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Mozilla lays off 250 employees while it refocuses on commercial products
- kvark 6y agoThat's the last call for anybody who thinks "it's good that Mozilla exists, and its mission is important, but I'm still using Chrome and derivatives". Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users.
- fsflover 6y agoAlso, please make a monthly donation to Mozilla if you can. You will contribute to saving the world. https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/
- pricecomstock 6y agoDo this! I procrastinated on switching from Chrome to Firefox for several months because I wasn't sure how much time and effort it would take. I set up a monthly donation to Mozilla during this time because it was easy and supported browser diversity. When I did finally switch, it turned out to be pretty easy and fast to transfer my bookmarks and passwords to Firefox, and there are some features like the built-in containers and add-ons like Tree Style Tab [0] that I find pretty valuable. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
- mikece 6y agoI wonder if it would work for companies/services to offer perks to their users in exchange for donation to Mozilla? It's a weak example but if, for a $50 donation, you could get an icon on your HN profile -- and that shows up with your comments -- that you're a financial supporter of Mozilla that might drive donations. Granted, HN is a pretty small community but if, say, Facebook offered a perk level for supporting Mozilla it might get the network effect going perhaps.
- marmshallow 6y agoReddit has been somewhat successful in this regard, but it doesn't feel like the most stable business model.
- wussboy 6y agoI would happily pay for a “premium” Firefox experience, even if that premium was only cosmetic. I have received so much value from Firefox over the years that it would be an honour to support them directly. Yes I know I can donate. But I want to pay, and that’s different somehow.
- ForHackernews 6y agoPay for their VPN! https://vpn.mozilla.org/ https://vpn.mozilla.org/
- pjmlp 6y agoIndeed, I do an occasional one every now and then, also for Thunderbird.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dblohm7 6y agoWhile donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox. If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
- skyfaller 6y agoWhat does the Mozilla Foundation do if it doesn't develop Firefox? What do they spend their money on?
- dom96 6y agoThe salary of their senior employees[1] 1 - https://twitter.com/withoutboats/status/1217558588857544704 https://twitter.com/withoutboats/status/1217558588857544704
- dx87 6y ago"The not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation supports open-source apps, web literacy curriculum, gender equality in tech and more." Found on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/
- dblohm7 6y agohttps://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
- staktrace 6y agoMoney is fungible and dollars are dollars. Donating money to the Foundation means less of the Corporation's dollars have to go to supporting the Foundation (which they do via dividend payments), and so more of the Corporation's dollars go to Firefox.
- dblohm7 6y agoI don't disagree with your concept in theory, but I also don't think there is any evidence to suggest that MoCo's trademark royalty payments (as IIRC that's how they are structured according the financial docs) to MoFo are adjusted based on MoFo's donations. Has that been mentioned in a meeting somewhere?
- shock 6y agoI wonder how many more people would donate if they knew the donation would be spent on making Firefox better and not on political activism.
- input_sh 6y agoThat doesn't work with their current structure. Foundation can receive donations, Corporation (itself a subsidiary of the foundation) can sell products (like Mozilla VPN).
- shock 6y agoI wonder why the current structure is set up like that. I mean I don't think it's by accident – if it were set up like that by accident, surely, it could have been set up so people could direct donations directly at Firefox, if the CEO wanted that.
- staktrace 6y agoThe structure is set up that because it reflects the goals of Mozilla. Firefox the browser is not the end goal, it's a means to making the internet a better place. And that's what the Foundation is about. The corporation also pays dividends to the Foundation in order to help fund their efforts, because it's the Foundation's work that matters more (in the long term) than Firefox.
- input_sh 6y agoIt was established precisely so that the Corporation could pursue commercial operations that the Foundation legally couldn't before that, like business partnerships. Also Mozilla Foundation didn't qualify as a public charity since it received less than 1/3rd of its revenue via donations, though I don't know if it can be considered as one now (15 years after the split).
- detaro 6y agoAFAIK non-profits can receive donations bound to a specific purpose - they just don't like the accounting headache?
- kgraves 6y agoWhile donations is a noble cause, it is a merely a drop in the ocean in the sea of money provided by Google. I wonder how much of their money is from donations though, does Mozilla release these numbers? > You will contribute to saving the world. Cringed a bit there but to each to their own.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoAfter hearing how their corporation is run and what their execs spend on flights I'm not convinced they deserve it. Would rather they fall and a Phoenix rises out of the ashes for a second time.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoWhat kills me is when people say they use Chrome cause they don't trust Mozilla cause they embedded Pocket, but like Chrome is literally shoved with a million Google bits, even Chromium (the open source variant of Google Chrome which is the proprietary variant almost everyone installs) has Google crapware at a much larger scale. Mozilla's Firefox still feels like the lesser of the two evils. Edit: Added clarification about Chromium in case someone doesn't know the difference between Chromium (open source) vs Google Chrome (proprietary).
- lmedinas 6y agoWell i think Mozilla made very clear in the past that they did all they can to avoid Pocket to be evasive, and they made it to respect your privacy, in case you choose to use it. Of course you can always turn it off on your Firefox and never come across it again.
- ForHackernews 6y agoI actively enjoy the Pocket integration, and I especially appreciate that it's suggesting things locally.
- lmedinas 6y agoi also have no issues with it, if it was Google on the other hand i would probably disable it.
- emptyparadise 6y agoIf it was Google, I don't think you'd be able to.
- jorvi 6y agoSomehow I feel like they could have avoided a lot of the backlash by renaming Pocket to Firefox Pocket (and thus being part of the Firefox Lockwise, Firefox Send, Firefox Sync etc suite). Instead of being / feeling like it’s own separate entity, it would have felt like an integral part of Firefox and thus enjoying the same privacy commitments. Even though I have Pocket disabled I don’t see much of a problem with it being in the browser. Isn’t it the same concept as Safari’s Reading List?
- tmaly 6y agoI donate $20 a year to Mozilla. I like the product. I hope they will keep focus making great browser and not get distracted with other things.
- dblohm7 6y agoWhile donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox. If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
- tmaly 6y agoWhy not just offer a paid version of firefox then? That is really what I am offer. I don't use pocket or the VPN. I am willing to pay for a license if they continue to support the browser.
- adsjhdashkj 6y agoThis is actually sad - because i have limited use for either of those products. I likely want the VPN, but the value of having it on my phone is minimal to me. So while i think i will get the VPN, Pocket on the otherhand... is just meh to me. Products where i give some cloud company a ton of data, even if a good company, is just not an interesting problem for an honest company to solve. VPN is meaningful. Privacy in general is meaningful. Basic necessities like identity and communication are meaningful. Pocket is a really nice feature and a good UX, but just not interesting to me for the company goals. If it makes them money i'm happy, but it's just mildly more interesting to me than Mozilla Tiktok might be. I really hope they embrace the essentials to the web, and make a profit doing so. VPN seems like the right direction (though i'm dying for it on desktop). Pocket, less so... to me.
- ecmascript 6y agoWell, I want to use products from companies that I support. Mozilla is simply pushing too much politics that I strongly disagree with so I cannot support them. Brave is more private and respecting of the user, without the politics. It's all whats good with Mozilla leaving out the bad part. We could have had that in Mozilla today, but because virtue signaling they had to fire Brendan. This was probably the nail that lead to the coffin for Mozilla.
- jamienicol 6y ago"Firing Eich because of his political views is virtue signalling. I don't use Firefox because of Mozilla's political views."
- ecmascript 6y agoYes, do you have something to say or do you just like to quote me? I dislike companies that push a political agenda when the product or service itself has little to do with it. Privacy politics is fine, since that is a core part of Mozilla and Firefox and is very neutral since everyone can enjoy privacy. It is also part of the browsing experience. But pushing stuff like "white privilege" is just pushing away users like me. I use Brave, which is a company founded by Brendan and they don't push anti gay marriage politics on me even if that is what they may support. I just don't want that in my browser, it makes it a shitty experience. I don't understand what's hard to understand about that. I am also a web developer, so pissing me off will just result in me not testing the website in Firefox unless my users specifically requests it.
- stnmtn 6y agoIs gay marriage anti-marriage to you?
- AlexandrB 6y ago> I just don't want that in my browser, it makes it a shitty experience. How? If you don't care about politics, why would the politics of the organization running the browser affect your experience? Aren't you therefore virtue signalling (in this case for maximal free speech) by not using Firefox for political reasons? You haven't mentioned any product features/decisions made as a result of Mozilla's "virtue signalling" that affected the day-to-day experience of using Firefox.
- rvz 6y ago> Mozilla can't exist solely because people think it has a good mission: it needs products that can pay the bills, or at least a large population of active users. Absolutely. It has to stand on its own feet. Yet the only reason Mozilla is being kept alive is due to Google paying them to be the default search engine as part of a deal which is where the majority of their revenue is from. [0] Funny how their mission in "supporting internet privacy" also somehow means we must have deals with companies with the likes of Google who don't believe in Mozilla's own mission in order to survive. [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/
- kvark 6y agoWell, you have to pick your battles, right? Maybe in some future when Mozilla has their own privacy-oriented open-source search engine, as well as an independent solid source of income, it would cease to sign contracts with Google. We aren't there yet, and may never be.
- auslegung 6y agoWow. > Today, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla’s termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath (which was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019.)
- Barrin92 6y ago>it needs products that can pay the bills the alternative is cutting the bills down somewhat. They made about 500 million in revenue in 2018, that's a healthy pile of cash. They've got a pretty huge engineering team and still development on their products is painfully slow. Just take the password manager they've been offering, it can't even import or export passwords and it misses half of the features any of the free competitors have. Adding even more stuff on top of it doesn't really give me a lot of confidence.
- _the_inflator 6y agoYes, I agree. And the best product is a product that is useful to users. To me, Mozilla felt like an ideology and not so much like a browser. That repelled me from Mozilla. I was annoyed by their attitude and puns toward Chrome, especially the prefix war and the comparison between IE6 and Chrome. That was way too much for me, even though they had a point. Ironically one of their evangelists, that made a lot of noise against Chrome, later moved on to Microsoft. Microsoft has settled the prefix war in the way that they adopted Chromium. Coming from Netscape, which I loved, and going through almost every iteration of the Internet and browsers, Mozilla feels like Assembler or C to me. Yes, Assembler was cool when you had your C64, and yes, you can do everything with C, but that is not the point. People need to get a job done, and yes, automated Garbage Collection is ok most of the time - I mean you Java, C#, Python, etc. Maybe the comparison is not the best, but Mozilla's priority seems right this time: new product(s). Best of luck, Mozilla!
- yamrzou 6y agoI would pay for firefox if that's what it takes for it to continue existing and to be as good as other browsers.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoIs it actually true that Mozilla’s core business (develop Firefox, funded by search bar traffic) loses money? Or is the crises that this core business doesn’t generate enough surplus to fund the overhead of other activities that Mozilla engages in?
- nikisweeting 6y agoI subscribe to Pocket Premium to support Firefox development because I think it's critical for it to continue existing, but I use Chrome as my daily driver because it's almost 2x faster on my Mac. I give FF a try every few months and will happily switch if they ever manage to get it to having comparable performance to Chrome or Safari on my architecture.
- rubber_duck 6y agoI spent the last month switching to FF because Chrome is getting dog slow and I wanted to support it, despite multiple issues since switching I stuck along. Seeing this "diversification" strategy I just installed Edge and am giving it a try, FF wasn't a great experience but I was willing to stick with it to support Chrome alternatives - but it's obvious it needs a lot of work - and removing focus is a signal people should be moving off not coming back to it.
- s9w 6y agoSeeing Mozilla burn fills my heart with joy. Maybe they will be forced to be an actual software dev company instead of a political activist group. But even in this post they had to shove in 'racism' in the headline.
- fsflover 6y agoWhat's wrong with being "a political activist group"?
- shock 6y agoSkews incentives.
- fsflover 6y agoIn a bad way? Honestly I wish we had more activists pursuing something else than money.
- shock 6y agoI can't say if it's in a good or bad way, I guess it would depend on the individual case. I just know it's extremely hard to be true to your stated purpose when incentives push you in other directions.
- jamienicol 6y agoMozilla's stated purpose is our Manifesto - https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/about/manifesto/
- shock 6y agoOn the whole that page sounds like corporate speak. Nevertheless you have broken your > Principle 5: Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it. That principle is in direct contradiction to Mozilla pushing the recent Firefox update on users, that disabled their addons. This tells me that the whole Manifesto is worthless. How can I trust an entity that has broken one of its core principles?
- rswail 6y ago"Focusing Firefox On Users In order to refocus the Firefox organization on core browser growth through differentiated user experiences, we are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team." So what is the impact on things like Servo/Rust, and the core browser? I guess they are setting up for a post-Google-pays-to-keep-us-going world, but not sure that Pocket or Hubs or VPN are going to set the world on fire.
- emptyparadise 6y agoStrange, I can't see that sentence in the post.
- vanderZwan 6y agoIt's in the linked internal message, second page: https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-to-Employees-Change-in-Difficult-Times.pdf https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-...
