5 ms·

While I appreciate the political work, I would like to see better leadership at Firefox, and less spent on side and failed projects.

by porker 8y ago

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
I have nothing against political work, but I think they should just give money to the EFF instead of doing their own - they are much better at the job, imagine what they would do with 300M$. And FF should focus on the browser because this is their cash cow, and progress is needed. But as the declining usage numbers show, FF employes just do what they want, riding FF to death then jumping ship to raid the next project. As a longtime FF user (25y) you're just left in the dust.
- shady-lady 8y ago
  Exactly. Employees who get to engage in the theatre of running a software company with 0 risk. They need an oversight committee (from outside the valley preferably) Anybody got the breakdown on community commits to FF vs. employee commits?
  - gsnedders 8y ago
    > Anybody got the breakdown on community commits to FF vs. employee commits? Last time I saw anyone try to do this, it was vastly predominately employee commits (this isn't that surprising, there are hundreds of people working full-time on Firefox at Mozilla, and very few spending a comparable amount of time per day in the larger community); it's hard to get exact numbers because determining whether a commit is by an employee or not is hard (e.g., there's no requirement for employees to use Mozilla email addresses for their commits).
- the_duke 8y ago
  Left in the dust? I have no idea what you are talking about. Current Firefox is better than ever for me.
  - _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
    Tab management is as bad as ever, I need to turn of spy configs all the time to still use it, it broke most of the plugins I used etc. etc.
vezycash 8y ago
Quantum is the result of two side projects - Rust and Servo.
ColanR 8y ago
Too bad the founder was kicked out for political reasons. It would have been nice if FF could have focused on technology, while being agnostic to the politics.
- toyg 8y ago
  "The" founder? Eich was hired by the original Netscape, and ended up as one of the many "founders" that moved to the Mozilla project from there. He did not "found" Firefox either, that project was started by others.
- Frondo 8y ago
  He wasn't kicked out -- he resigned. And it was for political reasons that stood to directly affect an unknown number of his employees, the people whose lives would be directly affected by his donation to the anti-gay marriage thing; if those people raise a stink because he's trying to use government to interfere in their lives, I can't fault them. "I'm going to use my wealth and power to negatively impact your life -- but don't talk about it, that's political." Nope.
  - nil_pointer 8y ago
    That's not entirely accurate, he was forced out
    - CorpusCalcium 8y ago
      No, he wasn't. He wasn't accepted as CEO by enough employees, but he could have stepped down and retained another position in the company, like CTO. Even he recognizes that Mozilla leadership wanted him to stay on board, but he chose to quit and pursue his own project. Which is fine. It just doesn't mean he was "forced" out any more than the people who quit because they couldn't stand him being CEO were "forced" out.
      - BrendanEich 8y ago
        Why are you asserting false claims without being able to support them? As CEO I had already reorged Mozilla, and CTO was lined up for someone else (Andreas Gal). I was not offered any particular C level position by anyone with authority over such things. I did not leave because of any of my employees objecting to me. If you are thinking of the handful of Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted on March 27th against me (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil...), none of them worked for me. The Mozilla Foundation is arms-length from the Mozilla Corporation. I also did not quit to pursue my own project; Brave was not founded until May 2015. I resigned to avoid Mozilla taking any more damage from mob action kicked off by someone who demanded that I be "completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla" (http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/24/goodbye_firefox_marketplace/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrar... -- the blog seems broken but the Web archive has snapshots). It's clear you just asserted falsehoods that make you comfortable. But you not only did not know what you were asserting to be true, you could not possibly know whether it was true. That's wishful thinking at best, and tantamount to lying at worst.

While I appreciate the political work, I would like to see better leadership at Firefox, and less spent on side and failed projects.

by porker 8y ago

While I appreciate the political work, I would like to see better leadership at Firefox, and less spent on side and failed projects.

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

I have nothing against political work, but I think they should just give money to the EFF instead of doing their own - they are much better at the job, imagine what they would do with 300M$. And FF should focus on the browser because this is their cash cow, and progress is needed. But as the declining usage numbers show, FF employes just do what they want, riding FF to death then jumping ship to raid the next project. As a longtime FF user (25y) you're just left in the dust.

shady-lady 8y ago
Exactly. Employees who get to engage in the theatre of running a software company with 0 risk. They need an oversight committee (from outside the valley preferably) Anybody got the breakdown on community commits to FF vs. employee commits?
- gsnedders 8y ago
  > Anybody got the breakdown on community commits to FF vs. employee commits? Last time I saw anyone try to do this, it was vastly predominately employee commits (this isn't that surprising, there are hundreds of people working full-time on Firefox at Mozilla, and very few spending a comparable amount of time per day in the larger community); it's hard to get exact numbers because determining whether a commit is by an employee or not is hard (e.g., there's no requirement for employees to use Mozilla email addresses for their commits).
the_duke 8y ago
Left in the dust? I have no idea what you are talking about. Current Firefox is better than ever for me.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
  Tab management is as bad as ever, I need to turn of spy configs all the time to still use it, it broke most of the plugins I used etc. etc.

vezycash 8y ago

Quantum is the result of two side projects - Rust and Servo.

ColanR 8y ago

Too bad the founder was kicked out for political reasons. It would have been nice if FF could have focused on technology, while being agnostic to the politics.

toyg 8y ago
"The" founder? Eich was hired by the original Netscape, and ended up as one of the many "founders" that moved to the Mozilla project from there. He did not "found" Firefox either, that project was started by others.
Frondo 8y ago
He wasn't kicked out -- he resigned. And it was for political reasons that stood to directly affect an unknown number of his employees, the people whose lives would be directly affected by his donation to the anti-gay marriage thing; if those people raise a stink because he's trying to use government to interfere in their lives, I can't fault them. "I'm going to use my wealth and power to negatively impact your life -- but don't talk about it, that's political." Nope.
- nil_pointer 8y ago
  That's not entirely accurate, he was forced out
  - CorpusCalcium 8y ago
    No, he wasn't. He wasn't accepted as CEO by enough employees, but he could have stepped down and retained another position in the company, like CTO. Even he recognizes that Mozilla leadership wanted him to stay on board, but he chose to quit and pursue his own project. Which is fine. It just doesn't mean he was "forced" out any more than the people who quit because they couldn't stand him being CEO were "forced" out.
    - BrendanEich 8y ago
      Why are you asserting false claims without being able to support them? As CEO I had already reorged Mozilla, and CTO was lined up for someone else (Andreas Gal). I was not offered any particular C level position by anyone with authority over such things. I did not leave because of any of my employees objecting to me. If you are thinking of the handful of Mozilla Foundation employees who tweeted on March 27th against me (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozilla-employees-to-brendan-eich-step-down/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/mozil...), none of them worked for me. The Mozilla Foundation is arms-length from the Mozilla Corporation. I also did not quit to pursue my own project; Brave was not founded until May 2015. I resigned to avoid Mozilla taking any more damage from mob action kicked off by someone who demanded that I be "completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla" (http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrarebit.com/blog/2014/03/24/goodbye_firefox_marketplace/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180621041436/http://www.teamrar... -- the blog seems broken but the Web archive has snapshots). It's clear you just asserted falsehoods that make you comfortable. But you not only did not know what you were asserting to be true, you could not possibly know whether it was true. That's wishful thinking at best, and tantamount to lying at worst.