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Dear Mozilla, Please allocate more time and energy towards becoming financially healthy. Please. There's so much demand for a trusted and privacy conscious se

Dear Mozilla, Please allocate more time and energy towards becoming financially healthy. Please. There's so much demand for a trusted and privacy conscious service provider. Please look at email, domain registration, web analytics, etc, etc, etc.

ericflo 6y ago
Dear Mozilla, Please continue your work on this. It's one of the lowest-cost, highest-leveraged points of counterbalance against Facebook's continued attempts to dominate the platforms of the future. In addition, there are numerous monetization opportunities that naturally arise from this effort, so if you stick with it, other Mozilla efforts will be buoyed by its success.
- core-questions 6y ago
  No, this is silly, it's like Second Life or something else, it's only ever going to be used by Extremely Online people who will never pay a cent for the infra needed to run it or for the coders, and it will sap away at the important part of what Mozilla is doing. > there are numerous monetization opportunities that naturally arise from this effort if you want an internet which consists of poorly rendered VRML-looking crap that bothers you for micropayments continuously, ok, sure, but most of us really want something that keeps the big FAANG types honest, and Firefox is one of the keystones of that effort.
  - mplewis 6y ago
    This looks like a novel attempt at an open, collaborative space. Why do you have to be so negative about it?
    - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
      Their money can and needs to be spent elsewhere. But then again who am I to tell them how to spend? This project isn't going anywhere, I guarantee it - but at the sane time I'd also like to be proved wrong on that.
wlesieutre 6y ago
From a product perspective, I do think this is an important one in the longer term. VR and AR are going to be big, and Facebook is making a play to own the social space and tie it to their hardware with Horizon. There's literally no one competing with their Quest platform, so they'll be in a market position to turn Horizon into the dominant social environment for a whole lot of VR users. Without cross-platform social systems like this, you end up in a world where your grandma has an Oculus headset and if you want to virtually visit them you need to be on a Quest as well. BigScreen is another example that I'm glad still exists. Facebook would like to either own them or crush them: https://twitter.com/DShankar/status/1295825811748999173 https://twitter.com/DShankar/status/1295825811748999173 > When I announced a beta version of @BigscreenVR in 2015/2016, Facebook reached out. They told me to join them, because they were going to build the same thing and crush us. > I have many stories like this. I can share a long list of VR devs who have been trampled by Facebook.
- jms703 6y ago
  Perhaps, but Mozilla need to pick their battle. They can’t keep splitting their resources on so many fronts.
  - wlesieutre 6y ago
    Maybe there's a way that Hubs can make money? "Virtual office service" seems like the obvious answer in this growing remote work situation (see also: Immersed VR), but with Facebook's lower level hardware access they may be poised to eat that space too.
    - entropicdrifter 6y ago
      Hardware-agnostic seems like a big selling point for Mozilla's service vs FB. Unless my company is going to go all-in and buy everyone a 'work headset' like how we have work laptops, they'll want it to be cross platform compatible so users have a choice.
    - Tossrock 6y ago
      Hubs already makes money, by offering turn-key self-hosted Hubs instances for corporations via AWS image.
Kiro 6y ago
For ideological reasons, yes, but not for financial. I think you're overestimating the demand.
throw_m239339 6y ago
Mozilla ditched FirefoxOS for throw away projects (there is no other way to call these), FirefoxOS now KaiOS that has received more than $50 Millions in investment and is deployed on 100M cell phones, basically the 3rd OS in popularity after Android and IOS... I question Mozilla's management judgement...
- gogopuppygogo 6y ago
  Mozilla is an insurance policy for Google to show they have competition. Anything else you see there is a falsity. I say this as a Mozilla browser and vpn user. They have no reasonable market share to speak of anymore and no direction.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Every time I see this I'm just going to ask, why Yahoo was willing $500 million a year to Google's insurance policy?
throwaway413 6y ago
Click link in Firefox on iOS... Get greeted with notice that says “Please copy paste URL into safari, your browser isn’t supported.” Proceed to roll eyes.
- jeremiahlee 6y ago
  I came here to note the same experience. Come on, Mozilla…
perryizgr8 6y ago
IMO Mozilla should allocate 40% of their funding from Google every year into a sustainability fund. Keep it invested in very safe bonds or something. In 5 years Mozilla will be financially independent. Then they can do all this fancy stuff.
- err4nt 6y ago
  But then how would you enrich the CEO?
Vinnl 6y ago
I think one of the reason Hubs was kept on was exactly because it appears to be on a path to being financially healthy while still being relevant to a free and open web: https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-path-to-mozilla-hubs-2697e635490d https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-path-to-mozilla-hubs-2697e635...

