8 ms·

Mozilla Is Dead

65 points by kowabit 6y ago

skyfaller 6y ago
OK but seriously, is the Firefox security team gone? If so, how do they propose to ship a browser without anyone making sure it's secure? That sounds kind of irresponsible.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  By...not shipping a browser. That's straight-up the opening point of the article.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  No https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Indeed, what remains of the core teams? Why didn't they transfer talented engineers from canceled projects instead of canning them? I hope this will all resolve in a sensible way. But this could be Mozilla's equivalent of Nokia killing both Symbian and Maemo. If so in a few years the ashes will be sold and, we have to hope, a new phoenix will rise. Typing this from Firefox on Android, have been following and using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and Netscape before that since 1.0.
choeger 6y ago
The stupidity of actually killing the very core team of their very core product leaves me speechless. The managers behind that decision are so obviously inept that they should be unemployable in the future.
- hazz99 6y ago
  Is it more likely that they are “so obviously inept” or that there are underlying reasons for the change? They’re pivoting, or perhaps they are simply not profitable enough to keep them on. We don’t know what’s going on in their strategy room. It could very well be a good business move, or a terrible one. We don’t have all the information.
  - choeger 6y ago
    Pivoting would be nearly the same level of stupidity. Mozilla is not a startup where the founders want to be entrepreneurs, no matter what they are selling. Mozilla makes a very important browser. I am not interested in them creating electric cars or ebooks. I need a non-google, free software browser FFS.
    - hazz99 6y ago
      The majority of Mozilla’s revenue currently comes from partnerships with Google. If you want truly independent, Google-free software then a a change in their strategy is definitely required.
- Certhas 6y ago
  Except they are not. The article is wrong according to the very sources it links.
  - choeger 6y ago
    Care to explain?
    - Certhas 6y ago
      Top comment under this post does. Gecko/Firefox/Security is unaffected according to the very twitter posts linked. Servo and Infrastructure services are not.
- Yoric 6y ago
  The core team is not killed. OP is bullshit.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> As an administrator in the main job and helper in the private sphere for some people, Firefox as a browser can no longer be an option. The danger of unpatched security holes and lack of further development in the core area endangers the infrastructure and systems. I think this is the killer for Mozilla. Most people knew about Mozilla because of Firefox. Most non-tech people knew about Firefox because their tech friends recommended it to them. Now, I think that recommending Firefox to your non-tech friends is a disservice to them. Despite what people say their priorities are, what their priorities are become evident when they are forced to make cuts. What gets cut is not the priority no matter how loudly they proclaim it. What remains is the priority no matter how much they may say it is not. Firefox, Servo, Security these all got the axe. They are not the priority at Mozilla.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > Firefox, Servo, Security these all got the axe. This is not true. Do not spread FUD.
- sueuu3rid8 6y ago
  Most non-tech people don't care about Firefox. Chrome already won the browser war and the internet is increasingly becoming apps and appstores as far as consumers are concerned anyway. Firefox has for years been the browser of tech enthusiasts and privacy activists, people who by definition don't care if the experience is subpar so long as it's not Chrome and lives up to their idealism. I'm not saying it isn't sad but it's been obvious for awhile to anyone that actually talked to people outside tech circles that Firefox is not something the mainstream cares about. It's far more practical to shift focus to areas where gaining a profitable foothold has real potential.
rvz 6y ago
Well, its sort of true. Open source doesn't pay the bills and their projects Firefox and Rust are used for free and doesn't help them generate revenue other than getting a contract with a trillion dollar company against your privacy. They have to stand on their own if they want to be true to their mission rather than taking in a privacy abusers money, or just admit it and drop that mission statement.
david_draco 6y ago
If Mozilla focused on better technology, that would not solve its money problem. It currently depends on other companies (Google search, Pocket) to survive. This post does not make any suggestions how to make Mozilla profitable. Indeed, Mozilla provides utilities, services and advocacy that provide value to many people and companies. We take that for granted somehow, and don't reward their efforts. We want everything for free and better and faster and with no ads. I wish France or the EU provided funding for Mozilla to reduce the internet dominance of Google.
- rswskg 6y ago
  Sadly the EU would only be interested in a german solution to this problem.
- katktv 6y ago
  isn't pocket owned by Mozilla anyway
- jkmcf 6y ago
  I be'd willing to pay for Pocket again if the project didn't seem on life support. One of my favorite features of Readablilty was the browser search integration -- when I searched from the browser bar it would include results I'd saved in Readability.
zelly 6y ago
So what does this mean for Rust? Is there any other company dedicated to maintaining it, not just using it?
Certhas 6y ago
