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Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

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Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#31

Post by zamadatix »

XorNot wrote: post #16
martinald wrote: post #14

Deary me. There is literally not one mention of any concrete product development or launch that I can see in that post. This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy dis…

What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.

Pocket comes enabled by default and they do plenty of telemetry. It's 10,000x better than Chrome's use of the 2 but it's not nonexistent.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#32

Post by paulryanrogers »

Igelau wrote: post #23
claudiojulio wrote: post #12

Some organization or group of people has to fork Firefox or start another browser from scratch that has ethical leaders.

There are forks. Ice Weasel. Pale Moon is fun because it kept the old GUI.

How can they even maintain a secure browser as they drift from Firefox, much less innovate? Pale Moon in particular doesn't have the best security track record.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#34

Post by sciurus »

Nextgrid wrote: post #22
XorNot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.

I call BS on Mozilla's commitment to privacy until uBlock Origin (or equivalent) is built into Firefox. Nowadays running a browser without an ad blocker is as irresponsible as running a Windows XP machine without antivirus nor firewall a decade ago. Any browser that doesn't implement countermeasures that have been proven to be effective and are available free of charge under a permissive license should be considered…

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote... has been built-in for nearly two years, and new privacy-protecting features are frequently being added.

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on this)

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#35

Post by elcritch »

XorNot wrote: post #16
martinald wrote: post #14

Deary me. There is literally not one mention of any concrete product development or launch that I can see in that post. This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy dis…

What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.

The newer Firefox quantum has become my goto browser since it was released. Slower than Chrome but less memory hungry. Unfortunately anytime I hear about Firefox it's often "Firefox removes features" or worse "Firefox disables feature for your good". I literally couldn't log into some old wifi router at an airbnb because Firefox refused to let me visit a non-standard port, with no way to override it. It's not adtech surveillance big brother, it's patronizing we know better big brother.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#36

Post by Nextgrid »

sciurus wrote: post #34
Nextgrid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call BS on Mozilla's commitment to privacy until uBlock Origin (or equivalent) is built into Firefox. Nowadays running a browser without an ad blocker is as irresponsible as running a Windows XP machine without antivirus nor firewall a decade ago. Any browser that doesn't implement countermeasures that have been proven to be effective and are available free of charge under a permissive license should be considered…

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote... has been built-in for nearly two years, and new privacy-protecting features are frequently being added. (Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but not on this)

This is nowhere near enough though, and it used to be even worse. Basic spyware such as Google Analytics could be blocked by uBlock for ages and yet it's only recently that the built-in Firefox solution started blocking it (by replacing it with a neutered shim).

Furthermore, considering uBlock Origin and the underlying filter lists are available under a permissive license, what's the point behind developing & maintaining your own (inferior) implementation?

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#37

Post by anshorei »

8458e112e7b2 wrote: post #15
ByTheBook wrote: post #8

Firefox market share down 85%, during the same period the executives get a 400% raise. Then 250 employees are fired. It feels like it's just the top brass getting as much money they can before the ship sinks at this point.

Not only that, they do have their other priorities figured out also: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).

I had been dissatisfied with their management for a long time, but that was the point where I switched browsers.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#38

Post by sfink »

martinald wrote: post #14

Deary me. There is literally not one mention of any concrete product development or launch that I can see in that post. This reinforces my view that Mozilla doesn't really see itself as an actual product company. It seems to see itself as some sort of quasi NGO focussed on the internet. Which is sort of fine, but I feel they would influence much more of the web with better more popular products rather than policy dis…

Sorry, you're complaining that a year's retrospective post by the CEO doesn't include announcement of product development plans or launches? I would think that... unwise. Unless you're trying to create a cult of personality around your CEO.

She'd either be undercutting her own marketing department, or tying her personal popularity to products/projects. Neither would be a very good idea.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#39

Post by sciurus »

tofuahdude wrote: post #18

Has Mozilla ever made any serious attempt at technical contributions to crypto?

What do you mean by crypto? I think we do lots of interesting work in that area. Heck, our CTO was the editor of the RFC for TLS 1.3.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/01/09/eric-rescorla-wins-...

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla but only ever tangentially on this)

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#40

Post by Retric »

elcritch wrote: post #35
XorNot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.

The newer Firefox quantum has become my goto browser since it was released. Slower than Chrome but less memory hungry. Unfortunately anytime I hear about Firefox it's often "Firefox removes features" or worse "Firefox disables feature for your good". I literally couldn't log into some old wifi router at an airbnb because Firefox refused to let me visit a non-standard port, with no way to override it. It's not adtech…

Does this no longer work? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.security.ports.banned.over...
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