ericflo 6y ago

Dear Mozilla, Please continue your work on this. It's one of the lowest-cost, highest-leveraged points of counterbalance against Facebook's continued attempts to dominate the platforms of the future. In addition, there are numerous monetization opportunities that naturally arise from this effort, so if you stick with it, other Mozilla efforts will be buoyed by its success.

core-questions 6y ago
No, this is silly, it's like Second Life or something else, it's only ever going to be used by Extremely Online people who will never pay a cent for the infra needed to run it or for the coders, and it will sap away at the important part of what Mozilla is doing. > there are numerous monetization opportunities that naturally arise from this effort if you want an internet which consists of poorly rendered VRML-looking crap that bothers you for micropayments continuously, ok, sure, but most of us really want something that keeps the big FAANG types honest, and Firefox is one of the keystones of that effort.
- mplewis 6y ago
  This looks like a novel attempt at an open, collaborative space. Why do you have to be so negative about it?
  - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
    Their money can and needs to be spent elsewhere. But then again who am I to tell them how to spend? This project isn't going anywhere, I guarantee it - but at the sane time I'd also like to be proved wrong on that.

wlesieutre 6y ago

From a product perspective, I do think this is an important one in the longer term. VR and AR are going to be big, and Facebook is making a play to own the social space and tie it to their hardware with Horizon. There's literally no one competing with their Quest platform, so they'll be in a market position to turn Horizon into the dominant social environment for a whole lot of VR users. Without cross-platform social systems like this, you end up in a world where your grandma has an Oculus headset and if you want to virtually visit them you need to be on a Quest as well. BigScreen is another example that I'm glad still exists. Facebook would like to either own them or crush them: https://twitter.com/DShankar/status/1295825811748999173 https://twitter.com/DShankar/status/1295825811748999173 > When I announced a beta version of @BigscreenVR in 2015/2016, Facebook reached out. They told me to join them, because they were going to build the same thing and crush us. > I have many stories like this. I can share a long list of VR devs who have been trampled by Facebook.

jms703 6y ago
Perhaps, but Mozilla need to pick their battle. They can’t keep splitting their resources on so many fronts.
- wlesieutre 6y ago
  Maybe there's a way that Hubs can make money? "Virtual office service" seems like the obvious answer in this growing remote work situation (see also: Immersed VR), but with Facebook's lower level hardware access they may be poised to eat that space too.
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    Hardware-agnostic seems like a big selling point for Mozilla's service vs FB. Unless my company is going to go all-in and buy everyone a 'work headset' like how we have work laptops, they'll want it to be cross platform compatible so users have a choice.
  - Tossrock 6y ago
    Hubs already makes money, by offering turn-key self-hosted Hubs instances for corporations via AWS image.

Kiro 6y ago

For ideological reasons, yes, but not for financial. I think you're overestimating the demand.

throw_m239339 6y ago

Mozilla ditched FirefoxOS for throw away projects (there is no other way to call these), FirefoxOS now KaiOS that has received more than $50 Millions in investment and is deployed on 100M cell phones, basically the 3rd OS in popularity after Android and IOS... I question Mozilla's management judgement...

gogopuppygogo 6y ago
Mozilla is an insurance policy for Google to show they have competition. Anything else you see there is a falsity. I say this as a Mozilla browser and vpn user. They have no reasonable market share to speak of anymore and no direction.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Every time I see this I'm just going to ask, why Yahoo was willing $500 million a year to Google's insurance policy?

throwaway413 6y ago

Click link in Firefox on iOS... Get greeted with notice that says “Please copy paste URL into safari, your browser isn’t supported.” Proceed to roll eyes.

jeremiahlee 6y ago
I came here to note the same experience. Come on, Mozilla…

perryizgr8 6y ago

IMO Mozilla should allocate 40% of their funding from Google every year into a sustainability fund. Keep it invested in very safe bonds or something. In 5 years Mozilla will be financially independent. Then they can do all this fancy stuff.

err4nt 6y ago
But then how would you enrich the CEO?

Vinnl 6y ago

I think one of the reason Hubs was kept on was exactly because it appears to be on a path to being financially healthy while still being relevant to a free and open web: https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-path-to-mozilla-hubs-2697e635490d https://medium.com/@gfodor/the-path-to-mozilla-hubs-2697e635...