This article has no substance, and the tweets it links to explicitly contradict it's core message. Maybe the author isn't aware of the difference between Servo and Gecko? https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 > Fwiw, afaict, almost all Gecko / platform devs are unaffected (I'm pretty relieved about that, I started my day with a totally different feeling). > These layoffs are still devastating personally, but if anything, Mozilla is not ditching Gecko. and > To combat some FUD: my Security and Hardening team working on Firefox also appears to have survived. > I conclude that a secure Gecko is still considered key to achieving Mozilla's goals. > I'm happy to still be here. We have key improvements in the pipeline that I want to ship.
- kgraves 6y ago
  This is irrelevant to the discussion, the point being that Mozilla's financial position as a company needs to be discussed if it has any chance of surviving. This seems like a knock on effect from the recent layoffs. I wonder if they made Firefox Enterprise paid would have been a better option. EDIT: Downvoters not accepting reality obviously...
  - Max_Mustermann 6y ago
    Pointing out wrong "facts" that are used as arguments isn't relevant?
pabe 6y ago
Mozilla better switches to a management that understands building experiments to move the company forward based on data / evidence. Why not establish an experiment based on the the concepts of Brave? Why not evaluating if people have money to get advanced dev tools (e.g. I'd buy session replay tools). Killing of teams related to Firefox will definitely hurt their reach, especially in enterprises.
AndrewSChapman 6y ago
What kills me is that I was unaware of just how badly Mozilla was struggling. As an avid Firefox user, I would have paid a monthly subscription to help keep the Mozilla dream and values alive. A world with just Google/Chrome is too depressing.
- josteink 6y ago
  > What kills me is that I was unaware of just how badly Mozilla was struggling. It's been fairly evident these last 5 years (since Brendan Eich was forced out and Baker entered?) that Mozilla has been growing really fat on Google money. They have (or have had) initiatives for pretty much everything not the core product: social justice initiatives, “diversity” campaigns, internet newsletters, AI (sic), router-firmware, online services (startup competitors), in-browser ads and what not. What has been most common for most of these initiatives (besides a complete lack of direction) is that many of them haven't made sense from an engineering point of view, and many have been wildly at odds with the community Mozilla has managed to build around Firefox. Many (most?) of them seemed either fluffy on technical details/merit, or just completely political, some even divisively so. (Not to mention Brendan Eich was kicked out for purely political reasons in a SJW witch-hunt) In short, for the last half decade, it seems Mozilla has put politics first and engineering second. For a political player that might make sense. For a software-company, not so much. So what is Mozilla? To me, it's the browser-company. For Mozilla itself... It seem they have another idea? It's getting increasingly unclear and vague. While having "infinite" Google-funding, that sort of lack of focus wasn't that big a problem, since they could afford it. But now with the very near and real threat of that funding going away, there's a lot of fat to cut in order to maintain within budget. The Mozilla I love and know (and I don't say that about many companies!) would swiftly cut its political arm, and all the other dead-end projects, and focus on its core products: The open-source browser and possibly email client too. And make sure they have a good mobile-story to tell, because that's where the users are heading. The new Mozilla seems to cut all that and keep the pointless political activism, and dead-end technological adventures without any clear technological story about how they're supposed to make sense. For me it sounds like a completely managerial failure, from end to end.
  - 6y ago
Santosh83 6y ago
If cost-cutting is the ostensible goal then I presume there have been layoffs in non-engineering divisions too? Why are we not hearing anything on Twitter about that?
wcerfgba 6y ago
I'd love to know how many people have flagged this for an article with 57 upvotes and 19 comments in 1 hour to get marked as [flagged].
weikju 6y ago
Dead or not, their intent to focus on profits led me to delete my Firefox accounts preemptively before they start mining user data... Good bye, Mozilla Firefox, looking forward to the forks a few years down the line.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  This makes no sense. Its free product, that doesn't mean it gets made for free. And same holds true for any other browser or any other open source project.
- katktv 6y ago
  Waterfox is already a thing, check that out.
  - smnthermes 6y ago
    Waterfox is evil! https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/1406 https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/1406
- Yoric 6y ago
  The focus is not on profit, it's on paying the bills, preferably without depending on Google. Not mining user data.
KingHenryVIII 6y ago
Reading the public docs shows Google contributes 90+% of Mozilla's revenue, basically it has been keeping Mozilla alive so that it can avoid antitrust allegations. But if you look at the tweets and stuff from their blog post, mostly they have killed off their R&D, which is actually where all the interesting stuff from the last few years has come; wasm, rust, servo, vr & ar. Without that stuff and since Google has squeezed the money pipeline, they're reduced to BS areas which are already super competitive like vpns. What next, antivirus? Fn goodluck with that. Mitchell Baker should have been put out to pasture long ago and the new exec ranks look stacked with diversity hires. Inclined to agree with OP.
random_dork1 6y ago
Why do most people assume the worst on this topic? Mozilla might be changing, but it's not dead: Mozilla Extends its Google Search Deal - http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ksxPwXG1UyY/mozilla-extends-its-google-search-deal http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ksxPwXG1UyY/...

