4 ms·

Never abandoned Firefox. Now what? :) And please, donate to Mozilla, if you can. They really do deserve some help. Fighting against giants like Google, MS and

by mk89 9y ago

Never abandoned Firefox. Now what? :) And please, donate to Mozilla, if you can. They really do deserve some help. Fighting against giants like Google, MS and Apple... They have products running on all kinds of possible platforms, also on old Android phones! And they have some of the best extensions.

fabrice_d 9y ago
They have a lot of money in the bank. Donations are a drop in the bucket and I would even argue that there are other orgs that deserve your money more than Mozilla.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > They have a lot of money in the bank. Donations are a drop in the bucket What is the basis for these statements? Mozilla's budget is far less than its competitors, Google, Apple, and Microsoft; I expect they could find good uses for a little more.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    I was a Mozilla employee so I kind of know the numbers. The CEO is always claiming during the all hands that Mozilla's financial situation is better than ever.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    Oh, and about finding good use for their money: they laid off excellent system platform engineers earlier this year, while keeping some failed execs on payroll. That tells a lot about what the priorities of the leadership are.
  - cgag 9y ago
    They've got 1000+ employees (in 2015 at least). I don't imagine them having more money really helping anything. edit: in response to fabrice's comment about other orgs, checkout http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > They've got 1000+ employees (in 2015 at least). I don't imagine them having more money really helping anything. I don't follow that argument; the evidence seems inconclusive. That's not a lot of people for a software company developing multiple products (and in 2015 they still were developing FirefoxOS), including one as complex and fast-moving as a major web browser, as well as furthering other missions. Do you know how many work on Firefox, compared with Chrome, IE, and Safari? What are the budgets for the other browsers and for Firefox? That would be evidence that would be applicable.
- mk89 9y ago
  They don't share their reports since 2015 - basically when the contract with Google ended. Now, I don't think they are poor, but being a company that doesn't sell your data, doesn't show ads, etc... I mean, frankly, I think that such products are really hard to find nowadays. Their revenues come primarily by Google competitors (Yahoo, etc., which try to appear as default search engine).
  - dblohm7 9y ago
    >They don't share their reports since 2015 - basically when the contract with Google ended. That's not true at all. The 2015 report was published at the end of 2016. Likewise, the 2016 report should be out by the end of the year.
    - mk89 9y ago
      It was not meant to diminish them, of course. It was a sort of weird argument against "they are rich already" - considering that their last report is dated to 2015, how do we know what happened in the last 1-2 years?
dralley 9y ago
AFAIK, donations to Mozilla Foundation can't actually fund development projects by Mozilla Corporation (like Firefox, etc.) The best way to help them out is to help get the marketshare back up, so that the next time they sign a contract for the default search provider, they have more negotiating power.
rhelmer 9y ago
Donations go to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, not to the Mozilla Corporation, and are used for many worthy (non-Firefox) endeavors: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ The Corporation (which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation i.e. only has a single shareholder, the Foundation) brings in revenue mostly through search engine deals, which is how it's able to pay staff to work on Firefox. Unsurprisingly, it's a bit confusing... I think having the ultimate owner of the Corporation and the trademarks etc. be the Foundation is a good thing, even though it makes actually funding everything appropriately a bit complex. Don't forget that Firefox is an open-source project, so contributions of time are always welcome! https://whatcanidoformozilla.org https://whatcanidoformozilla.org
badsectoracula 9y ago
> And they have some of the best extensions. Sadly 11 of the 14 extensions i use do not work on Firefox 57 (i just tried it). The browser is indeed faster - it feels faster than Chrome and Edge - but i never really had an issue with its performance. On the other hand i have a very big issue with the functionality that is lost. Stylish, FireFTP, Greasemonkey (with its own extensions), Better Reader, DownThemAll and a bunch of other addons are things i rely on almost daily (e.g. the internet became way brighter the moment Stylish stopped working :-P) and there are either no plans to update, no alternatives or the alternatives are simply way inferior (e.g. FireFTP is my favorite (S)FTP client for years now, i use DownThemAll for pretty much every download, i use Stylish themes in many sites to tone the sunburns down, i use Better Reader to make Reader mode actually usable, etc. Firefox is sadly solving a problem i never had and in the process it introduces a problem that for me is a showstopper.
- fernandotakai 9y ago
  same with me. vimperator doesn't work on fx57, which means i won't be updating soon. it's a big dealbreaker for me.
  - tux1968 9y ago
    They're transitioning way too quickly. There is going to be scorched earth if they stick to the plan to stop supporting legacy extensions in version 57. Over 10 basic extensions I use no longer work and have no replacement that works with the new webextensions... there's not even the ability to export all cookies for wget -- they need to reevaluate their timeline.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Looked into Palemoon?
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    Yes, but it doesn't seem to support all Firefox extensions and they've said they will not support WebExtensions (which is a dealbreaker from the other side since some extensions i use are WebExtensions and some new ones will only appear as WebExtensions).

