111–120 of 1001 posts
250 people, roughly 25% of the company, were laid off today. This is on top of the 70 laid off in January (discussion of that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737 )
Why Mozilla has almost 1,000 employees blows my mind. Isn't this an project for an open source web browser?
This has wayyy too much corporate doublespeak in it. I try not to be negative on companies with a good mission, but this fluff-filled announcement tells my spidey senses that they're about to do something that people won't like.
You're not wrong, but why do you suspect the "something people won't like" is anything more than this massive layoff?
" New focus on economics. Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges. "
A kind reading would be that they'll try to move to a consultancy or subscription based model, like Red Hat. An unkind reading is that they will make portions of their products and code proprietary and charge licensing fees.
"... everything was free ..." is an ambiguous statement in this context. Do they mean free/libre or do they mean free/gratis? This, to me reads like corporate double speak. It leaves enough ambiguity so that people can have a kind interpretation while letting them claim they were being honest about their intentions should they choose to go a proprietary route.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kills me is when people say they use Chrome cause they don't trust Mozilla cause they embedded Pocket, but like Chrome is literally shoved with a million Google bits, even Chromium (the open source variant of Google Chrome which is the proprietary variant almost everyone installs) has Google crapware at a much larger scale. Mozilla's Firefox still feels like the lesser of the two evils. Edit: Added clarification…
Thing is, Google doesn't try to sell itself otherwise. Mozilla talks a good game about privacy and users-first, but then it goes and does things like Pocket, Mr. Robot, etc. that make it clear it is all just marketing. Edit: Uh, my memory was faulty on this one. See below.
Citation?
It blows my mind that no company is currently able to challenge Chrome. Not even Microsoft or Apple is interested to challenge the status quo.
Mozilla keeps it up because of the principle that there should be more than one decent rendering engine. For-profit companies can't take that stance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kills me is when people say they use Chrome cause they don't trust Mozilla cause they embedded Pocket, but like Chrome is literally shoved with a million Google bits, even Chromium (the open source variant of Google Chrome which is the proprietary variant almost everyone installs) has Google crapware at a much larger scale. Mozilla's Firefox still feels like the lesser of the two evils. Edit: Added clarification…
Thing is, Google doesn't try to sell itself otherwise. Mozilla talks a good game about privacy and users-first, but then it goes and does things like Pocket, Mr. Robot, etc. that make it clear it is all just marketing. Edit: Uh, my memory was faulty on this one. See below.
"Focusing Firefox On Users In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team." So what is the impact on things like Servo/Rust, and the core browser?…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making a browsers requires developers, developers cost money. Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.
I wonder what percentage of their bottom line comes from goodwill donations from individuals, versus the millions they get each year from Google and various other search companies they have contracts with - in some recent past years Google has been funding like 90%+ of their budget haven't they?
Mozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There a…
Yet we are increasingly seeing developers who won't follow those standards. What are we as developers going to do about that?
It is so refreshing to see an ethical company like mozilla when faced with financial struggle say "We at the top level have slashed our salaries to ensure we can keep paying as many contributors as possible as it is they who make our products great"