3 ms·

I think you underestimate the diversity of the userbase. Especially in places like Europe until Chrome ate their lunch, Firefox users were basically a random sa

by rtpg 11y ago

I think you underestimate the diversity of the userbase. Especially in places like Europe until Chrome ate their lunch, Firefox users were basically a random sample of the population.

x0x0 11y ago
Right, but at least in the US, there is a significant contingent of firefox users and advocates that are very privacy sensitive. Call it the Jonathan Mayer wing. FF should have known these people would be very upset.
- rtpg 11y ago
  I hope so but sometimes tradeoffs have to be made. Compromise is the name of the game, and if BSD development is any indicator, security/privacy focus users are not ones to jump in and help keep lights on in most circumstances That said I'm not sure FF could have done better things, but in their situation I would be trying to find some revenue streams that weren't Google
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    There was no compromise necessary. Pocket is possible as an extension, cf the work being done right now to integrate it as one. Why was it rushed out before? What was so pressing about it that it needed to be in "the next firefox version" and massively damage Mozilla's reputation, instead of waiting a few months and passing it without a fuss?
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    > Compromise is the name of the game In most cases, I'd agree.However, it's never a good idea to compromize on your mission statement. How does pre-bundled Pocket integration promote an open web? IMO, it goes against it. While they are losing market-share, Mozilla are not running out of cash any time soon and they are not in a death spiral. They can afford to, and should think long and hard about how they diversify their revenue streams, rather than trying random decisions that alienate part of their userbase trying to find anything that sticks - which is the impression I'm getting.
- johnny22 11y ago
  how significant is it really? anybody ever put numbers to it?
  - e15ctr0n 11y ago
    The most significant number that anyone needs to know about Mozilla is that the global desktop browser market share of Firefox has fallen 50% over the last 5 years (from 31.64% in January 2010 to 14.7% in November 2015).[1][2] If the declining trend continues, desktop Firefox would approximate zero market share in less than 4 years from now. On mobile phones, the market share of Firefox is so small, it doesn't even show up on anyone's chart.[2] Users wouldn't be fleeing in droves if they liked what Firefox has turned into. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#StatCounter_.28July_2008_to_present.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#St... [2] http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-december-2015-fight-firefoxs-future/ http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-december-2015-fight-...
    - SgtBrutalisk 11y ago
      This is my experience with Firefox, there will be no sources provided. I remember using Firefox since I was in college in 2004 and I can tell you what happened when I first tried Firefox 4. The performance was horrible for a very simple reason: the system requirements were increased _tenfold_ and it was pretty much impossible to enjoy browsing using it on older hardware. Extensions started breaking and the menu options would suddenly change place, function or disappear altogether without any prior warning or explanation. Meanwhile, Mozilla devs would either ignore the feedback or post snickering comments on their blogs. The constant version change made it so things were rapidly falling apart - you could no longer rely on Firefox to stay one and the same for any period of time. I saw that Firefox was going downhill, but it was still far superior to all browsers simply due to the wealth of extensions it had. And now, what is the most recent change to Firefox paradigm? Locking the extension ecosystem inside a walled garden. I currently use Palemoon and I look forward to Edge, which promises a basically open-source environment, which will include extensions. Now that´s irony.
- cinquemb 11y ago
  Idk, for me I got tired of dealing with all the BS long ago, so I just run off a fork of nightly and remove/add then compile whatever I want… it's great. I think If people really cared that much about it, they would do something themselves, but alas its all to easy to moan and do nothing. /me shrugs
  - ant6n 11y ago
    Yeah so unless you know how to fork the project and remove/add + compile whatever you want, you don't really have a right to complain. But I guess if you do know how to do that, you also have no right to complain.
    - cinquemb 11y ago
      People can complain all they want, I wasn't saying one doesn't have any right to complain, people are free to have their opinions and I was speaking my mind like everyone complaining is, I apologize for that, maybe I should have joined in on the fun in the echo chamber, probably would get more internet points for that. The probability of complaining, that actually solves any given problem in that moment, hovers around zero. Especially after all the BS people have been saying they have been seeing with Mozilla for some time now (enough time over the years to see hundreds of c/c++ code samples, walkthroughs, and to read their build instructions[0]) … its quite banal at this point. Too many people have worked too hard to share their knowledge on the internet for me to be satisfied with complaining about something that we all have a capacity to do ourselves to some degree if were commenting on hacker news. But that's just how I feel, everyone else is free to feel differently. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...
      - okasaki 11y ago
        Building Firefox isn't so easy. There are like 50 build options, any random combination of which is likely to result in build failure, and your only option is to try a combination, wait 10-40 minutes for it to fail, try to diagnose what went wrong and fix it. There's also the matter that Linux distro maintainers know more about building than you do, and include things like exploit mitigation, which you'll be missing out on. And of course you need to monitor Firefox for security updates, and rebuild every time there's an update. It gets boring pretty quickly. Even GNU barely manages to update their IceCat fork.

