3 ms·

Please don't resort to whataboutism to defend a move that would obviously alienate a very core part of Firefox's userbase. Being better than Chrome is a very lo

Please don't resort to whataboutism to defend a move that would obviously alienate a very core part of Firefox's userbase. Being better than Chrome is a very low bar. This hubbub seems overblown to you, but not to others, and from your comments on this thread, you don't seem to understand why. Firefox has traditionally been the _only_ major browser that champions the traditional freedoms that many folks (myself included) associate with the web. For me personally, that involves looking at the commercial internet as a subset of the internet as a whole, which is a successful decentralized system which has reached escape velocity. The legacy of Firefox is the legacy of that system. You seem to presume that the corporation and its profitability is necessary for Firefox to be successful, and so a "decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream" rooted in advertisements is reasonable. I don't agree on principle, and I don't agree in practice, because these things take away the sole differentiator that prevents Firefox from becoming Chrome with less market share. This is probably the central thing that might make sense for you to think about: what is the market differentiator for Firefox? Why would anyone bother to use it versus Chrome? Being less obnoxious in doing sketchy things but still doing them is not a good reason. Not doing sketchy things is a good reason.

clairity 8y ago
i deny your whataboutism and counter with slippery slope! but seriously, i don’t think it’s a big deal because 1) no personal data is shared up front 2) it's an experiment 3) you can turn it off/block it 4) some people might appreciate the discount 5) there’s a wide non-slippery gulf between complete ad blocking and complete tracking 6) mozilla might find a decent compromise between those extremes, which is sorely missing 7) i trust mozilla to course-correct if necessary, as they have in the past. i don’t want ads everywhere either, and i applaud your principles, but please apply them to helping mozilla find non-ad and non-google revenue streams (assuming you’re not anti-revenue as well). please work through and put forth a rationale, not an emotional appeal, and refrain from condecscension. n.b. - i've used firefox since it was called phoenix (v0.3).
- yowlingcat 8y ago
  Please allow me to apologize in advance for the long rant that is to follow. I think you're proving my point by insinuating that I need to put forth a way for Mozilla to find non-ad and non-Google revenue streams, and I also think you're misunderstanding me by implying I'm putting forward an emotional appeal -- I actually could care less about whether or not Mozilla Corp chooses to uphold the open source values that propelled it to success and relevance, I merely think it's poor decision making to ignore that if they wish to survive. This, of course, was the heart of the question I posted to you at the end of my comment, and it is also something that you still haven't answered. Let me reiterate it: what is the key differentiator of Firefox? Why do people use it? You are talking about why you don't think it's a big deal. The thing is, whether you (or anyone else) thinks it is a big deal or not is simply not directly relevant to Mozilla and Firefox (although it is a signal). The question of whether it's strategically a good decision for them is actually important. I believe that it is not. To further illustrate that, let me make some arguments by comparison. Is Python ad-supported? Is the Linux Kernel ad supported? Ruby? Nginx? There are companies that make products which utilize Python or are greatly involved in the Python ecosystem, and those companies contribute back to the ecosystem because it serves their purposes. Likewise with the Linux Kernel, Ruby, Nginx, Python, and many other excellent pieces of open source software. Would you dilute the reference protocols and implementations for these products by diluting key parts of their functionality with advertising in a form that is essentially malware? No. You wouldn't do that because it would compromise the trust of your core users and ultimately result in negative momentum. You wouldn't do that because ultimately, it's poor product management. Healthy businesses that operate with a division between the open source and closed source areas are well trodden territories, and one of the easiest ways to kill the healthy business line that depends on the open source product's mindshare is to dilute it. This is what you're not addressing, and based on your arguments, it may be something that you don't understand. What Mozilla Corp just did was a bafflingly poor product management decision. It was an experiment with little reward and what appears to be high risk. Time will tell. They may have lost sight of the the need to add value first in order to rake in profits long term, and the need for that to sometimes take longer, more expensive paths to result in the most lucrative circuit. This, of course, is something that the original core contributors to all of these projects understood quite well. They produced software, but they were first and foremost constructing protocols. Protocols can be created in purely informational theoretic terms and be released into the wild, and upon critical mass of mindshare adoption, operate self-sustainably in their current form. It is certainly the case that money and other resources can scale up the rate of development and scope of these protocols as well as the ecosystem around it, but it is not a requirement. The organization and labor that construct these protocols are motivated by a variety of motivations, but often times, one of the core motivations is the desire to mutate the way that things flow in societal infrastructures by improving them. When attempting to build one of these mutations, focusing on profitability prematurely is ironically one of the easiest ways to doom it, or precluding it from ever occurring. It will get you stuck in local minima and distract you from executing correctly. Why did Google beat every other search engine? They figured out how to do search properly, better than every other competitors. Mozilla Corporation (if it can) needs to figure out how to do the browser properly, better than every other one of its competitors. If not, it will slowly fade into obsolescence as superior forks or competitors better at its core functionality supplant it.

