4 ms·

Man these kind of views bother me so much. They’re taking one of the most (if not, most) useful documentation sources for cross platform web development that be

Man these kind of views bother me so much. They’re taking one of the most (if not, most) useful documentation sources for cross platform web development that benefits them very little, and moving it to a system of open contribution so it can live past the company’s financial problems. And this is your first take?

DC-3 6y ago
As far as I can see, Mozilla have no reason to be losing money other than their own mismanagement.
- roblabla 6y ago
  This is an article about MDN, not Mozilla. How exactly does MDN bring money? Do you suggest MDN should be a revenue source? Or do you expect Mozilla to maintain the MDN for free eternally just because? This is seriously entitled. Mozilla gave us an amazing resource, entirely for free. This attitude isn't right, it's toxic and harmful. Mozilla is in a spot of difficulty, and instead of taking a resource that is operating entirely at a loss down, they're taking the engineering steps to ensure thez resource can outlive them. That their mismanagement caused them the difficulty is entirely irrelevant here. It could have happened in a myriad of other ways. We should be praising Mozilla and the MDN tech team for the steps they're taking in making sure the MDN can live on.
  - eznzt 6y ago
    It's stuff like MDN that attracts donations.
    - johnfn 6y ago
      Fun fact: I have an open source repo with millions of downloads, tens of thousands of active users, and, for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. How much in donations do you think it took in over its lifetime? Hint: it's less than $200. Donations don't really work.
      - cambalache 6y ago
        Which one is it? Maybe you will win a handful of donations here.
        polymatter 6y ago
        I guess its https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim
      - weaksauce 6y ago
        Thanks for the vim plugin for vscode! It's quite useful and usable. fwiw i don't think you get many donations because it looks like an official microsoft backed vscode plugin so why would people throw money at microsoft. that said, i do think you are correct in that people in general do not donate to open source individually that much.
      - sroussey 6y ago
        We didn’t have many for Firebug either, though we appreciated those we got and funneled them to new contributors living outside the States where it made a difference.
      - tracker1 6y ago
        At the bottom of a long scroll isn't something I'd consider prominent. I'd probably change it to simply "Donate" as a button, and put it with the badges at the top. Red, purple or orange as a contrasting color from the blue and green badges.
      - rhizome 6y ago
        >for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. Just to be sure, are you referring to the "BuyMeCoffee" button on the GitHub page for the extension (https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim)?
        johnfn 6y ago
        Nah, we used to have a more prominent link. It's been removed since I stopped developing on the extension.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Or do you expect Mozilla to maintain the MDN for free eternally just because? That's what I expect of a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining one of the last two remaining major browser engines, yes.
    - afiori 6y ago
      I didn't know that becoming non-profit meant that money is free :)
- ori_b 6y ago
  What are their revenue streams? Now that antitrust is happening anyways, Google's main reason for shoveling money at them is going away.
wwarner 6y ago
Granted, it depends on how it turns out. But my first impression is that authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements.
- newmnhn 6y ago
  MDN has never been "authoritative reference documents". It's a wiki. Anybody can edit and republish pages, change examples, do whatever. I noticed somewhere about a year ago that it was a wiki, and have made minor changes to a couple of pages since then, when something was missing an example or something. I change, I publish, it's done. And if my change was wrong, or opinionated, or bad, it's just like that until somebody else catches it and fixes it back.
  - hyperrail 6y ago
    Neither Safari, Chrome/Chromium, IE, old Edge, nor new Edge have substantial HTML and CSS developer documentation on their own web sites. Their vendors - excepting Apple and the WebKit contributors - all chose to work with Mozilla instead to put their docs on MDN: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-web-together-mdn-web-docs/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-w... It seems to me that as far as the browser makers are concerned, MDN is as close to authoritative as you can get without going to the standards documents themselves - and the standards don't give you browser compatibility matrices or make any note of browser-specific quirks. MDN may be a wiki, but it certainly isn't treated like one by the people who are most interested in it being accurate and up to date.
    - newmnhn 6y ago
      I suppose I was reacting to this: "Authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements" Which suggests previously authoritative docs are becoming less so due to being editable. I'm just pointing out they are and always have been subject to edits from the public. If anything the PR process will likely increase the reliability of the info because there would be a chance to do some vetting of changes. I totally agree that MDN is as close to authoritative as you can get, but it's one (important) step away.
nialv7 6y ago
I think you are both right. This is good for the future of MDN, but OTOH cutting cost is likely to be what motivated Mozilla to make this change.
- afiori 6y ago
  They had already cut cost, I would phrase it as this change being now even more necessary.
contravariant 6y ago
Well, the way I see it it was the financial problems who personally made the decision, so that complicated things somewhat.
ironmagma 6y ago
With corporations, the cynical view is most likely to be the correct view. And I wouldn’t say MDN does very little for Mozilla; it’s the main part of their brand in developers’ mind share. If they want to have a browser without developers who like it, that’s their choice, but it won’t really work out well business wise.

