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When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? They've managed to lose almost all their market popularity, mobile Firefox share is almost n

When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? They've managed to lose almost all their market popularity, mobile Firefox share is almost nonexistent, they pay their executives extremely disproportionately compared to most nonprofits, they have expanded into countless failed side projects (Firefox OS, Firefox Send) and vestigial side projects they aren't good at (Pocket, Firefox Focus, Firefox Reality, Firefox Lockwise, Firefox Monitor, Mozilla VPN) which only serve to distract Mozilla from working on Firefox. And since then they've now decided they are an NGO fighting for the Freedom of the Internet or something, even though all Google has to do is pull royalty funding because Firefox's market share is not worth supporting for how small it is, and their entire operation will fall overnight like a house of cards.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> mobile Firefox share is almost nonexistent Apple uses anti-competitive tactics to prevent Firefox from competing fairly with Safari on iOS, and Google uses anti-competitive contracts that mandate that Chrome ships on the devices Android vendors sell.
elcapitan 5y ago
Once their market share is so small that it doesn't protect Google from the next round of monopoly discussion anymore, they'll probably pull the plug anyway. It's a shame.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Mozilla is out of their minds to think that paying their top executive $2.4 million per year for 2018 onward (and rising exponentially, it was "only" $1 million a year in 2016) is a good idea. It's egregious by average nonprofit levels, particularly one that advocates "ethics" like Mozilla, and considering they laid off a major part of the development team, that's like 20 developers. Hiring 20 developers to work on your core product so that Google keeps paying you, versus raising the top executive's pay for absolutely no good results other than adding failing side projects. Insanity.
  - throw_m239339 5y ago
    The CEO and other executives are looting that company before it collapses. It's obvious, and Mozilla will fold in the next 5 years. They will probably replace their own engine with Chrome before that and fire the team in charge, and see the CEO compensation double at the same time. Mark my words.
krzyk 5y ago
Not sure what you are writing regarding Firefox Send and Lockwise. They are/were good, or at least good for me.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  They are decent - but they are undermining the development of the Firefox browser by consuming lots of precious time and money which is not what Firefox needs right now. Remember that Mozilla get's 90%+ of its funding, not from donations, but from Google for being the default search engine. Firefox's market share is now ~4%, dangerously close to where Google might decide that the payout isn't worth it. And close enough where Google thinks they could stop payments without causing any antitrust ire because it's such a small percentage it doesn't make any business sense. You would think Mozilla executives would take that as a sign that their funding and core product is at stake and they need to double-down on it. Instead, they fire engineering teams and spread into the many side projects in a desperate attempt at diversification that isn't working.
  - Miraste 5y ago
    I get where you're coming from, and I would also love to have more work put into Firefox, but development speed has precisely nothing to do with why it's lost so much market share. Nobody is choosing a browser because of feature checklists. The average user has Chrome because it's the default on Android and ChromeOS, and on everything else a helpful notification tells you that your browser sucks and you should get Chrome as soon as you google something, or check your email, or watch a video, or open a document. It's the strongest software marketing in history and short of antitrust legislation I don't see any way for Mozilla to compete.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      Maybe when Firefox was at 33% and Google was just starting to gain major dominance in Chrome, Firefox should have realized the game was changing and tried blocking ads for Chrome or even lying to Google properties that it was Chrome (as Microsoft Edge now is capable of even though Microsoft AFAIK hasn't flipped the switch). If Google complained, Firefox could say it was a response to anticompetitive behavior. Google would then be a catch-22 where if they cut Firefox's default search funding, they would be inviting lawsuits and investigations. It wouldn't be a healthy relationship but it would have given Firefox a stronger footing than right now. But Firefox just naively believed adding more fluff like Pocket and paying their executives ludicrous sums of cash would do the trick. You can't do that - you need to get into the mindset that Google wants to kill you and has the power and brand to do it, so you need to fight and stop the bleeding or get killed.