clairity 8y ago

i deny your whataboutism and counter with slippery slope! but seriously, i don’t think it’s a big deal because 1) no personal data is shared up front 2) it's an experiment 3) you can turn it off/block it 4) some people might appreciate the discount 5) there’s a wide non-slippery gulf between complete ad blocking and complete tracking 6) mozilla might find a decent compromise between those extremes, which is sorely missing 7) i trust mozilla to course-correct if necessary, as they have in the past. i don’t want ads everywhere either, and i applaud your principles, but please apply them to helping mozilla find non-ad and non-google revenue streams (assuming you’re not anti-revenue as well). please work through and put forth a rationale, not an emotional appeal, and refrain from condecscension. n.b. - i've used firefox since it was called phoenix (v0.3).

yowlingcat 8y ago
Please allow me to apologize in advance for the long rant that is to follow. I think you're proving my point by insinuating that I need to put forth a way for Mozilla to find non-ad and non-Google revenue streams, and I also think you're misunderstanding me by implying I'm putting forward an emotional appeal -- I actually could care less about whether or not Mozilla Corp chooses to uphold the open source values that propelled it to success and relevance, I merely think it's poor decision making to ignore that if they wish to survive. This, of course, was the heart of the question I posted to you at the end of my comment, and it is also something that you still haven't answered. Let me reiterate it: what is the key differentiator of Firefox? Why do people use it? You are talking about why you don't think it's a big deal. The thing is, whether you (or anyone else) thinks it is a big deal or not is simply not directly relevant to Mozilla and Firefox (although it is a signal). The question of whether it's strategically a good decision for them is actually important. I believe that it is not. To further illustrate that, let me make some arguments by comparison. Is Python ad-supported? Is the Linux Kernel ad supported? Ruby? Nginx? There are companies that make products which utilize Python or are greatly involved in the Python ecosystem, and those companies contribute back to the ecosystem because it serves their purposes. Likewise with the Linux Kernel, Ruby, Nginx, Python, and many other excellent pieces of open source software. Would you dilute the reference protocols and implementations for these products by diluting key parts of their functionality with advertising in a form that is essentially malware? No. You wouldn't do that because it would compromise the trust of your core users and ultimately result in negative momentum. You wouldn't do that because ultimately, it's poor product management. Healthy businesses that operate with a division between the open source and closed source areas are well trodden territories, and one of the easiest ways to kill the healthy business line that depends on the open source product's mindshare is to dilute it. This is what you're not addressing, and based on your arguments, it may be something that you don't understand. What Mozilla Corp just did was a bafflingly poor product management decision. It was an experiment with little reward and what appears to be high risk. Time will tell. They may have lost sight of the the need to add value first in order to rake in profits long term, and the need for that to sometimes take longer, more expensive paths to result in the most lucrative circuit. This, of course, is something that the original core contributors to all of these projects understood quite well. They produced software, but they were first and foremost constructing protocols. Protocols can be created in purely informational theoretic terms and be released into the wild, and upon critical mass of mindshare adoption, operate self-sustainably in their current form. It is certainly the case that money and other resources can scale up the rate of development and scope of these protocols as well as the ecosystem around it, but it is not a requirement. The organization and labor that construct these protocols are motivated by a variety of motivations, but often times, one of the core motivations is the desire to mutate the way that things flow in societal infrastructures by improving them. When attempting to build one of these mutations, focusing on profitability prematurely is ironically one of the easiest ways to doom it, or precluding it from ever occurring. It will get you stuck in local minima and distract you from executing correctly. Why did Google beat every other search engine? They figured out how to do search properly, better than every other competitors. Mozilla Corporation (if it can) needs to figure out how to do the browser properly, better than every other one of its competitors. If not, it will slowly fade into obsolescence as superior forks or competitors better at its core functionality supplant it.