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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#251

Post by staktrace »

jacquesm wrote: post #211
staktrace wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla's mission is to make the internet a better place for everybody. Having an open web browser is a part of that, but nowhere near sufficient to accomplish the goal. The "vanity ambitions" you are talking about are the things that actually make a long-term difference in people's lives. Having a great competitive browser with a silo'd, broken up Internet is not a desirable end-state.

Losing that great competitive browser because of pursuing even higher goals and ending up with an even more silo'd, broken up internet is an even less desirable end state and one that is much more likely to materialize by acting like this.

I don't see how losing Firefox would end up with an "even more silo'd, broken up Internet". Firefox can't fight that by itself so just having Firefox by itself isn't going to make much of a difference to what Big Tech is going to do with the Internet.

But anyway, you're entitled to your opinion.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#252

Post by ac29 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #138
jacquesm wrote: post #95

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…

Thanks for capturing my feelings around this so well. I absolutely love Firefox, but I can’t help but feel Mozilla’s ambitions are hurting them rather than helping them. Don’t get me wrong; their “distractions” have given the world a lot of nice things (Rust comes to mind). But first and foremost, Mozilla’s mission should be to ensure a great, competitive browser, and they’re losing the competition badly. And imho th…

Regarding the donations, I think the way they are structured with donations going to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and development of Firefox being done by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation means that donations cant be used to support Firefox development. Its unfortunate, because I would happily donate to fund Firefox, but I'm not terribly interested in funding Mozilla's non-profit activities (at least not more than other charities I could donate to).

I wonder if crowdfunding around specific development goals would be productive - certain promising features like Webrender have been in development for a very long time, and I'd be willing to contribute money to see them finished and shipped.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#253

Post by input_sh »

elliekelly wrote: post #70
kvark wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally with you on "Recommended by Pocket" thing, it's very sad. But I think you are confusing Mozilla with something it's not. Mozilla is not a software company today that tries to be an internet activist. Mozilla is an activist company that also happens to develop software to prove their point. So no, it's not just about the web browser.

I wish Mozilla would distribute their free software the way some museums charge entry. A “suggested donation” of $X. And when I go to download the browser prompt me to either pay the suggested donation or manually change it to $0. I’d gladly pay $10 for Firefox every major update and I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s just not something I really think about very often. The passive asks just aren’t that effective.

> And when I go to download the browser prompt me to either pay the suggested donation or manually change it to $0.

FYI elementary OS does that and they have public analytics where you can see how many people skip it: https://plausible.io/elementary.io

Their "payment skipped" goal has 57.9k conversions, while "payment complete" has 1k conversions. This is <2 months of data, since they've started using Plausible pretty recently.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#254

Post by clscott »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #20
kvark wrote: post #2

That's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.

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…

Here is the worst possible case scenario that is really happening with Chrome:

If I want to use a Google Property with Chrome (just tested with Google Search Console) I MUST be "signed into" Chrome with the same Google Account as I want use to access the service.

I am not "signed into" Chrome with a google account and I log into that service using the login process IN the web page I become automatically "signed into" Chrome.

Chrome just peeks throught the veil and I am now logged into my browser. Talk about overstepping boundaries.

So, I don't want to have my browser sessions associated to my google account so I "Sign Out" of the browser. BOOM! Logged out of the service as well.

This is a very sad day for the state of a free and open internet.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#255

Post by wooger »

takluyver wrote: post #153
macspoofing wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their priorities are out of wack. Firefox is their golden goose. It's the thing that gives them clout and revenue. Their job is to increase adoption because increased adoption means more clout and more revenue. You do that by constantly reinvesting in the platform and making it your core singular focus, especially performance and tooling (because developers are a big driver for browser adoption). Where is the Firefox…

Counterpoint: Firefox is the thing they're best known for, but it's been inexorably losing market share for years to a direct competitor with vastly more financial muscle and access to very prominent advertising space. At the same time, they're dependent on that competitor for most of their revenue. It's hard to imagine they could give Firefox a significant technical edge over Chrome, no matter how much they focus on…