- emptyparadise 6y agoThis is seriously unfortunate. A Chromium-only world creeps ever closer...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kvark 6y agoI'm really worried about Mozilla's participation in standards now, WebGPU in particular :/
- tmp0192847475 6y agoMost of the Servo team got fired :(
- xolve 6y ago
- sciurus 6y ago250 people, roughly 25% of the company, were laid off today. This is on top of the 70 laid off in January (discussion of that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737)
- calvinmorrison 6y agoWhy Mozilla has almost 1,000 employees blows my mind. Isn't this an project for an open source web browser?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoHow many people do you think a browser's team + all components + support + management + marketing + finances need? Chromium alone has 1700+ contributors (https://github.com/chromium/chromium https://github.com/chromium/chromium), Firefox has hundreds of "core contributors" (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Community#Core_Contributor https://wiki.mozilla.org/Community#Core_Contributor) and many more beyond those.
- stomatomot 6y agomozilla has double face, i will never trust them
- ecmascript 6y agoI could see this coming a mile away and have written about it several times on HN, last 6 months ago [1]. Due to Mozillas woke-ness, focus has shifted from the product which actually is great to worthless endeavors like pushing woke politics. This made their product offerings hurt and now they have to cut jobs. I use Brave as my main browser today and Firefox is just not that relevant anymore due to bad user numbers. It's barely even worth it to test your sites in Firefox anymore. I hope they will stop with the woke bullshit and start getting actual value to users out there instead. I believe it's that or they will cease to exist in time. No one will use your product just because you are woke. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22298296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22298296
- growlist 6y agoAre we now stuck with this vacuous corporate virtue signalling forever, or just until the globalist/leftist/whatever-ists finally achieve the absolute tyranny they seem to be seeking?
- IshKebab 6y agoYes they could have gone with a much clearer message: "People still aren't using Firefox much, so we've had to lay off part of our workforce. However we have lots of great technology almost ready so expect that to change soon" sort of thing. Instead: In these COVID times, COVID COVID unprecedented COVID systemic racism. COVID. Btw we fired 250 people. Uncertain times, COVID.
- pkilgore 6y agoIt's wild to live in a world where a guiding philosophy of maybe we as a society should make best efforts to treat people with maximum kindness is mistaken for "absolute tyranny".
- growlist 6y agoIncluding cancel culture? You don't think this is all part of the same push?
- cameronhowe 6y agoIt is so refreshing to see an ethical company like mozilla when faced with financial struggle say "We at the top level have slashed our salaries to ensure we can keep paying as many contributors as possible as it is they who make our products great"
- DNied 6y agoThe linked article says nothing like that.
- Nimitz14 6y agoThat's the point.
- shock 6y agoI thought I missed the quote when I first read the article, but I did a search now and it came up empty. Was the quote in the article and got taken out, or were you just being sarcastic?
- cameronhowe 6y agoSorry I thought it would be obvious to anyone reading the article. My hope was that by setting expectations to where they should be, the terribleness of this corporate statement would be more apparent. The only sacrifice Mitchell Baker admits to is firing people. Somehow the ones that stay are supposed to do more. There is no statement that firefox should be the best browser out there to encourage more users to switch. No rallying call against the ad industry which is internet users biggest enemy All I got out of it is that they want to develop new services as a software substitutes and charge people for it, probably as a subscription.
- thefrog 6y agoAnd yet 250 Matts and Olivias (the groundfolk) still find themselves out of a job - you can thank their failures at the top for that.
- justapassenger 6y agoThis announcement is very strong in corporate speak. Main takeaway is that they’re out of money and need to are going to focus on making money?
- esarbe 6y agoMaking a browsers requires developers, developers cost money. Since not enough people are donating, they have to figure out how to make money otherwise.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoYup; Google / Chrome, Apple / Safari + webkit, and Microsoft / Edge get away with it because their browser is not their product, it's an extra. For Google its original intent was to make the internet faster so that people would see more ads. Firefox needs a company behind it whose income is not tied to the browser. I don't believe you can monetize a browser, not without doing some dodgy shit like forcing search engines on people, injecting ads, premium features, etc. I know Firefox tried to launch a number of products over the years to try and make money, but at this point it doesn't seem to be working. I think their only hope financially is to be bought up by a FAANG, but they either have their own browsers or no interest in having one.
- Yoric 6y agoYou can't by Mozilla. It's a non-profit. There are no shares.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoSo that leaves us with FB or Netflix.
- err4nt 6y agoI wonder what percentage of their bottom line comes from goodwill donations from individuals, versus the millions they get each year from Google and various other search companies they have contracts with - in some recent past years Google has been funding like 90%+ of their budget haven't they?
- kstenerud 6y agoThis has wayyy too much corporate doublespeak in it. I try not to be negative on companies with a good mission, but this fluff-filled announcement tells my spidey senses that they're about to do something that people won't like.
- Fiahil 6y agoIt's right there at the bottom : > Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges.
- gilrain 6y agoYou're not wrong, but why do you suspect the "something people won't like" is anything more than this massive layoff?
- moomin 6y agoThere's a lot of talk of values that doesn't have an obvious associated action. This is typically a two stage way of announcing something. Next comes the actual action, which is in keeping with the "new values".
- abetusk 6y agoSection 5: " New focus on economics. Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges. " A kind reading would be that they'll try to move to a consultancy or subscription based model, like Red Hat. An unkind reading is that they will make portions of their products and code proprietary and charge licensing fees. "... everything was free ..." is an ambiguous statement in this context. Do they mean free/libre or do they mean free/gratis? This, to me reads like corporate double speak. It leaves enough ambiguity so that people can have a kind interpretation while letting them claim they were being honest about their intentions should they choose to go a proprietary route.
- 6y ago
- user1980 6y ago"New focus on economics": It was bad enough seeing terrible clickbait in the "Recommended by Pocket" section displayed on every new tab. Now I have to go into settings to opt-out of Sponsored Stories so I don't have to see ads for Honey. All to fund the so-called "internet activist movement"? I just want a web browser, not an ideology.
- kvark 6y agoI'm totally with you on "Recommended by Pocket" thing, it's very sad. But I think you are confusing Mozilla with something it's not. Mozilla is not a software company today that tries to be an internet activist. Mozilla is an activist company that also happens to develop software to prove their point. So no, it's not just about the web browser.
- elliekelly 6y agoI wish Mozilla would distribute their free software the way some museums charge entry. A “suggested donation” of $X. And when I go to download the browser prompt me to either pay the suggested donation or manually change it to $0. I’d gladly pay $10 for Firefox every major update and I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s just not something I really think about very often. The passive asks just aren’t that effective.
- throwaway8941 6y agoIn theory it's a nice idea, but it's hard enough to persuade my friends and acquaintances to try Firefox (again, since many of them left between versions 4 through 56). If they visited the website and were asked to make a donation, they'd think Firefox has become commercial software and will leave immediately. This will hurt their market share even more, if anything. Ubuntu tried that one, and it wasn't very effective.
- takluyver 6y agoUbuntu is still trying it - the Ubuntu desktop download page still prompts you to donate. You no longer have to pass it to get the download, though.
- oefrha 6y agoThought it would be another political activism post, turns out to be a dressed-up corporate layoff announcement: > Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today.
- jjordan 6y agoFor all it's flaws, and with the exception of a brief 18 month stint, I've been a dedicated Firefox user since 2004. I sincerely hope that this project finds its new groove and continues to provide a viable alternative to Chromium. The world truly needs it.
- shock 6y ago> Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce — approximately 250 people of exceptional professional and personal caliber who have made outstanding contributions to who we are today. To each of them, I extend my heartfelt thanks and deepest regrets that we have come to this point. This is a humbling recognition of the realities we face, and what is needed to overcome them. What a load of bull! How many people did she save from firing by taking a pay cut? I agree that it would have been an insignificant number of the 250 people fired, but it would have made a difference in the life of the employees not fired and it would have given meaning to her words. Words are extremely cheap (including the ones I'm writing right now). Statements only become principles when they imply a personal cost, otherwise they are just ideas.
- Spivak 6y agoYou do get that the total compensation for 250 FTE's is probably in the neighborhood of $25 million/yr. She gets paid about $1m/yr which includes performance incentives. So if she just gave up her whole salary she would only have to fire 96% of the people let go today. C suite members raking in high salaries is the tiniest most insignificant issue when it comes to a large orgs finances. In most large orgs if C sites were paid $0 the average employee wouldn't even notice the difference.
- hu3 6y ago4% might be just a number to you but to those people it would mean the world.
- williamstein 6y agoLayoffs can be as much about spending less money as refocusing the company. The company might layoff people who are very good at X but have no experience with Y because the company is not doing X anymore and is focusing on Y. From the announcement, "our pre-COVID plan for 2020 included [...] investing in innovation and creating new products", which suggests they hired people who were very experienced at X (a new product) but have decided to kill development on X. It would be nice if the post actually said what X was, since this whole post is totally generic. Retraining people to work on Y rather than laying them off would be nice, but maybe that would take too long and those people don't want to be retrained to work on Y, and will be much happier working on X somewhere else.
- ForHackernews 6y agoITT: "I'm fine with Chrome controlling the whole internet, as long as I never again have to read about Mozilla trying to fight racism." The irony of these folks whining about Mozilla's priorities...
- macspoofing 6y agoTheir priorities are out of wack. Firefox is their golden goose. It's the thing that gives them clout and revenue. Their job is to increase adoption because increased adoption means more clout and more revenue. You do that by constantly reinvesting in the platform and making it your core singular focus, especially performance and tooling (because developers are a big driver for browser adoption). Where is the Firefox version CEF? Where is a competitive option to v8/node.js? Why is MS Edge (and every other independent browser) based on CEF and not Firefox? Why has Firefox performance lagged behind Chrome for years now? Since they ousted Eich (and maybe even before that), they've been focusing on everything except Firefox, and as a result they've steadily lost market-share. They screwed up. Case in point: >New focus on product. Mozilla must be a world-class, modern, multi-product internet organization. What do you mean 'multi-product internet organization'? You have Firefox, and ... what else? Nothing. Firefox is the only thing that keeps them relevant and provides employment for their people. But let's instead focus on everything else?
- liability 6y agoMaybe they mean to remember Thunderbird exists?
- takluyver 6y agoCounterpoint: Firefox is the thing they're best known for, but it's been inexorably losing market share for years to a direct competitor with vastly more financial muscle and access to very prominent advertising space. At the same time, they're dependent on that competitor for most of their revenue. It's hard to imagine they could give Firefox a significant technical edge over Chrome, no matter how much they focus on it. Even if Google plays entirely fair - not optimising things like GMail & Google Maps for Chrome at all - it has the resources to keep up with anything Mozilla can do. Throwing all the eggs in one basket and praying is not a strategy. It makes sense for them to diversify. Inevitably there will be some failures (Firefox Phone seems like a bad idea with hindsight, but hindsight is always 20/20), but some things are having a bit of quiet success, like Firefox Send or their 'Privacy not Included' guides. How they create revenue, I have no idea, though their new VPN is one idea.
- claydavisss 6y agotranslation: mozilla will be more about politics than tech, so please donate now
- jjordan 6y agoThe reduced spending on dev tools makes me sad. Their efforts in the past, for example their unparalleled support for CSS grid, have set the standard for web developer tools. I hope they find a way to continue to innovate in this space.
- olodus 6y agoYeah, I very much agree. For a diverse Web development needs to be good on as many browsers as possible. Maybe this could be one of the separate parts some of the devs could split out as a donation/patreon project or something. You pay for them giving you better dev environment in Firefox.
- EdwinLarkin 6y agoIt blows my mind that no company is currently able to challenge Chrome. Not even Microsoft or Apple is interested to challenge the status quo.
- dblohm7 6y ago> It blows my mind that no company is currently able to challenge Chrome. I think that as developers we could be doing more to help with that. Using Firefox, testing with Firefox, avoiding Blink-only APIs, etc...
- takluyver 6y agoI think they are able. Apple still arguably does. But there's no obvious incentive for them. Developing your own browser engine is a big ongoing investment, constantly adding new features and promptly plugging security vulnerabilities. We've long expected browsers to be free, so it doesn't generate any direct income. If they want to collect data with it, they can wrap Blink in their own app. Mozilla keeps it up because of the principle that there should be more than one decent rendering engine. For-profit companies can't take that stance.
- TheCoelacanth 6y agoApple can't really compete with Chrome. They have walled off one little walled garden (iOS) that Chrome isn't allowed to enter, but everywhere that Chrome is allowed, it is crushing Safari.
- macspoofing 6y agoI think it's only a matter of time before Microsoft does a hard fork of Chromium.
- jrvidal 6y agoCan you elaborate on what makes you think that? (I'd love it to happen, btw)
- ihsw 6y agoHow about cut the budget for "changing" the world rather than cutting developers?
