The name is strange. They had a fox and a bird, used fire and thunder. The logical next would be Earthworm or watervole.
Spacemonkey.
Seamonkey exists.
Mozilla Thunderbolt
341–350 of 366 posts
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#342Wow HN really does have a problem with commenting on anything to do with Mozilla. Anyway, awesome to see this from the team inside Mozilla — hope this can become a new revenue stream over the long term. Really excited to see some tight integration with Firefox and Thunderbird in the future. People are going to hate this, but if someday Mozilla expands to being a productivity suite I’d be pretty happy to give them my…
Mozilla has shown again and again that they care more about their politics than they do about what their customers want.
They resently released an updated Mascot that is "non-binary and goes by they/them". They'd rather just keep shoving their politics down their customers throats than actually provide them what they want.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#343Addressing the usual few complaints folks always bring up: * This is from the separate independent team that works on Thunderbird, not Firefox, so there isn't any resource contention happening there * Thunderbird is revenue positive, and this potentially gives that team another revenue stream to be even more self-sustaining through charging companies * Businesses definitely want to control the AI they're using (espec…
It goes to show that Mozilla(s) could, if they really wanted, restructure Mozilla Corporation / Foundation. (edit - to allow users to fund Firefox, allowing us to better sleep at night, and to align our incentives)
It's certainly a feel good idea but the math doesn't math. Even a best case scenario donation drive would never be able to compete with search licensing revenue.
Right now if you want to look at the best case scenario, it's probably wikipedia. Wikipedia is the biggest online donation drive that exists and they get 18% of the revenue that Mozilla gets from search licensing on approximately 4,400% more global traffic. And it's a mature campaign that's been an annual tradition for decades.
I'd rather have the donation option than not have it but it has to be understood primarily as something that's just there to make users feel good. The reason they're structured the way they are is to access the search licensing revenue that gets them income they would never be able to get from just donation drives.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#344Wow HN really does have a problem with commenting on anything to do with Mozilla. Anyway, awesome to see this from the team inside Mozilla — hope this can become a new revenue stream over the long term. Really excited to see some tight integration with Firefox and Thunderbird in the future. People are going to hate this, but if someday Mozilla expands to being a productivity suite I’d be pretty happy to give them my…
Mozilla has shown again and again that they care more about their politics than they do about what their customers want. They resently released an updated Mascot that is "non-binary and goes by they/them". They'd rather just keep shoving their politics down their customers throats than actually provide them what they want.
I think they're just taking the Sesame Street approach.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mozilla could stop doing everything else and slow burn their existing $1B into developer salaries over the next decade. They are actively choosing not to.
And then what? Just go bankrupt after a decade? That's entirely unsustainable.
Even worse, they would go bankrupt after like 2-3 years. And almost no serious non-profit has an endowment that can fund them in perpetuity. They are almost always firewalls that buy time/safety in response to crises (e.g. financial crisis or covid), meant to run in parallel with ongoing revenue that comes in regularly.
It's great if you can get your endowment so big you never have to worry about revenue but outside of, say, elite universities or middle eastern sovereign wealth funds that rarely happens.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then what? Just go bankrupt after a decade? That's entirely unsustainable.
1. It's unfair to assume that their primary funding source stops in one scenario and not in the other. 2. 1 billion dollars is a lot of money. Even the interest off it is huge. 3. 10 years is a very long time in tech. 4. I would greatly prefer the money Mozilla earned due to Firefox being a thing was put into developing Firefox, yes. The current Mozilla organization seems to be a mechanism for providing third homes f…
>1. It's unfair to assume that their primary funding source stops in one scenario and not in the other.
Wait, what? I thought your whole premise from one comment ago was that they "stop doing everything" and exclusively slow burn away their endowment. They're dead by 2029 if they do that.
If they don't do that, then you're just talking about how they currently operate.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a crazy crowded space. Any entry into this field looks like a "me too" product driven by FOMO instead of being motivated by (a) serving customer needs, (b) serving social needs, or (c) making money. (All of which are fine with me) It will get 0.5% market share -- and I'm supposed to get excited? If you lived in New York City you might think there are Duane Reades coast-to-coast but there are not. If you are base…
> Really the EU needs to apologize for those damned cookie popups and invest in a privacy-first browser. You clearly misunderstand when they are required and how they are legally required to work, the key points (as I take them) that are often misunderstood are: * They are not about cookies, but any persistent identifier * If a identifier is needed for your core functionality (ads/tracking is not a core functionality…
Frankly I feel having to clear modal dialogs is like getting a lobotomy. I don’t ever want to see one. I don’t want to ever be asked “click on the traffic lights”. I don’t want to have to clear 1, 2, 3 or 4 more modals asking for my email address on a blog.
I want “respect DNT or go to jail”
GDPR normalized enshittification, turned it from something that was unambiguously evil to something that was required, virtuous even.
I could care less personally if you track me or not but if you pop up a meaningless distraction in my face there is no limit on how much I want to hurt you and blowing our your kpis and wrecking your analytics by disabling your tracking it is the least I can do. We need to resist the Google Economy that wants to divert 99% of your attention to worthless trash.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. It's unfair to assume that their primary funding source stops in one scenario and not in the other. 2. 1 billion dollars is a lot of money. Even the interest off it is huge. 3. 10 years is a very long time in tech. 4. I would greatly prefer the money Mozilla earned due to Firefox being a thing was put into developing Firefox, yes. The current Mozilla organization seems to be a mechanism for providing third homes f…
>1. It's unfair to assume that their primary funding source stops in one scenario and not in the other. Wait, what? I thought your whole premise from one comment ago was that they "stop doing everything" and exclusively slow burn away their endowment. They're dead by 2029 if they do that. If they don't do that, then you're just talking about how they currently operate.
The money paid by Google so Chrome does not look like a monopoly is earned by Firefox and specifically for Firefox to exists as a viable-enough competitor. If anything, maintaining Firefox properly is the branch that earns that money.
Mozilla should stop doing all these side quests -- look at their track record! -- and they should get rid of the fat executive layer. They should transparently report what they're using their money, instead of saying they burn hundreds of millions of dollars in "software development" while firing the Servo developers.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
It goes to show that Mozilla(s) could, if they really wanted, restructure Mozilla Corporation / Foundation. (edit - to allow users to fund Firefox, allowing us to better sleep at night, and to align our incentives)
It's certainly a feel good idea but the math doesn't math. Even a best case scenario donation drive would never be able to compete with search licensing revenue. Right now if you want to look at the best case scenario, it's probably wikipedia. Wikipedia is the biggest online donation drive that exists and they get 18% of the revenue that Mozilla gets from search licensing on approximately 4,400% more global traffic.…
I agree that switching over to an exclusively grassroots sponsorship level would be impossible.
But there may be hybrid options available.
Purely conjecture. Does the Google money come with some kind of funding non-compete? If not, why not open up other funding streams. If it does, that's worrying.
The argument has always been "the org structure doesn't support donations" but the org structure is just a proxy for the intentions of the org.
Re: Mozilla Thunderbolt
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Firefox is the only thing that lends Mozilla any credibility.
No. Thunderbird has its own merits and they work without Firefox. Mozilla has credibilities in e-mail because of Thunderbird. This topic has 0 relations to Firefox.
>Thunderbird has its own merits and they work without Firefox.
Fair enough, I guess. I stand corrected.