65 points by kowabit 6y ago

OK but seriously, is the Firefox security team gone? If so, how do they propose to ship a browser without anyone making sure it's secure? That sounds kind of irresponsible.

filleduchaos 6y ago
By...not shipping a browser. That's straight-up the opening point of the article.
raverbashing 6y ago
No https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616
nitrogen 6y ago
Indeed, what remains of the core teams? Why didn't they transfer talented engineers from canceled projects instead of canning them? I hope this will all resolve in a sensible way. But this could be Mozilla's equivalent of Nokia killing both Symbian and Maemo. If so in a few years the ashes will be sold and, we have to hope, a new phoenix will rise. Typing this from Firefox on Android, have been following and using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and Netscape before that since 1.0.

choeger 6y ago

The stupidity of actually killing the very core team of their very core product leaves me speechless. The managers behind that decision are so obviously inept that they should be unemployable in the future.

hazz99 6y ago
Is it more likely that they are “so obviously inept” or that there are underlying reasons for the change? They’re pivoting, or perhaps they are simply not profitable enough to keep them on. We don’t know what’s going on in their strategy room. It could very well be a good business move, or a terrible one. We don’t have all the information.
- choeger 6y ago
  Pivoting would be nearly the same level of stupidity. Mozilla is not a startup where the founders want to be entrepreneurs, no matter what they are selling. Mozilla makes a very important browser. I am not interested in them creating electric cars or ebooks. I need a non-google, free software browser FFS.
  - hazz99 6y ago
    The majority of Mozilla’s revenue currently comes from partnerships with Google. If you want truly independent, Google-free software then a a change in their strategy is definitely required.
Certhas 6y ago
Except they are not. The article is wrong according to the very sources it links.
- choeger 6y ago
  Care to explain?
  - Certhas 6y ago
    Top comment under this post does. Gecko/Firefox/Security is unaffected according to the very twitter posts linked. Servo and Infrastructure services are not.
Yoric 6y ago
The core team is not killed. OP is bullshit.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> As an administrator in the main job and helper in the private sphere for some people, Firefox as a browser can no longer be an option. The danger of unpatched security holes and lack of further development in the core area endangers the infrastructure and systems. I think this is the killer for Mozilla. Most people knew about Mozilla because of Firefox. Most non-tech people knew about Firefox because their tech friends recommended it to them. Now, I think that recommending Firefox to your non-tech friends is a disservice to them. Despite what people say their priorities are, what their priorities are become evident when they are forced to make cuts. What gets cut is not the priority no matter how loudly they proclaim it. What remains is the priority no matter how much they may say it is not. Firefox, Servo, Security these all got the axe. They are not the priority at Mozilla.

