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Leaving Mozilla

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Re: Leaving Mozilla

#181

Post by lawgimenez »

derf_ wrote: post #142
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.

> To this day, I am still kind of confused with that move. I do not think that this was that confusing. People [1] looked around at the beginning of the 2010's and saw 1) Mobile usage was growing exponentially and desktop was... not [2]. 2) Every mobile OS shipped their own browser by default, or even went so far as to prevent other browsers from being used at all (iOS) [3]. 3) Because Android and iOS both had non-tr…

Thanks for the explanation, and thank you for your work at Mozilla. I guess what I'm saying is that I wish Mozilla could have just focused on the browser.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#182

Post by jm4 »

nntwozz wrote: post #69
klez wrote: post #7

Some 10 years ago I was a Mozilla volunteer. I mainly worked on MDN, to the point of becoming a so-called "topic driver" for the glossary. Some of the work I did landed in the citations of a couple of papers about web technology. They flew me a whole week to Vancouver for an event where employees and volunteers worked together in the same room and they even made me (and the other volunteers ) attend a sort-of-corpora…

Dat feeling when reading "IRC (an open protocol)" on HN—the parenthesis being necessary to explain IRC. Makes me think in 10 years time the web will all be discord-like data silos behind infernal subscriptions and/or dark patterns with ads. What a wonderful thing we've created.

I think “IRC (an open protocol)” served more to explain the why than the what here. It frames the whole rest of the story and why GP felt alienated.

It wasn’t because Mozilla stopped using GP’s favorite chat software. It’s because GP was a believer in the mission and the principles. Switching from an open system to a corny corporate one made the whole illusion fall apart. Mozilla was a corp all along and they took their volunteers for a ride.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#184

Post by Bender »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #130
nntwozz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dat feeling when reading "IRC (an open protocol)" on HN—the parenthesis being necessary to explain IRC. Makes me think in 10 years time the web will all be discord-like data silos behind infernal subscriptions and/or dark patterns with ads. What a wonderful thing we've created.

Is there a widely-used open modern chat network? Specifically, I'm fine with the feature set of IRC, but I want durable messages and a mobile client. Speaking as someone who hasn't run their own bouncer in 10+ years.

For what it's worth there are some web front-ends to IRC that make it more approachable from the modern crowd. [1][2] These both have live demo's

[1] - https://thelounge.chat/

[2] - https://convos.chat/

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#185

Post by heresie-dabord »

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.

> focus relentlessly on a privacy-first, performant browser across major platforms. Nothing else. [...] to browse the web safely and privately and preserve battery life - nothing more.

"Nothing more," you say.

The chief focus should be Privacy... Privacy and Performance... Our two chief focuses should be Privacy and Performance... and Cross-Platform Executables with Functional Parity... Our three chief focuses should be Privacy, Performance, Cross-Platform Executables with Functional Parity, and Safety on the Web... Our four chief focuses should be Privacy, Performance, Cross-Platform Executables with Functional Parity, Safety on the Web, and ruthless Efficiency in Preserving Battery Life... Our five... no... Amongst our chief focuses... Amongst our non-trivial chief focuses that users think are easy... are such elements as Privacy, Safety on the Web, Cross-Platform Executables with Functional Parity... I'll come in again.

Software Engineering Apologies to...

[0] _ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spanish_Inquisition_(Monty...

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#187

Post by deanc »

MatejKafka wrote: post #117
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.

How do you expect Mozilla to make enough money from just Firefox to survive if Google ever decides to stop paying them for being the default search engine?

Charge me. I’ll pay. I’m not going to donate to the org right now as I don’t use Firefox as it uses (noticeably) too much battery on my MacBook compared to safari and chrome.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#188

Post by prabhu-yu »

magpi3 wrote: post #62

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy absolutely applies here: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers, launch techni…

I want to put it in other words based on philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche - Exploitation is the key characteristic of living beings. This is applicable not only to humans but also to single celled life forms. (There are exceptions to this). So, those who are dedicated to the org itself are the one who are exploiting. And those who are working for the goal of the org are the exploited. There is always fight between these two group. Some time, a symbiotic relationship, some times status quo. etc.

Those who recognize this will be at peace since they understand the soul of bureaucracy.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#189

Post by driverdan »

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.

> I don’t want extensions (attack vector)

How do you block ads and invasive trackers? DNS only?

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#190

Post by 3683826312819 »

red_admiral wrote: post #12
shevy-java wrote: post #3

> We're a niche browser that is lucky enough to get well funded. Now - we really need a viable alternative to the Evil Google Empire. For a while I had hope that ladybird would be that competitor, but that died after I was banned from github, as well as Kling making some really strange decisions in the last year or so, with weird explanations; most recent one the "we don't need external contributors so we close that…

Hey, we have the evil Microsoft empire :) Or the Apple alternative. Maintaining a browser engine including patching the latest vulnerabilities when someone points Mythos at your code is a really hard problem, my feeling is you need a certain size of organization and funding as your table stakes. Someone should convince the EU to look into funding a new browser, maybe.

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