DC-3 6y ago

As far as I can see, Mozilla have no reason to be losing money other than their own mismanagement.

roblabla 6y ago
This is an article about MDN, not Mozilla. How exactly does MDN bring money? Do you suggest MDN should be a revenue source? Or do you expect Mozilla to maintain the MDN for free eternally just because? This is seriously entitled. Mozilla gave us an amazing resource, entirely for free. This attitude isn't right, it's toxic and harmful. Mozilla is in a spot of difficulty, and instead of taking a resource that is operating entirely at a loss down, they're taking the engineering steps to ensure thez resource can outlive them. That their mismanagement caused them the difficulty is entirely irrelevant here. It could have happened in a myriad of other ways. We should be praising Mozilla and the MDN tech team for the steps they're taking in making sure the MDN can live on.
- eznzt 6y ago
  It's stuff like MDN that attracts donations.
  - johnfn 6y ago
    Fun fact: I have an open source repo with millions of downloads, tens of thousands of active users, and, for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. How much in donations do you think it took in over its lifetime? Hint: it's less than $200. Donations don't really work.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Which one is it? Maybe you will win a handful of donations here.
      - polymatter 6y ago
        I guess its https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim
    - weaksauce 6y ago
      Thanks for the vim plugin for vscode! It's quite useful and usable. fwiw i don't think you get many donations because it looks like an official microsoft backed vscode plugin so why would people throw money at microsoft. that said, i do think you are correct in that people in general do not donate to open source individually that much.
    - sroussey 6y ago
      We didn’t have many for Firebug either, though we appreciated those we got and funneled them to new contributors living outside the States where it made a difference.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      At the bottom of a long scroll isn't something I'd consider prominent. I'd probably change it to simply "Donate" as a button, and put it with the badges at the top. Red, purple or orange as a contrasting color from the blue and green badges.
    - rhizome 6y ago
      >for at least a year, a prominently displayed donate button. Just to be sure, are you referring to the "BuyMeCoffee" button on the GitHub page for the extension (https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim)?
      - johnfn 6y ago
        Nah, we used to have a more prominent link. It's been removed since I stopped developing on the extension.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Or do you expect Mozilla to maintain the MDN for free eternally just because? That's what I expect of a non-profit organization dedicated to maintaining one of the last two remaining major browser engines, yes.
  - afiori 6y ago
    I didn't know that becoming non-profit meant that money is free :)
ori_b 6y ago
What are their revenue streams? Now that antitrust is happening anyways, Google's main reason for shoveling money at them is going away.

wwarner 6y ago

Granted, it depends on how it turns out. But my first impression is that authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements.

newmnhn 6y ago
MDN has never been "authoritative reference documents". It's a wiki. Anybody can edit and republish pages, change examples, do whatever. I noticed somewhere about a year ago that it was a wiki, and have made minor changes to a couple of pages since then, when something was missing an example or something. I change, I publish, it's done. And if my change was wrong, or opinionated, or bad, it's just like that until somebody else catches it and fixes it back.
- hyperrail 6y ago
  Neither Safari, Chrome/Chromium, IE, old Edge, nor new Edge have substantial HTML and CSS developer documentation on their own web sites. Their vendors - excepting Apple and the WebKit contributors - all chose to work with Mozilla instead to put their docs on MDN: https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-web-together-mdn-web-docs/ https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2017/10/18/documenting-w... It seems to me that as far as the browser makers are concerned, MDN is as close to authoritative as you can get without going to the standards documents themselves - and the standards don't give you browser compatibility matrices or make any note of browser-specific quirks. MDN may be a wiki, but it certainly isn't treated like one by the people who are most interested in it being accurate and up to date.
  - newmnhn 6y ago
    I suppose I was reacting to this: "Authoritative reference documents of MDN are going to become cluttered with comments and disagreements" Which suggests previously authoritative docs are becoming less so due to being editable. I'm just pointing out they are and always have been subject to edits from the public. If anything the PR process will likely increase the reliability of the info because there would be a chance to do some vetting of changes. I totally agree that MDN is as close to authoritative as you can get, but it's one (important) step away.

nialv7 6y ago

I think you are both right. This is good for the future of MDN, but OTOH cutting cost is likely to be what motivated Mozilla to make this change.

afiori 6y ago
They had already cut cost, I would phrase it as this change being now even more necessary.

contravariant 6y ago

Well, the way I see it it was the financial problems who personally made the decision, so that complicated things somewhat.

ironmagma 6y ago

With corporations, the cynical view is most likely to be the correct view. And I wouldn’t say MDN does very little for Mozilla; it’s the main part of their brand in developers’ mind share. If they want to have a browser without developers who like it, that’s their choice, but it won’t really work out well business wise.