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State of Mozilla

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Re: State of Mozilla

#91

Post by safety1st »

madeofpalk wrote: post #29
margorczynski wrote: post #8

It's good that Mozilla is still there to provide an alternative to the proprietary browsers and is fighting for open Internet standards. But the management direction and the aggressive political stance it took in the last years is not really good for the project. Also big kudos for Rust, been playing around with it and it really is a great improvement over archaic languages like C or C++.

> It's good that Mozilla is still there to provide an alternative to the proprietary browsers and is fighting for open Internet standards > aggressive political stance These two statements are at odds with each other. Mozilla whole purpose is inherently political.

While they were always political, somewhere along the way Mozilla's politics changed. They stopped being an organization dedicated to furthering the cause of free software, and instead dedicated themselves to promoting radical left wing political causes. For example here's the mission statement for riseup.net, which Mozilla gives money to: https://riseup.net/en/about-us

> Riseup’s Purpose

> We value, support, and engage in struggles for human liberation, the ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability.

> We organize on the basis of autonomy, mutual aid, resource sharing, participatory knowledge, social advocacy, anti-oppression work

> We empower organizations and individuals to use technology in struggles for liberation

> Meet the Collective

> Cedar Waxwing is a revolutionary hacker and critic of late capitalism. Although deeply skeptical of technology, Waxwing has spent much of his life in a quixotic attempt to use technology for liberation.

> Colibrí Jacobina doesn’t hesitate to use her abilities and radical spirit to fight rich people, men, meat eaters, fascists, monogamy, and the police.

...And so on.

When you look at what this group actually does it's basically a glorified mail host for Queer, Feminist, Anarchist, Socialist, Labor, Unions etc. mailing lists: https://lists.riseup.net/www/

Now I mean I'm not necessarily against all of these causes but WTF is Mozilla doing bankrolling the "fight against monogamy and meat eaters" or "Anarchist and Socialist" groups? They have lost the plot.

This shift of focus has occurred during the reign of a CEO who is a lawyer and has boosted her own comp to $7.5M annually of course, what a true revolutionary socialist she is!

Re: State of Mozilla

#92

Post by tristan957 »

dotancohen wrote: post #25
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also laying off rank-and-file worker to save costs.

Also, purge technical CEO for political reasons then replace him with MBA trophy politically correct CEO that takes home four times the pay while laying off engineers.

Do people forget Mitchell Baker has been a Mozilla employee for decades?

Re: State of Mozilla

#93

Post by bee_rider »

shinryuu wrote: post #36

As usual, you see a lot of hate against Mozilla's management team on HN. It makes me wonder, the people who hold these views, do they begrudingly use firefox? Do they use a different browser?

It is still the least bad option.

There are two complaints I see in this thread: they are being distracted by social justice stuff, and they are overpaid and wasting money they desperately need for technical matters.

IMO the former is not really all that consequential to most people. If you are just a user, you don’t have to abide by any of their contributor guidelines.

The money thing seems troubling, though.

It would be preferable if the web wasn’t so over complicated that it required a multi-billion dollar company to make a browser.

Re: State of Mozilla

#94

Post by KingOfCoders »

tempest_ wrote: post #18
KingOfCoders wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use FF on desktop and mobile (although FF on mobile crashes on me, sometimes does not refresh etc.- Android)

So do I, but I am here with you on hacker news and this site is not a representative sample at all. I have never had mobile FF crash on me, largely been a good experience.

Most of the problems I have are that when opening a new tab, FF does not show the content. I need to copy paste the url to another tab, and then it works.

Re: State of Mozilla

#95

Post by KingOfCoders »

NlightNFotis wrote: post #68
KingOfCoders wrote: post #2

(Writing from FF) $7bn. 2.66% market share. "Expanding our Board to create the internet we want" Sure, as long as the music is playing. [Edit] Looks like the music will stop earlier than suspected, https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2023/11/firefox-brink/

Where did you source the $7bn value from? I have trouble reconciling this with the information present on the financial statement. They have net assets of $1.2bn, and revenue for the year was $593mn minus $425mn for expenses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

Income $5bn from 2015 to 2020 + 2021 ($585M),2022 ($828M),2023.

