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Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

infosec.press

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Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#571

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.

Is Brave so persona-non-grata? I find that it's a 'don't ask don't tell' because of some ancient politics. If Firefox is becoming suspect, WHAT is left? I found Chrome+adblockers NOT good enough. I like (and hate) Brave's shield, as I never figured out how to use wildcards to whitelist a whole domain / subdomain, it seems per-host. But that Brave shield WORKS. Now people are going back to Chrome? Really?

Brave is just one of the dozen Chromium-based browsers. It's still Chromium.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#572
post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah no, (1) Mozilla was going to be in for a tough go no matter what; I don't think Eich would have fared any better. Nobody knows this for sure. We do know that Eich was fired for political reasons, and not because of his technological direction. This betrays a decision making process that prioritizes political correctness above leadership qualities and technical contributions. > you can't donate to stop your own…

> Firing your CEO for not being sufficiently aligned with the American Democratic Party This is not what happened. He gave money to a cause with the explicit goal of using that money to prevent his coworkers and users from having equal civil rights based on an inalienable trait they were born with. That's not an "American Democratic Party" alignment issue, and if you genuinely believe it is, your dog whistle may be b…

That's just factually wrong. Proposition 8 deprived nobody of any rights. Gay couples could get exactly the same rights as straight couples through a domestic partnership, or get married out of state, as even Wikipedia admits:

> A same-sex marriage lawfully performed in another state or foreign jurisdiction on or after November 5, 2008 was fully recognized in California, but Proposition 8 precluded California from designating these relationships with the word "marriage." These couples were afforded every single one of the legal rights, benefits, and obligations of marriage.

Note the last sentence!

Additionally, proposition 8 was not extreme. It was carried by a majority of California voters, and Barack Obama said at the time: “I personally believe that marriage is between a man and a woman” which is essentially what the proposition established too, though Obama opposed using a ballot proposition to settle the issue.

> He has a right to do that without fear of government retaliation. But Mozilla has a right to fire him for being a bad person because of it.

I never argued that Mozilla doesn't have the right to fire people for their political views. We're just establishing that Eich _was_ fired for his political views, and that that shows Mozilla had become a political organization first, and a technological company second.

In a politically neutral technology company there should be room for people who side with Barack Obama and the majority of Californian voters. The fact that that is not true of Mozilla proves it's not a politically neutral company; it's a political project that inherited a software project they are not particularly interested in maintaining except as a vehicle for further promoting their politics.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#573
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're selected by the board.

Meaning they select each other, because they're all on each other's board.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#574
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…

It would bring users leaving.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#575
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Go to about:processes and kill whichever website's subprocess is using the most memory. Sometimes it's the main process but more commonly it's a specific site. Looking at You, Tube.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#576
post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you referring to his donation to prop 8? Im a younger dev and a bit out of the loop but how would that be anti-miscegenation? Wasn’t that more related to gay marriage?

I used anti-miscegenation as a stand-in, as an example of a ludicrous, indefensible position to hold today, while there are still holdouts who apparently think that gay marriage is some sort of affront to the moral fabric of society.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most adblocker developers throughout history have routinely taken millions of dollars to weaken their adblockers, though. That's why we're all using uBO instead of uB.

Must be hard to resist letting some ads through for life changing money...

They say everyone has a price. Wouldn't you for ten million? A hundred million? A billion dollars? It would be extremely irrational not to. You could always donate 70% of it to Ladybird, and still come out ahead.

You could always secretly continue helping the adblocking mission under a different name. Even if you signed a contract not to.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#578
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

He doesn't have to share all of them, but we have to have enough overlap for him to consider me & my friends enough of a human being to share the same rights that he does.

As another commenter pointed out, there are beliefs heinous enough that will override the quality of optional software that I might choose to use.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#579
post #549
post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current pattern in software is, sadly: 1. Innovate 2. Dominate 3. Enshitify to cash in. You can't skip step #2. Right now, Firefox's market share is a rounding error compared to Chrome. Users are starting to switch away from Chrome because it's currently in step 3 (in spades). That trend will not continue if Firefox beats Chrome to the bottom of the pig-pen. Firefox's current focus on AI is concerning enough, but…

Indeed, Mozilla has a particular bad habit of not listening to customers. It shows even in the UI design. Features like tab pinning and tab groups work in ways that are sub-optimal to how users want to use them. A pinned tab should not be tied to a specific URL. If you go their forums you see a lot complaints, and weird thing is all the nonsensical arguments that their reps advance as to how these features should wor…

Try Zen Browser - it's reskinned Firefox.

Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?

#580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) Firing a CEO because there is an immediate, massive public shaming of them is entirely rational from a business perspective B) This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs?

> This is the hill you want to die on? That being a bigot should be a protected status for CEOs? That is a wildly uncharitable take. I'm not OP, but I believe that nobody , CEOs or otherwise, should be fired for their activities outside of work. That can be political beliefs, but doesn't have to be either. And yes, that means that sometimes someone whose beliefs you find repugnant is going to have a good job. That is…

> That is the price of a free society, and I think it's worth it.

A society free enough to fund hatred, but not one free enough for employers to make decisions based on that?

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