- marmshallow 6y agoIf this makes you sad or pissed off, the best thing you can do is donate. I just donated for $15 for the first time. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/
- dblohm7 6y agoWhile donating to Mozilla Foundation is a great cause [1], none of those funds go to funding Mozilla Corporation, and thus Firefox. If you want your funds to go toward MoCo (and thus Firefox development), your best bet is to subscribe to Mozilla VPN or Pocket Premium. [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
- mrweasel 6y agoThat’t kinda stupid to be honest. Just charge me $50 for Firefox... you know what make it $100 per year and I will pay, just to avoid Chrome. I don’t know how many of us are out there, but a large number of people don’t mind paying for the tools they rely on. I have co-worker who pay $100+ to get the email client they want. How such a payment scheme would work with an open source project I don’t know, but find a way for me to direct payments to Firefox.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hu3 6y agoNow repeat that donation another 164000 times and you'll have donated their CEO's income in 2018. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-form-990.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- oxymoron 6y agoWhich teams were impacted? In particular, is anyone working on rust being let go?
- kgraves 6y agoDid anyone find anything in this post about Mozilla refusing to take money from Google? I can’t find it. Mozilla, stop taking money from Google and letting them be the default search engine! Please don’t enable and legitimise surveillance capitalism.
- kgraves 6y agoThanks for the downvotes, I know you don't like the facts, but here they are: > Today, the majority of Mozilla Corporation revenue is generated from global browser search partnerships, including the deal negotiated with Google in 2017 following Mozilla’s termination of its search agreement with Yahoo/Oath (which was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019.) [0] [1] [2] [0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2018/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/11/30/mozillas-money-latest-filings-include-a-few-surprises/#367ac6844222 https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/11/30/mozilla...
- soundnote 6y agoTo do that now would be financial suicide. They have several new services, if they manage to get revenue from them they could survive cutting Google. But not before.
- shock 6y agoI present to you the Debian Foundation as a counter example. I posit they are surviving just fine without a contract with Google.
- staktrace 6y agoThe Debian Foundation also doesn't have to compete against Google on a product that costs millions of dollars to build and maintain, and that Google throws billions at in marketing.
- Nightshaxx 6y agoWhile I definitely think Mozilla is great for the internet, their main product is terrible from a business perspective. Trying to monitize a piece of free software that you are selling on this privacy benifits is a loosing battle. The reason free software is free is _because_ it can sell more valuable ads by using your data. Products that you pay directly for don't need to worry about selling ads so they don't have to do tracking and such. A paid browser at this point is realistically impossible to sell at any sort of scale because chrome is free. IMO Firefox Mozilla needs to make a new product that is paid. Someone on HN suggested email and/or other services that compete with Google's user product suite? At that point you are selling server space so its easier to get people to pay for it.
- mulmen 6y agoIt's especially a losing battle when you offer no way to pay for the product.
- coffeefirst 6y agoThat's a funny idea. Suppose there were a Firefox Pro option? It's the sort of thing a lot of people here might pay for regardless of what's in it just because they believe Firefox is essential to the open web. But what could it be? What if all it was to start was bundling their existing VPN service, Scroll, and Pocket Premium for a single price, and even if technically you can use them in Chrome or as iOS apps, it's marketed as a better browser. And then the door is open to add new things, maybe pinboard-style bookmark archiving would make sense? Is it a hit? Hard to say. But it feels like a better bet as a feature set that ALSO supports the open web than marketing each of those services individually.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- liability 6y agoIt feels like my hopes for ever seeing the Library window get fixed are being dashed against the rocks. How can they ever hope to change the world when they can't even rewrite a history/bookmarks GUI? I'm genuinely concerned for Firefox.
- thefrog 6y agoSorry, but Mozilla started their downhill slide after the situation that forced Eich out. Mitchell Baker is complicit in this backstabbing. I haven't used a Mozilla product since- until their leadership and mission change meaningfully to remove themselves from identity politics, I will continue to not use them.
- jacquesm 6y agoMozilla management has me puzzled. They have a position that is incredibly strong, lots of dedicated users that would rather quit the web than switch to Chrome or Edge. "But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests" Is exactly what they should stay away from. Work on the bloody browser, forget about the rest. There are bugs open for the browser that cost them marketshare every day (WebMIDI for instance) driving people to Chrome. Spreading their focus thinly, causing their main product to be somewhat neglected and behind when it comes to comparing it with other browsers. And that's before we get into the re-write and forced upgrade and breakage of lots of important plug-ins. It's not so much the changing world that is the problem here, but a ship that has become rudderless and that does not treat the browser landscape like the war it really is. The world needs Mozilla, healthy and under good management. I'm not sure if that is a luxury we will have for much longer if they are going down hill this fast. On the plus side, it's open source and will - hopefully - continue to work for many years as long as there are people willing to keep it alive. So as far as I'm concerned this post highlights the problem in the post itself, this is not what's needed. Laser focus on the browser at the expense of all the fluff. Forget about 'internet activism' and 'building new products'. Get the most secure and most user friendly, privacy first, standards compatible and feature rich browser out there and you'll survive for another decade at least. Get distracted by new and shiny stuff and I'd be surprised if it lasts another five years.
- dblohm7 6y ago> standards compatible Yet we are increasingly seeing developers who won't follow those standards. What are we as developers going to do about that?
- deltron3030 6y agoWhy not make a commercial pro version of the developer edition with Webflow like design features?
- pjmlp 6y agoBecause most devs are allergic to pay for stuff, unless they happen to work for big corp. This is how the bazaar generation has pushed all good tools for those of us that happen to work for the man.
- deltron3030 6y agoFF developer attracts a different audience I think, more designers and frontend people. Designers usually spend a lot more and don't insist on foss.
- im3w1l 6y agoI'm curious how Mozilla's finances are being impacted by covid.
- input_sh 6y agoAdd features to your smaller products (Lockwise, Notes, Monitor, Pocket, etc.) and put them behind a paywall, while keeping the core features free to use. I'd pay triple the price of Pocket's premium / Mozilla's VPN ($15/month) for a Mozilla/Firefox app pack.
- praveenperera 6y agoThis post makes me happy that Mozilla doesn't "own" rust
- GnarfGnarf 6y agoI wish they would get their "Send" feature up & running again. It's so simple for one-off's, better than DropBox. https://send.firefox.com/ https://send.firefox.com/
- frabbit 6y ago/That/ I would pay for. Add in Matrix server(s) , email hosting and I'm a subscriber.
- mxuribe 6y agoPay Mozilla for email hosting and matrix homeserver hosting!?! YES, PLEASE! Oh, and in my monthly fees, i can simply add $1 or $2 per month to donate directly to the browser team s well? YES, PLEASE, where do i sign up!?!?!?!?! While I'm serious about the above, forgive my capitalization and excessive punctuation...but this is honestly a great idea. For Mozilla - which is a company that i trust - to offer a paid service for 3 of the most essential internet services - web browsing, email, and chat (via matrix) - would be a great product offering. They could even offer other additional stuff like the VPN service i heard about...which generates so much value for users, and by making it a paid service, makes it sustainable. I'll add the caveat that none of these would be amazing money-makers, and stuff like managing email is hard, but it is a start, and at least brings in revenue. Maybe not so revolutionary (as a set of offerings), but sometimes foundational things provide the platform for future awesomeness.
- floatingatoll 6y agoWould it be acceptable for the third-party provider (whether Mozilla or not) that you're paying email and matrix hosting services to run automated content scanners on the email and chat server to detect known malware and child pornography content signatures? A lot of people take for granted that "I pay you money" implies "I have the right to use your service without you having any right to inspect my usage of your service", and it'd be useful to know your views on that.
- 6y ago
- praveenperera 6y ago4.5 months severance for the laid off employees. Doesn't say anything about any cuts to executive compensation however. https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-to-Employees-Change-in-Difficult-Times.pdf https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Message-...
- ecf 6y agoEvery single C-suite executive should be required to take a (2 * % of employees laid off) pay cut. Lay off 25% of your company? Enjoy your 50% pay cut. Have to lay off 50%? Enjoy working unpaid for a year while you rebuild.
- b3kart 6y agoOh you sweet summer child.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI mean, I guess I want a pony, too.
- warmind99 6y agoComing from the finance world, there's a very good reason that doesn't happen. In situations where a company is spiraling, everyone is incentivized to leave for new work. The people who are most competent at work are also most capable of getting new jobs, so what used to happen before it was standard was as a company died, the best people left, and the company died faster. If you axe the CEO's pay by 50% one year, what reason does he have to stay on and fix things? Why shouldn't he just go to some successful series A startup, get a bunch of equity, and retire in 10 years? He definitely could, if he wanted to.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoWhile I fully understand the logic of what you're saying, this is what makes us peons despise the upper execs, as they've turned it into a game of "Heads I win, tails you lose". I mean, if you're a great CEO, you're lavished with Midas-level wealth. If you're an absolute shitty CEO, you're also lavished with let's say Midas-junior-level wealth in the form of retention bonuses and/or golden parachutes to fix the mess you created (as you, no doubt, axe a large number of your underlings).
- jccalhoun 6y agoThese posts always make me wish that hackernews has a way to block posts from certain users. These kind of posts always bring out the hateful comments and if I look at their posting history a lot of times they seem to post mostly hateful comments. Call it a filter bubble if you want but I would rather not waste my time trying to convince them they are wrong and would rather be able to block them.
- gpanders 6y agoSeems like something you could do manually with Tampermonkey or something similar.
- insin 6y agoI feel the same, so I'm currently adding this feature to my HN Comments Owl user script/extension: https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl/issues/2 https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl/issues/2
- renewiltord 6y agoI feel the same. A friend wrote an extension that allows you to do this and my life has been much better. It just kills threads made by users I don't like.
- jiripospisil 6y ago> I've been told that a large part of Mozilla's security team has also been laid off, which seems like a big issue especially after Mozilla launched a VPN offering last month. https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1293200453736570881 https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1293200453736570881
- drosan 6y agoThey're already knee-deep in some ideology bullshit (instead of working on actual browser that people want to use) and now they cover laying off 250 people with corporate garbage talks. I really hope that Firefox has a future, but that kind of events make me thing otherwise.
- gadders 6y ago>> To start, that means products that mitigate harms or address the kinds of the problems that people face today. So no more Firefox browser then? What does that statement even mean?
- Santosh83 6y agoThe browser space is extremely competitive because it has been driven for decades by corporations seeking to dominate the field, and that naturally leads to Byzantine complexity and high barrier for any competition. Mozilla really needs to find ways to generate profits and in turn, channel the lion's share of those profits into their browser. But this is a hard proposition when giant corporations give away their browsers for free and even bundle it hard with their operating systems. The unfairness of Mozilla's browser endeavour is stark when you stop to think about it. Maybe we the collective really do deserve our corporate overlords because we can't be bothered to pay for something when a free version also exists. This not only applies to Firefox but is a big reason why nearly all the top OSS are struggling to reach parity with their commercial counterparts. How many of us will pay Office/Adobe licenses but if LibreOffice or Gimp ask for payment, we won't? The reason is vendor lock-in and feature-wise inferiority of the open source counterparts, but if no one uses them, then like the proverbial chicken-and-egg, they will never be able to compete, and will only slowly fade away.
- tempsy 6y agoWhat was the reasoning behind closing the Taipei office?
- khuey 6y agoThe core Gecko engineering group in Taipei was all laid off already back in 2018. I'm not sure what was left but apparently it wasn't considered very essential.
- mishftw 6y agoThis means a 1/3 reduction from where they were last year. And now with remote work being the norm, I could see a company like Mozilla preferring that to save further costs. Their Google deal has not be renewed yet and that has accounted for a lot of their revenue in the past (the article mentions a 90% figure). I just hope Mozilla Co & Mozilla Foundation survive.
- Vinnl 6y agoI wonder what this means (and fear) for important projects like https://commonvoice.mozilla.org https://commonvoice.mozilla.org, that do not seem to have been concerned with a business case at all. Best case I can currently see is that some other organisation will take it on, though I'm not sure which. And I'm also curious how the pandemic has impacted them. As I understood it, still by far their major revenue sources were the search engine deals - has their value changed due to the pandemic?
- sdenton4 6y agoI am very interested to know what's up with common voice... Please chime in if anyone knows anything!
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago> Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue This is baffling. How? You make a web technology and everyone is stuck at home.
- staktrace 6y agoPeople aren't clicking on ads to buy things because they've all been laid off. Economies are circular.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoAnd yet, Google and Facebook revenue don't seem to be doing too bad. Slightly down, but not very much so.
- goalieca 6y agoThe economy is a ecosystem. If one species goes extinct it can destroy the balance and throw everything into chaos. My company and most of my friends at other tech companies have had paycuts, layoffs, or furloughs.
- onyva 6y agoWould defiantly move from proton to Mozilla’s VPN the minute they make it available in Europe. Would love to cancel my iCloud storage too, if Mozilla offered an hosted NextCloud or something similar.
- gspr 6y agoMozilla's VPN is powered by Mullvad. Mullvad is available globally right now, costs €5/month (vs Mozilla VPN's $5), and allows a range of payment methods all the way down to "cash in an envelope". Mozilla are great, I have nothing against them, but I really struggle to see the point of their VPN service.
