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It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible

It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. It makes one seriously wonder whether it is feasible at all to maintain an independent open-source web browser in 2021. People tend to blame Mozilla's management and I'm sure there have been management failures but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. So what to do? Go back to being the quirky, heavily configurable browser we all know and love? That would be great for me, but even assuming Mozilla can afford to do that now (greater configurability leads to greater code complexity and therefore greater maintenance costs), experience seems to suggest it won't be enough to allow Mozilla grow its market share to a sustainable level. Finally, and this is a bit of a tangent, but I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry. I understand that telemetry is in general something to be suspicious of, but we're not talking about handing your data over to Google so they can target you with ads; we're talking about sharing technical data with a non-profit organisation to help them maintain and improve the browser you rely on. Mozilla are removing a feature you use daily? Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? Receiving and analysing user data is increasingly important to delivering a good user experience. If open-source projects can't access the same data as proprietary ones do, we can't expect them to be able to react to user demands in the same way, and so we can't expect them to be able to compete in today's market.

lvncelot 5y ago
What's worse, I think it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for another project to start from either a fork or from nothing and provide an alternative, as developing a browser (with its own rendering engine) is extremely complicated, comparable to an operating system.
- onion2k 5y ago
  The rendering engine part is kind of the least problematic bit, because there are three primary options (Gecko, WebKit, and Blink) and they're all pretty up-to-date and open source. You could also pick up Goanna, KHTML or Servo if you didn't want to use any of the big three as they're open too, but there'd be work to do on them. There's no particularly good reason to start your own renderer from scratch.
  - lvncelot 5y ago
    I'd agree that there's no good reason to start your own renderer from scratch, but I'd argue that there's a great benefit having a competing rendering engine (in this case, Gecko). If Firefox (and, by extension, Gecko) were to die, or fall into obscurity, there would be nothing stopping harmful proposals from being added to various web specifications[1], which is what I was getting at. [1] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
- eitland 5y ago
  I've been suggesting someone starts maintaining a set of patches to Firefox and building based on them. Start by fixing low-hanging frukt (the tab-strip api, make real customizability for the UI possible again) and build momentum from there. I'm ready to pay a bit for what is one of my most important tools, and I think we all should think about it that way. Just don't start growth hacking me or anything sleazy and I'm also your free billboard on HN and elsewhere.
fomine3 5y ago
Agreed. For who dislike telemetry, it's your choice to disable it. But you shouldn't blame developers to have optional telemetry, like Audacity case.
m-p-3 5y ago
IMO they're in a good position where then can include deep-rooted privacy services on which they could (and already do in some) capitalize. for example Mozilla VPN and Firefox Relay which added a premium version with unlimited aliases and your own @*.mozmail.com subdomain. If they can find a way to promote themselves as a leader of Internet privacy with well-integrated servoces, and from which they can get a revenue from it then at least they'll gain some independence.
- aorth 5y ago
  > Relay I started using Relay recently and it seems useful. I'll subscribe. I hope they can get a few hundred thousand paying users there...
  - m-p-3 5y ago
    Personally I'd pay just a bit more to integrate my Firefox Relay aliases automatically with my Bitwarden account. I know Firefox has its own builtin password manager, but it's mostly barebone.
bool3max 5y ago
I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do that. That's why telemetry is useful.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Believe me, I understand the appeal. Yesterday we were discussing something dropping support for some platforms from an open source project and the issue is... we have no way of determining how many installs are on such platforms. Telemetry would fix this, but it's not our right to collect data from other people's machines. So our best bet would be to detect the condition we expect to cause problems, notify them in advance, and allow time for feedback before implementing a change. Is it less pretty and a worse user experience than telemetry? Absolutely. But when you realize you have no right to data collection on someone else's machine, telemetry isn't a viable option, and we would betray people's trust by doing it.
  - gostsamo 5y ago
    This would be true if you had an involved user based that follows your communication channels and can give you feedback through the proper channel for each change that you might make. If you have a change surface of hundreds of features/parameters, then it gets rather tricky. Edit: typo.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    A checkbox (defaulted to disabled) during setup is the best option in my opinion.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > Yesterday we were discussing something dropping support for some platforms from an open source project and the issue is... we have no way of determining how many installs are on such platforms. You seem to be assuming that your users are always online and not sitting somewhere isolated, the ideal place for platforms old enough that you want to stop supporting them. Telemetry only tells you if something is there, it doesn't tell you if something isn't.
cout 5y ago
I thought firefox was supposed to be a simplified interface (compared to the older mozilla suite).
