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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#521

Post by renewiltord »

ryandrake wrote: post #469
mrtksn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come. Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and…

> People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. Yes, No, Yes? I don't demand constant updates. I don't want constant updates. Usually when a company updates software it becomes worse. I am happy with the initial version of 90% of the software I use, and all I want is bug fixes and security updates.

I suspect then it doesn't matter whether Mozilla kills itself or not. You should be fine with the current release of Firefox. Maybe you'd lose the installer, so all you have to do is put it somewhere safe and you're good.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#522

Post by nateglims »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #308
CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #42

Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, I guess I can see the temptation to try to regain it by reaching out to others, but doing that at the expense of your core is a terrible business strategy. It's not like those users are all that sticky, they're leaving as Mozilla pisses them off, and likely Mozilla are going to be left wi…

> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience. Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon. > They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak, To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would st…

> To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.

Their peak in share was also pre-chrome. They've basically been losing the battle slowly for over a decade.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#523

Post by shaky-carrousel »

SoftTalker wrote: post #438
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not correct. Linux is free, almost all open source is, many projects, websites are done out of passion. I contribute to open source projects and nobody "gave me something", as I did it because I wanted to make it better. Like me, there are many others. Nobody is "the product" there. What the saying you are misrepresenting means is "carefully check free things as you may be the product". Not "free things cannot…

Linux development is paid for either directly or in-kind by companies including Red Hat, IBM, Canonical, Oracle, and others. It's free to use and mostly open source but if it existed only on passion it would be something far less than it actually is. People need to eat and have a roof over their heads.

Those companies pay the improvements they want for their usage case, which is usually far removed from what normal users want. I don't really need support for thousands of CPUs and terabytes of RAM.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#524

Post by unglaublich »

nialv7 wrote: post #81
lxgr wrote: post #41

>> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission. > It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos ”. Yes, that does seem like a pretty uncharitable interpretation of that quote. I read it as "we won't do it, even though it would bring in $150M US…

The interpretation is not the problem. Whether he will do it, is actually secondary to the fact that he thinks cutting adblock can bringing in money. No, it will just kill the browser. The fact he thinks otherwise tells me how out of touch he is.

Who selects these CEOs? It almost seems like a caste system at this point. You can be a complete clown, but it's the best we have in our small caste so you're the one.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#525

Post by lukeschlather »

arnaudsm wrote: post #402
vanviegen wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an elephant in the room: why is maintaining a web browser costing $400M/y? Is that actually the case though? I find it hard to believe that Mozilla has anywhere close to 1500 senior developers working on just Firefox. My guess is that the bulk of that money is spent on unrelated adventures and overhead.

Google Chrome is likely around $400M, while Mozilla's core browser team is around $200M but are technologically far behind. Hard to find precise numbers, it's just an order of magnitude estimate

In what sense is Mozilla behind? Chrome is an advertising delivery platform, they have fundamentally different goals and that $400M they spend on Chrome is not mostly going to technology that I want in my browser, that's the point. Just because Chrome builds telemetry features doesn't mean Mozilla needs them too.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#526

Post by sltkr »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #468
miroljub wrote: post #457

The day Mozilla fired Brendan Eich for political reasons, Firefox died. It just took a while for everyone to realise that. That was when they collectively decided that other things are more important to them than the quality and usability of Firefox. The new CEO is just the final nail in their coffin.

I don't know, if the CEO of some software I used suddenly came out as anti-miscegenation, and started donating money to the cause, I'd stop using the software until the CEO was fired too.

So you agree: for you, it's more important that the Mozilla CEO shares your political views, than that Mozilla makes a quality product.

That's exactly what the parent post is talking about. When Mozilla started prioritizing political correctness over software quality, software quality predictably declined. That's why they are struggling now: they reduced their user base to the tiny group of political extremists that will put up with an inferior product for the sake of political signaling.

By the way, Eich didn't “come out” as anything. His private donation (a mere $1000) was exposed by people who wanted to cancel him for his political views. It wasn't Eich who forced the issue, it was his political opponents, who do not tolerate any viewpoint diversity. Eich's views weren't even fringe or extreme at the time: Proposition 8 passed with support from the majority of Californian voters.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#527

Post by mghackerlady »

PaulHoule wrote: post #483
miroljub wrote: post #457

The day Mozilla fired Brendan Eich for political reasons, Firefox died. It just took a while for everyone to realise that. That was when they collectively decided that other things are more important to them than the quality and usability of Firefox. The new CEO is just the final nail in their coffin.

I'd say it's complicated. If you are running a company in San Francisco I think you want to be sensitive to the culture there. That cause of gay marriage that he opposed was not one of these radicalism for the sake of radicalism queer positions you see on Twitter-dervied platforms but something mainstream at the root. I think of how on The Bulwark podcasts you hear gay people with a conservative but never-Trump viewp…

I wish there was anyone in Minneapolis or MN anymore. IBM left, crays been gone forever, and what's left is basically just medtech

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#528

Post by prmph »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #453
JoeJonathan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.

There are a few reasons: I haven't compared it in years, but Firefox's bookmark sync is better than Google's, it is a reason why I have stuck with it. I think Firefox manages hundreds of tabs better than Chrome does as far as memory usage goes. I haven't used Chrome seriously in years, but people continue to complain about how RAM hungry Chrome is so I assume it is still an issue. But Mozilla has been doing odd thing…

It's only Firefox that is never satiated with however much memory I throw at it. Any time my machine slows, the solution is to kill Firefox. Not sure what exactly they are doing wrong.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#529

Post by matheusmoreira »

agumonkey wrote: post #230
JoeJonathan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.

and funnily enough uBO author didn't want any money even though he's making our lives a lot better

I want to take this opportunity to thank Raymond Hill for his enormous gift to humanity. I've done this many times over the years, and it's always worth the time to do it again.

Thank you, gorhill! And thanks to all the people maintaining it and all the filter lists!

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#530

Post by PaulHoule »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #516
JoeJonathan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.

Same. Without uBlock Origin I'll drop Firefox. There are very few reasons to put up with its "niche browser that nobody tests" status if they won't even allow me to block ads. They should just give up and end Firefox development already if they're going down that route.

I'm doing as much to keep Firefox alive as anybody.

Wherever I've worked as a dev in a decade I've always developed Firefox-first and let the testers turn up Chrome issues. So the products that I am involved with just work with Firefox all the time.

I know there are a lot of people like me, people who are passionate and engaged with technology but have problems with "big tech" and if they turn people like me away than it really will be a "niche browser that nobody tests"

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