4 ms·

> An actual community project should rise from this state of affairs This is just so naive view ... it's always the abstract "community" which should step in a

> An actual community project should rise from this state of affairs This is just so naive view ... it's always the abstract "community" which should step in and save the day. Recently it was LibreOffice too where people got all mad due to proposed branding and again "community" superhero was expected to step in, fork it and carry on the whole development. In reality these projects are far too huge to be purely community projects. They require full time paid developers and not few of them. They won't be able to survive without corporate sponsorship (and thus influence).

coldtea 6y ago
>In reality these projects are far too huge to be purely community projects. Mozilla is far too huge to not have money. Just 200M from those 600 million per year it took from Google, put in the bank, could pay for 50 developers/graphic designers/ $200K per year to work on it for 20 years. That would have taken care of the engine for 2 decades... Instead they burnt money in BS ventures, Cxx salaries, events, and so on...
- fabrice_d 6y ago
  You're delusional if you think you can maintain a competitive browser runtime with 50 employees.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    I think you can maintain it with even less... KHTML was done by a tiny KDE team. After Apple adopted it, Webkit/Safari only had a small team of people working on it. A good team of 12-20 devs is better than some BS team of 250 with politics, communication overhead, lack of coherence etc that comes with scale...
    - The_Colonel 6y ago
      > KHTML was done by a tiny KDE team. Yes, 20 years ago. Fortunately, web technology did not evolve and grow at all since so it should be doable now too, right?
      - coldtea 6y ago
        > Yes, 20 years ago. So? 20 years ago Netscape still had a much larger team, Microsoft too, and Webkit with its small team still beat them in their own game. Small teams can build whole OSes, browsers, compilers, and whatever they put their mind too. Given good devs/experts, they can do so even better/faster than bigger teams. P.S. 1 Not that a 50-strong team is small. P.S. 2 Plus, way of missing the point. The team-of-50, 200K, 20 years = 200M was just an example. 200M is 1/3rd of what Mozilla made in a year for decades. And even those 200M would just be the raw money spent, not invested or anything. They could afford to support a 300-strong team of 20 years with 2 years of their revenue un-invested. And that's with a $200K/year salary, which doesn't have to be...
- Redoubts 6y ago
  Kinda wonder what happened after the yahoo buyout. Supposedly Mozilla could have kept all the cash from yahoo's search deal, but still solicited revenue from google by making them the default instead. Where did that money go, and why not just earmark it for Firefox? https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla-375-million-a-1821043679 https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla...
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    My understanding is that there was a lawsuit over this https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-mozilla-legal-fight-over-2014-firefox-search-deal-2017-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-mozilla-legal-fight-ov... I have not heard about this in a very long time (note this article is from December 2017), but also, litigation takes a very long time.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > 50 developers/graphic designers That is way too low to be anything more than maintenance mode. By my estimation [1], you'd want somewhere around 250 full-time equivalents to be able to declare the project in a healthy state. [1] Take the number I'd estimate for Thunderbird, multiply by 10 for Firefox-scale, then add another 20% to account for the operations that Thunderbird gets "for free" (e.g., maintaining server infrastructure) and accounting for the fact that email standards are far slower in innovation than browser standards.

coldtea 6y ago

>In reality these projects are far too huge to be purely community projects. Mozilla is far too huge to not have money. Just 200M from those 600 million per year it took from Google, put in the bank, could pay for 50 developers/graphic designers/ $200K per year to work on it for 20 years. That would have taken care of the engine for 2 decades... Instead they burnt money in BS ventures, Cxx salaries, events, and so on...

fabrice_d 6y ago
You're delusional if you think you can maintain a competitive browser runtime with 50 employees.
- coldtea 6y ago
  I think you can maintain it with even less... KHTML was done by a tiny KDE team. After Apple adopted it, Webkit/Safari only had a small team of people working on it. A good team of 12-20 devs is better than some BS team of 250 with politics, communication overhead, lack of coherence etc that comes with scale...
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    > KHTML was done by a tiny KDE team. Yes, 20 years ago. Fortunately, web technology did not evolve and grow at all since so it should be doable now too, right?
    - coldtea 6y ago
      > Yes, 20 years ago. So? 20 years ago Netscape still had a much larger team, Microsoft too, and Webkit with its small team still beat them in their own game. Small teams can build whole OSes, browsers, compilers, and whatever they put their mind too. Given good devs/experts, they can do so even better/faster than bigger teams. P.S. 1 Not that a 50-strong team is small. P.S. 2 Plus, way of missing the point. The team-of-50, 200K, 20 years = 200M was just an example. 200M is 1/3rd of what Mozilla made in a year for decades. And even those 200M would just be the raw money spent, not invested or anything. They could afford to support a 300-strong team of 20 years with 2 years of their revenue un-invested. And that's with a $200K/year salary, which doesn't have to be...
Redoubts 6y ago
Kinda wonder what happened after the yahoo buyout. Supposedly Mozilla could have kept all the cash from yahoo's search deal, but still solicited revenue from google by making them the default instead. Where did that money go, and why not just earmark it for Firefox? https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla-375-million-a-1821043679 https://gizmodo.com/yahoo-s-insanely-bad-deal-to-pay-mozilla...
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  My understanding is that there was a lawsuit over this https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-mozilla-legal-fight-over-2014-firefox-search-deal-2017-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-mozilla-legal-fight-ov... I have not heard about this in a very long time (note this article is from December 2017), but also, litigation takes a very long time.
jcranmer 6y ago
> 50 developers/graphic designers That is way too low to be anything more than maintenance mode. By my estimation [1], you'd want somewhere around 250 full-time equivalents to be able to declare the project in a healthy state. [1] Take the number I'd estimate for Thunderbird, multiply by 10 for Firefox-scale, then add another 20% to account for the operations that Thunderbird gets "for free" (e.g., maintaining server infrastructure) and accounting for the fact that email standards are far slower in innovation than browser standards.