- onyva 6y agoI’d like to support Mozilla going forward. I’m not sure if this is a major revenue stream for them possibly or not, but if I can help, why not. I’m aware of mullvad btw and I need to run out my proton subscription in any case.
- Datenstrom 6y ago> "Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges," Baker said. > We must learn and expand different ways to support ourselves and build a business that isn't what we see today. Perhaps I am wrong, but to me this reads as Mozilla plans to give up on not being evil and to do whatever it takes to make money. Sounds like Mozilla products will soon become toxic including Firefox if not forked. Also, looks like their hand is being forced by google. Edit: formatting - also I hope I am wrong.
- gspr 6y ago> Sounds like Mozilla products will soon become toxic including Firefox if not forked. This is extremely worrisome. Has it not been demonstrated quite clearly that developing and maintaining a modern and secure web browser is a gargantuan task, almost on par with an OS itself? Isn't Mozilla really the only organization that currently stands a chance at keeping a truly free and open such browser in the game? This is very troubling.
- wtetzner 6y agoCharging money doesn't necessarily mean they're going to start being evil. In fact, they may be able to provide better and more secure products, if it means they can stop relying on Google/advertising/etc. to stay afloat.
- Datenstrom 6y agoTrue, they could possibly spin out other high quality secure products and I hope that is what they do and that I am wrong. It all depends on the current leadership and how desperate they get I suppose and I am not familiar enough with that to say.
- specto 6y ago750 employees with $350 million or more in revenue. It seems like they're just restructuring and using covid as cover. Maybe I'm wrong, but it kind of looks like that on the surface.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pjfin123 6y agoI you think projects like Mozilla and Firefox are important donations can really go a long way. If enough people even donated ~$5/mo to projects like this, which is less than lots of people spend for Spotify or buying coffee, it would make open source privacy respecting projects a lot more viable.
- gspr 6y ago> I you think projects like Mozilla and Firefox are important donations can really go a long way. I know this kind of goes against my other comment stating that I'm super worried about losing the only viable free and open browser out there (my only browser), but: what's keeping me from donating is the bad aftertaste of the money being used for frivilous things. I don't want to fund their bookmarking service. I don't want to fund their VPN rebranding effort. I don't want to fund their authentication services. I don't want to fund their voice recognition services. They're probably great, but it's the browser that's absolutely essential and irreplaceable at this time!
- TumorousJoker 6y agoYou can't give them money and then put conditions on top of it. It's their business decision as to what they want to do with their monetary donations. Otherwise, this would be like your employer saying, "I will pay you salary, buuut only if you promise not to spend it on alcohol". It clearly doesn't work like that, you just have to make a high level judgement if you agree with their values and if yes, go ahead with that donation.
- spinningslate 6y agoI feel for everyone who will lose their job here. That's never a pleasant thing, particularly so in current circumstances. Notwithstanding that though - and with no disrespect to anyone being laid off - I'm actually really encouraged by this. The key quote from the announcement is this one: "Furthermore, Mozilla's contract with Google to include Google as the default search provider inside Firefox is set to expire later this year, and the contract has not been renewed." Mozilla's reliance on Google is a major detraction from delivering privacy-focused products. I've said before, and I'll say again: I'd gladly pay a fee for Firefox if it meant (a) it was funding the product so that (b) there was no need for them to peddle in surveillance. I really wish Mozilla all the best. Commit to provacy, show me where to pay and I'll gladly sign up. -- I'm aware they accept donations and have already donated. But that's different from paid-for products.
- wtetzner 6y agoI would also happily pay for Firefox. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse for the browser though, in terms of market share. If they don't charge for it, hopefully they can cover costs with other paid services, like their VPN service. Honestly, it would be great if Mozilla could provide privacy focused cloud services like storage, email, etc. I'd gladly pay for it, knowing they are not interested in collecting my information.
- mulmen 6y agoHow long do you think Mozilla can resist the temptation to monetize your data? Personally I prefer they don't try to run these services because the concentration of data is too much of a temptation for anyone. You already have email and storage options. Mozilla just needs to offer a way to pay for Firefox directly.
- syshum 6y agoThey need to get back to their roots of fighting for the user, open access, open standards, and privacy The last few years, imo, they have been chasing market share by trying to play follow the leader with Google which have turned off a few major power users which was their core base This is with out getting into some of the political based initiatives we have seen over the last few years as well
- konaraddi 6y agoThe cost of building and maintaining a competitive browser is huge and it's hard for Mozilla/Firefox to compete with Google/Chrome. Firefox saw its monthly active users go down by ~14% in the last 8 months [1]. I think Mozilla should consider stopping Firefox development and fork Chromium to focus on accessibility and privacy (both in and out of the browser). It's far from ideal--there'll only be one popular browser engine--but it's a trade off that could help Mozilla put more money and time towards its true mission: "to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all". The cost of building/maintaining Firefox is holding them back from putting more money and effort toward that mission (and I think that's why they're reducing their workforce [2]). [1] 244M MAU in Dec. 2018 and 209M MAU as of Aug. 2, 2020 https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity [2] "Today we announced a significant restructuring of Mozilla Corporation. This will strengthen our ability to build and invest in products and services that will give people alternatives to conventional Big Tech. Sadly, the changes also include a significant reduction in our workforce by approximately 250 people."
- LamaOfRuin 6y agoThat's 20 months, not 8.
- konaraddi 6y agoAh you're right, I skipped a year. Thank you for pointing that out
- The_rationalist 6y agoMozilla should consider stopping Firefox development and fork Chromium to focus on accessibility and privacy (both in and out of the browser). Mozilla will die before getting the intellectual maturity to do this. The cost of building/maintaining Firefox is holding them back from putting more money and effort toward that mission (and I think that's why they're reducing their workforce [2]). Well said!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wintermutestwin 6y agoI am already paying a very high price (mostly in time) to keep the data thieves from stealing my precious data. I would pay a pretty high monthly fee to someone who I could trust to take care of it for me. That's why I pay the Apple tax. How about a free browser for those who want to DIY privacy and a premium for those who don't want to spend their time?
- lukeplato 6y agoIt might be obvious, but it would have been nice if their statement explained in detail why this decision was the result of Covid
- spinningslate 6y agoI feel for everyone who will lose their job here. That's never a pleasant thing, particularly so in current circumstances. Notwithstanding that though - and with no disrespect to anyone being laid off - I'm actually really encouraged by this. The key quote from the announcement is this one: "Furthermore, Mozilla's contract with Google to include Google as the default search provider inside Firefox is set to expire later this year, and the contract has not been renewed." Mozilla's reliance on Google is a major detraction from delivering privacy-focused products. I've said before, and I'll say again: I'd gladly pay a fee for Firefox if it meant (a) it was funding the product so that (b) there was no need for them to peddle in surveillance. I really wish Mozilla all the best. Commit to privacy, show me where to pay and I'll gladly sign up. -- I'm aware they accept donations and have already donated. But that's different from paid-for products. EDIT: cross-posted comment above from duplicate thread [0]. Don't think that's against guidelines - apologies if so. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166
- calcifer 6y ago> The key quote from the announcement is this one: > "Furthermore, Mozilla's contract with Google to include Google as the default search provider inside Firefox is set to expire later this year, and the contract has not been renewed." That sentence doesn't seem to be anywhere in the announcement, nor in the linked PDF. Where are you getting this?
- spinningslate 6y agoIt's here [0], which was posted in a separate thread [1]. [0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166
- calcifer 6y agoEven on that article I don't see a source for the claim. It's all unsubstantiated speculation.
- billyhoffman 6y ago“We need to focus...” followed by 5 different areas to focus on. That’s not focusing. “[We] need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests.” What? Mozilla needs to build great products that solve people’s problems better than Google or whomever else does. That’s what Firefox did when it came out. It was objectively better than IE in ways that people could immediately grasp. “Representing interests?” WTF are you even taking about? If you mean privacy and ownership of my personal data than say that. “To start, that means products that mitigate harms or address the kinds of the problems that people face today. Over the longer run, our goal is to build new experiences that people love and want, that have better values and better characteristics inside those products.” Mitigate harms? Again, WTF are we even talking about? Better values? Maybe this is the open source roots showing? But the majority of your business is based on selling default search engine rights to one of the most invasive harvesters of personal info, so let’s not pull that “values” thread too much here Mozilla. Make awesome products and solve people problems better than your competitors. If you competition is doing scummy stuff, then tell people why your approach is better. Apple is doing an awesome job messaging the importance of privacy. Come on Mozilla. Get in the damn game
- shard972 6y ago> Mitigate harms? Probably related to BLM.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway234101 6y agoCorporate cancer[0] strikes again. Mozilla took on a lot of social justice projects over the years. They hung around their ankles like a boat anchor. Good on them for jettisoning that excess baggage and refocusing on their primary business. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Cancer-Miracles-Millions-Company-ebook/dp/B081D58P1X/ https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Cancer-Miracles-Millions-Co...
- CameronNemo 6y agoMozilla should offer a way to make donations that are earmarked for direct use on Firefox engineering. Not marketing, not new services, none of that... just engineering the core product. Other expenses can come out of the general donation fund.
- dblohm7 6y ago[I am a Mozilla employee, and yes, I do recognize how my position influences my perspective.] One thing that always frustrates me a bit whenever Mozilla comes up on HN or elsewhere is that we are always held to impossibly high standards. Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at the corporate doublespeak in that press release. Fuck Mozilla, I'm switching to Chrome." Really? That's what's got you bent out of shape? Sure, Mozilla has made mistakes. Did we apologize? Did we learn anything? Did we work to prevent it happening again? People want to continue flogging us for these things while giving other companies (who have made their own mistakes, often much more consequential than ours, would never be as open about it, and often learn nothing) a relatively free pass. I'm certainly not the first person on the planet whose employer has been on the receiving end of vitriol. And if Mozilla doesn't make it through this next phase, I can always find another job. But what concerns me about this is that Mozilla is such an important voice in shaping the future of the internet. To see it wither away because of people angry with what are, in the grand scheme of things, minor mistakes, is a shame. EDIT: And lest you think I am embellishing about trivial complaints, there was a rant last week on r/Firefox that Mozilla was allegedly conspiring to hide Gecko's source code because we self-host our primary repo and bug tracking instead of using GitHub, despite the fact that the Mozilla project predates GitHub by a decade.
- shock 6y ago> Yes, as a non-profit, we should be held to higher standards, but not impossible standards. > OTOH, sometimes it just seems unreasonable and absurd. Stuff like, to paraphrase, "Look at the corporate doublespeak in that press release. Fuck Mozilla, I'm switching to Chrome." If you think that Mozilla not using "corporate doublespeak" is an impossible standard, I am left speechless.
- dblohm7 6y ago> If you think that Mozilla not using "corporate doublespeak" is an impossible standard, I am left speechless. If you think that is a reason to abandon Mozilla, you've just proved my point.
- throwaway189262 6y agoCan they just focus on the browser? Firefox has been falling behind for years now, especially on mobile. And it's not all because of Google's questionable advertising. Chrome is simply better in many ways. Mozilla is failing it's core mission chasing so many vanity projects. It's a non-profit, not a startup. Flush management and start over
- acdha 6y agoIf you actually use Firefox it's really hard to support the belief that there's some quality or speed gap like there was in the mid-2010s. They're neck and neck on quality and features but it also highlights the degree to which Google uses their other businesses to promote Chrome: everywhere you go you'll be hit with suggestions to switch to Chrome, not to mention various QA “lapses” like lowering performance on YouTube or accidentally breaking logins on GCP only in Firefox.
- throwaway189262 6y agoThis is true. I set firefox to spoof Chrome user agent because otherwise many Google properties are near unusable. I really hope Mozilla survives. Were growing close to a Chrome monoculture at it would be worse than IE days
- throwawaysea 6y agoAnyone else concerned by a browser manufacturer claiming to build products by mixing tech with their "values"? This seems like the exact opposite of what I want with utility software.
- pitay 6y agoHere is a (selective) look at the management of Mozilla in the recent past. From Mitchell Bakers blog https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase-markham/ https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gerva... “Gerv’s faith did not have ambiguity at least none that I ever saw. Gerv was crisp. He had very precise views about marriage, sex, gender and related topics. He was adamant that his interpretation was correct, and that his interpretation should be encoded into law. These views made their way into the Mozilla environment. They have been traumatic and damaging, both to individuals and to Mozilla overall.” From http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2018/07/29/gerv.html “I bring up Gerv's open-mindedness because I know that many people didn't find him so, but, frankly, I think those folks were mistaken. It is well documented publicly that Gerv held what most would consider particularly “conservative values”. And, I'll continue with more frankness: I found a few of Gerv's views offensive and morally wrong. But Gerv was also someone who could respectfully communicate his views. I never felt the need to avoid speaking with him or otherwise distance myself. Even if a particular position offended me, it was nevertheless clear to me that Gerv had come to his conclusions by starting from his (a priori) care and concern for all of humanity. Also, I could simply say to Gerv: I really disagree with that so much, and if it became clear our views were just too far apart to productively discuss the matter further, he'd happily and collaboratively find another subject for us to discuss. Gerv was a reasonable man. He could set aside fundamental disagreements and find common ground to talk with, collaborate with, and befriend those who disagreed with him. That level of kindness and openness is rarely seen in our current times.” Here is an article another person who knew Gervase Markham who refutes Mitchell Bakers account https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/ https://lwn.net/Articles/762345/ . Worth a read. Brendan Eich on the jump in executive share since he was let go: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058629 Here is Brokedamouth on the two class system now at Mozilla https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061500 Comment replicated here (it is worth looking at the whole discussion): “I was at Mozilla for a while and it was a two-class system. The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures. This is not even included in comp. One time, the CFO sent out a missive urging everyone to stay in AirBnB to save money and the execs (literally the following week) booked $500/night rooms at a hotel in NYC. I think the moment that made it clear as day was during a trip to Hawaii for the company all hands. The plane was a 737 so you had to walk past first class. These all hands are a huge deal for families - many were struggling down the aisle, carrying booster seats, etc. And they were passing two of the C-levels sitting in giant first-class seats sipping tropical cocktails. The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last. Mozilla has always reversed that rule and the result was a pretty toxic culture, all around.” The people saying this is full of corporate doublespeak look to be very true, especially when you have a memory and can look up what has gone on before.
