Leaving Mozilla • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#161

Post by dariusj18 » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:07 PM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #121

tjoff wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like you couldn't create an IRC-client with better UI than discord. Not as many features, but whatever strength discord has it is not UI. Email really could have been great, but html and bad actors have made it so much worse than it needs to be.

Email is OK. The point is that most conversations moved to other media (mainly chats) and so 90% of my mail is notifications, 9% is newsletters, 1% are real messages. They used to be 99%.

I really wish Google's Wave went somewhere. It was the real solution.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#162

Post by drewfax » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:10 PM UTC

deanc wrote: post #108

I really wish Mozilla would focus relentlessly on a privacy-first, performant browser across major platforms. Nothing else. I don’t want extensions (attack vector), vpns, fancy bookmarking services that are deprecated later on etc. I want to browse the web safely and privately and preserve battery life - nothing more.

Extensions were why Firefox was so popular among those considered 'abnormal.' Chrome just copied the idea. VPNs, Pocket, and sync services are all great features; it's their implementation and execution that is so poor.

All Mozilla (and Firefox) needs is to be run by developers, not the fucking MBAs.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#163

Post by Timwi » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:12 PM UTC

collabs wrote: post #150

nicoburns wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Matrix. It all seems a bit overengineered, but it's open and has good clients, and all the modern features you'd expect.

I'm sorry but I lost interest in matrix in 2017 ish when I tried to use my existing matrix log in when trying to sign into the Mozilla matrix and I simply couldn't. At the end I ended up creating a new account on Mozilla side just so I could use it for a few days. I've never thought of matrix as a mature technology ever since. even mastodon figured out federation.

Mastodon does not have persistence of data though. Your instance shuts down? All your posts are gone. I naively assumed I could just move them to a new instance and found out the hard way. I have felt disillusioned with Mastodon ever since.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#164

Post by drewfax » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

lawgimenez wrote: post #19

I think Mozilla started getting nuts the day they ventured with Firefox OS. To this day, I am still kind of confused with that move.

Firefox OS was a brilliant idea. Imagine cross platform and open apps based on HTML/JavaScript that feel native and polished. 2026 would have been amazing if Mozilla executed it right.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#165

Post by RobotToaster » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Eisenstein wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also: * People who understand that the existence of the organization is necessary for the goals of the organization

That is rarely true. If an organization ceases to exist but people still have the same goal then they create a new organization or act individually without an incorporated bureaucracy. On the contrary, the existence of a mismanaged organization nominally dedicated to a given purpose often prevents its nominal goal from being achieved, because people assume giving time or money to that organization will be the best wa…

> On the contrary, the existence of a mismanaged organization nominally dedicated to a given purpose often prevents its nominal goal from being achieved

This gives rise to another type of person within an organisation. Someone opposed to the goals of the organisation, and who understands this all too well.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#166

Post by franga2000 » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #80

franga2000 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This attitude is exactly why Mozilla is failing. Total contempt and ignorance of the users that are the core of Firefox’s user base. If someone doesn’t want to use AI features, that’s not “living in a fantasy world”. And if Mozilla had any respect for its users, they would have realized the need to make this sort of thing a first class setting. Pretending that their core users are delusional freaks who only deserve “…

You're missing the point. If someone doesn't want to use AI features, they can just NOT. USE. THEM. That's it. Just don't press the AI button. Is it that hard? Would you say Mozilla is deleting all your data because there's a "Delete cookies and history" button in the menu? You can just NOT. PRESS. THE. BUTTON.

The master AI switch doesn't actually change whether the browser uses AI features - it never does unless you specifically run them. What it does is hides them from the user, pretending they don't exist.

Browsers that don't respect their users' choices about using AI do things like automatically download large models in the background, integrate cloud-based speech recognition and synthesis as an API available to any website and make the default search engine which they also own show LLM slop above actual results.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#167

Post by sethops1 » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #103

> Another delusion comes about because of self-reinforcement. Say you're going to release some, controversial feature. Maybe it's browser based DRM, maybe it's AI, maybe it's Push Notifications. Listening to your users can be a bit challenging[2], because while some might tell you, most probably won't. They'll just leave. That means that your source of information will be the people that stick around, so you wind up…

I've been bitching about it for like a decade but I still won't use Firefox until it supports window based profiles. Safari has them now, ffs.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#168

Post by pseudalopex » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:17 PM UTC

xmprt wrote: post #104

duffydotsvg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is new to me. Not sure I totally agree but it's a useful heuristic. Despite being easy targets, orgs do in fact need coordinators, middle managers, administrators, etc. Especially as they scale. (And no AI won't render them obsolete.) Finding the balance between productivity and bureaucracy is the hard part.

It's true that large orgs need all that bureaucracy. But is it still true that productivity needs large orgs? We see a lot of massive hits coming from small teams - whether it's startups, movies, indie games, etc.

There are 3 web engines generally useful. Each produced by 100s of people. Small teams have not matched their output. How would you explain this?

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#169

Post by drewfax » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:20 PM UTC

Some things Mozilla could have done correctly:

    - Kept Rust and sold best-in-class tooling like IDEs to enterprises.
    - Polished Firefox OS and distributed apps in their store for a 1% commission.
    - Kept Servo and made the most secure and fast browser that no one else had made.
    - Partnered with OEMs to offer Firefox as the default browser.

Yet the best they could do was pay their CEO for nothing.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#170

Post by gdwatson » Sat, Jun 13, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC

pseudalopex wrote: post #138

RobotToaster wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem a coincidence that it started to go down hill after they removed an engineer from CEO (Brendan Eich), and replaced him with a marketing dude, then a lawyer lady, and now an MBA bro.

Firefox's market share peaked in 2009. Eich was CEO for 2 weeks in 2014. He resigned and declined Mozilla's offer to remain in another C level position. The same lawyer lady Mitchell Baker had every top job from 1999 to 2008.

"He resigned and declined Mozilla's offer to remain in another C level position."

At this point I think it's clear his resignation was not voluntary. Maybe the other offer was sincere, or maybe it wasn't; I'm not sure how we could tell.