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

Mozilla Thunderbolt

thunderbolt.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 366 posts

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#321

Post by drzaiusx11 »

eipi10_hn wrote: post #278
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue these are not _contradictory_, just incentivized financially to continue since that's how they've operated. What i'm suggesting is a change. There's plenty of counter examples where diverse funding models for community projects can work without taking vast sums from a single, direct competitor. Linux is one. Imagine if MSFT was the sole contributor to Linux and how that would have shaped its development. In…

Because Windows doesn't go open-source and others can't build their OS from windows like chromium. With OS, there are no open source kernels that are actively maintained and security-fix bump every month by full time staff of giant corporation. With browsers, devs already have an open source engine with most of the work and build are from full-time staff of a giant corporation, and then they just lazily build "their…

I'm not sure the counter argument you're making tbh.

The license or patch cycles of either project is irrelevant in this example. The money changing hands between the original product and it's competitor is the issue at stake here.

I'll spell it out in Mozilla's case:

If money is provided by a direct competitor, and that same money is _critical to the continued existence of the original project_ as it is in Mozilla's case, that project and it's staff now have a vested interest in avoiding _anything_ that could endanger that flow, as it now poses a very real existential risk. This is the game they play and the conflict of interest I'm merely pointing out.

Google gets to keep slowly eating the entire browser pie. Should regulators come calling, they can even point at Firefox and say "see, we're not monopolizing this space! there's Firefox over there" To me it appears as a sick form of puppetry.

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#322

Post by dang »

eipi10_hn wrote: post #285
einr wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47798555 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47672260. That last one was particularly bad! Please don't do that!

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#323

Post by drzaiusx11 »

glenstein wrote: post #229
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #81

For anyone reading this that has worked on the launch of this new product (or the many others of their ilk throughout the years) under the various Mozilla orgs, I mean no disrespect, however I feel it's important to not mince words these days.. I implore ANYONE at Mozilla org to please, please stop working on projects distracting from the complex and necessary work of browser and web standards stewardship. That alone…

This "Mozilla is distracted" narrative is a category 5 hurricane of unsubstantiated vibes from people who have no idea what they're talking about. Some quick hits just from reading recent release announcements from December '25 through April 26: - Hardware acceleration for faster performance with PDFs - Expanded WebGPU support - Faster page loading with compression dictionaries - Deeper hardware integration for faste…

Firefox is still very much a technically excellent browser. My plea is simply to stop taking poison pills from the very companies they should be fighting against in standards body discussions. I'd argue Firefox is "behind" in both _marketshare_ and _features_ largely _because_ said features are steamrolled through community governance bodies by the likes of Google, etc. Mozilla is at the table for these discussions but their hands are tied.

Mozilla's continued existence in recent history has relied on money from their primary competitor to stay in operation. Some have argued that doing seemingly unrelated projects like the one announced today is an effort to buy their freedom as it were. I'm arguing that's a distraction and that something closer to Linux or wiki foundation model would allow them to concentrate their efforts where it makes the most sense, as their current governance model is inherently based on a conflict of interest.

Opera was also a technically excellent browser, and we've seen that that alone is not enough to justify its existence in the long term.

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#325

Post by eipi10_hn »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #321
eipi10_hn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Windows doesn't go open-source and others can't build their OS from windows like chromium. With OS, there are no open source kernels that are actively maintained and security-fix bump every month by full time staff of giant corporation. With browsers, devs already have an open source engine with most of the work and build are from full-time staff of a giant corporation, and then they just lazily build "their…

I'm not sure the counter argument you're making tbh. The license or patch cycles of either project is irrelevant in this example. The money changing hands between the original product and it's competitor is the issue at stake here. I'll spell it out in Mozilla's case: If money is provided by a direct competitor, and that same money is _critical to the continued existence of the original project_ as it is in Mozilla's…

The argument is you are using OS as a counter example when it's not the counter example.

What is the chromium of OS world but Linux doesn't depend on them?

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#326

Post by hardwaresofton »

Wow HN really does have a problem with commenting on anything to do with Mozilla.

Anyway, awesome to see this from the team inside Mozilla — hope this can become a new revenue stream over the long term.

Really excited to see some tight integration with Firefox and Thunderbird in the future.

People are going to hate this, but if someday Mozilla expands to being a productivity suite I’d be pretty happy to give them my money. ProtonMail is doing it and I trust them as well.

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#327

Post by drzaiusx11 »

maxloh wrote: post #185
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #81

For anyone reading this that has worked on the launch of this new product (or the many others of their ilk throughout the years) under the various Mozilla orgs, I mean no disrespect, however I feel it's important to not mince words these days.. I implore ANYONE at Mozilla org to please, please stop working on projects distracting from the complex and necessary work of browser and web standards stewardship. That alone…

Mozilla is doing exactly what you’re describing. They need revenue to ditch their direct financial ties to Google (and I wonder if they hire those high-salary executives solely in the hope of generating that revenue). These AI products, along with all previous failed attempts, are just them trying to gain enough revenue to remove that dependency on Google.

I truly hope that is the case. I feel they're going about it from all the wrong angles, but I sincerely hope it works out in their favor. Their funding model and governance seem inherently broken and have for a long time...

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#328

Post by drzaiusx11 »

jamespo wrote: post #205
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #81

For anyone reading this that has worked on the launch of this new product (or the many others of their ilk throughout the years) under the various Mozilla orgs, I mean no disrespect, however I feel it's important to not mince words these days.. I implore ANYONE at Mozilla org to please, please stop working on projects distracting from the complex and necessary work of browser and web standards stewardship. That alone…

Have you donated to the Mozilla Foundation so they can ditch financial ties with Google?

I'd gladly setup a recurring donation if I knew it was going to the areas in question and NOT to separate grants to the likes of this product just announced

Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt

#329

Post by drzaiusx11 »

dralley wrote: post #16
soapdog wrote: post #2

oh mozilla, why don't you just focus on Firefox. That is all we want.

People "want" a lot of contradictory things. People "want" them to be less financially reliant on Google, while also "focusing" on a browser in a market that is entirely commoditized and subsidized by 3 of the 10 largest companies in the world - and having a wholly implementation independent browser engine when it's so massively difficult and capital intensive that even Microsoft gave up on it.

I don't think these are contradictory, you're listing what many have wanted all along. There are funding models that would support exactly the above.

Microsoft stopped building their own browser engine because it didn't suit their business needs and they could still get a controlling share with significantly less effort by recycling webkit/blink for the umpteenth time. That makes total sense for them. Mozilla has, in the past, guided and pushed back on corporate interests.

Today, a large portion of the web now stands, built from the bones of the original khtml project, which was unceremoniously made by a handful of volunteers on the KDE project. Let's not pretend a rendering engine it's an entirely _impossible_ task. It is a LOT of work, and I laud the effortor of the few tireless individuals that make it their work, but in the end it's another piece of software, not unlike an OS. The history goes:

KHTML -> WebKit -> Blink

Meanwhile:

Mosaic -> Netscape -> Gecko

Maybe we find maintaining the second lineage is too great a burden and the web just becomes a defacto standard, guided entirely by 3 corporations. It's not what we want, but I guess at this point it's probably what we deserve.

Post reply on HN