7 ms·

Thanks for capturing my feelings around this so well. I absolutely love Firefox, but I can’t help but feel Mozilla’s ambitions are hurting them rather than help

Thanks for capturing my feelings around this so well. I absolutely love Firefox, but I can’t help but feel Mozilla’s ambitions are hurting them rather than helping them. Don’t get me wrong; their “distractions” have given the world a lot of nice things (Rust comes to mind). But first and foremost, Mozilla’s mission should be to ensure a great, competitive browser, and they’re losing the competition badly. And imho they are prioritizing their resources badly as well. The one reason that I don’t donate to Mozilla is simply because I feel that my money will be used for vanity ambitions, rather than to the core product. I wish there was a way to donate to Mozilla and say “only use this money for Firefox, because that’s the mission I support, and I don’t really care about the other 90% of the things you’re doing”.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
staktrace 6y ago
Mozilla's mission is to make the internet a better place for everybody. Having an open web browser is a part of that, but nowhere near sufficient to accomplish the goal. The "vanity ambitions" you are talking about are the things that actually make a long-term difference in people's lives. Having a great competitive browser with a silo'd, broken up Internet is not a desirable end-state.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Losing that great competitive browser because of pursuing even higher goals and ending up with an even more silo'd, broken up internet is an even less desirable end state and one that is much more likely to materialize by acting like this.
  - staktrace 6y ago
    I don't see how losing Firefox would end up with an "even more silo'd, broken up Internet". Firefox can't fight that by itself so just having Firefox by itself isn't going to make much of a difference to what Big Tech is going to do with the Internet. But anyway, you're entitled to your opinion.
    - stingraycharles 6y ago
      > Firefox can't fight that by itself Why do you say this? Because this is exactly what I expect Mozilla/Firefox to do. IE, Chrome and Opera all use the Chromium engine. Safari is locked into the Apple ecosystem. And as such, it’s imperative Firefox fights this battle, with all the resources and community support they can get. Otherwise we do end up with a Chromium-only silo very quickly.
      - staktrace 6y ago
        This is a relatively narrow view of the Internet, though. You're talking about a web-standards silo kind of thing, which I agree is bad, but is not the sum total of the problems affecting the Internet. See https://internethealthreport.org/2019/ https://internethealthreport.org/2019/ for some more context on what I'm trying to convey. I don't agree with everything in that report, but hopefully it demonstrates that there are threats to the Internet that Firefox can't fix just by being a great browser.
        jacquesm 6y ago
        Mozilla can't afford a war on so many fronts at the same time. It can maybe afford one. Maybe.
  - takluyver 6y ago
    At the moment, it looks a lot like they're losing a competitive browser despite putting a lot of effort into the technology - either because Google competes unfairly, or because it just has more resources to compete with fairly. So it seems reasonable to look for other approaches to support the open internet.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      > either because Google competes unfairly, or because it just has more resources to compete with fairly Both, actually.
    - anonymousab 6y ago
      Every major lauded technical achievement has been followed by a series of community and PR missteps. I'd wager those have mostly affected the power users more than the average user, but I suspect continually driving the power users away in this manner will hurt them more than it helps them.
- shock 6y ago
  > Mozilla's mission is to make the internet a better place for everybody. "Don't be evil".
- nec4b 6y ago
  Besides the browser, in what way do they make the internet a better place?
ac29 6y ago
Regarding the donations, I think the way they are structured with donations going to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and development of Firefox being done by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation means that donations cant be used to support Firefox development. Its unfortunate, because I would happily donate to fund Firefox, but I'm not terribly interested in funding Mozilla's non-profit activities (at least not more than other charities I could donate to). I wonder if crowdfunding around specific development goals would be productive - certain promising features like Webrender have been in development for a very long time, and I'd be willing to contribute money to see them finished and shipped.
- staktrace 6y ago
  This is a bit of a silly argument, because money 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, and so more of the Corporation's dollars go to Firefox.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Either that, or they decide that they now have enough cash to pursue folly #12 and end up with less budget for FF. Mozilla has not been very effective with how they have spent the received money in the past, a very large fraction of that money went to dead end projects or net negatives.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    That's not how entities managed by humans function. If you give the Mozilla foundation $1, they now have $1 + their previous money. The people running the org have no incentive to lower their other revenue sources. They want to manage as large of an org as possible and you do that by not leaving money on the table.
- pas 6y ago
  Yep, Mozilla and/or the Firefox team is abysmal at communicating about these things. They regularly make HN front page with the release notes, but ... nothing happens, no call to action, no communication.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

