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Leaving Mozilla

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Re: Leaving Mozilla

#331

Post by account42 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #141
MatejKafka wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you expect Mozilla to make enough money from just Firefox to survive if Google ever decides to stop paying them for being the default search engine?

> make enough money from just Firefox According to 2025 filings, 86%+ of revenue came from the Google deal. Google pays Mozilla because of the browser. How would shifting focus to the browser make that worse?

Seeing as google keeps paying them more and more even as they shift away from improving the browser, you have to reevaluate what they are really being paid for.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#332

Post by account42 »

user3939382 wrote: post #37

If Mozilla believed in the values it espoused, Librewolf wouldn’t exist. It would just be called Firefox. One of the first betrayals was putting ads in their new tab page, the forced AI comes as a Mozilla tradition now of user respect as marketing only. At the same time it simply may not be a viable business. Firefox was popular originally because Chrome didn’t exist and Internet Explorer especially 6 back was awful.…

Does it have to be a viable business though? It's essential infrastructure.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#333

Post by aboardRat4 »

gsich wrote: post #292
crote wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's gatekeeping. Don't be surprised when your pet project slowly dies because potential new contributors choose to join less hostile communities instead.

Gatekeeping is not always bad.

Gatekeeping is only good when there are no easier options.

When IRC is the only instant messaging system, and it has an entry barrier, clever people will pass this barrier, and stupid people will not.

But when there are easier alternatives, clever people won't bother.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#334

Post by account42 »

dash2 wrote: post #110

"We shouldn't try to be like the big browsers because that's not what our Community wants." This is just a path to irrelevance. Firefox had the ambition to be the default browser, what Chrome is now! It's a shame if they're going to spiral off into their niche.

That's a weird claim to make considering how trying to be just like Chrome has lead to their current market share.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#335

Post by account42 »

derf_ wrote: post #142
lawgimenez wrote: post #19

I think Mozilla started getting nuts the day they ventured with Firefox OS. To this day, I am still kind of confused with that move.

> To this day, I am still kind of confused with that move. I do not think that this was that confusing. People [1] looked around at the beginning of the 2010's and saw 1) Mobile usage was growing exponentially and desktop was... not [2]. 2) Every mobile OS shipped their own browser by default, or even went so far as to prevent other browsers from being used at all (iOS) [3]. 3) Because Android and iOS both had non-tr…

> 3) Because Android and iOS both had non-trivial marketshare, neither could be called a "monopoly" so there was no way to use anti-trust law to get Firefox on devices as was done with Windows (not that this would have been a compelling strategy even if it were possible).

I don't think its true that there was no way but rather there was no will.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#336

Post by account42 »

palata wrote: post #268

I like that take. There is a tendency in the software world to dream about becoming the BigTech we all hate. I believe that the people who want Firefox want it because it's different, just like the people who want Linux want it because it is different. And similarly in Linux, many people keep explaining how Linux should look more like Windows if it wants the year of the Linux Desktop. But I wouldn't be on Linux if I…

There is also the fact that even if FF was changed into being exactly like Chrome it would not get much of its market share as Google still has more ways to push it onto people. So to compete FF needs to actually provide real advantages and with the much smaller budget the only way it can do that is by competing with features that Google can't or doesn't want to compete in.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#337

Post by account42 »

delfugal wrote: post #226

It's easy to leave a place. Harder to stay and fix the things you don't like. How many people regret leaving the place they invested 12+ years, rather than fighting back while in a position to do so? If you're burned out, no longer fun, we all get it. But don't leave your investment into a product just because some new direction took over unless you plan to kick their backside.

On the other hand the burnt cost fallacy is probably much more common.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#338

Post by ocdtrekkie »

account42 wrote: post #329
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensions are the primary threat to your security today. Nothing else comes close. Organizations are not basically competent if they are not restricting or blocking extensions, and you should not have more than one to three very trusted extensions in your browser. I'd argue the case for eliminating them in favor of in house code is significant. As a reminder: Extensions execute with post-decryption access to the web…

Websites themselves are a much larger threat than extensions - should your ideal browser remove support for them as well?

This is incredibly untrue. Many extensions can see and modify everything you see on any other site. Installing a browser extension is best described as installing a rootkit in your browser.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#339

Post by godelski »

thisislife2 wrote: post #320
godelski wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they had listened to their users It seems to me like they are. A lot of people actually use those AI features. Particularly translate. The other I like is semantic search. Those are genuinely useful things. When people are complaining about AI it seems vague and like they're complaining about something else not related to Firefox. What is it, the optional chatbot side window? I agree that's annoying, but it's pr…

Thank you for engaging politely and reasonably in discussing this. My complaint wasn't about AI ... it is about force-bundling whatever this-will-make-us-money-feature or we-think-its-a-great-feature idea into the browser without giving the user any real choice (or control) in the matter. I am not against Firefox management exploring alternate revenue streams or even "innovative" feature ideas. In fact, mostly everyo…

  > Do you agree with me that this approach is better, as it would not only increase trust in Firefox but also reduce complaints?
I agree the approach is better but doesn't work in reality. I mean how many people actually end up donating to Mozilla to help keep them out of the grips of Google? The better approach is that a small set of users donate a little bit each year and that accumulates to millions of dollars. Personally, I do it through my work because my employer does donation matching

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#340

Post by thisislife2 »

godelski wrote: post #339
thisislife2 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for engaging politely and reasonably in discussing this. My complaint wasn't about AI ... it is about force-bundling whatever this-will-make-us-money-feature or we-think-its-a-great-feature idea into the browser without giving the user any real choice (or control) in the matter. I am not against Firefox management exploring alternate revenue streams or even "innovative" feature ideas. In fact, mostly everyo…

> Do you agree with me that this approach is better, as it would not only increase trust in Firefox but also reduce complaints? I agree the approach is better but doesn't work in reality. I mean how many people actually end up donating to Mozilla to help keep them out of the grips of Google? The better approach is that a small set of users donate a little bit each year and that accumulates to millions of dollars. Per…

It is fair to say that the approach I have suggested wouldn't generate as much revenue as force-bundling something to every user of Firefox. But it would generate revenue. Diversification is really possible because if you offer some monetisation component that a user voluntarily opts into, you can experiment with a lot of such things that would otherwise be controversial. (For example, Firefox could tie-up with some ad company that uses some Mozilla tech like "privacy-preserving ad-measurement" that offers to share revenue with the user if they allow ads on the "partner" sites they visit - some % of users would be willing to try it out to make money and / or to support Firefox).

Of course, before they do all that, they should really divert some of the 100's of millions of dollars they have into making a Firefox actually better - faster and less resource consuming. Developers have long complained that despite the money, 20+ years of development, the codebase isn't modular and Gecko still isn't available as a stand-alone module that could be used in other application development or to even make other browsers.

Those working for Mozilla / Firefox need to understand that they have lost substantial trust with their users for some genuine reasons (and not just bad PR from their competitors), and that is one of the major reason why their user-base is dwindling. The way to fix that is to first repair that trust. Reinforce the values that Firefox marketed to its users.

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