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  That's how I remember it too, but I think the expectations of simplicity has changed over the years - in those days, it was closer to great defaults and no gratuitous features, whereas now it's a bit more like less flexibility (although really, Firefox has masses of options that aren't included in the UI but are accessible from about:config, so I don't really think Firefox falls victim to this criticism). Part of the old tradeoff was that extension writers could do almost anything to make the web browser do almost anything. Nowadays, extensions are much less flexible. I think for good reason: being able to click a few buttons and get pwned isn't really a desirable feature. But the tradeoff has moved. I don't think that's really an argument against Firefox, but consider that powerusers are often very conservative, I'm not surprised that it caused some disagreement.
the_duke 5y ago
> greater configurability leads to greater code complexity and therefore greater maintenance costs Firefox is extremely configurable. Settings being removed from the UI doesn't mean they are gone. `about:config` has a crazy amount of toggles that allow customizing pretty much everything, including turning off all the Mozilla services (telemetriy, account sync, Pocket, VPN adds, ...). Compare that with the measly set of settings and undiscoverable CLI flags available in Chrome... I personally feel removing settings from the standard UI is perfectly fine when almost no-one is using them, and power users can work just fine with settings.js or `about:config`.
- shultays 5y ago
  about:config is removed from (not beta) android version of firefox. Who knows if they will decide to remove it on desktop as well because "only x% of our users were using about:config!" Also if a setting is hidden behind about:config, it probably means dev will care less and less about it and eventually remove if it is becoming a hindrance
  - aaron_m04 5y ago
    It is present in Fennec F-droid, which I am using now, FWIW. It is based on Firefox.
  - unsignedint 5y ago
    This precisely the reason I've dropped Firefox. (Previously I was using Firefox almost exclusively across all the platforms.) I was using it to enable TRR on Android.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"we're talking about sharing technical data with a non-profit organisation to help them maintain and improve the browser you rely " No we are talking about a non-profit and a for-profit at the same time, where the distinction is often not clear. But it is clear, that they included ads and "studies" by default in their browser, that did send data to whoever, without any user consent. So no, I do not really trust them anymore. Still more than google maybe, but not enough to voluntarily send them my data. And this is a shame, because I would have liked to keep trusting them.
bluedays 5y ago
Has Mozilla explained whether or not they are not handing your data over to Google?
- jefftk 5y ago
  Which data are you talking about? The only thing I know of that's similar to that is how Mozilla has Google Analytics on some pages as part of the Firefox interface, but there they have a contract restricting how the data is used: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
- Yoric 5y ago
  Mozilla does not handle data over to Google.
DeathArrow 5y ago
>It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. >So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. You can have sensible defaults for people who value simplicity and want it to just work and have customisation accessible from the settings page for the people who want customization.
ldng 5y ago
> It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. Firefox or the (quite lost) Mozilla Corp ? They're not the same.
GuB-42 5y ago
> Finally, and this is a bit of a tangent, but I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry. That's the consequence of marketing themselves as "privacy first". Many people use Firefox because they don't want to be tracked, and therefore, any tiny bit of tracking/telemetry will be frowned upon. Google makes no such claim with Chrome, in fact, it makes it pretty clear that it tracks you.
nathias 5y ago
it would be great if we can move past the browser and debundle the tech, for example we should have a few different JS engines, a few different CS engines and a multitude of different GUIs ...
moron4hire 5y ago
Mozilla Corporation, which represents the majority of activity on Firefox, is not a non-profit. That's only Mozilla Foundation, and it's never really been clear to me what their role is, regarding Firefox.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. There are various advantages to this kind of structure, but I don't know what they are. The upshot though is that the incentives of the owners of the Mozilla Corporation are not to squeeze every drop of profit, but rather to benefit the goals of the Mozilla Foundation (to raise money to support open source development), because the profits of the Mozilla Corporation are paid to their only shareholder: namely, the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. (No idea if they have any profits, but that's a different matter.)
GekkePrutser 5y ago
> So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. Well, no surprise there. Technical people like us experiment. Mainstream users just use what they know, and what their techie friends recommend them. They're not suddenly going to use Firefox now that it's more like chrome. They'll just use the real chrome. And they don't like touching something that works. Note that this approach didn't work for Microsoft either (and they went a lot more 'like chrome' than Mozilla!). They're having some success with Edge but it's mainly because they push it really hard to enterprise users with their O365 integration, so people are getting to know it at work and bringing it home. > [...] If open-source projects can't access the same data as proprietary ones do, we can't expect them to be able to react to user demands in the same way, and so we can't expect them to be able to compete in today's market. I don't want them to become like the proprietary browsers in this regard. Telemetry is not an all-seeing oracle, it's often used to confirm their own bias because it doesn't say why the users like something or what they'd prefer. What they should be doing is listening to users instead of blindly trusting telemetry. Google and Microsoft make the same mistake but they already have a monopoly on the browser and OS markets respectively so their mistakes are easily absorbed. It's not like their products have become a lot better since they started relying on telemetry so much. But no, I won't allow telemetry and I block it for Microsoft and Google too in my DNS. The reason I use Firefox is because I don't want to "get with the program". If I have to change my ideology, I would be changed so much that the primary reason to use Firefox is no longer relevant.