viraptor 6y ago
> Firefox, Servo, Security these all got the axe. This is not true. Do not spread FUD.
sueuu3rid8 6y ago
Most non-tech people don't care about Firefox. Chrome already won the browser war and the internet is increasingly becoming apps and appstores as far as consumers are concerned anyway. Firefox has for years been the browser of tech enthusiasts and privacy activists, people who by definition don't care if the experience is subpar so long as it's not Chrome and lives up to their idealism. I'm not saying it isn't sad but it's been obvious for awhile to anyone that actually talked to people outside tech circles that Firefox is not something the mainstream cares about. It's far more practical to shift focus to areas where gaining a profitable foothold has real potential.

rvz 6y ago

Well, its sort of true. Open source doesn't pay the bills and their projects Firefox and Rust are used for free and doesn't help them generate revenue other than getting a contract with a trillion dollar company against your privacy. They have to stand on their own if they want to be true to their mission rather than taking in a privacy abusers money, or just admit it and drop that mission statement.

david_draco 6y ago

If Mozilla focused on better technology, that would not solve its money problem. It currently depends on other companies (Google search, Pocket) to survive. This post does not make any suggestions how to make Mozilla profitable. Indeed, Mozilla provides utilities, services and advocacy that provide value to many people and companies. We take that for granted somehow, and don't reward their efforts. We want everything for free and better and faster and with no ads. I wish France or the EU provided funding for Mozilla to reduce the internet dominance of Google.

rswskg 6y ago
Sadly the EU would only be interested in a german solution to this problem.
katktv 6y ago
isn't pocket owned by Mozilla anyway
jkmcf 6y ago
I be'd willing to pay for Pocket again if the project didn't seem on life support. One of my favorite features of Readablilty was the browser search integration -- when I searched from the browser bar it would include results I'd saved in Readability.

zelly 6y ago

So what does this mean for Rust? Is there any other company dedicated to maintaining it, not just using it?

Certhas 6y ago

This article has no substance, and the tweets it links to explicitly contradict it's core message. Maybe the author isn't aware of the difference between Servo and Gecko? https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 https://twitter.com/gcpascutto/status/1293519587967983616 > Fwiw, afaict, almost all Gecko / platform devs are unaffected (I'm pretty relieved about that, I started my day with a totally different feeling). > These layoffs are still devastating personally, but if anything, Mozilla is not ditching Gecko. and > To combat some FUD: my Security and Hardening team working on Firefox also appears to have survived. > I conclude that a secure Gecko is still considered key to achieving Mozilla's goals. > I'm happy to still be here. We have key improvements in the pipeline that I want to ship.

kgraves 6y ago
This is irrelevant to the discussion, the point being that Mozilla's financial position as a company needs to be discussed if it has any chance of surviving. This seems like a knock on effect from the recent layoffs. I wonder if they made Firefox Enterprise paid would have been a better option. EDIT: Downvoters not accepting reality obviously...
- Max_Mustermann 6y ago
  Pointing out wrong "facts" that are used as arguments isn't relevant?

pabe 6y ago

Mozilla better switches to a management that understands building experiments to move the company forward based on data / evidence. Why not establish an experiment based on the the concepts of Brave? Why not evaluating if people have money to get advanced dev tools (e.g. I'd buy session replay tools). Killing of teams related to Firefox will definitely hurt their reach, especially in enterprises.

