The fact that they even have a CEO is mind boggling to me
Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
61–70 of 851 posts
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#62>> 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 wouldn't bring in their estimate, it'd kill the browser.
Right? This is what all these MBAs and supply chain efficiency experts never get.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#63Has anything positive came out from or about Mozilla in the past few months or years?
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#64A decent chunk of the users who bothered installing an adblock would also be bothered enough to install a FF fork with adblock, so I doubt the revenue increase would be much. As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?
Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted? Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?
LibreWolf has a Firefox Sync option, though it's disabled by default
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#65>> 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…
Yeah, the article's quoting didn't help its case. It doesn't seem fair to quote someone saying [I don't think X is a good idea] as evidence they are about to do X.
That being said, in the original context [0] it does sound a lot more like an option on the table. That original article presents it as the weakest of a list of things they're about to explore - but who knows, maybe the journalist has butchered what was said. It is an ambiguous idea without more context about how close it is to Mozilla trying to make life hard for ad-blockers.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz...
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#66I just noticed last week that Chrome was putting multiple versions of some 4GB AI model [1] on my hard disk that I'd never asked for, so when I upgraded my laptop I took the opportunity to switch to Firefox, and now this. My image of Mozilla as a bastion for user first software just shattered. [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/ai/get-started
last I checked, firefox doesn't download AI models unless you try to use a (clearly-labeled) feature that requires them. you can also manage/uninstall them at about:addons
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/on-device-models
totally uncharitable interpretation of the quote linked here aside, how is providing an interface for using fully local models not user first software?
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does "doubling down on making Firefox better?" mean? What can Mozilla Firefox do to make their 500 million without Google?
They could just make less money and deprioritise non-engineering/engineering-leadership personnel.
In short, they could become a non profit again, with a single mission - build a open source browser with the interests of its users as first priority.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#68It's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#69A decent chunk of the users who bothered installing an adblock would also be bothered enough to install a FF fork with adblock, so I doubt the revenue increase would be much. As for calling it "off-mission": yes, what's even the point of FF if that's the route it goes on?
Do any of these forks have the ability to sync, either with Firefox or something self hosted? Or are they all just basically reskins with a single toggle added or such?
Yes you can actually self-host both Firefox sync server [1] and use Firefox accounts (which also can be self-hosted [2] and someone put something simpler in docker image [3]). And those can be used even with Firefox itself not only the forks.
[1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs
[2] https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/devel...
Re: Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
#70This Mozilla fiasco has convinced me that being a nonprofit isn't enough. We need a web browser that is actively hostile towards corporations and surveillance capitalism.
Why hasn't the anti-corporate fiasco (not a single successful example) convinced you that it's not enough?