- soundnote 5y ago
  > Note that this approach didn't work for Microsoft either (and they went a lot more 'like chrome' than Mozilla!). They're having some success with Edge but it's mainly because they push it really hard to enterprise users with their O365 integration, so people are getting to know it at work and bringing it home. Edge is also - aside from being a privacy disaster - a legitimately good product that does a lot of good UI innovation on top of stock Chrome. Things like normie-friendly but powerful vertical tab implementations, turning menus into floating panels that can be turned into sidebars with a click, Collections etc. They're actually adding lots of customer-facing features that are really well designed.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
> particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. This is simply not so. Google pays to be the default search engine on Firefox because it is beneficial for them. Had they not, this place would be bought out by Bing or whoever else, and in the end Google will lose more.
latexr 5y ago
> It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. Perhaps they could care for the automation niche. There are thriving communities on macOS who are deeply into automation, and virtually no one uses Firefox. The ones who do stop because Firefox’s AppleScript support is non-existent, while Chromium’s (and thus every browser based on it) is top notch, even better than Safari’s. I’m not talking developers, either. Non-coders frequently cobble up short AppleScript snippets do to what they want. When they visit the forums asking for help and how to do what they want in Firefox, they are directed to the open bug report which is old enough to drink. I have seen plenty of users abandon Firefox on account of that gap. I tried to convey that to Firefox developers multiple times—both in person and online—and their response was to not care.
- asoneth 5y ago
  If they're going to be paying developers to do it they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts. I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share. Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? If they're relying on volunteers then they'd need a few folks with the right set of skills and a motivation to scratch that itch. I would personally love to see better AppleScript support in Firefox, but I won't judge anyone else for not stepping up if I don't have the inclination to either.
  - latexr 5y ago
    > I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share. The automation communities (plural) create tools for themselves and for others. That’s the important bit. It’s common for non-coders to resort to those communities (which can be as simple as a subreddit) to achieve a simple recurring task. If they use Firefox, they get turned away from it because it’s the only major browser lacking AppleScript support. Not only do those developers abandon Firefox, so do all their users. > Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? I estimate they wouldn’t lose as many as they do. What good is it to gain market share if you can’t stop the bleed? If Firefox can’t even be interesting to large sections of developers and power users, what chance to they have with the general populace? I lost count to how many people asked for my tools to be ported to Firefox, and I’m a single data point with a single need. Before I stopped caring, I checked every (front page) Firefox story on HN and without exception I collected a new macOS grievance by someone different. Tellingly, I noticed that no matter how polite or constructive the criticism, it was invariably met by defensiveness of the “I don’t care for that feature, so it’s not the problem” kind. That’s in line with what I felt in my interactions with the Firefox developers I spoke to, despite ostensibly most of them using macOS. It’s fine for Firefox developers to ignore whatever communities they want; that’s their prerogative. But they then need to accept when those same people assert they can’t use Firefox as their daily driver. > they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts Their latest efforts are constantly criticised on HN precisely because they are gimmicks not related to the browser. I’m not a marketing expert, but I expect making a browser people want to use is better ROI than Mr Robot marketing stunts or short-lived file sharing services with no innovative features.
floatboth 5y ago
> did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? I have all telemetry and Nightly studies enabled wherever I can (unfortunately the option is unavailable in custom builds, and I use custom builds on my main OS, since I contribute code to Firefox occasionally). > removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI I never understood the whole "dumbing down" thing either. It's fundamentally the same UI as it was in Firefox 2.0 back in the day, except the menus are more well-structured (there's now a convenient hamburger rather than everything being in a crowded "application menu" bar at the top). > I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser I think it's still all these things. But to make growth possible, they need to somehow fight against Google persistently advertising Chrome right on the fucking google dot com main page (and YouTube and so on).
freediver 5y ago
