Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#91

Post by Nextgrid » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 8:40 AM UTC

lolrepeatlol wrote: post #78

Nextgrid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of media heavy applications such as video conferencing software, do websites explicitly do specific things to “support” Firefox beyond complying with the specs? > many ads get blocked because those ads bundle tracking code within them uBlock filter lists can provide fallback shims that would be loaded in place of ad scripts to deal with this exact problem. The shim implements a neutered version of the origina…

> Outside of media heavy applications such as video conferencing software, do websites explicitly do specific things to “support” Firefox beyond complying with the specs? You'd be surprised. Apple Business Manager does not support Firefox, for example. > uBlock filter lists can provide fallback shims that would be loaded in place of ad scripts to deal with this exact problem. The shim implements a neutered version of…

> My point was that ads were being accidentally blocked and that websites wouldn't get their ad revenue.

Blocking ads would be the point - ads are malware.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#92

Post by john-aj » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 9:06 AM UTC

kovac wrote: post #50

Can't we just get together and build an opensource browser? Considering how we are building very complex things without these executives, middle managers and all the corporate bs. It could be our gift to the next generation of engineers like we inherited Linux and give them a fighting chance.

Yeah, it is pretty incredible how there can be multiple free/open-source operating system kernels, not controlled by corporations, but hardly a single web browser engine like that. Are web browsers really that complex?

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#93

Post by thiht » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 10:19 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #31

XorNot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's weirder is Firefox should be rising in popularity. The world in general has been getting more interested in privacy and data breaches and it's the only modern unaffiliated browser that doesn't have an advertising and telemetry motivation.

Pocket comes enabled by default and they do plenty of telemetry. It's 10,000x better than Chrome's use of the 2 but it's not nonexistent.

Can we just finally let it go with Pocket? Who cares? Just disable it if you care.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#94

Post by anshorei » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 10:21 AM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #44

paulryanrogers wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which did you move to? Is their compensation more democratic?

On my phone, I moved from Firefox to Brave. The overall experience is much better. I don't know about democratic compensation, but I don't regularly hear about Brave making political statements or picking sides, which matters to me. I still get ads blocked, and I experience far fewer issues.

The only issue I have with Brave (and any other Chromium-based browsers) is the memory consumption, it's definitely worse than Firefox on that front. But at least they're looking for ways to improve their browser like they've done with their ad system, integrated Tor and IPFS.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#95

Post by majewsky » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

CodeGlitch wrote: post #89

craftinator wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave was good until they really started pushing their ad/cryptocurrency stuff. It's still okay in technical terms (they subvert a lot of telemetry, have good performance), but it just FEELS icky now.

Brave user here. You can turn all the crypto stuff off and ignore it. If that's the way Brave is funded then I really don't mind them pursing that route. It's better than depending on Google at least.

If there is a feature that you can opt of out, but which they rely on for funding, how can you be sure that the opt-out will stick around?

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#96

Post by majewsky » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 11:30 AM UTC

losvedir wrote: post #13

Oof, not even a perfunctory nod to a "very difficult decision to layoff some extremely talented individuals, in order to keep mozilla sustainable in the long term" or something to that effect? Anyway, I get the sense that they're focusing on UX related to browser privacy. Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium and provide a compelling application around it (a la Brave and all those browsers) at this point?…

> Any reason they shouldn't just switch to Chromium

The most likely reason that Google continues to pay them for being the default engine, is that Google wants to be able to point at Firefox like "see, we're not a monopoly, there's this other browser as well". If Firefox were just a Chromium frontend, that argument would be weaker, so I could imagine Google tying their payments to Firefox being technologically separate from Chrome.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#97

Post by zamadatix » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

tofuahdude wrote: post #18

Has Mozilla ever made any serious attempt at technical contributions to crypto?

FF was also pretty involved with DoH and ESNI (now ECH).

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#98

Post by rivn » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

CodeGlitch wrote: post #90

rivn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with chromium/ungoogled chromium/maybe other derivatives, you can put multiple browser profiles to ~/.config/chromium and add --profile-directory="xxx" to exec path

Braver user here: I can add multiple profiles through the GUI - which I use to separate my Google usage from my general internet usage. Is this not supported by base Chromimum?

I might have missed it, but I don't think it was back when I was looking for equivalent of Firefox's `-p` command line arg a few years ago. I did however end up setting up a dedicated launcher for every Firefox profile as well instead of using `-p`

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#99

Post by robin21 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:59 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #48

8458e112e7b2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, they do have their other priorities figured out also: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).

I really hate how people just read the title of this post, got offended, and just constantly link it to say "See guys? Mozilla wants to censor you!" when that's not what the actual post is saying. It is almost guaranteed that whenever someone posts anything Mozilla-related, people bring this up, possibly with an invitation to switch to Brave or something. The article is specifically trying to criticize social media w…

74MM ppl voted for someone who used to be President and is now permanently banned from all social media platforms. This article agrees with that. If you were one of those people, you would not want to associate with this company.

Re: Reflections on One Year as the CEO of Mozilla

#100

Post by no-s » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #63

8458e112e7b2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, they do have their other priorities figured out also: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d... I am actually glad that they came out and put that in black and white. Got me to move to another browser. (I do miss Firefox's multi-container tabs and account containers however but I will survive).

It was clear when they forced Brendan Eich out for having a mainstream political opinion.

> It was clear when they forced Brendan Eich out for having a mainstream political opinion.

That's when I stopped using Firefox. It wasn't that Eich's opinion was mainstream. He kept it to himself and never imposed it on anyone at Mozilla. Free Software stands on Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Conscience, Freedom of Inquiry, and Freedom of Expression. Mozilla developers and outsiders conducted a propaganda campaign to justify a witch hunt, showing their disdain for honest discussion and respect for community members of different backgrounds. No one was allowed to question the premise that supporters of Prop 8 on religious grounds were automatically dishonest bigots and unworthy of associating with Mozilla.

Instead of persuasion, Prop 8 detractors preferred vitriol, revenge, and punishment. The silencing of dissent, the witch hunt to out prop 8 supporters for vilification - the things done in the name of social justice were far worse in social consequences than Prop 8 could have ever been, and we are the worse for it.