- bhauer 6y agoThe new vision sounds like the old, current vision for the most part. I might be missing subtle changes in items 1 through 4. But item 5 is interesting: > New focus on economics. Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges I think combining this with the momentum behind things like the Federal Reserve's new inter-bank payments system (linked on HN yesterday) could finally make micropayments or something analogous mainstream. I would really enjoy shifting some of the advertising-funded model back to direct revenue from customers. I would like to be considered a "customer" again in more walks of life, generally. Not just a "subject." I think the customer-vendor dynamic is much more healthy when I am indeed the customer. If there's anything hopeful to take from this announcement, I think this is it.
- connorgutman 6y agoDear Mozilla, I would gladly sign-up for monthly patronage payments that go towards the development of Firefox features that the community chooses. Firstly, "installable" PWA support on Linux and Android. No one cares about your VPN or Pocket.
- lildata 6y agoI've used & loved Mozilla forever but at some point I am starting to wonder: when you fire 1/3 of your workforce & have obvious mismanagement problems, how can you still guarantee the security of such a complex piece of software?
- xg15 6y ago> We love the traits of it — the decentralization, its permissionless innovation, the open source underpinnings of it, and the standards part — we love it all. But to enable these changes, we must shift our collective mindset from a place of defending, protecting, sometimes even huddling up and trying to keep a piece of what we love to one that is proactive, curious, and engaged with people out in the world. [...] and seeing how the traits of the past can show up in new ways in the future. If my US corporate-speak decoder works halfway decently this paragraph reads really scary. When exactly have decentralization, permissionless innovation, open source and web standards become things to remember fondly while you move on? This honesty reads like an admission of defeat.
- jverce 6y agoWhat does COVID-19 have to do with anything here? They are an Internet company, one would expect they'd be thriving in this scenario.
- drno123 6y agoI somehow hoped that Baker got replaced.
- liminal 6y agoI'm still sad Microsoft chose to build on Chrome instead of Firefox
- mikece 6y agoWhile I really hate to suggest this, the best way to make money might be to sell space on newly opened tabs (with an option to turn off ads for something reasonable like USD$24.95 per year).
- DSingularity 6y agoWhat!? I would switch to brave immediately.
- gkoberger 6y agoMozilla tries this every few years and gets (rightfully) huge blowback. Mozilla makes enough money (through partnerships), the problem is they just spend too much.
- Causality1 6y agoThe sheer number of phone calls I would get from pissed-off friends and family for whom I installed Firefox would make me want to put a brick through Mozilla's window.
- zobzu 6y agoThey already do this. The default new tab stuff you see is sponsored. Just not overly so..
- KingOfCoders 6y agoThe "make Firefox a secondary goal" faction has won again. "Mozilla exists so the internet can help the world collectively meet the range of challenges a moment like this presents. Firefox is a part of this. But we know we also need to go beyond the browser to give people new products and technologies that both excite them and represent their interests. Over the last while, it has been clear that Mozilla is not structured properly to create these new things — and to build the better internet we all deserve."
- coffeefirst 6y agoThis would bug me less if their big ideas weren't Pocket and a VR chatroom.
- rl3 6y ago>This would bug me less if their big ideas weren't Pocket and a VR chatroom. It's probably just Pocket; developers working on the latter were hit with layoffs today, too.
- throwaway5752 6y agoDoes the Baidu revenue and shutting down the Taipei office rub anyone else the wrong way? I am not sure Mozilla works outside of a nonprofit model.
- zobzu 6y agoI think it works, they simply have no market share. Baidu and others will pay millions to be a default search engine of a popular browser. But Firefox just isn't that popular anymore. Which, mind you, sucks, because we need a Firefox (and Quantum is actually pretty good). That said, Mozilla's focus is no longer Firefox apparently - so, there's that.
- vsskanth 6y agoThey should license their UI framework.
- rapsey 6y agoIsn’t it all js/html? Who would pay for it when electron is free.
- DiabloD3 6y agoBecause Electron is a neverending toxic pile of shit.
- slezyr 6y agoYou still need to render that js/html with something. Chromium based on skia. IIRC Firefox was based on it as well, but migrated from it.
- Crespyl 6y agoIt used to be centered around XUL, and there was even a sort of proto-electron in the form of xulrunner and the related Prism project, but they were all dropped years ago and XUL itself has been deprecated and is being steadily replaced. There might've been a window somewhere in there where turning XUL/Gecko into a Qt style application toolkit could've been an option, but I think we're well past that point now.
- The_rationalist 6y agoI wonder if rustc developpers have been fired
- zobzu 6y agoWhen I worked there, there were basically 4 people working on Rust. And these people were making sure Rust would not need Mozilla to survive. Very smart people. Rust will be fine.
- imagetic 6y agoJust give me a $10 subscription to all the services in one package. If I got pocket + VPN in my browser for that. Win. Also, focus on how to share with a family, not under one login ID. $20/mo I get 3 logins under one household to hand out.
- sbahr001 6y agoI find this sad, Mozilla is really an advocate for the open web and web standards. Since web browsers are free, they can't make much. They might be able to sell something like Thunderbird; if they improve it and make it more into a service, like Hey! for example. They could also try the sponsorship model that a lot of open source projects are doing. They already have sponsors, but maybe sponsors for their open source frameworks might be better than asking for donations at a company level.
- wlesieutre 6y agoIf downsizing the organization and bringing some revenue in from a VPN service helps them be less financially beholden to Google, I think that's a net positive. I don't know that they would need to sell Thunderbird as a whole bundled product/service like Hey; they could launch a paid email service (in the "it's not Gmail" market occupied by Proton, FastMail, Posteo, etc.) and use that money for work on Thunderbird. Not so different from having a VPN service and using it to bring in money for Firefox.
- nix23 6y ago>beholden to Google, I think that's a net positive For the Mozilla Management, not the Company itself.
- wlesieutre 6y agoFor anyone worried about what will happen to Mozilla if Google decides they don't want to pay for being the default search engine in Firefox anymore. Their current arrangement is a lot of eggs in one basket.
- nix23 6y agoWas about the net positive, if you trow out all the developers and just hold the highly paid management, firefox will loose even more % and not even google will care if the default search engine google is.
- 6y ago
- protomyth 6y agoNew focus on technology. Mozilla is a technical powerhouse of the internet activist movement. What does this line mean?
- dredmorbius 6y agoAs someone who very much wants to like Pocket, but finds it immensely frustrating,[1] how 'zactly does Mozilla plan to monetise it? ________________________________ Notes: 1. "Pocket: It gets worse the more you use it" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_it_gets_worse_the_more_you_use_it/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_... and "Pocket: The worsening continues" https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/688oc9/pocket_the_worsening_continues/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/688oc9/pocket_... There's been some progress and backsliding, most of the complaints still apply.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoThat's sad, many of them would have joined Mozilla not just for money but genuinely believing they are working for social good and they did. I understood how bad Mozilla, for lack of a better term 'sucked' at making money when I saw how the small team of KaiOS picked up the remains of Firefox OS and not only turned it to be a viable business but did so in the ruthless, hyper-competitive market of Smartphone OS ecosystem where even Microsoft had failed. IMO Mozilla should have gone full throttle on Thunderbird Enterprise with support structure, Something for Microsoft Teams equivalent and finally embracing DDG with open hands.
- llsf 6y agoI could have seen Mozilla build an enhanced email service like Hey! Actually, they could still probably do it, it would align with their focus on privacy and experience with email reader.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoTrue, email requires more players to stay federated and would have reflected well with Mozilla's supposed ethos. But, I seriously doubt whether Mozilla would have pulled off what Hey did in terms of marketing. Mozilla's marketing for the hypothetical email service would have been like ProtonMail without the advantage of 'Switzerland/CERN' brand. Also, ProtonMail has now gone all guns on Apple following Hey, which I don't think Mozilla would do.
- llsf 6y agoWhile Mozilla would likely not go head on against Apple, Mozilla still have some aura especially in the Silicon Valley. Who knows, they might have cut a deal with Apple...
- gridlockd 6y ago> I understood how bad Mozilla, for lack of a better term 'sucked' at making money when I saw how the small team of KaiOS picked up the remains of Firefox OS and not only turned it to be a viable business but did so in the ruthless, hyper-competitive market of Smartphone OS ecosystem where even Microsoft had failed. KaiOS is in the ultra-low-end smartphone/feature-phone market that Microsoft/Google/Apple don't care about at all. What's remarkable is that something ill-conceived like "web technology on ultra-low-end devices" actually gained enough traction to get devices on the market. Like Firefox OS before it, actual KaiOS devices were not well-received, because of poor performance and lack of apps. It's just that nobody really notices because all the buzz is around "real" smartphones.
- babesh 6y agoI was told about 10 years ago that management at Mozilla was a shitshow. They have had layoffs, project cancellations, and internal strife for a long time. Sounds like more of the same.
- qchris 6y agoOn one hand, it's of course kind of a bummer that these folks are losing their jobs--never an easy thing to see. On the other, I'm excited about the products that may end up coming out of this. I'm already paying for the Mozilla VPN + Browser Extension (I think that totals something like $8/mo), plus another few dollars for additional storage on my personal Google account at the moment. I would be immensely enthusiastic about putting that (and more) money towards a privacy-respecting Mozilla-hosted email/calendar/file storage system instead. That obviously not an insignificant engineering challenge, but there's a bunch of open-source work in that area already that could probably be used as a template. I only hope that whatever products they put out, they spend some time making sure they're not damaging the enormous amount of goodwill they've built up in the community about privacy and Internet ethics.
- echelon 6y agoThey were doing fine until Chrome ate up all the market share. Google shouldn't have been allowed to do that. It's very anti-competitive for them to have a browser that defaults to Google search and disables plugins that support adblocking. Google is destroying Mozilla. Their monopoly is making the web worse.
- TylerE 6y agoChrome didn’t destroy Firefox. Firefox destroyed Firefox. Chrome was SO MUCH better it could't help but win. Turns out people do actually care about performance and responsiveness.
- echelon 6y agoChrome isn't better than Firefox, and both browsers have varied in terms of their performance. Google had the advantage of plastering Chrome all over google.com when people performed searches. That's how it got installed everywhere.
- TylerE 6y agoThat is patently false. Chrome was light years ahead of Firefox in both cpu and memory use for years.
- gnulinux 6y agoThat has not been my experience. Quite the contrary, Chrome never worked as good as Firefox in any of the OSX or linux laptops I owned. The only thing about Firefox is occasionally websites being broken due to Chrome-only support.
- yason 6y agoYes it was. I don't really see the difference anymore, on any practical level. However, Chrome has been removing useful features and not fixing usability bugs while just being more and more invasive, privacy-wise. I jumped from Firefox to Chrome with no hesitation when I saw Chrome blazing through multiple tabs without any slowdown. At the time Firefox was crawling on like a snail. Now, years later, I jumped from Chromium to Firefox because I could no longer use the browser to preserve control over certain web pages I needed to use.
- elric 6y agoThe cynic in me can't help but wonder if this "new focus on making money" is why they suddenly decided to cripple the android version of firefox.
- cglong 6y agoCan you elaborate?
- elric 6y agoThe new FF version for android is a toy. All advanced features have been removed. Virtually no addons are available. No more about:config. The home screen is a joke ("collections" instead of my previously opened tab? What's that about?). Opening a new tab does not place the focus in the address bar, and the "new tab" button and the address bar are on opposite ends of the screen, resulting in very awkward finger movements. I got so angry in the first hour of using it that I uninstalled it. It's the worst browsing experience I've had since before IE4. It's so bad that maybe it's deliberate in an attempt to sell the missing features as addons or a pro version or something? At least I hope that's what it is, otherwise I don't understand the move at all.
- searchableguy 6y agoMaybe it's a cultural problem but many of their products are aimed at consumers when they have the opportunity to tune them for enterprise (lockwise?). They could make more money with better and paid consultation projects. Many open source projects they own can be sassified (voice project?).