>but I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry Telemetry includes personal information such as IP address and some people are (rightfully) concerned about it. Also we do not know for sure what is done with this data, as Firefox server side code (the one that processes the telemetry) is not open source (and even if it was it would not be a guarantee). > Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? There would be no problem if Firefox shipped as a zero-telemetry browser, and all telemetry was opt-in. This would remove all doubt and if you want to send Firefox data you can choose to do so. However that is not the case. Significant amount of telemetry is enabled by default. Choosing to go for opt-out vs opt-in is what is hurting Mozilla's credibility here. What then happens (and I am speculating here) is that this behavior triggers most power users in a negative way (for various reasons, one of them being simply using your bandwidth and resources for telemetry and noone likes having a slower browser) so they do their best to disable it. This in turn leaves Mozilla with data that does not include most of its power user base, the one that actually has most impact on Firefox market share (because as 'techies' they install the browser for their family and friends). The crippled data leads to crippled product decisions, which in turn makes power users even angrier and thus we witness the death spiral of user attrition that Firefox is currently in.
- spixy 5y ago
  > Telemetry includes personal information such as IP address and some people are (rightfully) concerned about it. Source? I don't see any IP address in about:telemetry window.
  - freediver 5y ago
    Client IP address is included with every http request, regardless of what data is being sent. Mozilla is receiving it, wanting it or not. This is why any telemetry, even if the browser is sending benign data, is a potential privacy risk for the user.
Hidios 5y ago
Would it not be in the interest of Google as well to fund Firefox? I would imagine they wouldn't mind spending a small amount to keep it alive to prevent accusations of Anti-competitive practises? ;)
- philipwhiuk 5y ago
  That's exactly what they do.
chmod775 5y ago
> [..] but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. They could focus on building that browser, instead of getting sidetracked and wasting money on other things. Also reduce the friction of contributing to their projects from the outside, streamline the process, bring it into the 21st century while keeping top-down politics and egos out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if their rivals see more outside contributions (in total) simply because they are somewhat easier to work with. However, overall the vast majority of contributions to Mozilla's projects is likely still coming from the outside. Mozilla is afraid it will fail with Firefox if they don't diversify. But if Firefox fails, the world doesn't need Mozilla. If that happens they should just pack up and hand the custody of surviving technologies (Rust etc.) to someone else.
xanaxagoras 5y ago
> Mozilla are removing a feature you use daily? Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? I would much rather lose a feature I use daily than send telemetry data.
soundnote 5y ago
> So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. The funny thing about this is that it's a narrative, but is it correct? Configuration options may be low, but Chrome has added things like tab groups and a reading list / bookmarks sidebar. They're in no way aiming to be as customizable as Vivaldi/presto!Opera/xulExtensions!Firefox, but even stock Chrome is actually adding useful features, while most news I've seen from Firefox have been them removing unique features I've used and loved, like being able to sync keyword searches via bookmarks. The only significant feature I've seen them add - and it's a doozy, I admit - is Containers. But that's cold comfort when other features get removed at a steady rate. > It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. This may be true, but it can really come down to quality of product: Firefox is losing ground, but Brave for example is growing, and doing it by a privacy sales pitch (with some dumbfucks who think they're going to get rich off BAT added in - it's a cut from Brave's ad revenue, ffs, and individual ad viewers aren't worth shit except en masse when the money pools up at creators' and ad agencies' wallets). > Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? Receiving and analysing user data is increasingly important to delivering a good user experience. If open-source projects can't access the same data as proprietary ones do, we can't expect them to be able to react to user demands in the same way, and so we can't expect them to be able to compete in today's market. This is true, but making decisions purely off telemetry stats and setting up self-fulfilling prophecies of making features harder to find and then saying nobody uses them isn't exactly the way either. Telemetry is a good jumping off point, I think, but as a sole director it's shit precisely because privacy-conscious users are going to turn that shit off if they can out of habit. > I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry. I think a lot of the Mozilla userbase is from an earlier age, before everything became cloud-based subscription services. They long for the days of locally installable software, buying new versions vs. subscribing to an app, etc. Some are the kind of obstinate FOSS purists who'd use gNewSense even if it meant they had to use their computer as a command line only device. Think about Pocket, for example. I was one of the abovementioned people and hated its inclusion, and people still grumble about it in part due to the source code, in part just due to the old bad blood. They'd essentially need a relaunch with a new take and attitude - look at Brave, whose pitch is pretty similar, and how people are a-ok with monetized services within the browser so long as they're opt-in. The product's newer, and so the attitude people come to it is newer. And it's growing. Finally, there's an issue of focus: The organization increasingly feels like general activists first, custodians of a product second, which is not a vibe much of the competition gives off. Actors like Brave and Vivaldi have firm, in some sense political stances, but they're of a narrower sort of user control and privacy. I know people at both orgs who do/have shown their politics, but it doesn't show at the org/product level. The user? Does. I never, ever want to hear shit like "we need more than deplatforming" from an ostensibly privacy and user centered organization.