staktrace 6y ago

Mozilla's mission is to make the internet a better place for everybody. Having an open web browser is a part of that, but nowhere near sufficient to accomplish the goal. The "vanity ambitions" you are talking about are the things that actually make a long-term difference in people's lives. Having a great competitive browser with a silo'd, broken up Internet is not a desirable end-state.

jacquesm 6y ago
Losing that great competitive browser because of pursuing even higher goals and ending up with an even more silo'd, broken up internet is an even less desirable end state and one that is much more likely to materialize by acting like this.
- staktrace 6y ago
  I don't see how losing Firefox would end up with an "even more silo'd, broken up Internet". Firefox can't fight that by itself so just having Firefox by itself isn't going to make much of a difference to what Big Tech is going to do with the Internet. But anyway, you're entitled to your opinion.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    > Firefox can't fight that by itself Why do you say this? Because this is exactly what I expect Mozilla/Firefox to do. IE, Chrome and Opera all use the Chromium engine. Safari is locked into the Apple ecosystem. And as such, it’s imperative Firefox fights this battle, with all the resources and community support they can get. Otherwise we do end up with a Chromium-only silo very quickly.
    - staktrace 6y ago
      This is a relatively narrow view of the Internet, though. You're talking about a web-standards silo kind of thing, which I agree is bad, but is not the sum total of the problems affecting the Internet. See https://internethealthreport.org/2019/ https://internethealthreport.org/2019/ for some more context on what I'm trying to convey. I don't agree with everything in that report, but hopefully it demonstrates that there are threats to the Internet that Firefox can't fix just by being a great browser.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        Mozilla can't afford a war on so many fronts at the same time. It can maybe afford one. Maybe.
- takluyver 6y ago
  At the moment, it looks a lot like they're losing a competitive browser despite putting a lot of effort into the technology - either because Google competes unfairly, or because it just has more resources to compete with fairly. So it seems reasonable to look for other approaches to support the open internet.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    > either because Google competes unfairly, or because it just has more resources to compete with fairly Both, actually.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    Every major lauded technical achievement has been followed by a series of community and PR missteps. I'd wager those have mostly affected the power users more than the average user, but I suspect continually driving the power users away in this manner will hurt them more than it helps them.
shock 6y ago
> Mozilla's mission is to make the internet a better place for everybody. "Don't be evil".
nec4b 6y ago
Besides the browser, in what way do they make the internet a better place?

ac29 6y ago

Regarding the donations, I think the way they are structured with donations going to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and development of Firefox being done by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation means that donations cant be used to support Firefox development. Its unfortunate, because I would happily donate to fund Firefox, but I'm not terribly interested in funding Mozilla's non-profit activities (at least not more than other charities I could donate to). I wonder if crowdfunding around specific development goals would be productive - certain promising features like Webrender have been in development for a very long time, and I'd be willing to contribute money to see them finished and shipped.

staktrace 6y ago
This is a bit of a silly argument, because money 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, and so more of the Corporation's dollars go to Firefox.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Either that, or they decide that they now have enough cash to pursue folly #12 and end up with less budget for FF. Mozilla has not been very effective with how they have spent the received money in the past, a very large fraction of that money went to dead end projects or net negatives.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  That's not how entities managed by humans function. If you give the Mozilla foundation $1, they now have $1 + their previous money. The people running the org have no incentive to lower their other revenue sources. They want to manage as large of an org as possible and you do that by not leaving money on the table.
pas 6y ago
Yep, Mozilla and/or the Firefox team is abysmal at communicating about these things. They regularly make HN front page with the release notes, but ... nothing happens, no call to action, no communication.