michaelhoffman 5y ago
Personally I like Pocket although there are certainly places where it could use improvement.
- pjdorrell 5y ago
  Last time I tried it you couldn't update titles. Which is very limiting. Some web pages have great titles and other web pages don't.
  - michaelhoffman 5y ago
    Wanting to update titles is so out of my usage scenario for Pocket that I wouldn't even think about it.
the_duke 5y ago
There is exactly zero chance of maintaining an up to date, reasonably fast and secure browser without a large, dedicated team of highly qualified developers. Good luck with forking... Mozilla has definitely failed with most of their side projects, many of them really redundant. And shutting them down is really bad for their reputation. But they also need to find some funding source that doesn't make them beholden to Google or Microsoft. They have been desperately trying to do that. Ignoring the fact that many of those side projects probably took one or two part time devs, with the vast majority working on the browser ... only working on Firefox won't get them any revenue. And no, a subscription model probably won't work. As things stand they would need maybe 30-40 million subscribers paying 10$/year to match Googles money. That's never happening.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  "But they also need to find some funding source that doesn't make them beholden to Google or Microsoft. They have been desperately trying to do that." I agree. How about we do some executive cuts at Mozilla then? $2.4 million for the top exec over there, maybe to $300K or so which is closer to average for a nonprofit, would be a free $2 million per year. It's not like those executives have been successful in any way to merit that cash. I'm just stuck with that, I want Firefox to succeed, but the leadership has real problems. And they need cash flow, but side projects aren't doing it, so double-down already on your success and try to claw back slowly - don't flee from what's working. Maybe even Fight Dirty. I have never figured out why Firefox doesn't pretend to be Chrome on Google websites or try to hide the "Download Chrome" or "Unsupported Browser" popups. Microsoft doesn't care in their quest, Firefox shouldn't either.
  - afavour 5y ago
    I agree the top execs could be paid less but it’s still a rounding error in their overall funding. It would be a symbolic gesture, welcomed by many. But it wouldn’t make a massive difference.
  - emn13 5y ago
    While I agree that the CEO's pay seems unreasonable, let's not pretend it's a singular factor that's going to make a significant dent overall. The best thing people can do is simply use firefox; the longer we avoid a chromium monoculture; the better - and while mozilla the corp may suffer, as long as the userbase doesn't entirely vanish, they might survive based on the scraps microsoft or google throws them.
kf6nux 5y ago
> When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? When we can and will do better. FWIW, I heard Mozilla is offering full refunds to everyone that purchased Lockwise, which is way better than you'd get from any for-profit company.
- Miraste 5y ago
  But Lockwise is free. Was that the joke?
  - kf6nux 5y ago
    Yup, I was poking fun at the entitlement people feel toward FOSS developers who release free products. Amusingly, the person railing against Mozilla didn't catch that it's free and used "the refunds" as an additional talking point against Mozilla.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Full refunds? I get the ethics - but that means that this entire experiment was a very, very expensive failure that only caused a net loss to the brand and Mozilla's finances. Heads should roll in management, but they won't.
  - dralley 5y ago
    >was a very, very expensive Why do you keep pretending to know this?
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      It doesn't take much math to know that Engineering Hours + 100% return of all money made + Damages from having money and then not having it + Labor and processing and lost credit card fees = Expensive experiment. Also they laid off a major Firefox engineering division because of tight funds. You can't tell me that the side projects didn't have something to do with that.
chuckSu 5y ago
Fork it. Nobody’s stopping you.
skrowl 5y ago
>When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? You mean like https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ , https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/ , https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ , etc, or something different?