- lukaa 6y agoPerhaps it should outsource most of jobs in country where open source community is very strong like Brasil.
- prophesi 6y agoIt really stinks that 250 people lost their jobs, I don't want to downplay that. But I think overall this is a good move for Mozilla. For them to be product-oriented will allow them to uphold their own privacy advocacy ideals. Most notably, they may eventually be able to remove Google as Firefox's default search engine.
- solarkraft 6y ago> they may eventually be able to remove Google as Firefox's default search engine IIRC the financial woes are precisely because the contract with Google is running out. Aren't they?
- prophesi 6y agoThat's news to me. Their contract has been consistently renewed for years, and I'd imagine that would give Google some pretty bad PR if they didn't.
- giomasce 6y agoPossibly. But Google gets the bad PR and stays in the dominant position anyway, while Firefox more or less disappears. I don't say Google necessarily wants to be evil towards Firefox, but in their position it is enough to not care. Also, even if the contract is renewed, the number could be smaller.
- solarkraft 6y agoGoogle isn't afraid of bad PR of larger caliber. No normal user cares whether Mozilla is getting money from Google and people who care find it questionable that Google is the default search engine instead of something like DuckDuckGo (that would fit the Firefox brand so much better). Whenever the day comes it'll be a small notice on the normie-tech websites ("An era has come to an end") and a short discussion in freedom-concerned tech circles. Who doesn't deep down already consider Mozilla dead at this point? I'm just hoping for a good rebirth.
- 6y ago
- spenrose 6y agoI worked at Mozilla from 2013-2017, then moved into clean tech. I currently manage software engineers for a technically-not-cleantech company that is extremely effective at selling life-changing products, especially solar energy, in the global South. While I don't have open slots on my team, I'm happy to chat about software job hunts in general, and the amazing opportunities available right now to fight climate change in particular. There are dozens of legit companies that can use your skills—you just have to find them. If you need a #mozillalifeboat, feel free to get in touch. "sampenrose" on Google's email service.
- josh_carterPDX 6y agoI like the new focus on how they will make money. While it's nice to be a mission-driven org they always straddled that line of being aspirational and being "for profit." It makes the value proposition tough to define. Putting an emphasis on revenue will better define the business without needing to sell their souls.
- wanderr 6y ago'The coronavirus pandemic “significantly impacted our revenue,”' - Most of their revenue comes from search engines paying to be the default. Are there any details on why the pandemic would have a significant impact on that?
- ngokevin 6y agoIt's odd also because those search engines have long-term contracts to the tune of like $350-$500M a year, and Google seems to be doing okay.
- zobzu 6y agoThe contract ends start of 2021 IIRC and Firefox market share has been dropping and will continue dropping (specially now after this news). Which means I'm sure they are planning for a large reduction in revenue, like 50% or whatever. These contracts are usually on a 3-6 year basis..
- traskjd 6y agoWhile I get the intent, as noted on the thread about their version 2 script blocker: what better way to hobble what tiny share you have by not allowing site owners to know FF users exist?
- gridlockd 6y agoSearch engines royalties are a share of the ad revenue generated from the search queries. Ad revenue is down significantly across the board.
- The_rationalist 6y agoThey are obviously bullshiting
- zobzu 6y agoMozilla 2010: "join us, don't work for the man, work for mankind!" (this was their actual slogan) Mozilla 2020: "well actually, work for the man" (or woman in this case) Sadly, even with Mozilla Foundation getting 40M in donations they need the Corporation to pay the bills (including Mitchell Baker's 2.5M/y salary) The fact that this makes it less likely Firefox continues to be competition for Chrome is bad news for the web ...
- bogomipz 6y ago>"Sadly, even with Mozilla Foundation getting 40M in donations they need the Corporation to pay the bills (including Mitchell Baker's 2.5M/y salary)" I remember a headline in 2006 that Mitchel Baker's salary at Mozilla was $500k which I thought was a lot for non-profit but her salary has increased 5X since then? Based on what exactly? I understand the need to pay competitive wages but $2.5 million when the organization is in such a state that you are laying off a significant chunk of your workforce? Is she giving up any salary? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12link.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12link.html
- missedthecue 6y agoThis forum would be in uproar if the firm was offering their software devs $30k a year, but offering competitive pay for executives and managers is a sin incapable of restitution for some inconsistent reason.
- codemonkey-zeta 6y agoExorbitant executive pay is a sin incapable of restitution wherever it occurs, much more today than at any point in the past. The leaders of nonprofits especially should be ashamed to accept such pay. Developer compensation generally is not exorbitant to nearly the same degree, so this comparison feels unfair.
- missedthecue 6y agoExplain to me why an executive who might have three or four opportunities choose the lowest paying one while a dev should be entitled to competitive pay?
- goldenManatee 6y agoI’ve always thought of Mozilla as a “force for good and change”, never as a money machine. This has maintained some balance for allowing Google to go largely unchecked. If Mozilla moves in a direction more focused on profit and more products, there’s no balance and the overdue regulating has to kick in fast.
- deltron3030 6y ago>That means reducing investment in other areas, though, such as in building out developer tools. Damn, big mistake. So this is what triggered the creator of the awesome CSS grid tools to join Apple and Safari?
- kryptiskt 6y agoI wonder why they didn't ever try to make it as a cloud provider, it would fit their mission well to provide cloud services, it would just be for the server side instead of the client side. Guess it's about a decade too late to pivot there, but firms like Cloudflare shows that it's possible to compete with the big actors with enough focus.
- claydavisss 6y agoMozilla's support model was left too weird, too long. Baker is to blame, this should have been rectified years ago. What does Mozilla really bring to the table with this new focus? The world is full of VPN vendors.
- butz 6y agoWeb browsers should be considered public utility, funded by tax payers money and developed by independent organization. Core web browser should have minimal set of features, just enough to safely browse internet and do every day tasks, like online banking. Open source "core" web browser could be extended by companies and provided as commercial software with various additional features (VPNs, news aggregators, etc.) that might be useful to some users who have means to pay for them.
- pc86 6y agoThis makes about as much sense as saying that toilets or electrical outlets should be public utilities. I've heard good arguments that the internet should be a utility like electricity or water. But this is nonsensical.
- noisy_boy 6y agoThis makes me feel worried. I have come to rely on Firefox as the antidote to Google's data collection machine and it would be unfortunate if Firefox also goes the same way with this new focus.
- ldiracdelta 6y agoYou may wish to consider Brave. https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/
- ZekeSulastin 6y agoThe browser built around ad replacement and blockchain payments? Seriously?
- anoncareer0212 6y agooccassionally I am reminded exactly how vapid the discourse are open source has gotten - 20 years ago, there used to be discussions, now it's just 'google is SELLING EVERYONES DATA' instead of 'telemetry makes me uncomfortable' when someone suggests X, instead of 'honestly, I think what I'm looking for is something free as in beer - no charge, no revenue' 'ugh X is no alternative, they do also make money in a way I don't like!' the thing is, 20 years ago I was 10 and just trolling around slashdot, there shouldn't be _weaker_ arguments at 30
- renewiltord 6y agoToday someone else is 10 and trolling around HN, friend.
- ldiracdelta 6y agoSoo... don't do the blockchain stuff. They have a built-in ad-blocker and I see very few ads. You install a blank page chrome extension and you don't see their new tab ads either. Practically, a chrome downstream-mod that strips as much telemetry and google spying as possible is a simpler way to get rid of the parts of chrome one doesn't like.
- markdog12 6y agoLooks like Servo may be done, :( https://twitter.com/lindsey/status/1293243218331439107 https://twitter.com/lindsey/status/1293243218331439107
- abinaya_rl 6y agoHuge fan of Firefox. I’m working on an initiative to help people who laid off today at Mozilla If you lost your job today add your profile here -> https://airtable.com/shrkd3WXxreIdgruV https://airtable.com/shrkd3WXxreIdgruV
- bsimpson 6y agoSounds like Servo, the next-generation browser engine that brought the world Rust, is one of the teams being destaffed: https://twitter.com/SimonSapin/status/1293231187167784960 https://twitter.com/SimonSapin/status/1293231187167784960
- __s 6y agoServo showed there was plenty of room for browser perf beyond optimizing JS engines Mozilla getting rid of their main product's most relevant R&D makes me fear they'll eventually announce Firefox replacing its internals with chromium
- xfour 6y agoCan’t say I’m surprised there wasn’t much movement on that project in a coordinated fashion it had all the makings of a project without adequate staffing to complete its vision.
- rl3 6y agoCan you elaborate on this? Because I remember the day Firefox became fast with an incredible amount of fondness, and that moment owed in large part to Servo.
- Miraste 6y agoFirefox is faster than it was, but it's still the slowest browser. I've gotten literally 2x benchmark scores from Safari on the same hardware, and the subjective difference is large. Servo propelled FF from "unusable" to "worth the tradeoff" but they didn't have the resources to make it fast.
- rl3 6y agoMy experience in daily use of Firefox post-Servo is that all page loads have essentially been instantaneous. This is of course subjective based in part on hardware, so I'm not disputing your assessment. As far as I'm aware, Servo is at the bleeding edge of performance under the hood. Its hybrid glyph rendering system for example is state-of-the-art.
- ddevault 6y ago>Mozilla will initially focus on products such as Pocket, its VPN service, its VR chatroom Hubs, and new “security and privacy” tools. "It's not working, so let's fire everyone else and do it some more!" Mozilla is disgrace to the values it was founded upon. Get your shit together already.
- lenkite 6y agoSo this affects rust-lang too I guess ? I found it strange that people started trusting a language with no open standard and one implementation.
- pcwalton 6y agoRust has multiple implementations, see mrustc.
- infamouscow 6y agoHow exactly do you know which implementation is correct without a document to point to?
- progval 6y agomrustc doesn't support all of Rust, its only purpose is to bootstrap the normal Rust compiler; and it only works on x86 and x86_64 Linux and isn't very much optimized (eg. needs about 10GB of RAM for the final linking). And it's lagging behind by a year or two (which is about 15 intermediate releases of the Rust compiler you need to compile to get the current one); because it only has a single developer and keeping up is a huge amount of work.
- crazypython 6y agoDlang has three implementations, one front-end, and a specification you can learn in a day. https://dlang.org/spec/statement.html https://dlang.org/spec/statement.html
- brundolf 6y agoRust has gained so much traction at this point with other major companies (Cloudflare, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc), because of the unique value it offers, that I assume it would have to be picked up if it got dropped by Mozilla.
- bhahn 6y agoThe CEO mentions that COVID devastated their revenue but doesn’t elaborate. Did COVID somehow impact their market share? Are fewer people buying and as such they get less rev share? Something else?
- throwaway987978 6y agoYeah that's interesting. I thought nearly all of Mozilla's revenue came from Google to default to their search engine. I wonder if COVID is just an excuse to do this now. Edit: Another comment seems to have some details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24123945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24123945
- segphault 6y agoOver the past decade, Mozilla has capitulated over and over again on critical issues. They failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure for h.264 and EME. They also ended up following rather than leading on key privacy issues like third-party cookie behavior. In every case, they defended these decisions by saying that they couldn't risk losing users, arguing that these issues weren't hills worth dying on. And now, because Mozilla didn't choose a hill to die on, they are going to die on no hill at all. When they aren't the browser that is standing up for interoperability and the freedom and privacy of their users, they have no way to differentiate themselves. Firefox is just another browser, and it's one that is architecturally dated and under-resourced compared to its rivals. I had assumed that when Mozilla had nothing left to lose as Firefox marketshare crashed, they would go back to being the scrappy underdog who advocates for the right thing. The fact that they've chosen to focus on revenue instead says everything you need to know about how far Mozilla has fallen.
- fsflover 6y agoSo what are your suggestions? Let Mozilla die and enjoy Google monopoly in the web? No, thanks. I prefer a non-profit organization which "failed their users and the ecosystem by not standing up to industry pressure". By the way, consider donating to Mozilla if you want them to (be able to) listen to you.
- rootsudo 6y agoIronically, Google supports the Mozilla project https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-is-google-funding-its-own-competition-in-the-firefox-os/#1542f01c35c5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-i... Which means as Mozilla dries up, its only support is "Google." Meaning, soon to you, a chromium firefox based browser no different as to Edge, Brave or whatever else is out there. tl;dr Mozilla is propped up by Google. Google is no bueno.
- kbenson 6y ago> Meaning, soon to you, a chromium firefox based browser no different as to Edge, Brave or whatever else is out there. Doubtful. I think of lot of the reason Google helps fund Mozilla is so there's a better answer to the question "Does Google have a monopoly in web browsers?" It's better for both Google (because they can point at competition) and Mozilla (because Google will still want to hand them money) if Mozilla has their own engine.
- bzb4 6y agoThe mentions of “racism”, “advocacy”, etc on this post make me want to puke. All while firing people from servo, rav1e, etc. Make a bloody good browser and stop meddling with politics, dunces!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- caiob 6y agoWhy does Mozilla insist on Pocket?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aborsy 6y agoThe free open source software approach has its own limitations. Developers and companies need to make money to be viable. Software is a class of product; it takes work and resources and simply can’t be all free. This is going to be a problem going forward. I feel bad seeing developers sometimes begging for donations. Why should software be free?
