8 ms·

I don't understand Mozilla. How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends $450m annually and dedicates $43m just for f

I don't understand Mozilla. How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends $450m annually and dedicates $43m just for future endeavors? Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team?

jen20 7y ago
Would you cut, say, Rust?
- echelon 7y ago
  Rust is perhaps the best thing to come out of any corporation in years. Protobuf, Envoy, Kubernetes, ... -- I struggle to think of anything better for our industry than Rust.
  - throwaway17_17 7y ago
    You could feel that Rust as a programming language is the greatest thing to ever happen to computer science, the big question for a corporation’s C-suite is can it make money. I’d assume (perfect possible that I’m wrong) that Rust does nothing but cost money for Mozilla. This is not to say I think it will be cancelled or force to expatriate and become a separate legal entity, but management is beholden to shareholders, not the tech community at large. And yes I know that Rust does receive some corporate funding from other entities, but it is still a Mozilla product.
    - UnpossibleJim 7y ago
      I'm a Rust fanboy, let's state that at the beginning. It does, however, have a slow production adoption even though there is a fairly quick developer adoption (much to my chagrin). I think it would do better to become it's own entity in light of this news, and the fact that it doesn't really get managed by Mozilla anymore anyway.
    - i_dursun 7y ago
      Rust is not a Mozilla product. It is heavily used at and funded by Mozilla but they have almost zero influence over the direction of the language. Actually, this kind of perception is the reason that they have been recently talking about forming a Rust Foundation. http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towards-a-rust-foundation/ http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towa...
      - jldugger 7y ago
        > Rust is not a Mozilla product. And yet from your own citation: > Mozilla has from the get-go attempted to create an independent governance structure and to solicit involvement from other companies, because we know this makes Rust a better language for everyone. It seems like they have a lot of influence over the language, and other things. Like, whether there's independent governance or not. I'm happy they're looking for collaborators, but lets not pretend that founder status comes with zero influence.
      - dom96 7y ago
        > Rust is not a Mozilla product. Would Rust be where it is today if it wasn't for Mozilla's clout?
        throwaway17_17 7y ago
        That is really a separate issue, if I’m recalling correctly, there is a team of Rust devs who specifically are employees by Mozilla Corporation. Also, even with an attempt at ‘team’ independence, Mozilla still owns the Rust trademark and the payables for Rust, things like servers for crates.io, etc are also paid by Mozilla Corp. My point was if an executive with only revenue concerns looks at Rust and sees a team which is not just helping Mozilla, but who attempt to help the industry as a whole, including competitors, it is conceivable that cutting those expenses is an option to pursue. I do not think this is particularly likely (I would assume the expenditure on Rust is minimal compared to the salary and benefits of 70 employees), I was just exploring the rabbit hole the GP comment sent me down.
      - metajack 7y ago
    - epage 7y ago
      I'd go the opposite and say that Rust is a competitive edge for Firefox to beat other browsers, architecturally. There were things they tried and failed many times to do to improve Firefox's performance and it wasn't until Rust that they were achievable.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  How many people are they paying to work on it?
ameshkov 7y ago
Nowadays, a small team is simply not enough to develop a browser and keep up with the competition. Unless you fork Chrome, of course.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  Browsers have become way over complicated. They're always trying to figure out some new gimmick just to keep people engaged and to produce clicks. Down-vote me, go ahead. I speak the truth.
- diegocg 7y ago
  Indeed. Even Microsoft decided to give up their own browser, and they have plenty of money.
- jahlove 7y ago
  They made $450m in revenue in 2018. What fraction of that is actually needed to keep a productive browser team afloat?
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be? How big do you think the Chromium team is?
    - jahlove 7y ago
      > How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be? Wait, that was my question...
      - bzbarsky 7y ago
