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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#731

Post by nsonha »

spanhandler wrote: post #651
ploxiln wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox. I have used it since it was called Phoenix, and I still use it today, extensively, on macOS, Linux, and Windows. I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. It wasn't supposed to be an "agile" tech company, with slick marketing and UI/UX, making deals to try to get market share. It was supposed to be a non-profit foundation, making an open-source cross-platform browser engine, p…

I'd say if they wanted to do a moon-shot-but-actually-achievable non-browser project against a slow, bloated, closed, locked-in, shitty product that everyone uses anyway (so, like IE back when they took that one), they'd target Google's office suite. As a bonus it could give them the revenue they want, through paid business hosting with official support or something like that. Being an as-good-as-the-competition web…

Office 365 is pretty great I honestly dont get why people keep using gsuit

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#732

Post by staycoolboy »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #724
staycoolboy wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inviting a tidal wave of eye rolls. That depends entirely on how the reader feels about diversity. EDIT: I made a claim that the reader's reaction depends on what the reader is thinking, and six people claimed I was wrong, which means they can read minds. Nice. Critical thinking means removing your emotional bias from analysis.

>Critical thinking means removing your emotional bias from analysis. it also means not immediately dismissing different perspectives. It is self defeating to remove emotional bias when the statement in question is an emotional plea. That's likely the root of all the reservations you're getting in replies.

I never dismissed anything. You literally dismissed ME. sigh

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#733

Post by mark_l_watson »

I came here to ask a question, hopefully one other people would like answered also:

If the funding for the FireFox web browser combined with all Mozilla projects/products, or is there some separation?

I would like to donate just to support development of the FireFox browser. Is that possible?

FireFox containers is a very important feature to me and supporting FireFox and containers is something I would like to support at a higher level than the few random Mozilla donations I have made in the past.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#734

Post by zmix »

ploxiln wrote: post #640
renewiltord wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, this is what it looks like to cater to the privacy/security crowd. They have a picture of ideological purity. They don't actually use your product. Essentially if these were customers you'd want to fire them. People in this business always discover this stuff and then they're always like "Why do they hate me?". The answer is "they never wanted to love you. They want to watch you fall". Like DDG with their favic…

I use Firefox. I have used it since it was called Phoenix, and I still use it today, extensively, on macOS, Linux, and Windows. I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. It wasn't supposed to be an "agile" tech company, with slick marketing and UI/UX, making deals to try to get market share. It was supposed to be a non-profit foundation, making an open-source cross-platform browser engine, p…

Each time somebody mentions, that 'libxslt2' is on an XPath 1.0 level (20 years old, we are at v3.1, currently) and how nice an update would be, the common agreement is the same: "lots of work, which nobody pays for."

Just thinking about all the money they burned through, how great would it have been, to bring XML up to current standards, and to support it well in Firefox. I mention this, because it is important, that we have at least one browser in the market, that understands XML native.

Or what would be if "Ubiquity" would have become an integral part of Firefox? Wow, just wow! I hate these people. They totally ignored the desire of many folks for a WYSIWYG XUL IDE back in the day as well... Instead they made Firefoxy parties, sold T-Shirts and coffee-mugs, implemented 'Persona', 'Hello' and what not! Did you just say, they bought 'Pocket'? Holy moly! I thought it was just a strategic relationship.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#735

Post by grey_earthling »

takluyver wrote: post #313
godshatter wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the tech is being commoditized (WebKit, Chromium) An aside from the discussion at hand: is it possible to repackage Gecko so that it uses the same API calls that WebKit uses, basically translating from WebKit calls to Gecko calls? The problem with WebKit and Chromium is that all new browsers are going that direction and Gecko is being left behind. This isn't good for the web as a whole. A version of the Gecko API t…

That's a mug's game. The best you can do is exactly what Webkit does, because that's what you're trying to imitate. You won't do it 100% perfectly (all software has bugs), so in any direct comparison you come out looking worse.

The behind-the-scenes API stuff may be no better, but the product's user experience can be better, and that can differentiate it from its competitors.