lvncelot 5y ago

What's worse, I think it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, for another project to start from either a fork or from nothing and provide an alternative, as developing a browser (with its own rendering engine) is extremely complicated, comparable to an operating system.

onion2k 5y ago
The rendering engine part is kind of the least problematic bit, because there are three primary options (Gecko, WebKit, and Blink) and they're all pretty up-to-date and open source. You could also pick up Goanna, KHTML or Servo if you didn't want to use any of the big three as they're open too, but there'd be work to do on them. There's no particularly good reason to start your own renderer from scratch.
- lvncelot 5y ago
  I'd agree that there's no good reason to start your own renderer from scratch, but I'd argue that there's a great benefit having a competing rendering engine (in this case, Gecko). If Firefox (and, by extension, Gecko) were to die, or fall into obscurity, there would be nothing stopping harmful proposals from being added to various web specifications[1], which is what I was getting at. [1] https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/
eitland 5y ago
I've been suggesting someone starts maintaining a set of patches to Firefox and building based on them. Start by fixing low-hanging frukt (the tab-strip api, make real customizability for the UI possible again) and build momentum from there. I'm ready to pay a bit for what is one of my most important tools, and I think we all should think about it that way. Just don't start growth hacking me or anything sleazy and I'm also your free billboard on HN and elsewhere.

fomine3 5y ago

Agreed. For who dislike telemetry, it's your choice to disable it. But you shouldn't blame developers to have optional telemetry, like Audacity case.

m-p-3 5y ago

IMO they're in a good position where then can include deep-rooted privacy services on which they could (and already do in some) capitalize. for example Mozilla VPN and Firefox Relay which added a premium version with unlimited aliases and your own @*.mozmail.com subdomain. If they can find a way to promote themselves as a leader of Internet privacy with well-integrated servoces, and from which they can get a revenue from it then at least they'll gain some independence.

aorth 5y ago
> Relay I started using Relay recently and it seems useful. I'll subscribe. I hope they can get a few hundred thousand paying users there...
- m-p-3 5y ago
  Personally I'd pay just a bit more to integrate my Firefox Relay aliases automatically with my Bitwarden account. I know Firefox has its own builtin password manager, but it's mostly barebone.

bool3max 5y ago

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do that. That's why telemetry is useful.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Believe me, I understand the appeal. Yesterday we were discussing something dropping support for some platforms from an open source project and the issue is... we have no way of determining how many installs are on such platforms. Telemetry would fix this, but it's not our right to collect data from other people's machines. So our best bet would be to detect the condition we expect to cause problems, notify them in advance, and allow time for feedback before implementing a change. Is it less pretty and a worse user experience than telemetry? Absolutely. But when you realize you have no right to data collection on someone else's machine, telemetry isn't a viable option, and we would betray people's trust by doing it.
- gostsamo 5y ago
  This would be true if you had an involved user based that follows your communication channels and can give you feedback through the proper channel for each change that you might make. If you have a change surface of hundreds of features/parameters, then it gets rather tricky. Edit: typo.
- judge2020 5y ago
  A checkbox (defaulted to disabled) during setup is the best option in my opinion.
- josefx 5y ago
  > Yesterday we were discussing something dropping support for some platforms from an open source project and the issue is... we have no way of determining how many installs are on such platforms. You seem to be assuming that your users are always online and not sitting somewhere isolated, the ideal place for platforms old enough that you want to stop supporting them. Telemetry only tells you if something is there, it doesn't tell you if something isn't.

cout 5y ago

I thought firefox was supposed to be a simplified interface (compared to the older mozilla suite).

squiggleblaz 5y ago
That's how I remember it too, but I think the expectations of simplicity has changed over the years - in those days, it was closer to great defaults and no gratuitous features, whereas now it's a bit more like less flexibility (although really, Firefox has masses of options that aren't included in the UI but are accessible from about:config, so I don't really think Firefox falls victim to this criticism). Part of the old tradeoff was that extension writers could do almost anything to make the web browser do almost anything. Nowadays, extensions are much less flexible. I think for good reason: being able to click a few buttons and get pwned isn't really a desirable feature. But the tradeoff has moved. I don't think that's really an argument against Firefox, but consider that powerusers are often very conservative, I'm not surprised that it caused some disagreement.

the_duke 5y ago

> greater configurability leads to greater code complexity and therefore greater maintenance costs Firefox is extremely configurable. Settings being removed from the UI doesn't mean they are gone. `about:config` has a crazy amount of toggles that allow customizing pretty much everything, including turning off all the Mozilla services (telemetriy, account sync, Pocket, VPN adds, ...). Compare that with the measly set of settings and undiscoverable CLI flags available in Chrome... I personally feel removing settings from the standard UI is perfectly fine when almost no-one is using them, and power users can work just fine with settings.js or `about:config`.