        OK, let's do some data-gathering. If I git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git and then run: git log --since=2019-01-15 | grep "^Author:" | fgrep chromium.org | sort -u | wc -l to get one year's worth of commits as of today (as of rev c43e247d6444 to be exact), I get 1250. If I repeat that with "google.com" instead of "chromium.org", I get 623. So figure ~1800-1900 there. If I git clone https://github.com/WebKit/webkit.git https://github.com/WebKit/webkit.git as of today (rev ba925cdbc8c3f2dff44cdcb92d9a374816b0215b) and run: git log --since=2019-01-15 | grep "^Author:" | fgrep webkit.org | sort -u | wc -l I get 15. If I repeat that with apple.com instead of webkit.org I get 70. If I just list all distinct authors, I get 128. Note that this is an underestimate of what it takes to build a browser, because a bunch of the parts of an actual browser are not in the webkit repo itself last I checked. Like the whole network stack. If I hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ (the repository for Firefox) and run: hg log -d 2019 | grep "^user:" | sort -u | fgrep mozilla.com | wc -l I get 359. I am quite sure this last is is an underestimate: I am a Mozilla employee, but I use a non-mozilla.com address in my commits, because I started contributing before becoming an employee. I'm not the only one. The total number of distinct committers there is 1497 which is a serious overestimate: web platform test changesets come with their original author, who is often an engineer working on some other browser. If I filter out webkit.org, microsoft.com, google.com, chromium.org, webkit.org, that leaves me with 1265. This is almost certainly a significant over-estimate, since it's more than the total number of Mozilla employees. Note that we may be undercounting QA here, since not all of them might commit to the main repository. On the other hand, we might be counting one-off contributors who are not really on the "browser team" per se, especially for "apple.com" and "google.com". We're also overcounting somewhat depending on how much churn there was over the course of the year (people leaving, new ones joining). But pallpark, I suspect an unrealistic lower bound is 100 and a reasonable lower bound is 150-500, depending on how much of the tech stack you want to delegate to other entities. The Chrome team is a lot bigger than any of those numbers, of course.
jakearmitage 7y ago
I also don't understand why they keep pushing useless services.
- BitwiseFool 7y ago
  I think they're trying to become an ecosystem. Evidenced by all the times they try to get me to make a Mozilla account.
- mintplant 7y ago
  Because otherwise they're almost entirely reliant on search partnerships for funding. Which means Google, i.e., their biggest competitor.
  - jakearmitage 7y ago
    They can provide decent server-side services that integrate with Thunderbird, for example. There's a hole in that market.
burtonator 7y ago
> Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team? Risk... companies that make too much revenue from one product or too much from one customer risk death.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Empire building tends to be irresistible to those in positions eligible.
8ytecoder 7y ago
One metric of power that has been constant throughout human history is the number of people you are in charge of. You'll find this to be the most common measure of power across all of industries, militaries, cultures and governments.
thrower123 7y ago
Bloated headcount destroys most software. People still think you can throw more people at it and it will get built faster and better, as if we were building the pyramids.
jldugger 7y ago
> How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends Well, I mean, they started off as a HTTP server company with a not lightweight browser, won an antitrust case but lost the war, and reformed as a non profit. Or, well, a for profit company wholly owned by a non profit. At which point they went about rebuilding Netscape suite, the one with mail clients and calendars (and IRC and nntp), as open source software. Then some rogue employees and interns thought 'nobody wants this shit' (https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-us/firefox/releases/0.1 https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...) and firefox was born. Well, phoenix, because engineers never do trademark searches when naming projects. So yea, I don't think anyone fully understands Mozilla, except maybe a few annoyed IRS auditors. I don't know when Mozilla started taking money for search engine placement, but whoever invented the idea should get a few mil, because now that nobody buys HTTP servers, it's all Netscape/Mozilla has left. From Google's perspective, it's quite easy to see why they fund chrome: each user that converts to chrome is money they dont have to pay Mozilla. Somehow, despite that depressing metric of user share, mozilla's been making more money every time search bar placement contracts are up for renewal. Some of that was likely competition in search engine space, with both Bing and Yahoo under Marissa chomping for some revenue. I guess the layoffs signal that isn't going to happen again? Or maybe it signals that you don't need users if your main value anymore is to prove to the DOJ there is no monopoly?
- zozbot234 7y ago
  Phoenix^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFirebird^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFirefox.
- BrendanEich 7y ago
  Not accurate. Netscape was the browser company, with servers too (I worked with the McCool twins and Ari Luotonen in first month on board). I have no idea what "not lightweight" means but Netscape took over the market from Mosaic and pioneered SSL (now TLS) for secure e-commerce. This is all pretty well known and many still alive who saw it. Taher El Gamal among them. Why do people make up fables on HN?
  - 7y ago

jen20 7y ago

Would you cut, say, Rust?

