4 ms·

The "new focus" isn't that new, it's been the same since Baker became CEO, and it's a focus on making Mitchell Baker really, really rich. Mozilla's privacy bra

by yborg 6y ago

The "new focus" isn't that new, it's been the same since Baker became CEO, and it's a focus on making Mitchell Baker really, really rich. Mozilla's privacy branding is in direct conflict with Baker's vision of some kind of corporate entity that can pay her a lot of money. Apple can do this because they are filthy rich themselves, Mozilla's puny market share means that increasing their revenue will require them to use the most valuable coin in the Internet realm, which is user data. I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. Another thread mentioned Mozilla Firefox becoming a skin on Chromium ... Microsoft basically has validated this approach, and I can see Baker eliminating most of the rest of their engineering core to do the same.

sedachv 6y ago
> I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
- erk__ 6y ago
  GnuZilla does not appear to have had an update for more than a year, which would mean that there are multiple CVEs in it.
erk__ 6y ago
The issue is that there are few nonprofits that can carry Firefox as much as it need. The document foundation has around 0.2% of the revenue that Mozilla has, so that was a lot more manageable than a hard fork of Firefox would be. A potential new non-profit would need backing from some very large companies, donations from privite people would likely get no where near enough.
- xigency 6y ago
  Can you explain why? Why would a fork need anything more than hosting and a mailing list?
MikusR 6y ago
Funniest thing is that LibreOffice itself will soon also need a fork.
- liability 6y ago
  Do you have more information about this? I haven't heard anything about LibreOffice in quite some time.
  - dx87 6y ago
    They said they're considering a paid "enterprise" version, and an online version. https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/
  - MikusR 6y ago
    They were going to rename LibreOffice to "LibreOffice Personal Edition" and introduce paid enterprise version called LibreOffice.
grey_earthling 6y ago
> I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. It doesn't have to be a hard fork. A new community could do a soft-fork of the Firefox codebase, like Ubuntu does with Debian. (Or even like Seamonkey!) There have been several attempts at this, but they never consolidated into a clearly-presented single alternative (like LibreOffice, Ubuntu, or Glimpse image editor). If there is enough interest in maintaining a viable browser that isn't controlled by a large corporation, would funding for the new project emerge from the likes of Red Hat?

by yborg 6y ago

sedachv 6y ago

> I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/

erk__ 6y ago
GnuZilla does not appear to have had an update for more than a year, which would mean that there are multiple CVEs in it.

erk__ 6y ago

The issue is that there are few nonprofits that can carry Firefox as much as it need. The document foundation has around 0.2% of the revenue that Mozilla has, so that was a lot more manageable than a hard fork of Firefox would be. A potential new non-profit would need backing from some very large companies, donations from privite people would likely get no where near enough.

xigency 6y ago
Can you explain why? Why would a fork need anything more than hosting and a mailing list?

MikusR 6y ago

Funniest thing is that LibreOffice itself will soon also need a fork.

liability 6y ago
Do you have more information about this? I haven't heard anything about LibreOffice in quite some time.
- dx87 6y ago
  They said they're considering a paid "enterprise" version, and an online version. https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/ https://lwn.net/Articles/825598/
- MikusR 6y ago
  They were going to rename LibreOffice to "LibreOffice Personal Edition" and introduce paid enterprise version called LibreOffice.

grey_earthling 6y ago

> I think a LibreOffice-style hard fork will be necessary at some point with a nonprofit carrying Firefox forward. It doesn't have to be a hard fork. A new community could do a soft-fork of the Firefox codebase, like Ubuntu does with Debian. (Or even like Seamonkey!) There have been several attempts at this, but they never consolidated into a clearly-presented single alternative (like LibreOffice, Ubuntu, or Glimpse image editor). If there is enough interest in maintaining a viable browser that isn't controlled by a large corporation, would funding for the new project emerge from the likes of Red Hat?