by mk89 9y ago

fabrice_d 9y ago

They have a lot of money in the bank. Donations are a drop in the bucket and I would even argue that there are other orgs that deserve your money more than Mozilla.

forapurpose 9y ago
> They have a lot of money in the bank. Donations are a drop in the bucket What is the basis for these statements? Mozilla's budget is far less than its competitors, Google, Apple, and Microsoft; I expect they could find good uses for a little more.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  I was a Mozilla employee so I kind of know the numbers. The CEO is always claiming during the all hands that Mozilla's financial situation is better than ever.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  Oh, and about finding good use for their money: they laid off excellent system platform engineers earlier this year, while keeping some failed execs on payroll. That tells a lot about what the priorities of the leadership are.
- cgag 9y ago
  They've got 1000+ employees (in 2015 at least). I don't imagine them having more money really helping anything. edit: in response to fabrice's comment about other orgs, checkout http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > They've got 1000+ employees (in 2015 at least). I don't imagine them having more money really helping anything. I don't follow that argument; the evidence seems inconclusive. That's not a lot of people for a software company developing multiple products (and in 2015 they still were developing FirefoxOS), including one as complex and fast-moving as a major web browser, as well as furthering other missions. Do you know how many work on Firefox, compared with Chrome, IE, and Safari? What are the budgets for the other browsers and for Firefox? That would be evidence that would be applicable.
mk89 9y ago
They don't share their reports since 2015 - basically when the contract with Google ended. Now, I don't think they are poor, but being a company that doesn't sell your data, doesn't show ads, etc... I mean, frankly, I think that such products are really hard to find nowadays. Their revenues come primarily by Google competitors (Yahoo, etc., which try to appear as default search engine).
- dblohm7 9y ago
  >They don't share their reports since 2015 - basically when the contract with Google ended. That's not true at all. The 2015 report was published at the end of 2016. Likewise, the 2016 report should be out by the end of the year.
  - mk89 9y ago
    It was not meant to diminish them, of course. It was a sort of weird argument against "they are rich already" - considering that their last report is dated to 2015, how do we know what happened in the last 1-2 years?

dralley 9y ago

AFAIK, donations to Mozilla Foundation can't actually fund development projects by Mozilla Corporation (like Firefox, etc.) The best way to help them out is to help get the marketshare back up, so that the next time they sign a contract for the default search provider, they have more negotiating power.

rhelmer 9y ago

Donations go to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, not to the Mozilla Corporation, and are used for many worthy (non-Firefox) endeavors: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/ The Corporation (which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation i.e. only has a single shareholder, the Foundation) brings in revenue mostly through search engine deals, which is how it's able to pay staff to work on Firefox. Unsurprisingly, it's a bit confusing... I think having the ultimate owner of the Corporation and the trademarks etc. be the Foundation is a good thing, even though it makes actually funding everything appropriately a bit complex. Don't forget that Firefox is an open-source project, so contributions of time are always welcome! https://whatcanidoformozilla.org https://whatcanidoformozilla.org

badsectoracula 9y ago

> And they have some of the best extensions. Sadly 11 of the 14 extensions i use do not work on Firefox 57 (i just tried it). The browser is indeed faster - it feels faster than Chrome and Edge - but i never really had an issue with its performance. On the other hand i have a very big issue with the functionality that is lost. Stylish, FireFTP, Greasemonkey (with its own extensions), Better Reader, DownThemAll and a bunch of other addons are things i rely on almost daily (e.g. the internet became way brighter the moment Stylish stopped working :-P) and there are either no plans to update, no alternatives or the alternatives are simply way inferior (e.g. FireFTP is my favorite (S)FTP client for years now, i use DownThemAll for pretty much every download, i use Stylish themes in many sites to tone the sunburns down, i use Better Reader to make Reader mode actually usable, etc. Firefox is sadly solving a problem i never had and in the process it introduces a problem that for me is a showstopper.

fernandotakai 9y ago
same with me. vimperator doesn't work on fx57, which means i won't be updating soon. it's a big dealbreaker for me.
- tux1968 9y ago
  They're transitioning way too quickly. There is going to be scorched earth if they stick to the plan to stop supporting legacy extensions in version 57. Over 10 basic extensions I use no longer work and have no replacement that works with the new webextensions... there's not even the ability to export all cookies for wget -- they need to reevaluate their timeline.
digi_owl 9y ago
Looked into Palemoon?
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  Yes, but it doesn't seem to support all Firefox extensions and they've said they will not support WebExtensions (which is a dealbreaker from the other side since some extensions i use are WebExtensions and some new ones will only appear as WebExtensions).