shultays 5y ago
about:config is removed from (not beta) android version of firefox. Who knows if they will decide to remove it on desktop as well because "only x% of our users were using about:config!" Also if a setting is hidden behind about:config, it probably means dev will care less and less about it and eventually remove if it is becoming a hindrance
- aaron_m04 5y ago
  It is present in Fennec F-droid, which I am using now, FWIW. It is based on Firefox.
- unsignedint 5y ago
  This precisely the reason I've dropped Firefox. (Previously I was using Firefox almost exclusively across all the platforms.) I was using it to enable TRR on Android.

hutzlibu 5y ago

"we're talking about sharing technical data with a non-profit organisation to help them maintain and improve the browser you rely " No we are talking about a non-profit and a for-profit at the same time, where the distinction is often not clear. But it is clear, that they included ads and "studies" by default in their browser, that did send data to whoever, without any user consent. So no, I do not really trust them anymore. Still more than google maybe, but not enough to voluntarily send them my data. And this is a shame, because I would have liked to keep trusting them.

bluedays 5y ago

Has Mozilla explained whether or not they are not handing your data over to Google?

jefftk 5y ago
Which data are you talking about? The only thing I know of that's similar to that is how Mozilla has Google Analytics on some pages as part of the Firefox interface, but there they have a contract restricting how the data is used: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14 (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
Yoric 5y ago
Mozilla does not handle data over to Google.

DeathArrow 5y ago

>It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. >So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. You can have sensible defaults for people who value simplicity and want it to just work and have customisation accessible from the settings page for the people who want customization.

ldng 5y ago

> It's a depressing situation, particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. Firefox or the (quite lost) Mozilla Corp ? They're not the same.

GuB-42 5y ago

> Finally, and this is a bit of a tangent, but I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry. That's the consequence of marketing themselves as "privacy first". Many people use Firefox because they don't want to be tracked, and therefore, any tiny bit of tracking/telemetry will be frowned upon. Google makes no such claim with Chrome, in fact, it makes it pretty clear that it tracks you.

nathias 5y ago

it would be great if we can move past the browser and debundle the tech, for example we should have a few different JS engines, a few different CS engines and a multitude of different GUIs ...

moron4hire 5y ago

Mozilla Corporation, which represents the majority of activity on Firefox, is not a non-profit. That's only Mozilla Foundation, and it's never really been clear to me what their role is, regarding Firefox.

squiggleblaz 5y ago
Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. There are various advantages to this kind of structure, but I don't know what they are. The upshot though is that the incentives of the owners of the Mozilla Corporation are not to squeeze every drop of profit, but rather to benefit the goals of the Mozilla Foundation (to raise money to support open source development), because the profits of the Mozilla Corporation are paid to their only shareholder: namely, the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. (No idea if they have any profits, but that's a different matter.)

GekkePrutser 5y ago

> So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. Well, no surprise there. Technical people like us experiment. Mainstream users just use what they know, and what their techie friends recommend them. They're not suddenly going to use Firefox now that it's more like chrome. They'll just use the real chrome. And they don't like touching something that works. Note that this approach didn't work for Microsoft either (and they went a lot more 'like chrome' than Mozilla!). They're having some success with Edge but it's mainly because they push it really hard to enterprise users with their O365 integration, so people are getting to know it at work and bringing it home. > [...] If open-source projects can't access the same data as proprietary ones do, we can't expect them to be able to react to user demands in the same way, and so we can't expect them to be able to compete in today's market. I don't want them to become like the proprietary browsers in this regard. Telemetry is not an all-seeing oracle, it's often used to confirm their own bias because it doesn't say why the users like something or what they'd prefer. What they should be doing is listening to users instead of blindly trusting telemetry. Google and Microsoft make the same mistake but they already have a monopoly on the browser and OS markets respectively so their mistakes are easily absorbed. It's not like their products have become a lot better since they started relying on telemetry so much. But no, I won't allow telemetry and I block it for Microsoft and Google too in my DNS. The reason I use Firefox is because I don't want to "get with the program". If I have to change my ideology, I would be changed so much that the primary reason to use Firefox is no longer relevant.