You speak like they have any other baskets.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#256

Post by komali2 »

mikorym wrote: post #244
jacquesm wrote: post #95

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…

While I agree with this: > Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There is also this: > As of today, the Thunderbird project will be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, MZLA Technologies Corporation. [1] (January 28th 2020) I think that proper email and calendar is what people need too. It's a big market and something you would more obviously pay for than a browser. Pro…

We had an issue where my mom's company had email set up through like, godaddy or some shit. And to have calendar invites work (including people sending google calendar invites, or my mom sending them invites), it was some extra charge that her boss wasn't willing to pay. I explored a bunch of possibilities, then on a whim threw Thunderbird on her machine, set up IMAP/SMTP, and tried sending her a calendar invite. It Just Worked, showed up in her Thunderbird calendar. Then she did the same for me, boom, functional calendar invite.

All absolutely free of charge.

I think that's a good thing, that's what Mozilla is good at doing, subverting arbitrary cost added bullshit.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#257

Post by TumorousJoker »

gspr wrote: post #221
pjfin123 wrote: post #207

I you think projects like Mozilla and Firefox are important donations can really go a long way. If enough people even donated ~$5/mo to projects like this, which is less than lots of people spend for Spotify or buying coffee, it would make open source privacy respecting projects a lot more viable.

> I you think projects like Mozilla and Firefox are important donations can really go a long way. I know this kind of goes against my other comment stating that I'm super worried about losing the only viable free and open browser out there (my only browser), but: what's keeping me from donating is the bad aftertaste of the money being used for frivilous things. I don't want to fund their bookmarking service. I don't…

You can't give them money and then put conditions on top of it. It's their business decision as to what they want to do with their monetary donations.

Otherwise, this would be like your employer saying, "I will pay you salary, buuut only if you promise not to spend it on alcohol". It clearly doesn't work like that, you just have to make a high level judgement if you agree with their values and if yes, go ahead with that donation.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#258

Post by dblohm7 »

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.]

One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards.

OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at the corporate doublespeak in that press release. Fuck Mozilla, I'm switching to Chrome."

Really? That's what's got you bent out of shape?

Sure, Mozilla has made mistakes. Did we apologize? Did we learn anything? Did we work to prevent it happening again?

People want to continue flogging us for these things while giving other companies (who have made their own mistakes, often much more consequential than ours, would never be as open about it, and often learn nothing) a relatively free pass.

I'm certainly not the first person on the planet whose employer has been on the receiving end of vitriol. And if Mozilla doesn't make it through this next phase, I can always find another job. But what concerns me about this is that Mozilla is such an important voice in shaping the future of the internet. To see it wither away because of people angry with what are, in the grand scheme of things, minor mistakes, is a shame.

EDIT: And lest you think I am embellishing about trivial complaints, there was a rant last week on r/Firefox that Mozilla was allegedly conspiring to hide Gecko's source code because we self-host our primary repo and bug tracking instead of using GitHub, despite the fact that the Mozilla project predates GitHub by a decade.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#259

Post by [deleted] »

mrweasel wrote: post #142
dblohm7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox. If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

That’t kinda stupid to be honest. Just charge me $50 for Firefox... you know what make it $100 per year and I will pay, just to avoid Chrome. I don’t know how many of us are out there, but a large number of people don’t mind paying for the tools they rely on. I have co-worker who pay $100+ to get the email client they want. How such a payment scheme would work with an open source project I don’t know, but find a way…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#260

Post by JimDabell »

clscott wrote: post #254
giancarlostoro wrote: post #20

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…

Here is the worst possible case scenario that is really happening with Chrome: If I want to use a Google Property with Chrome (just tested with Google Search Console) I MUST be "signed into" Chrome with the same Google Account as I want use to access the service. I am not "signed into" Chrome with a google account and I log into that service using the login process IN the web page I become automatically "signed into"…

Preferences… > Sync and Google Services > Allow Chrome sign-in

> By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites such as Gmail, without signing in to Chrome

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