echelon 7y ago
Rust is perhaps the best thing to come out of any corporation in years. Protobuf, Envoy, Kubernetes, ... -- I struggle to think of anything better for our industry than Rust.
- throwaway17_17 7y ago
  You could feel that Rust as a programming language is the greatest thing to ever happen to computer science, the big question for a corporation’s C-suite is can it make money. I’d assume (perfect possible that I’m wrong) that Rust does nothing but cost money for Mozilla. This is not to say I think it will be cancelled or force to expatriate and become a separate legal entity, but management is beholden to shareholders, not the tech community at large. And yes I know that Rust does receive some corporate funding from other entities, but it is still a Mozilla product.
  - UnpossibleJim 7y ago
    I'm a Rust fanboy, let's state that at the beginning. It does, however, have a slow production adoption even though there is a fairly quick developer adoption (much to my chagrin). I think it would do better to become it's own entity in light of this news, and the fact that it doesn't really get managed by Mozilla anymore anyway.
  - i_dursun 7y ago
    Rust is not a Mozilla product. It is heavily used at and funded by Mozilla but they have almost zero influence over the direction of the language. Actually, this kind of perception is the reason that they have been recently talking about forming a Rust Foundation. http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towards-a-rust-foundation/ http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towa...
    - jldugger 7y ago
      > Rust is not a Mozilla product. And yet from your own citation: > Mozilla has from the get-go attempted to create an independent governance structure and to solicit involvement from other companies, because we know this makes Rust a better language for everyone. It seems like they have a lot of influence over the language, and other things. Like, whether there's independent governance or not. I'm happy they're looking for collaborators, but lets not pretend that founder status comes with zero influence.
    - dom96 7y ago
      > Rust is not a Mozilla product. Would Rust be where it is today if it wasn't for Mozilla's clout?
      - throwaway17_17 7y ago
        That is really a separate issue, if I’m recalling correctly, there is a team of Rust devs who specifically are employees by Mozilla Corporation. Also, even with an attempt at ‘team’ independence, Mozilla still owns the Rust trademark and the payables for Rust, things like servers for crates.io, etc are also paid by Mozilla Corp. My point was if an executive with only revenue concerns looks at Rust and sees a team which is not just helping Mozilla, but who attempt to help the industry as a whole, including competitors, it is conceivable that cutting those expenses is an option to pursue. I do not think this is particularly likely (I would assume the expenditure on Rust is minimal compared to the salary and benefits of 70 employees), I was just exploring the rabbit hole the GP comment sent me down.
    - metajack 7y ago
  - epage 7y ago
    I'd go the opposite and say that Rust is a competitive edge for Firefox to beat other browsers, architecturally. There were things they tried and failed many times to do to improve Firefox's performance and it wasn't until Rust that they were achievable.
jimbokun 7y ago
How many people are they paying to work on it?

ameshkov 7y ago

Nowadays, a small team is simply not enough to develop a browser and keep up with the competition. Unless you fork Chrome, of course.

qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
Browsers have become way over complicated. They're always trying to figure out some new gimmick just to keep people engaged and to produce clicks. Down-vote me, go ahead. I speak the truth.
diegocg 7y ago
Indeed. Even Microsoft decided to give up their own browser, and they have plenty of money.
jahlove 7y ago
They made $450m in revenue in 2018. What fraction of that is actually needed to keep a productive browser team afloat?
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be? How big do you think the Chromium team is?
  - jahlove 7y ago
    > How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be? Wait, that was my question...
    - bzbarsky 7y ago
      OK, let's do some data-gathering. If I git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git and then run: git log --since=2019-01-15 | grep "^Author:" | fgrep chromium.org | sort -u | wc -l to get one year's worth of commits as of today (as of rev c43e247d6444 to be exact), I get 1250. If I repeat that with "google.com" instead of "chromium.org", I get 623. So figure ~1800-1900 there. If I git clone https://github.com/WebKit/webkit.git https://github.com/WebKit/webkit.git as of today (rev ba925cdbc8c3f2dff44cdcb92d9a374816b0215b) and run: git log --since=2019-01-15 | grep "^Author:" | fgrep webkit.org | sort -u | wc -l I get 15. If I repeat that with apple.com instead of webkit.org I get 70. If I just list all distinct authors, I get 128. Note that this is an underestimate of what it takes to build a browser, because a bunch of the parts of an actual browser are not in the webkit repo itself last I checked. Like the whole network stack. If I hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ (the repository for Firefox) and run: hg log -d 2019 | grep "^user:" | sort -u | fgrep mozilla.com | wc -l I get 359. I am quite sure this last is is an underestimate: I am a Mozilla employee, but I use a non-mozilla.com address in my commits, because I started contributing before becoming an employee. I'm not the only one. The total number of distinct committers there is 1497 which is a serious overestimate: web platform test changesets come with their original author, who is often an engineer working on some other browser. If I filter out webkit.org, microsoft.com, google.com, chromium.org, webkit.org, that leaves me with 1265. This is almost certainly a significant over-estimate, since it's more than the total number of Mozilla employees. Note that we may be undercounting QA here, since not all of them might commit to the main repository. On the other hand, we might be counting one-off contributors who are not really on the "browser team" per se, especially for "apple.com" and "google.com". We're also overcounting somewhat depending on how much churn there was over the course of the year (people leaving, new ones joining). But pallpark, I suspect an unrealistic lower bound is 100 and a reasonable lower bound is 150-500, depending on how much of the tech stack you want to delegate to other entities. The Chrome team is a lot bigger than any of those numbers, of course.

jakearmitage 7y ago

I also don't understand why they keep pushing useless services.

BitwiseFool 7y ago
I think they're trying to become an ecosystem. Evidenced by all the times they try to get me to make a Mozilla account.
mintplant 7y ago
Because otherwise they're almost entirely reliant on search partnerships for funding. Which means Google, i.e., their biggest competitor.
- jakearmitage 7y ago
  They can provide decent server-side services that integrate with Thunderbird, for example. There's a hole in that market.

burtonator 7y ago

> Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team? Risk... companies that make too much revenue from one product or too much from one customer risk death.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Empire building tends to be irresistible to those in positions eligible.

8ytecoder 7y ago

One metric of power that has been constant throughout human history is the number of people you are in charge of. You'll find this to be the most common measure of power across all of industries, militaries, cultures and governments.

thrower123 7y ago

Bloated headcount destroys most software. People still think you can throw more people at it and it will get built faster and better, as if we were building the pyramids.

jldugger 7y ago

> How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends Well, I mean, they started off as a HTTP server company with a not lightweight browser, won an antitrust case but lost the war, and reformed as a non profit. Or, well, a for profit company wholly owned by a non profit. At which point they went about rebuilding Netscape suite, the one with mail clients and calendars (and IRC and nntp), as open source software. Then some rogue employees and interns thought 'nobody wants this shit' (https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en-us/firefox/releases/0.1 https://website-archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_...) and firefox was born. Well, phoenix, because engineers never do trademark searches when naming projects. So yea, I don't think anyone fully understands Mozilla, except maybe a few annoyed IRS auditors. I don't know when Mozilla started taking money for search engine placement, but whoever invented the idea should get a few mil, because now that nobody buys HTTP servers, it's all Netscape/Mozilla has left. From Google's perspective, it's quite easy to see why they fund chrome: each user that converts to chrome is money they dont have to pay Mozilla. Somehow, despite that depressing metric of user share, mozilla's been making more money every time search bar placement contracts are up for renewal. Some of that was likely competition in search engine space, with both Bing and Yahoo under Marissa chomping for some revenue. I guess the layoffs signal that isn't going to happen again? Or maybe it signals that you don't need users if your main value anymore is to prove to the DOJ there is no monopoly?

zozbot234 7y ago
Phoenix^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFirebird^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFirefox.
BrendanEich 7y ago
Not accurate. Netscape was the browser company, with servers too (I worked with the McCool twins and Ari Luotonen in first month on board). I have no idea what "not lightweight" means but Netscape took over the market from Mosaic and pioneered SSL (now TLS) for secure e-commerce. This is all pretty well known and many still alive who saw it. Taher El Gamal among them. Why do people make up fables on HN?
- 7y ago