soundnote 5y ago
> Note that this approach didn't work for Microsoft either (and they went a lot more 'like chrome' than Mozilla!). They're having some success with Edge but it's mainly because they push it really hard to enterprise users with their O365 integration, so people are getting to know it at work and bringing it home. Edge is also - aside from being a privacy disaster - a legitimately good product that does a lot of good UI innovation on top of stock Chrome. Things like normie-friendly but powerful vertical tab implementations, turning menus into floating panels that can be turned into sidebars with a click, Collections etc. They're actually adding lots of customer-facing features that are really well designed.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

> particularly knowing that Firefox is pretty much kept alive at Google's whim. This is simply not so. Google pays to be the default search engine on Firefox because it is beneficial for them. Had they not, this place would be bought out by Bing or whoever else, and in the end Google will lose more.

latexr 5y ago

> It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. Perhaps they could care for the automation niche. There are thriving communities on macOS who are deeply into automation, and virtually no one uses Firefox. The ones who do stop because Firefox’s AppleScript support is non-existent, while Chromium’s (and thus every browser based on it) is top notch, even better than Safari’s. I’m not talking developers, either. Non-coders frequently cobble up short AppleScript snippets do to what they want. When they visit the forums asking for help and how to do what they want in Firefox, they are directed to the open bug report which is old enough to drink. I have seen plenty of users abandon Firefox on account of that gap. I tried to convey that to Firefox developers multiple times—both in person and online—and their response was to not care.

asoneth 5y ago
If they're going to be paying developers to do it they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts. I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share. Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? If they're relying on volunteers then they'd need a few folks with the right set of skills and a motivation to scratch that itch. I would personally love to see better AppleScript support in Firefox, but I won't judge anyone else for not stepping up if I don't have the inclination to either.
- latexr 5y ago
  > I wonder if the size of the macOS automation community is large enough to make much of an impact on their market share. The automation communities (plural) create tools for themselves and for others. That’s the important bit. It’s common for non-coders to resort to those communities (which can be as simple as a subreddit) to achieve a simple recurring task. If they use Firefox, they get turned away from it because it’s the only major browser lacking AppleScript support. Not only do those developers abandon Firefox, so do all their users. > Would you estimate they'd gain hundreds of users? Thousands? Tens-of-thousands? I estimate they wouldn’t lose as many as they do. What good is it to gain market share if you can’t stop the bleed? If Firefox can’t even be interesting to large sections of developers and power users, what chance to they have with the general populace? I lost count to how many people asked for my tools to be ported to Firefox, and I’m a single data point with a single need. Before I stopped caring, I checked every (front page) Firefox story on HN and without exception I collected a new macOS grievance by someone different. Tellingly, I noticed that no matter how polite or constructive the criticism, it was invariably met by defensiveness of the “I don’t care for that feature, so it’s not the problem” kind. That’s in line with what I felt in my interactions with the Firefox developers I spoke to, despite ostensibly most of them using macOS. It’s fine for Firefox developers to ignore whatever communities they want; that’s their prerogative. But they then need to accept when those same people assert they can’t use Firefox as their daily driver. > they'd need an expectation of a stronger ROI than their other efforts Their latest efforts are constantly criticised on HN precisely because they are gimmicks not related to the browser. I’m not a marketing expert, but I expect making a browser people want to use is better ROI than Mr Robot marketing stunts or short-lived file sharing services with no innovative features.

floatboth 5y ago

> did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? I have all telemetry and Nightly studies enabled wherever I can (unfortunately the option is unavailable in custom builds, and I use custom builds on my main OS, since I contribute code to Firefox occasionally). > removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI I never understood the whole "dumbing down" thing either. It's fundamentally the same UI as it was in Firefox 2.0 back in the day, except the menus are more well-structured (there's now a convenient hamburger rather than everything being in a crowded "application menu" bar at the top). > I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser I think it's still all these things. But to make growth possible, they need to somehow fight against Google persistently advertising Chrome right on the fucking google dot com main page (and YouTube and so on).

freediver 5y ago

>but I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry Telemetry includes personal information such as IP address and some people are (rightfully) concerned about it. Also we do not know for sure what is done with this data, as Firefox server side code (the one that processes the telemetry) is not open source (and even if it was it would not be a guarantee). > Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? There would be no problem if Firefox shipped as a zero-telemetry browser, and all telemetry was opt-in. This would remove all doubt and if you want to send Firefox data you can choose to do so. However that is not the case. Significant amount of telemetry is enabled by default. Choosing to go for opt-out vs opt-in is what is hurting Mozilla's credibility here. What then happens (and I am speculating here) is that this behavior triggers most power users in a negative way (for various reasons, one of them being simply using your bandwidth and resources for telemetry and noone likes having a slower browser) so they do their best to disable it. This in turn leaves Mozilla with data that does not include most of its power user base, the one that actually has most impact on Firefox market share (because as 'techies' they install the browser for their family and friends). The crippled data leads to crippled product decisions, which in turn makes power users even angrier and thus we witness the death spiral of user attrition that Firefox is currently in.

spixy 5y ago
> Telemetry includes personal information such as IP address and some people are (rightfully) concerned about it. Source? I don't see any IP address in about:telemetry window.
- freediver 5y ago
  Client IP address is included with every http request, regardless of what data is being sent. Mozilla is receiving it, wanting it or not. This is why any telemetry, even if the browser is sending benign data, is a potential privacy risk for the user.