heavyset_go 5y ago

> mobile Firefox share is almost nonexistent Apple uses anti-competitive tactics to prevent Firefox from competing fairly with Safari on iOS, and Google uses anti-competitive contracts that mandate that Chrome ships on the devices Android vendors sell.

elcapitan 5y ago

Once their market share is so small that it doesn't protect Google from the next round of monopoly discussion anymore, they'll probably pull the plug anyway. It's a shame.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Mozilla is out of their minds to think that paying their top executive $2.4 million per year for 2018 onward (and rising exponentially, it was "only" $1 million a year in 2016) is a good idea. It's egregious by average nonprofit levels, particularly one that advocates "ethics" like Mozilla, and considering they laid off a major part of the development team, that's like 20 developers. Hiring 20 developers to work on your core product so that Google keeps paying you, versus raising the top executive's pay for absolutely no good results other than adding failing side projects. Insanity.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  The CEO and other executives are looting that company before it collapses. It's obvious, and Mozilla will fold in the next 5 years. They will probably replace their own engine with Chrome before that and fire the team in charge, and see the CEO compensation double at the same time. Mark my words.

krzyk 5y ago

Not sure what you are writing regarding Firefox Send and Lockwise. They are/were good, or at least good for me.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
They are decent - but they are undermining the development of the Firefox browser by consuming lots of precious time and money which is not what Firefox needs right now. Remember that Mozilla get's 90%+ of its funding, not from donations, but from Google for being the default search engine. Firefox's market share is now ~4%, dangerously close to where Google might decide that the payout isn't worth it. And close enough where Google thinks they could stop payments without causing any antitrust ire because it's such a small percentage it doesn't make any business sense. You would think Mozilla executives would take that as a sign that their funding and core product is at stake and they need to double-down on it. Instead, they fire engineering teams and spread into the many side projects in a desperate attempt at diversification that isn't working.
- Miraste 5y ago
  I get where you're coming from, and I would also love to have more work put into Firefox, but development speed has precisely nothing to do with why it's lost so much market share. Nobody is choosing a browser because of feature checklists. The average user has Chrome because it's the default on Android and ChromeOS, and on everything else a helpful notification tells you that your browser sucks and you should get Chrome as soon as you google something, or check your email, or watch a video, or open a document. It's the strongest software marketing in history and short of antitrust legislation I don't see any way for Mozilla to compete.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Maybe when Firefox was at 33% and Google was just starting to gain major dominance in Chrome, Firefox should have realized the game was changing and tried blocking ads for Chrome or even lying to Google properties that it was Chrome (as Microsoft Edge now is capable of even though Microsoft AFAIK hasn't flipped the switch). If Google complained, Firefox could say it was a response to anticompetitive behavior. Google would then be a catch-22 where if they cut Firefox's default search funding, they would be inviting lawsuits and investigations. It wouldn't be a healthy relationship but it would have given Firefox a stronger footing than right now. But Firefox just naively believed adding more fluff like Pocket and paying their executives ludicrous sums of cash would do the trick. You can't do that - you need to get into the mindset that Google wants to kill you and has the power and brand to do it, so you need to fight and stop the bleeding or get killed.

michaelhoffman 5y ago

Personally I like Pocket although there are certainly places where it could use improvement.

pjdorrell 5y ago
Last time I tried it you couldn't update titles. Which is very limiting. Some web pages have great titles and other web pages don't.
- michaelhoffman 5y ago
  Wanting to update titles is so out of my usage scenario for Pocket that I wouldn't even think about it.

the_duke 5y ago

There is exactly zero chance of maintaining an up to date, reasonably fast and secure browser without a large, dedicated team of highly qualified developers. Good luck with forking... Mozilla has definitely failed with most of their side projects, many of them really redundant. And shutting them down is really bad for their reputation. But they also need to find some funding source that doesn't make them beholden to Google or Microsoft. They have been desperately trying to do that. Ignoring the fact that many of those side projects probably took one or two part time devs, with the vast majority working on the browser ... only working on Firefox won't get them any revenue. And no, a subscription model probably won't work. As things stand they would need maybe 30-40 million subscribers paying 10$/year to match Googles money. That's never happening.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
"But they also need to find some funding source that doesn't make them beholden to Google or Microsoft. They have been desperately trying to do that." I agree. How about we do some executive cuts at Mozilla then? $2.4 million for the top exec over there, maybe to $300K or so which is closer to average for a nonprofit, would be a free $2 million per year. It's not like those executives have been successful in any way to merit that cash. I'm just stuck with that, I want Firefox to succeed, but the leadership has real problems. And they need cash flow, but side projects aren't doing it, so double-down already on your success and try to claw back slowly - don't flee from what's working. Maybe even Fight Dirty. I have never figured out why Firefox doesn't pretend to be Chrome on Google websites or try to hide the "Download Chrome" or "Unsupported Browser" popups. Microsoft doesn't care in their quest, Firefox shouldn't either.
- afavour 5y ago
  I agree the top execs could be paid less but it’s still a rounding error in their overall funding. It would be a symbolic gesture, welcomed by many. But it wouldn’t make a massive difference.
- emn13 5y ago
  While I agree that the CEO's pay seems unreasonable, let's not pretend it's a singular factor that's going to make a significant dent overall. The best thing people can do is simply use firefox; the longer we avoid a chromium monoculture; the better - and while mozilla the corp may suffer, as long as the userbase doesn't entirely vanish, they might survive based on the scraps microsoft or google throws them.

kf6nux 5y ago

> When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? When we can and will do better. FWIW, I heard Mozilla is offering full refunds to everyone that purchased Lockwise, which is way better than you'd get from any for-profit company.

Miraste 5y ago
But Lockwise is free. Was that the joke?
- kf6nux 5y ago
  Yup, I was poking fun at the entitlement people feel toward FOSS developers who release free products. Amusingly, the person railing against Mozilla didn't catch that it's free and used "the refunds" as an additional talking point against Mozilla.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Full refunds? I get the ethics - but that means that this entire experiment was a very, very expensive failure that only caused a net loss to the brand and Mozilla's finances. Heads should roll in management, but they won't.
- dralley 5y ago
  >was a very, very expensive Why do you keep pretending to know this?
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    It doesn't take much math to know that Engineering Hours + 100% return of all money made + Damages from having money and then not having it + Labor and processing and lost credit card fees = Expensive experiment. Also they laid off a major Firefox engineering division because of tight funds. You can't tell me that the side projects didn't have something to do with that.

chuckSu 5y ago

Fork it. Nobody’s stopping you.

skrowl 5y ago

>When do we fork Firefox because Mozilla is a failure at their job? You mean like https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ , https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/ , https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ , etc, or something different?