AndrewSChapman 6y ago

What kills me is that I was unaware of just how badly Mozilla was struggling. As an avid Firefox user, I would have paid a monthly subscription to help keep the Mozilla dream and values alive. A world with just Google/Chrome is too depressing.

josteink 6y ago
> What kills me is that I was unaware of just how badly Mozilla was struggling. It's been fairly evident these last 5 years (since Brendan Eich was forced out and Baker entered?) that Mozilla has been growing really fat on Google money. They have (or have had) initiatives for pretty much everything not the core product: social justice initiatives, “diversity” campaigns, internet newsletters, AI (sic), router-firmware, online services (startup competitors), in-browser ads and what not. What has been most common for most of these initiatives (besides a complete lack of direction) is that many of them haven't made sense from an engineering point of view, and many have been wildly at odds with the community Mozilla has managed to build around Firefox. Many (most?) of them seemed either fluffy on technical details/merit, or just completely political, some even divisively so. (Not to mention Brendan Eich was kicked out for purely political reasons in a SJW witch-hunt) In short, for the last half decade, it seems Mozilla has put politics first and engineering second. For a political player that might make sense. For a software-company, not so much. So what is Mozilla? To me, it's the browser-company. For Mozilla itself... It seem they have another idea? It's getting increasingly unclear and vague. While having "infinite" Google-funding, that sort of lack of focus wasn't that big a problem, since they could afford it. But now with the very near and real threat of that funding going away, there's a lot of fat to cut in order to maintain within budget. The Mozilla I love and know (and I don't say that about many companies!) would swiftly cut its political arm, and all the other dead-end projects, and focus on its core products: The open-source browser and possibly email client too. And make sure they have a good mobile-story to tell, because that's where the users are heading. The new Mozilla seems to cut all that and keep the pointless political activism, and dead-end technological adventures without any clear technological story about how they're supposed to make sense. For me it sounds like a completely managerial failure, from end to end.
- 6y ago

Santosh83 6y ago

If cost-cutting is the ostensible goal then I presume there have been layoffs in non-engineering divisions too? Why are we not hearing anything on Twitter about that?

wcerfgba 6y ago

I'd love to know how many people have flagged this for an article with 57 upvotes and 19 comments in 1 hour to get marked as [flagged].

weikju 6y ago

Dead or not, their intent to focus on profits led me to delete my Firefox accounts preemptively before they start mining user data... Good bye, Mozilla Firefox, looking forward to the forks a few years down the line.

me_me_me 6y ago
This makes no sense. Its free product, that doesn't mean it gets made for free. And same holds true for any other browser or any other open source project.
katktv 6y ago
Waterfox is already a thing, check that out.
- smnthermes 6y ago
  Waterfox is evil! https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/1406 https://github.com/MrAlex94/Waterfox/issues/1406
Yoric 6y ago
The focus is not on profit, it's on paying the bills, preferably without depending on Google. Not mining user data.

KingHenryVIII 6y ago

Reading the public docs shows Google contributes 90+% of Mozilla's revenue, basically it has been keeping Mozilla alive so that it can avoid antitrust allegations. But if you look at the tweets and stuff from their blog post, mostly they have killed off their R&D, which is actually where all the interesting stuff from the last few years has come; wasm, rust, servo, vr & ar. Without that stuff and since Google has squeezed the money pipeline, they're reduced to BS areas which are already super competitive like vpns. What next, antivirus? Fn goodluck with that. Mitchell Baker should have been put out to pasture long ago and the new exec ranks look stacked with diversity hires. Inclined to agree with OP.

random_dork1 6y ago

Why do most people assume the worst on this topic? Mozilla might be changing, but it's not dead: Mozilla Extends its Google Search Deal - http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ksxPwXG1UyY/mozilla-extends-its-google-search-deal http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ksxPwXG1UyY/...