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Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

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Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#101

Post by dralley »

cogman10 wrote: post #86
dralley wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla doesn't sell user's data, they sell user's search traffic. Not the same, given that the latter requires a service rendered.

Mozilla does sell users' data. That's how the sponsored links and stories work > Occasionally, sponsors may pay Mozilla to specifically boost the score of their site during frecency ranking. In these cases, the shortcut is based on your history, but shown in the sponsored section. This still happens entirely on your device; your copy of Firefox has a list of participating sites, which receive a higher score during lo…

MozillaVPN is a paid service.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#102

Post by throwaway27448 »

dralley wrote: post #52
throwaway27448 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? They make $680M a year and use it to shill for the very company responsible for destroying the open internet. Firefox hasn't been easy to recommend for over a decade now. Where on earth is that money going if not to drain money from projects that actually work for humanity? I'm aware that this very revenue is what Mozilla is complaining about. But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual b…

> But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model HN would complain (and indeed has complained) every time they try to find a non-Google source of revenue. The advertisement for the Disney movie with a Red Panda got flamed despite being completely innocuous, Pocket and Mozilla VPN and Lockwise got flamed for being "distractions" or whatever, etc. "Focus on the browser", everyone…

> except that browsers are the most commoditized market you could possibly immagine

There's just blink, webkit, and gecko. What are you referring to?

> What kind of "business model" do you expect, exactly?

If Mozilla pays me $5M I can do better than "beg google", "ads", and "AI". It's like these mea freaks who run the organization haven't bothered to use their own brains for thirty straight years

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#103

Post by phyzix5761 »

hn_submit wrote: post #96
bulbar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to underestimate what a (even somewhat) large codebase entails. Even switching the compiler version is serious effort. Replacing the compiler can already be unfeasible, but apparently, switching the whole language seems to be super simple from the outside.

Simple it ain't, but it's certainly doable if you have hundreds of developers working on it. It will reduce maintenance further down the line especially as far as vulnerabilities are concerned.

Hundreds of developers? Have you ever written professional software? There is no way a coordinated effort across hundreds of engineers is going to be efficient enough to do a port like this. Also, with most legacy software you can't port modules to test if your port is working. It becomes, mostly, an all-or-nothing kind of thing and with 25 million lines of code that's going to take a huge amount of effort and time.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#104

Post by hn_submit »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #103
hn_submit wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple it ain't, but it's certainly doable if you have hundreds of developers working on it. It will reduce maintenance further down the line especially as far as vulnerabilities are concerned.

Hundreds of developers? Have you ever written professional software? There is no way a coordinated effort across hundreds of engineers is going to be efficient enough to do a port like this. Also, with most legacy software you can't port modules to test if your port is working. It becomes, mostly, an all-or-nothing kind of thing and with 25 million lines of code that's going to take a huge amount of effort and time.

Yes, I've worked on software projects with large numbers of developers. And it's feasible if the work is split up in independent projects that only require the API to be agreed on.

Exactly the type of work seen in a web browser, which has many interconnected but independent parts.

I also believe that if you have enough unit test coverage you can tackle any project, no matter how large. This is, however, lacking in most projects. Many only pay lip service to unit testing.

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#106

Post by KetoManx64 »

dralley wrote: post #41
hn_submit wrote: post #12

I love Firefox but feel little pity for Mozilla which receives $400+ million a year on search placement in their browser but spends only a tiny fraction on its development. The rest is wasted on greedy management and frivolous projects to give that same management an excuse to give themselves multi-million dollar payouts. Everyone's only in it for the money. There are no good or bad people anymore, only...unfortunate…

HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. Rust was a side project, asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM, IIRC LetsEncrypt was a side project (or at least a side project of Mozilla engineers, if not official), significant parts of the initial R&D for AV1 and Opus came out of Mozilla, Servo was largely a side pro…

You forgot to mention their rebranding earlier this year: "Kit the non-binary mascot"

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#107

Post by spwa4 »

pkaye wrote: post #84
amelius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU should heavily subsidize Mozilla, so that this is not necessary.

They could fund Lady Bird browser. Less legacy code to worry about. Run it lean like Blender.

They won't do anything and everyone knows it. It's not like they are critically dependent on it as a 500 million people government, critically dependent on US software, and US and Chinese hardware, and therefore could find themselves with a problem that would effectively end their ability to work digitally overnight.

Oh wait ...

Re: Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox'

#108

Post by Klonoar »

hn_submit wrote: post #77
Klonoar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blink and WebKit have diverged enough that there are minimum 3 engines now, not 2.

Don't forget Ladybird. It's coming along nicely too and it's currently being rewritten in Rust, which should give it a leg up on the rest of the bunch. There are a few others, mostly A.I. slop like NorthStar.

I will 100% forget Ladybird until it actually matters.

This is a discussion about real browser engines in the wild, not in-development ones.

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