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Mozilla already announced their new strategy, they are shifting into a "Product" focused company. Which why is they laid off all these teams. The browser is no

Mozilla already announced their new strategy, they are shifting into a "Product" focused company. Which why is they laid off all these teams. The browser is no longer the focus. Indeed they laid off the Servo team.

ChrisSD 6y ago
The browser is absolutely their focus which is why they laid off the Servo team. Servo is a research project, Gecko/Firefox is their browser. It's also a massive money sink. Firefox itself has zero income and yet keeping up with Google is fantastically expensive (even Microsoft decided to throw in the towel). So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spending on their browser.
- dblohm7 6y ago
  As a Mozilla employee, I can say that this is a fairly accurate assessment.
  - glandium 6y ago
    Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.
    - ChrisSD 6y ago
      It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine. But what I meant was Firefox has no means to actual generate an income in its own right. Mozilla have tried. The reactions have not been good. The money from Google is practically a donation at this point. It's not exactly an altruistic one but it's not exactly a pure business transaction either given Firefox's current market share.
      - geektips 6y ago
        What will happen to this donation if the outcome of the anti-trust is against Google ?
      - vbezhenar 6y ago
        Is it even possible to donate money to Firefox development and not to greedy CEOs?
        ChrisSD 6y ago
        You can't donate to Mozilla Corp full stop. Besides which Firefox users are strongly opposed to "nags" in the browser as Mozilla have found. Even wikipedia, with it's massive reach and yearly nags, "only" makes ~$120 million. Firefox could never hope to reach anything like that from donations alone and it needs many times that number to keep pace with Google Chrome's practically unlimited funds.
        srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Send money to employees
      - dblohm7 6y ago
        > It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine Your first bad assumption is that the amount of money is fixed.
- nanagojo 6y ago
  Contradicts their announcement on new product focus https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-chan... And here is a 2013 post about the "next generation" engine (Servo) https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-collaborate-on-next-generation-web-browser-engine/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung... > So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spending on their browser. Exactly, that means they do not see any value in closing the gap with Chrome. Servo was this plan that launched years ago. See this paragraph from the above post from 2013 > Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way. This means addressing the causes of security vulnerabilities while designing a platform that can fully utilize the performance of tomorrow’s massively parallel hardware to enable new and richer experiences on the Web. Not to mention their threat response team got laid off https://www.securityweek.com/mozilla-cybersecurity-staff-hit-layoffs https://www.securityweek.com/mozilla-cybersecurity-staff-hit...
  - hansjorg 6y ago
    Several parts of Servo have been incorporated into Firefox (Stylo, Webrender, Pathfinder and more). I think Servo was branded as a research project pretty early on. That it would replace Firefox wasn't very realistic.
    - nanagojo 6y ago
      Yes, however if Servo was stopped early on due to no "ROI" (like it is the case today). Then those very good improvements would have not been made.
- pmarin 6y ago
  Firefox is the reason why Google pours so many millions in Mozilla. Hardly a money sink.
rasz 6y ago
and the Product is whatever they sell Google every couple of years.

ChrisSD 6y ago

The browser is absolutely their focus which is why they laid off the Servo team. Servo is a research project, Gecko/Firefox is their browser. It's also a massive money sink. Firefox itself has zero income and yet keeping up with Google is fantastically expensive (even Microsoft decided to throw in the towel). So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spending on their browser.

dblohm7 6y ago
As a Mozilla employee, I can say that this is a fairly accurate assessment.
- glandium 6y ago
  Except for the part about Firefox not making any money. Firefox is making most of the money.
  - ChrisSD 6y ago
    It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine. But what I meant was Firefox has no means to actual generate an income in its own right. Mozilla have tried. The reactions have not been good. The money from Google is practically a donation at this point. It's not exactly an altruistic one but it's not exactly a pure business transaction either given Firefox's current market share.
    - geektips 6y ago
      What will happen to this donation if the outcome of the anti-trust is against Google ?
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      Is it even possible to donate money to Firefox development and not to greedy CEOs?
      - ChrisSD 6y ago
        You can't donate to Mozilla Corp full stop. Besides which Firefox users are strongly opposed to "nags" in the browser as Mozilla have found. Even wikipedia, with it's massive reach and yearly nags, "only" makes ~$120 million. Firefox could never hope to reach anything like that from donations alone and it needs many times that number to keep pace with Google Chrome's practically unlimited funds.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Send money to employees
    - dblohm7 6y ago
      > It gets a fixed amount of money from Google for using them as the default search engine Your first bad assumption is that the amount of money is fixed.
nanagojo 6y ago
Contradicts their announcement on new product focus https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-mozilla/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-chan... And here is a 2013 post about the "next generation" engine (Servo) https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung-collaborate-on-next-generation-web-browser-engine/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/03/mozilla-and-samsung... > So they cut teams that a) weren't directly working on their core browser and b) doesn't make money for spending on their browser. Exactly, that means they do not see any value in closing the gap with Chrome. Servo was this plan that launched years ago. See this paragraph from the above post from 2013 > Servo is an attempt to rebuild the Web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, rethinking old assumptions along the way. This means addressing the causes of security vulnerabilities while designing a platform that can fully utilize the performance of tomorrow’s massively parallel hardware to enable new and richer experiences on the Web. Not to mention their threat response team got laid off https://www.securityweek.com/mozilla-cybersecurity-staff-hit-layoffs https://www.securityweek.com/mozilla-cybersecurity-staff-hit...
- hansjorg 6y ago
  Several parts of Servo have been incorporated into Firefox (Stylo, Webrender, Pathfinder and more). I think Servo was branded as a research project pretty early on. That it would replace Firefox wasn't very realistic.
  - nanagojo 6y ago
    Yes, however if Servo was stopped early on due to no "ROI" (like it is the case today). Then those very good improvements would have not been made.
pmarin 6y ago
Firefox is the reason why Google pours so many millions in Mozilla. Hardly a money sink.

rasz 6y ago

and the Product is whatever they sell Google every couple of years.