On this thread about 'reducing flash usage in Firefox' [1] a few days ago, I articulated a point that I've been witnessing for a while: Mozilla products have th

On this thread about 'reducing flash usage in Firefox' [1] a few days ago, I articulated a point that I've been witnessing for a while: Mozilla products have three distinct audiences, and their wants and needs are often contradictory. These audiences are, in increasing order of vocalness: [a] the impressionable; the next-wave of web user who has recently gotten online [b] the alternative-seeker; the average web user who is uneasy with Google [c] the idealist; the open web, open-source advocate There is, of course, some amount of overlap between the audiences. But Chrome (despite Chromium), Edge, and Safari are largely missing audience [c] entirely; some of audience [b] will try to avoid any Chromium-derived product. These and other interactions create conflicting pressures between people who want Firefox have close feature-parity with Chrome, and people who want Firefox to stick closer to the mission of providing an open, elegant, minimalist browser open to user customization. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12129691 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12129691