by rtpg 11y ago

I think you underestimate the diversity of the userbase. Especially in places like Europe until Chrome ate their lunch, Firefox users were basically a random sample of the population.

x0x0 11y ago

Right, but at least in the US, there is a significant contingent of firefox users and advocates that are very privacy sensitive. Call it the Jonathan Mayer wing. FF should have known these people would be very upset.

rtpg 11y ago
I hope so but sometimes tradeoffs have to be made. Compromise is the name of the game, and if BSD development is any indicator, security/privacy focus users are not ones to jump in and help keep lights on in most circumstances That said I'm not sure FF could have done better things, but in their situation I would be trying to find some revenue streams that weren't Google
- scrollaway 11y ago
  There was no compromise necessary. Pocket is possible as an extension, cf the work being done right now to integrate it as one. Why was it rushed out before? What was so pressing about it that it needed to be in "the next firefox version" and massively damage Mozilla's reputation, instead of waiting a few months and passing it without a fuss?
- sangnoir 11y ago
  > Compromise is the name of the game In most cases, I'd agree.However, it's never a good idea to compromize on your mission statement. How does pre-bundled Pocket integration promote an open web? IMO, it goes against it. While they are losing market-share, Mozilla are not running out of cash any time soon and they are not in a death spiral. They can afford to, and should think long and hard about how they diversify their revenue streams, rather than trying random decisions that alienate part of their userbase trying to find anything that sticks - which is the impression I'm getting.
johnny22 11y ago
how significant is it really? anybody ever put numbers to it?
- e15ctr0n 11y ago
  The most significant number that anyone needs to know about Mozilla is that the global desktop browser market share of Firefox has fallen 50% over the last 5 years (from 31.64% in January 2010 to 14.7% in November 2015).[1][2] If the declining trend continues, desktop Firefox would approximate zero market share in less than 4 years from now. On mobile phones, the market share of Firefox is so small, it doesn't even show up on anyone's chart.[2] Users wouldn't be fleeing in droves if they liked what Firefox has turned into. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#StatCounter_.28July_2008_to_present.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#St... [2] http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-december-2015-fight-firefoxs-future/ http://www.sitepoint.com/browser-trends-december-2015-fight-...
  - SgtBrutalisk 11y ago
    This is my experience with Firefox, there will be no sources provided. I remember using Firefox since I was in college in 2004 and I can tell you what happened when I first tried Firefox 4. The performance was horrible for a very simple reason: the system requirements were increased _tenfold_ and it was pretty much impossible to enjoy browsing using it on older hardware. Extensions started breaking and the menu options would suddenly change place, function or disappear altogether without any prior warning or explanation. Meanwhile, Mozilla devs would either ignore the feedback or post snickering comments on their blogs. The constant version change made it so things were rapidly falling apart - you could no longer rely on Firefox to stay one and the same for any period of time. I saw that Firefox was going downhill, but it was still far superior to all browsers simply due to the wealth of extensions it had. And now, what is the most recent change to Firefox paradigm? Locking the extension ecosystem inside a walled garden. I currently use Palemoon and I look forward to Edge, which promises a basically open-source environment, which will include extensions. Now that´s irony.
cinquemb 11y ago
Idk, for me I got tired of dealing with all the BS long ago, so I just run off a fork of nightly and remove/add then compile whatever I want… it's great. I think If people really cared that much about it, they would do something themselves, but alas its all to easy to moan and do nothing. /me shrugs
- ant6n 11y ago
  Yeah so unless you know how to fork the project and remove/add + compile whatever you want, you don't really have a right to complain. But I guess if you do know how to do that, you also have no right to complain.
  - cinquemb 11y ago
    People can complain all they want, I wasn't saying one doesn't have any right to complain, people are free to have their opinions and I was speaking my mind like everyone complaining is, I apologize for that, maybe I should have joined in on the fun in the echo chamber, probably would get more internet points for that. The probability of complaining, that actually solves any given problem in that moment, hovers around zero. Especially after all the BS people have been saying they have been seeing with Mozilla for some time now (enough time over the years to see hundreds of c/c++ code samples, walkthroughs, and to read their build instructions[0]) … its quite banal at this point. Too many people have worked too hard to share their knowledge on the internet for me to be satisfied with complaining about something that we all have a capacity to do ourselves to some degree if were commenting on hacker news. But that's just how I feel, everyone else is free to feel differently. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...
    - okasaki 11y ago
      Building Firefox isn't so easy. There are like 50 build options, any random combination of which is likely to result in build failure, and your only option is to try a combination, wait 10-40 minutes for it to fail, try to diagnose what went wrong and fix it. There's also the matter that Linux distro maintainers know more about building than you do, and include things like exploit mitigation, which you'll be missing out on. And of course you need to monitor Firefox for security updates, and rebuild every time there's an update. It gets boring pretty quickly. Even GNU barely manages to update their IceCat fork.