- mrgleeco 6y agoAlways struck me that this nonprofit has some of the most beaucoup waterfront real estate down at EMB/Harrison. And that it shared the building with one of its partners, Google. Is that scaled down / restructured too?
- dang 6y agoThere have been multiple submissions. I guess this one wins because it's the original source and was posted first. But since corporate press releases leave much to be desired (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), I've pilfered the title from https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees... via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24121166. Please note that this thread has multiple pages of comments. You can get to the later pages via the More link at the bottom, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336&p=3
- ilmiont 6y agoMozilla needs to stop prattling on about being a "world-class, modern, multi-product internet organisation" and being "diverse" and "inclusive" and "battling systemic racism" and get back to developing its core products which people actually want to use. Stop with the fluff and the airy blog posts and societal ambitions and get back to doing actual engineering which gets people back using your products. You may have a "new focus on community" but it means nothing if there's no product to have that community built around. You might claim to be a "technical powerhouse of the internet activist movement" (whatever that is !? ) but soon you're going to be nothing at all because Firefox is, as much as it pains me to say it, still merely following and not leading while Mozilla leadership goes back and forth and seems more interested in writing blog posts about global issues than the technology that actually makes it a viable business. Focus on Firefox. Build a product that's truly competitive once more. Build a product. Not endless blog posts about trust and "authenticity" and "leadership" and whatever else appears on the RSS feed today; get some actual leadership together and start looking at what you're actually doing, which of late has been not a lot at all.
- shock 6y agoI wish the EU would get behind Firefox development. It would certainly be in their courtyard, given how much energy they've spent battling monopolies and toward creating a market in which there is competition.
- agumonkey 6y agoimagine chromium devs working with firefox devs on a new fork
- thinkloop 6y agoI was surprised and saddened when Mozilla gave up their mobile Firefox OS. They should have been "The Web Company". Google and Apple have competing interests with their proprietary native apps. They would much prefer the entire web shift to apps. Mozilla could have been the open mobile app platform. Maybe one of the purposes of Chrome OS is to ensure someone like Mozilla doesn't do it.
- m0ck 6y agoI just wish they shift their focus again to technical solutions, instead of political/social issues. I don't know why software company has need to act like NGO/activist group (doesn't matter if I agree with their stances or not).
- sp332 6y agoIt's self-defense. It does no good to focus on the tech if the people writing the code are being murdered or deported.
- rl3 6y agoSurreal. Even the Servo team was disbanded. Mozilla Research effectively no longer exists. That alone says everything. This is a dark day for the open web.
- Zenbit_UX 6y agoMozilla's ace up the sleeve, which I'm sure has been a temptation to them many times - and seems more and more inevitable the more they brand themselves as the privacy browser - is to make ublock origin a default and baked-in feature out of the box. I see this as an if, not when situation. Google may pull funding immediately if they do so but the surge in users would be extreme, possibly forcing big G to reconsider or lose an ever increasing market share to Bing and DDG.
- jdashg 6y agoWhy would that cause a surge of users given how trivial it is to add it to an existing install today?
- grey_earthling 6y agoAnd how would those new users make Mozilla money? Maybe DuckDuckGo could pay Mozilla to be Firefox's default search engine and get many more eyeballs on DDG… but if uBlock Origin blocks adverts on DDG, why would DDG pay Mozilla?
- Ericson2314 6y agoWell, I guess the one thing that could save Firefox now is anti-trust, so it can get on iOS devices and not be bludgeoned by Google promoting chrome.
- dfabulich 6y agoMozilla should have a Mozilla club. Today, you can go to https://donate.mozilla.org/ https://donate.mozilla.org/ and you can donate monthly, but you get nothing for it except the warm glow of helping Mozilla. Instead, Mozilla should have a private Discord for dues-paying club members, where participants have direct access to Mozilla decision makers, who should show up on a regular basis and do AMAs. Furthermore, the Mozilla club should nominate a user ombuds who can sit in on Mozilla's board meetings. Throughout this thread, I see folks criticizing Mozilla for not writing code / fixing bugs they care about, without providing a constructive way for Mozilla to fund their favorite initiatives. I think a Mozilla club could cut some of these tricky knots.
- Nextgrid 6y agoDonating to Mozilla goes to the foundation, not the company. This funds various initiatives that you may find useful or not but does not go directly to the browser. As far as I know there is no actual way to pay/donate and have that money allocated to the browser only. On the other hand, I disagree with your proposal. When I pay for software, content or a service I pay because I want the service/content, not because I want to join some kind of social club or receiving useless merch cluttering my wardrobe.
- marta_morena_25 6y agoWhy does Mozilla even develop their own browser? There is inherently nothing wrong with everyone using Chromium as a foundation. Mozilla could use Chromium as renderer while still doing all the privacy preserving stuff they do. There is absolutely no correlation between the rendering engine and privacy. And they few interlinks (fingerprinting, etc.) can very likely be addressed through patches that are rebased over Chromium. Firefox with its own renderer is dead anyway on iOS already, where everyone is forced into Webkit. It seems like a loosing battle to spend so much money on something that doesn't give the average user ANY benefit whatsoever. Yes, Chrome will be a monopoly, but Microsoft already bought into that monopoly. What's the point of fighting a loosing battle? Focus on integrating Chromium and make it into a rock solid privacy-first browser.
- The_rationalist 6y agoThey'll be all fired before they realized that you're spelling the truth. Until them you're condemned to be downvoted in order to lessen the harm on their childish sensitivities. Cognitive biases are indeed powerful.
- leptoniscool 6y agoWhy couldn't they have shifted those employees to new projects?
- yarrel 6y agoIt worries me that nobody in power at Mozilla seems to have the first clue how to make money from Free Software and so they have made "commercialism" a corporate fetish. Making money and looking commercial are not the same thing, team. For the some organizations they can be diametrically opposed. Mozilla, for example. Mozilla need a CEO who knows how to make money for the company rather than just receive it in their paycheck. Ideally one who eats up less than the revenue from the first 50,000 VPN subscriptions.
- ericyan 6y ago> We have mapped out five specific areas to focus on... Hey Mozilla, that's not how focusing works.
- paulie_a 6y agoThat press release had words. That's important
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cultureulterior 6y agoRemoving the old plugin format killed Mozilla.
- citizenpaul 6y agoThis is one of the most pathetic layoff releases I have ever seen. Its extremely, soul crushing, heart wrenchingly depressing to see Mozilla succumb to the the get woke go broke mentality. They should be focused on making good tech period nothing else.
- krick 6y agoWhat exactly does this mean? Will I be forced to find a new browser in the near future? Not that I was completely content with what happens for many years now, of course, it's just that I don't know anything better (or even not worse).
- tus88 6y agofirefox.exe /uninstall
- jitendrac 6y agoI find this sad news. I highly recommend mozilla to others due to its focus on user privacy and open nature of organization. I know it is not an option for a complete browser with its own js engine, rendering tool kit and kind of whole app eco-system is not possible to survive on donations and small income channels. But, I would have highly recommended mozilla do it in a way to release a community and enterprises services. where Enterprise will lead the future path of browser with its own industrial/enterprise offering to customer sets like governments, Developers and big companies, parallel maintaining the community version of browser as its now, may be two feature cycle behind with some less but fully open features. If I had an option to buy a paid version of mozilla service which gave me better functionality for application support and development I would have gladly paid for it. I wish, It is the path they chose.
- didip 6y agoWhat kind of commercial products Mozilla have? I am not aware of their offerings beside Firefox and Thunderbird.
- ffpip 6y agoA VPN, 'Pocket' and now Firefox Relay vpn.firefox.com getpocket.com relay.firefox.com
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoWithout Firefox though everything is Chrome. Skype, Zoom, Slack, Discord, Chrome itself, Safari, Edge, Opera, VS Code, Atom... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SCfNhyIo_U We need to encourage competition even if companies continue to spew this kind of cringe. Firefox is the last holdout. Good luck Mozilla, you're our old hope.
- andor 6y agoSafari is still Webkit. Zoom is a native application.
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoZoom is electon based.
- andor 6y agoHow did you get that idea? This is what an Electron app looks like: $ ls Atom.app/Contents/Frameworks Electron Framework.framework other stuff... You might also find a bunch of js files lying around: $ find Atom.app -name *.js Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/apm/node_modules/chainsaw/index.js Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/apm/node_modules/fs-constants/index.js Atom.app/Contents/Resources/app/apm/node_modules/fs-constants/browser.js very long list... Whereas these are the frameworks Zoom ships with: $ ls zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/ CptHost.app asproxy.framework nydus.framework zMacRes.bundle Scintilla.framework caphost.app protobuf.framework zMacResRetina.bundle Transcode.app cmmlib.framework ssb_sdk.bundle zSIPCallUI.bundle ZCommonUI.framework curl64.framework tp.framework zSIPSDK.bundle ZMScreenshot.app faac.bundle util.framework zSipCallApp.bundle ZoomPhone.app libcrypto.1.0.0.dylib viper.framework zVideoApp.bundle ZoomUninstaller.app libmpg123_mac.bundle xmpp_framework.framework zVideoUI.bundle airhost.app libssl.1.0.0.dylib zAutoUpdate.bundle zWebService.bundle annoter.bundle libz.dylib zChatApp.bundle zlt.bundle aomagent.bundle mcm.bundle zChatUI.bundle zmLoader.bundle aomhost.app mphost.app zData.bundle zmb.bundle Instead of Javascript files there are tons of Interface Builder files in the bundle: $ find zoom.us.app -name *.nib zoom.us.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/MainMenu.nib zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/zChatUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ZMSettingRecordingViewController.nib zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/zChatUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ZMChatsSearchField.nib zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/zChatUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/loadingInfoView.nib zoom.us.app/Contents/Frameworks/zChatUI.bundle/Contents/Resources/ZMDiagnosticViewController.nib ... A Linux job opening: https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Zoom/job/Phoenix-AZ/Software-Engineer--Desktop-Application--Linux_R658-1 https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Zoom/job/Phoenix-AZ... - 5 years of C/C++ programming experience. - 3 years of experience in Linux native application development. - Having experience in QT development is preferred. Mac OS job opening: https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Zoom/job/Phoenix-AZ/Software-Engineer---Mac_R525-1 https://zoom.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Zoom/job/Phoenix-AZ... - 2 years of experience in MacOS native client development. - Proficient in C++, Xcode, Objective-C and Cocoa Framework.
- dataminded 6y agoPlease sell me an alternative to gmail and gcalendar and docs.
- albertzeyer 6y agoJohn Carmack (https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1293227109738061826 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1293227109738061826): > Just last night I was thinking about how it was possible that, given the relative trends, Mozilla’s greater legacy might turn out to be Rust, not Firefox.
- Ericson2314 6y agoI want to read something at https://www.jwz.org/blog/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/ in response to all this.
- elmarschraml 6y agoHere is how that press release should have read: First paragraph: Get to the point (layoffs are happening) immediately, and state the concrete reasons why they are necessary. Second paragraph: Thank the people being laid off, call out some of their good work, and talk about the things you are doing to help them find a new job. Third paragraph: Mention the steps you are taking to avoid having to have layoffs again. Be as specific as possible. When mentioning "focus", that means focusing on one, possibly two, very specific things. Last paragraph: Motivation for the future. Renewed commitment to making Firefox better.
- tanilama 6y agoI don't find this that surprising as well. Good intentions or ethicality aside, I don't find Firefox as a browser convincing. It is just not as good as Chrome in handling navigating web pages. I'd say focus on making Firefox better experience wise should always been their priority, but the neglection of it has been lasting too long. Now Chrome becomes the even bigger monster than IE uses to be, Firefox will have a much harder time to justify its own existence in a financially substainable way
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dependenttypes 6y agoThis is a previous thread about something similar that happened a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737 tldr (if I remember correctly): the higher ups is still paid a shit-ton of money despite firing their employees and begging for donations. Along with abandonware being created all the time (some of them were good ideas even). More specifically https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058534 > 2.5 million for the executive chair of Mozilla in 2018
- mrkramer 6y agoWhat's the relation between Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation? Corporation is for profit and Foundation is non profit so they don't share revenues? But why they don't merge and become one for profit company, they would much stronger.
- gravypod 6y agoAre there any lists of people looking for work during this round of layoffs? It sounds like a lot of good projects got cut and there's some companies growing that are finding it hard to locate talent. The pandemic is making people weary of switching jobs and at my company it's been very difficult.
- ekianjo 6y ago> Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, It took them that long to realize it? Talk about a blind spot.
- Funes- 6y agoReduce every Mozilla executive's salary to a reasonable amount and you are set. No need for massive layoffs.
- eitland 6y agoI say it again: - I can support Mozilla today if I know the money goes to fix and improve Firefox - For almost everything else I'll prefer to send the money directly I sent a reply back to the last fundraising email I got and they still cannot promise that the money will go towards Firefox. To me however Firefox seems to be their biggest chance of achieving their mission: "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent." For this reason I find it deeply ironic that donation money somehow cannot be used to develop Firefox when that should be the core purposes.
