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Hi, I'm the architect of rr. Mozilla is very good at making browsers. Making browsers is incredibly hard and it's amazing that Firefox is competitive with Chro

by roca 7y ago

Hi, I'm the architect of rr. Mozilla is very good at making browsers. Making browsers is incredibly hard and it's amazing that Firefox is competitive with Chrome given a fraction of the development resources Chrome has. Mozilla has made some big mistakes, but so have the other browser vendors. It's easier to brush over your mistakes when you have an ocean of resources and market power.

jcranmer 7y ago
In terms of contributing to declining market share, my personal opinion is that Mozilla's big mistake with Firefox was killing embedding around 2010.
- roca 7y ago
  Could be, but it's awfully hard to say. What would have been cut to make room for embedding work, and what would the impact of cutting it have been? Did we know enough at that time to make a good decision about that? Given that the embedding API would have had to change dramatically due to e10s pretty soon after 2010 (and maybe again due to Fission), I think 2010 was probably a bad time to promote a stable embedding API. Embedding doesn't rank high on my list of Mozilla's mistakes.
alexhutcheson 7y ago
Thanks for rr - it's such an amazing tool, and a really impressive engineering accomplishment.
zelly 7y ago
Thank you for rr, once again. Great tool. I hope to contribute one day, as soon as I find an itch to scratch.
- roca 7y ago
  You're welcome! One contribution we can always use is people writing and talking about rr. One of the biggest things holding rr back is so many people just don't know it exists (or they know it exists but they don't appreciate what it could do for them).
gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
If Mozilla used all its income derived from Firefox on Firefox would it really be that underfunded compared to Chrome?
- dblohm7 7y ago
  Absolutely.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
    Absolutely it would or wouldn't be underfunded?
    - roca 7y ago
      I assume he meant "absolutely it really would be that underfunded", because that is true. Elsewhere in these comments people have estimated that Google pays at least 1000 people to work on Chrome. That's about the size of all of Mozilla, and a lot of those Mozilla staff are necessarily not working directly on Firefox --- you need HR, accountants, marketing, etc. Also, Google pays its developers significantly more than Mozilla does, on average; Mozilla developers tend to get big raises when they move to Google. And that's just direct spending. Historically Google has done a lot of Chrome marketing on its Web sites, which is prime advertising real estate that would cost astronomical amounts of money if it was for sale. And historically Google has paid hardware and software vendors to preinstall Chrome, which is also expensive, though I'm not sure how much that happens these days.
      - gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
        I've not seen any estimates that Google employs 1000 devs to work on Chrome. Only that in the more than decade long history of Chromium 1000 Google devs have worked on it in total.
        roca 7y ago
        I don't want to dig through hundreds of comments again --- but as someone who worked on Firefox for 15 years and knows a bunch of Chrome people, I believe those estimates.

by roca 7y ago

jcranmer 7y ago

In terms of contributing to declining market share, my personal opinion is that Mozilla's big mistake with Firefox was killing embedding around 2010.

roca 7y ago
Could be, but it's awfully hard to say. What would have been cut to make room for embedding work, and what would the impact of cutting it have been? Did we know enough at that time to make a good decision about that? Given that the embedding API would have had to change dramatically due to e10s pretty soon after 2010 (and maybe again due to Fission), I think 2010 was probably a bad time to promote a stable embedding API. Embedding doesn't rank high on my list of Mozilla's mistakes.

alexhutcheson 7y ago

Thanks for rr - it's such an amazing tool, and a really impressive engineering accomplishment.

zelly 7y ago

Thank you for rr, once again. Great tool. I hope to contribute one day, as soon as I find an itch to scratch.

roca 7y ago
You're welcome! One contribution we can always use is people writing and talking about rr. One of the biggest things holding rr back is so many people just don't know it exists (or they know it exists but they don't appreciate what it could do for them).

gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago

If Mozilla used all its income derived from Firefox on Firefox would it really be that underfunded compared to Chrome?

dblohm7 7y ago
Absolutely.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
  Absolutely it would or wouldn't be underfunded?
  - roca 7y ago
    I assume he meant "absolutely it really would be that underfunded", because that is true. Elsewhere in these comments people have estimated that Google pays at least 1000 people to work on Chrome. That's about the size of all of Mozilla, and a lot of those Mozilla staff are necessarily not working directly on Firefox --- you need HR, accountants, marketing, etc. Also, Google pays its developers significantly more than Mozilla does, on average; Mozilla developers tend to get big raises when they move to Google. And that's just direct spending. Historically Google has done a lot of Chrome marketing on its Web sites, which is prime advertising real estate that would cost astronomical amounts of money if it was for sale. And historically Google has paid hardware and software vendors to preinstall Chrome, which is also expensive, though I'm not sure how much that happens these days.
    - gvjddbnvdrbv 7y ago
      I've not seen any estimates that Google employs 1000 devs to work on Chrome. Only that in the more than decade long history of Chromium 1000 Google devs have worked on it in total.
      - roca 7y ago
        I don't want to dig through hundreds of comments again --- but as someone who worked on Firefox for 15 years and knows a bunch of Chrome people, I believe those estimates.