331–340 of 1001 posts
While I really hate to suggest this, the best way to make money might be to sell space on newly opened tabs (with an option to turn off ads for something reasonable like USD$24.95 per year).
[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…
First, the plague of Debian and the logjam breakers. Mozilla, like Debian, has many technical users with loud opinions and struggles to reach consensus. Debian suffers from this problem because it comes to consensus oh so very slowly - multiple competing packaging formats exist and hurt the community for decades. But, Mozilla has the worst result - "logjam breaker" executives come in, and, rather than pushing the technical leadership to make a reasonable technical decision based on the weighed factors, they break the logjam by encouraging the technical leaders to blindly imitate the competition. This problem is intractable - giving in to the Debianers means being mired in debate forever and making no or extremely slow progress; giving in to the suits means failing to innovate, becoming a clone of your competition, and eventually being forgotten. A true solution requires real technical leadership, something that's sorely lacking at Mozilla, or a different user base, which is not a possibility at Mozilla.
Second, the plague of Wikimedia. Non-technical leadership comes to dominate decisions about how to spending incoming donations from successful technical projects. Such leadership is often interested in hoping from the board of one non-profit to another. Much like Googlers are always interested in content for their next promotion form, such non profit executives are interested in bragging about the great projects they kicked off the ground. The results is a slew of failed and cancelled projects while the core project languishes.
Finally, the plague of social justice run amok. Most companies right now are on social justice kick and for the last few years. That's good; racism is bad, and tech could be a bit more welcoming. However, most companies understand where the lines are drawn. For example, Google executives don't release statements after employees die trashing the employee because of an underlying difference in personality and/or political views. Google also doesn't fire executives because of their political views or previous donations, when held privately, particularly when those political views are relatively common. Such actions have a chilling effect on recruitment and leads to technical talent that might otherwise have been interested in Mozilla (like myself) to permanently write it off.
I don't hold Mozilla to higher standards and I'm not mad about double speak. I'm mad that Mozilla is nasty, that is breaks well established liberal norms regarding political freedom, that it's executives waste my donations on resume lines for their next gig, and that it's technical leadership seems incapable of making balanced decisions other than imitation Google. But most of all, I'm mad that nobody at Mozilla can even see the problem (yourself included). Mozilla is deeply sick and needs to diagnose its own problems correctly, in order to begin remediating them. Until then, I'll regard it as a dying corporation and I'll look forward to the day when Mozilla finally dies and we can get started on the project of building a free web again by forking Chromium.
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…
To differentiate, one idea is that Firefox create optional browser extensions to support local mesh networking over wifi or bluetooth and a container or VM for hosting servers as a safer and more portable alternative to native appstores. This would represent a step back from the FirefoxOS notion, but a step forward from the browser, and could drive interesting proximity applications as well as gaming, which could lead to new users and properly challenge the status quo.
Rationale: Mobile device vendors are too heavily wed to the cellular carriers and related regulatory inertia to do anything here. In particular, carriers are also major distribution channels for a lot of mobile devices, creating a resistance to anything but carrier-enabled mobile-data as a frontline topology.
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A common refrain, but is anything but obvious. Focusing on the browser could be a losing strategy. I'd argue it probably is. The trajectory is terrible: the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) and the market share picture is bleak. The opportunity cost is huge: maintaining a web engine, one which basically just tries to keep up with the others put out by Google et al, takes armies of people that could perha…
Counterpoint: Apple when Jobs came back. Sometimes the answer to a company which is trying too many things at random is to drastically reduce the dispersion of effort, and focus ruthlessly. It's very hard to do psychologically, though. IMO Mozilla would probably be better served, business-wise, as being "the customizable Chrome". It would be a much smaller business (i.e. less IP under development), but it could be pr…
Mozilla's thesis is about unlocking the potential of the Internet and ensuring it remains a public resource. Its purpose for existing is not about tree style tabs or ad blockers. But this makes for a tough process of determining how to foster innovative products since the mission is so broad.
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…
I'm pretty ignorant about how they monetize Firefox, but isn't it pretty hard? The attempts I (think I) know of are selling the search box, putting some ads on the home/start page, and that mr. robot ad thing. I'm skeptical FF alone could fund Mozilla's mission to build an open, free web, and doubly skeptical when you consider its adversaries (Apple, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft, heavy hitters for sure).
What does this line mean?
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Yes, it is a losing strategy because this is a rearguard action. There are only losing strategies, nothing will turn Mozilla around to be some kind of powerhouse besides what it already is. And that's fine . It doesn't need to be the next singing, dancing platform with bells and whistles. It's a tool. It should do one thing and do that one thing well. FireFox is not a failing product, it is the only product they have…
I loved Firefox Send and really hope they can find a way to address the malware problem [1]. It was the only large file sharing service I fully trusted both because of the encrypted zero-knowledge aspect of the system and the organization behind it; I used it several times a month personally and told others about it. To me it was a "win" under the Mozilla/FF brand. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-suspends-f…
[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…
People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favicon service (which HN billed as some sort of nefarious tracker).
Vanta bypassed all this by not playing to the Security Puffery crowd. Usually a quick way to do that is to require money because the Security/Privacy Puffery crowd doesn't have any.
I'm a happy Firefox and Chrome user. Honestly, it's been working fine for me.
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Just get Google to fund them, i’m sure they will be glad to write a big cheque.
Apparently, that wasn't sufficient.
Foundations often have trusts. Many of the donations go into the trust and most of your operating expenses (perhaps not including fund raising) come out of the interest payments, not the principle.
I was so disappointed when I discovered Mozilla was spending it as fast as it comes in. There will never be a windfall like the Google donation again.