Hidios 5y ago

Would it not be in the interest of Google as well to fund Firefox? I would imagine they wouldn't mind spending a small amount to keep it alive to prevent accusations of Anti-competitive practises? ;)

philipwhiuk 5y ago
That's exactly what they do.

chmod775 5y ago

> [..] but I'm not sure what they could do to make Firefox a thriving, independent, sustainable browser. They could focus on building that browser, instead of getting sidetracked and wasting money on other things. Also reduce the friction of contributing to their projects from the outside, streamline the process, bring it into the 21st century while keeping top-down politics and egos out of it. I wouldn't be surprised if their rivals see more outside contributions (in total) simply because they are somewhat easier to work with. However, overall the vast majority of contributions to Mozilla's projects is likely still coming from the outside. Mozilla is afraid it will fail with Firefox if they don't diversify. But if Firefox fails, the world doesn't need Mozilla. If that happens they should just pack up and hand the custody of surviving technologies (Rust etc.) to someone else.

xanaxagoras 5y ago

> Mozilla are removing a feature you use daily? Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? I would much rather lose a feature I use daily than send telemetry data.

soundnote 5y ago

> So Mozilla tries to move in Chrome's direction, removing configuration options and "dumbing down" the UI, which frustrates its existing user base (including me) while apparently also failing to eat into Chrome's market share. The funny thing about this is that it's a narrative, but is it correct? Configuration options may be low, but Chrome has added things like tab groups and a reading list / bookmarks sidebar. They're in no way aiming to be as customizable as Vivaldi/presto!Opera/xulExtensions!Firefox, but even stock Chrome is actually adding useful features, while most news I've seen from Firefox have been them removing unique features I've used and loved, like being able to sync keyword searches via bookmarks. The only significant feature I've seen them add - and it's a doozy, I admit - is Containers. But that's cold comfort when other features get removed at a steady rate. > It seems that the market niche of tech-capable people who value privacy and customisation over a simplified UX is not capable of sustaining Firefox on its own. This may be true, but it can really come down to quality of product: Firefox is losing ground, but Brave for example is growing, and doing it by a privacy sales pitch (with some dumbfucks who think they're going to get rich off BAT added in - it's a cut from Brave's ad revenue, ffs, and individual ad viewers aren't worth shit except en masse when the money pools up at creators' and ad agencies' wallets). > Okay, did you enable the telemetry that lets them know you use it? Receiving and analysing user data is increasingly important to delivering a good user experience. If open-source projects can't access the same data as proprietary ones do, we can't expect them to be able to react to user demands in the same way, and so we can't expect them to be able to compete in today's market. This is true, but making decisions purely off telemetry stats and setting up self-fulfilling prophecies of making features harder to find and then saying nobody uses them isn't exactly the way either. Telemetry is a good jumping off point, I think, but as a sole director it's shit precisely because privacy-conscious users are going to turn that shit off if they can out of habit. > I've never quite understood why Mozilla got such a hard time from users about telemetry. I think a lot of the Mozilla userbase is from an earlier age, before everything became cloud-based subscription services. They long for the days of locally installable software, buying new versions vs. subscribing to an app, etc. Some are the kind of obstinate FOSS purists who'd use gNewSense even if it meant they had to use their computer as a command line only device. Think about Pocket, for example. I was one of the abovementioned people and hated its inclusion, and people still grumble about it in part due to the source code, in part just due to the old bad blood. They'd essentially need a relaunch with a new take and attitude - look at Brave, whose pitch is pretty similar, and how people are a-ok with monetized services within the browser so long as they're opt-in. The product's newer, and so the attitude people come to it is newer. And it's growing. Finally, there's an issue of focus: The organization increasingly feels like general activists first, custodians of a product second, which is not a vibe much of the competition gives off. Actors like Brave and Vivaldi have firm, in some sense political stances, but they're of a narrower sort of user control and privacy. I know people at both orgs who do/have shown their politics, but it doesn't show at the org/product level. The user? Does. I never, ever want to hear shit like "we need more than deplatforming" from an ostensibly privacy and user centered organization.