This is how Vivaldi (and I guess every other Chromium-based browser) pitches itself compared to Chrome.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#736

Post by themacguffinman »

bscphil wrote: post #713
est31 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME I agree about the EME point, but for h.264 they did stand up and lost. I can remember h.264 not working in Firefox for a long time while it did work on Chrome. It probably cost them a lot of users, but at some point you have to stop and realize that you are harming yourself more than advancing the cause.

> for h.264 they did stand up and lost. You might argue they lost the battle but won the war. A technological split between traditional media companies and web companies has developed: the former are continuing to pursue MPEG-LA endorsed codecs that enable their industry to keep a stranglehold on the market (i.e. H.264, HEVC, VVC), while the latter have moved to alternatives: a lot of hardware comes with VP9 decoding…

> You might argue they lost the battle but won the war.

The tide of the war is turning, little thanks to them IMO. VP9 was a Google initiative and they were already interested in royalty free codecs because of YouTube. Chrome didn't have to lose the H264 battle to get to work on VP9 and other royalty free technologies. Mozilla didn't do anyone any favors by losing the battle of H264 on its own. It has only made them weaker for future battles.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#737

Post by draw_down »

dblohm7 wrote: post #258

[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at…

OK. But it is possible to critique Mozilla from a place of caring about it, and wanting it to succeed. Agree that pissy comments about "corporate doublespeak" are not that, though.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#738

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Vinnl wrote: post #554
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they did that, and now Firefox market share is almost negligible because it wasn't the default browser on mobile OS's. Firefox has never been a default browser on any OS, mobile or otherwise, and I don't see how that could ever change short of Firefox developing their own OS. Which is in fact something they tried a while back for mobile, and it didn't go so well.

> I don't see how that could ever change short of Firefox developing their own OS. Which is in fact something they tried a while back for mobile, and it didn't go so well. Exactly, and they only did that when it was too late, and it was proven that mobile was going to be big. It'd have required betting on mobile before it was a sure thing, instead of just focusing on the browser they had.

Wikipedia says it was announced in 2011, I'd say that was pretty early.

I don't think Mozilla had any chance in this market. Microsoft couldn't do it, Blackberry couldn't do it, Palm couldn't do it, Nokia... probably could have done it if they hadn't been sabotaged by Steven Elop, but still. After the iPhone came out, everyone else failed except Google, who I'd posit just got lucky with a couple of well-timed carrier deals in key parts of the world.

The only thing Mozilla needed to do was have more foresight than all of the other guys with far more resources... sure, I guess. I don't think the target you're giving them is reasonable.

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#739

Post by cge »

war1025 wrote: post #726
gurumeditations wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Virtue signaling” meaning standing against homophobia. Just say what you mean.

I was going to say "virtue signalling to West coast liberals", but I decided to shorten things up a bit. Mozilla doesn't have any more business interest devoting resources to LGBT causes than Chick-Fil-A has a business interest in funding anti-LGBT causes. The difference is Chick-Fil-A makes money hand over fist and can afford to take its eye off the prize a little. Mozilla doesn't have that same luxury.

What prize and business interest are you referring to? The Mozilla Corporation is a company that must answer to its shareholders, and its only shareholder is the Mozilla Foundation. The Foundation, in turn, has interests determined by its board, and "an internet that includes all the peoples of the earth — where a person’s demographic characteristics do not determine their online access, opportunities, or quality of experience" is one of those interests (added formally to their manifesto in 2018, but likely the guiding idea behind the Eich matter).

You could certainly disagree with the interests of the Mozilla Foundation's board, and could choose to support another organization, like Brave Software, that has different ones, but are you suggesting that a board should not be able to determine the interests, within legal limits, for a non-profit, or that the sole shareholder of a corporation should not be able to control its interests and mission?

Re: Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products

#740

Post by stjohnswarts »

supernovae wrote: post #700
GuB-42 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also hate the privacy argument. Anyone can write super-private software, it just needs to do nothing. Anyone can do better than Google when it comes to privacy, especially if you define "privacy" as "don't do what Google is doing". It is almost a tautology: we first define Google as the opposite of privacy and then market yourself as private by not being Google. In order to drive the point, you add some kind of blo…

Bing results are quite good. But i still didn't buy DDG's privacy stuff

Can you show us where DDG has failed and continues to fail on the privacy front? It seems pretty decent to me.
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