- war1025 6y ago> I'm just disappointed about what Mozilla has become over the years. I think that train started rolling when they forced Eich out as CEO. Ever since then, Mozilla seems to be less about best-in-class technology, and more about virtue signalling.
- bitwize 6y agoThey forced Eich out because maintaining him in a leadership role and "face of the company" was at odds with their values as a company and foundation. And usage of "virtue signalling" in the manner you used it is strongly associated with bigotry.
- cambalache 6y agoNice way to police language
- Stupulous 6y agoThat's not a fair point about virtue signalling. I get the motivation there, the term rubs you the wrong way (me too) because it's frequently used by the wrong people, and you're trying to either help the guy write or write off his arguments. But there's no guilt by association. There's nothing inherent about 'virtue signalling' that makes it bigoted, and if corporations found a way to make money by pretending to be bigoted, the scale would tilt in the other direction. Free speech and anti-corporate attitudes are traditionally liberal values. Nowadays, you see arguments from bigots that oppose corporate power over free speech. We shouldn't be forced to withdraw our positions on free speech or corporate power just because they're associated with bigotry now. The idea of expecting others to do so is apalling to me, even if I'm not on board with the virtue signalling stuff specifically.
- prepend 6y agoI think that’s when their values changes from being a technically excellent product to being a friendly company that values harmony over function. So it did stick to their values, but their values seem superficial rather than functional. As a user, I would rather have a better browser than a company full of people who think that being against gay marriage 10 years ago means they are dangerous to coworkers or whatnot. I think it’s great for companies to choose their own values and make their own way. And I can prefer companies that focus on other things. I don’t necessarily think firing Eich causes Mozilla to suck, but I think Brave is a much better browser and they have far fewer employees with less funding. I don’t donate to Mozilla and one of the reasons is because their mission is so vague.
- theodric 6y agoRIP Mozilla
- oedmarap 6y agoIt's definitely not a requirement for companies to go into minute detail when making these sorts of announcements, but Mozilla is a non-profit and I think it would be good IMHO if they were to shed some light at least on the skillet of those being let go relative to the new direction being taken. If Mozilla is charting a path forward as a "technical powerhouse" and focusing on Pocket, Hubs, VPN, etc. (as per the linked memo), I would hate to imagine even a single SWE being laid off for reasons not performance-related.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rndmze 6y agoA shame, the internet could use a product like Firefox. `an open and accessible internet is essential to the fight.` can't agree more. Unfortunately just having that is not enough to get people to use your product. VLC maintainers seems to have understood this. To paraphrase JB Kempf "if you want people to use your open source product, build a great product that is also open source." Not sure where Firefox went wrong. And for sure the inclusion of default browsers in various OSes did not help (or even the automatic install of Edge whether you want to use it or not) but it seems like there are deeper problems with this product. I really hope they can get act together and start gaining marketshare again.
- The_rationalist 6y agoMozilla, it's still time. You need to face reality and embrace chromium, and improve it through worldwide collaboration.
- nojvek 6y agoI wonder why Mozilla can’t make their own meta search engine like duckduckgo and start something like carbonads. It’s obvious that browser + search engine + ad bids are a money minting machine. Why is Mozilla not doing that? Depending on Google for revenue is a losing game no?
- mark_l_watson 6y agoI came here to ask a question, hopefully one other people would like answered also: If the funding for the FireFox web browser combined with all Mozilla projects/products, or is there some separation? I would like to donate just to support development of the FireFox browser. Is that possible? FireFox containers is a very important feature to me and supporting FireFox and containers is something I would like to support at a higher level than the few random Mozilla donations I have made in the past.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoDonations to Mozilla (the non profit) do not go towards Firefox, and there's no way currently to directly donate to Firefox.
- andruby 6y agoI was watching Troy Hunt's weekly update[0] where he reveals he's open-sourcing Have I Been Pwned (HIBP). He also talks about the failed M&A process: We get all the way with an organisation who we thought was a very good fit. [...] which due to confidentiality reasons I have to describe as "a change in business operating model" happened that killed the whole [deal], in February. Mozilla would have been a perfect fit for HIBP. Could it be that the failed M&A partner was in fact Mozilla, who are now revealing their "change in business operating model" (ie: focus on commercial products)? This comment from 5 months ago has the same idea [1]. [0] https://youtu.be/2-wgY3Fqfos?t=2160 https://youtu.be/2-wgY3Fqfos?t=2160 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22471374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22471374
- ThA0x2 6y agoGlad they spent time replacing the facist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, white supremacist verbiage "master" instead of ensuring their white and Asian employees had jobs.
- alex_young 6y agoMozilla, with revenue of $27M last year, is mainly responsible for Firefox and a few related applications [0]. Apache meanwhile, has revenue of less than $1M, and has over 350 projects with huge adoption like Cassandra and Kafka and Lucene and Maven and that eponymous HTTP server [1]. In 2017 Mozilla paid their CEO $2.3M and their treasurer (who only worked 6 months) $1.2M [2]. Mozilla is a foundation which owns a for-profit corporation. That corporation had revenues of $450M in 2018 [3]. I double checked this shocking amount. Most of that revenue comes from their search partner, which was switched back to Google recently [4]. How is all of this possible given the relative contributions of these software non-profits? [0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products [1] https://projects.apache.org/projects.html https://projects.apache.org/projects.html [2] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-2017-form-990.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-2017-fo... [3] https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/26/mozilla-revenue-dropped-in-2018-but-it-is-still-doing-well/ https://www.ghacks.net/2019/11/26/mozilla-revenue-dropped-in... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Google
- mathattack 6y agoPutting yourself in front of a search engine and charging money is valuable. And Google likes having a non-threatening competitor around. They still have a thousand mouths to feed.
- fergie 6y agoRevenue: $27M; CEO pay: $2.3M Are these numbers accurate? The first seems very low and the last seems very high? Is it still like this?
- jefftk 6y agoYes, that's wrong. I'm not sure about the CEO number, but Mozilla's 2019 reported revenue was ~$450M.
- alex_young 6y ago
- scottlocklin 6y ago2018: meritocracy is bad 2020: ... pretty much what you'd expect
- late2part 6y agorelease reads like word salad...
- ulfw 6y agoSo will Mozilla lose it‘s non-profit status when „refocusing on COMMERCIAL products“?
- 3131s 6y agoI love Firefox but I'm going to start exploring other options for open source browsers. It's obvious from this layoff that their priorities are off. The CEO should be fired.
- spicyramen 6y agoWhile we are focusing in technology, once need to look into their Finance team and how they push leadership on terms of income/cash flow. Recently one ex-Google guy joined as COO not after a very successful gig in Cloud, hope he helps leadership this time.
- AnonHP 6y agoThe internal message to employees says: > Investing in New Products We are organizing a new product organization outside of Firefox that will both ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams. Our initial investments will be Pocket, Hubs, VPN, Web Assembly and security and privacy products. This is very much welcome, and I look forward to more products with paid tiers. Mozilla Corporation must have ways to get revenues from end users through different means, and combining that with Mozilla’s vision is a good thing. If there’s one thing missing for me in this list, it’s an email service that combines the best of other paid email providers.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoCan someone tell me how COVID situation explicitly affected Mozilla's revenue to such an extant? If anything, Internet companies were the least affected or in-fact has been benefited from COVID situation.
- gregmorton 6y agotldr. But layoff = I won't donate anymore (I did). Neither will I switch to Evil Corp browser.
- ofrzeta 6y agoAlso, why you (Mozilla) are at it (Firefox): Please make Firefox the premium development tool for webdevs. Headless should work as with Chrome. I am forced to use Chrome when running Puppeteer. Why create a separate "Firefox Developer Edition"? It's just a distraction.
- abalone 6y agoNot a great sign: There are five new focuses each of which is sweepingly vague. Sorry to those who just lost their jobs.
- Accacin 6y agoI personally think that Mozilla have been making poor decisions, but I can't believe that people would say they they are quitting Firefox because of it. Mozilla might be going through a rough patch, and they now need our support more than ever. Hopefully Firefox will be around a lot longer than the people currently running the show. I will not stop using Firefox, and will continue to try and help people move away from Chrome.
- sunseb 6y ago"combatting a lethal virus and battling systemic racism" WTF?! I mean, maybe you should actually build the best web browser instead of doing politics.
- edumucelli 6y agoI am curious how COVID impacted a company like Mozilla? Their main revenue comes from search partnerships, there were more people at home searching things during lockdown. In the internal message Mitchell Baker said: “We started with immediate cost-saving measures such as pausing our hiring, reducing our wellness stipend and cancelling our All-Hands. But COVID-19 has accelerated the need and magnified the depth for these changes. Our pre-COVID plan is no longer workable. We have talked about the need for change — including the likelihood of layoffs — since the spring. Today these changes become real.”
- addicted 6y agoAll the hand wringing here is kind of pointless without pointing out that it appears that Google has not renewed its contract, which accounts for almost 90% of Mozilla’s revenue. It’s obvious and necessary for Mozilla to consequently focus on revenue earners and put infra dev on the back burner.
- bluenose69 6y agoAnyone remember when companies were straightforward about layoffs and firings? You know, text like "Sales are slow, so we need to lay some people off", not "We’ll meet people where they are" (whatever that phrase-du-jour even means). If that letter is a guide to leadership at mozilla, there's not much hope for the future of the organization. It might be a good idea to ask the remaining technical people what they would like to build, and let them go from there. It's time to excite people with products. They got the browser to be nearly as good as the alternatives (I try every new release of FF, only to switch back to Safari when I see the terrible effect FF has on power consumption). How about a better alternative for remote meetings? Start with the basics: respond to reduced bandwidth by focussing on audio, not video. I want to hear what someone is saying, not to see the titles on their bookshelves. In my experience, zoom is pretty bad at this, and so (to a lesser extent) is microsoft/teams. Watching TV news, I've learned that webex and skype are also poor. Given the poor alternatives, and the high demand, I am surprised Mozilla has not already produced a kick-ass product, and I was disappointed not to read of this (or any other technical idea) in this management-speak firing letter.
- cmsj 6y agoThis is obviously very sad for the folk being laid off from Mozilla, and they have my sympathies and best wishes for finding alternate employment. Separate to that, and I realise I'm shouting at the sky since this is just one comment among over 1200 others... CAN WE PLEASE STOP GIVING THE WEB TO GOOGLE. Apple's iOS browser engine policy is basically the only thing that stands between Google and complete dominance of the web. That's right, an anti-choice, walled-garden decision to force WebKit on all iOS users, is the only defence against Chrome supplanting the ideal of The Web, with itself. Firefox and Safari are basically the only browsers left that don't use Chromium, and they are making the sensible decision to hold back Google's frenetic sprint to expose our entire computers to JavaScript. I'm confident that Apple can hold the line if it wants to, but I have to assume that Firefox will be dead within 5 years, which means the entire dream of an open web, rests solely on Apple's whims. This is not healthy in any way. To all of you who say things like "Safari is the new IE", or bemoan the lack of particular Chrome APIs in WebKit, or who solely target Chrome and don't care if your sites break in Firefox/WebKit.... you, all of you, individually and collectively, are killing the web. Stop sleepwalking all of us into a future where Chrome is the only "OS" that matters on any platform.
- devrustr 6y agoThis is sad if it affects rust
- a_imho 6y agoA door closes a window opens. Does not look good, but neither does the current status quo. Might just be the blessing in disguise that kicks off some actual competition in the browser space. Feel bad for the laid off though.
- magnusmagnusson 6y agoGlad they focused on virtue signal violent protestors.
- wwwwwwwww 6y agoVivaldi Browser. Founded by former Opera devs, when Opera was sold to a Chinese company. Vivaldi is a fully employee owned company, based on Norway. The browser had tons of ready-to-use configuration options. Very good privacy options, no external ad blocker needed. A great option if you want to stop using Firefox (like I did a few weeks ago).
- leshow 6y agoHas it been confirmed that the servo team got fired? I read rumblings about this on twitter. If so, that is very sad.
- cannedslime 6y agoMozilla was dead to me the moment they decided to financially support the encrypted communication services of antifa (riseup.net). Even though that donation was a drip compared to what the CEO pulls out of the organisation. I straight up deleted it! And I make sure that any organisation I get into won't bother optimizing or even testing for FF since it has such a small user base these days that its not worth bothering with it, testing on the default android browsers and safari has higher priorities these days. If the end users complain, we tell them to use ANY other browser now and they are happy with it. This is what you get when you pose as an NGO that stands for values such as free-speech and openness while you do nothing but stiffle it behind the curtains. (Helping professional political agitators, that are renown for attacking peaceful protests etc is the opposite of supporting free-speech, so is getting your own CEO booted for having an opinion, controversial or not!)
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoI guess Mozilla is going bust soon. Is there anyway to save Firefox and Thunderbird?
- geogra4 6y agoI wonder if Alibaba or tencent would benefit from funding servo