Without the $1bn assets it's $6.000.000.000 spent on ~3% market share, down from 39% in 2009.

Re: State of Mozilla

#96

Post by majoe »

shinryuu wrote: post #77
probably_wrong wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on record saying that I think Mozilla's management does not care about Firefox and are milking it to position Mozilla as some kind of big "Internet freedom" player. I also use Firefox, and I plan to keep using it while waiting for the current managers to get replaced by someone who actually understands that you need a strong browser to even have a place at the table.

I'm curious, what would caring about Firefox look like to you? They've released around 12 new versions of Firefox during 2023. The side projects that some complains about I to some respect think is a good thing as it can help to diversify revenue sources. The only way Firefox is ever going to be a cashcow is how it is a cashcow today which at the end of the day puts Mozilla in a somewhat precarious situation.

They do have a fixed release window, don't they? So the amount of versions per year is not really meaningful.

Laying off the Servo team is one example I remember, that didn't look like Mozilla cares about Firefox. Personally I keep on using Firefox and can't really complain about the browser itself, even though it's noticeable that incompatibilities increased over the years as the market share decreased.

I also agree, that it's the correct approach for Mozilla to search for different revenue streams. They just haven't been succesful with that for years, which together with the fact, that market share is declining drastically, paints a bleak future for Mozilla.

A lot of people care about Mozilla's declared goal of an "open internet" (for which a browser monoculture is the greatest risk). That's why you hear so many complains.

Re: State of Mozilla

#97

Post by Boogie_Man »

safety1st wrote: post #91
madeofpalk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's good that Mozilla is still there to provide an alternative to the proprietary browsers and is fighting for open Internet standards > aggressive political stance These two statements are at odds with each other. Mozilla whole purpose is inherently political.

While they were always political, somewhere along the way Mozilla's politics changed. They stopped being an organization dedicated to furthering the cause of free software, and instead dedicated themselves to promoting radical left wing political causes. For example here's the mission statement for riseup.net, which Mozilla gives money to: https://riseup.net/en/about-us > Riseup’s Purpose > We value, support, and eng…

Reading this post makes me desirous of an email provider political compass chart.

Re: State of Mozilla

#98

Post by newscracker »

probably_wrong wrote: post #86
shinryuu wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, what would caring about Firefox look like to you? They've released around 12 new versions of Firefox during 2023. The side projects that some complains about I to some respect think is a good thing as it can help to diversify revenue sources. The only way Firefox is ever going to be a cashcow is how it is a cashcow today which at the end of the day puts Mozilla in a somewhat precarious situation.

Some stuff I would like to see: First and foremost, allow me to donate to Firefox. Not to the foundation, to Firefox. Second, and related, increase Firefox' budget. Remember how extensions were essentially dead on Android since 2020 until recently? Or how they fired a chunk of the Rust team due to budget cuts? That should not have happened. Third, put Firefox front and center. The article linked here has exactly one…

> First and foremost, allow me to donate to Firefox. Not to the foundation, to Firefox.

I’d like to see this too. They already have a donation option for Thunderbird, which is officially under MZLA Technologies Corporation. There could be something similar for Firefox.

Not complete sure on this, but right now the only way to give money to Mozilla Corporation (the one owning and developing Firefox) is by subscribing to Mozilla VPN (offered by Mullvad). I don’t think any subscriptions to Pocket or MDN Plus go towards Firefox development and support. All these paid subscriptions are available only in certain countries though.

Re: State of Mozilla

#100

Post by KingOfCoders »

tristan957 wrote: post #92
dotancohen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, purge technical CEO for political reasons then replace him with MBA trophy politically correct CEO that takes home four times the pay while laying off engineers.

Do people forget Mitchell Baker has been a Mozilla employee for decades?

I do personally think tech companies [0] are better of if the CEO is a visionary techie instead of a lawyer.

[0] Mozilla and others might not think they are a tech company but a activist plattform, so this is irrelevant to them from their perspective

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