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'. Okay, before this is marked as crazy talk: Historically this has happened, this isnt a new invention. A company needs to survive, not be ethical. Using third parties give plausible deniability. I look at the atrocious state of LibreOffice, and I'm pretty sure someone from Microsof…

But at least it seems we have powerful Linux plants at Microsoft, they're doing great :)

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#65

Post by abbe98 »

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.

$1.4 billion would be a very good start for an endowment which one day could maybe fund, a browser?

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#66

Post by csense »

I would rather Mozilla spend their money focusing on reducing Firefox's enormous memory usage or maintaining Thunderbird.

They could build interesting protocols into Firefox like IPFS or ENS, or develop alternatives. $1.4 billion can accomplish a lot -- if you stay in your lane and don't yeet it into a capital intensive field with uncertain returns like AI.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#67

Post by epiccoleman »

sparcpile wrote: post #4

The sooner the AI bubble pops and takes all of these companies out, the better the world will be.

Which companies do you expect to be taken out?

Google and Microsoft will obviously remain. I have a hard time envisioning that OpenAI or Anthropic will go under - especially Anthropic, who are reportedly raking in billions from Claude subscriptions.

Just from my armchair predictions, it's not really any of the juggernauts who have to worry, but rather the many companies springing up to try SaaS offerings with LLMs at the core. A bubble pop there could certainly cause some strife, but I'm just not seeing the mechanism by which these too-big-to-fail tech companies and the heavily invested "frontier AI companies" are going to suddenly cease to exist.

I think the dotcom bubble is a fairly apt metaphor in the key sense that the web didn't go anywhere - just a lot of small players lost their tickets on the gravy train. "Big tech" as it existed at the time of the bubble pop trundled along and continued making gobs of money.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#69

Post by peaseagee »

wolvoleo wrote: post #51
dralley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect a web browser is much more complicated than a desktop environment. Firefox is like 30 million lines of code, much of which is active attack surface. A high performance JIT JavaScript engine alone might be more complex than KDE. Random people can fix UI bugs and contribute to simple desktop apps in a way that they likely cannot in general do with the deep internals of a browser.

KDE includes a web browser. Which spawned Safari in fact.

And Chrome!

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#70

Post by arxari »

direwolf20 wrote: post #32
pseudalopex wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing and investing in Firefox remains our biggest priority. Mozilla Corporation’s leading aim is to grow as a meaningful, differentiated browser, trusted by over 200mil people. In 2025 the team made great progress shipping tab groups, vertical tabs, smart tabs, many sidebar integrations with AI companies and more. Mozilla Corp welcomed Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the first technologist to serve as CEO in over 15 years. I…

Ah, replicating things that already exist as extensions. So useful.

In inferior execution, Sideberry is still miles ahead compared to the "native" option
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