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>since mozilla fired the servo team there is no certain future for it anymore. When did that happen? It seems the managerial class has completed their takeover

>since mozilla fired the servo team there is no certain future for it anymore. When did that happen? It seems the managerial class has completed their takeover of Mozilla in the last few years. A real shame, since it basically cedes the entire web to Google.

potiuper 5y ago
2020,8,11 https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees...
Melatonic 5y ago
I really hope that does not end up being the case because Firefox is better than ever in my opinion
YPPH 5y ago
>it basically cedes the entire web to Google Refocusing on making Mozilla a viable entity without the need for cash splashes from Google is doing precisely the opposite. By diluting Google's financial control it ensures decision-making is both actually and ostensibly impartial. Gecko is still a perfectly functioning browser engine. It's far easier to keep Gecko up to date with modern web standards than reinventing the wheel. As nice as it would be to have a free and open source browser engine written in a memory safe language, I can't see there being a lot of money in it for Mozilla.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  In 2013 Mozilla spent $197M on software development and $30M on general/administrative. In 2020 it was $242M and $137M. The future-focused servo team was not the place to cut a couple million.
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    > In 2013 Mozilla spent $197M on software development and $30M on general/administrative. > In 2020 it was $242M and $137M. > The future-focused servo team was not the place to cut a couple million. Wasn't it just after 2013 when the replacement politically-correct CEO got quadruple the pay of the not-politically-correct engineer CEO?
    - smcl 5y ago
      That's a bit of an oversimplification, it's not like they had a choice between adequately funding R&D projects or Doing Political Correctness and chose the latter. Besides, remember that Eich was appointed in 2014 and had only a short stint at CEO, so I don't think you can attribute the 2013 figures to him I think all of us on HN are a bit saddened about Mozilla cutting back on the Rust and Servo teams, but political-correctness isn't the reason behind that. Let's not turn this into one of those discussions.
      - leeroyjenkins11 5y ago
        They did give like a 10k grant for people to remove master/slave terminology from docs, so who knows what other PC work they were funding.
        ramesh31 5y ago
        >They did give like a 10k grant for people to remove master/slave terminology from docs, so who knows what other PC work they were funding. As a black person in tech, I can't tell you how much that whole debacle drives me insane. I never once in my life ever made the association between "master branch" and "slave master". But now every single time I pull a repo with a "main" branch instead of "master", I have to think about it and play along to assuage someone's white guilt. I absolutely refuse to ever make the switch.
        acdha 5y ago
        I think changing the default in Git was fine — it's such a small amount of work and doesn't affect existing projects — but what I really wish was that more people had taken this as the cue to ask what “master” even meant for their project. I've tried to switch my projects to names which actually describe what we use them for — e.g. tracking branches like development, staging, production representing what is currently being deployed to those environments — and that's been far more worthwhile because it brings clarity to discussions and simplifies things like CI/CD scripting.
  - lifthrasiir 5y ago
    I wouldn't be this cynical if everyone said the same thing to the Firefox OS back then. It turned out that Firefox OS did have much potential to countries with less mobile penetration, as observed from KaiOS's success in India. Was the Firefox OS less future-focused than Servo? I don't think so, and given that Servo actually did survive long enough to give back to the mainline Gecko (in the form of WebRender and so on). It might or might not make actual sense to conclude that as the ROI shrinks, but it is always easier to claim the decision was wrong after that decision.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Well, many claimed that back when decisions were being taken. They could have scrapped FFOS much sooner than they did. > Firefox OS did have much potential to countries with less mobile penetration, as observed from KaiOS's success in India. Such "success" is inevitably fleeting. Eventually a "developing" market develops to demand more established and desirable products. Nokia had those markets under lock and key for a long time, back when EU/US had already moved on to iPhone-like products; but then consumers inevitably gravitated towards the fashionable.
      - thematrixturtle 5y ago
        Not if the platform can leverage its position to move upmarket, as Japanese, Korean and now Chinese manufacturers have.
      - acdha 5y ago
        > Nokia had those markets under lock and key for a long time, back when EU/US had already moved on to iPhone-like products; but then consumers inevitably gravitated towards the fashionable. “fashionable” is the wrong word: it should be “functional”. Those old Nokia phones were very good at being phones but that's it — maybe a minimal messaging app, but anyone who used one knows just how limited those old mobile OSes were. I think FirefoxOS was an interesting idea but there are really important thresholds you need to be able to hit and that was the critical error they made. There was no plausible way to grow the low-end feature phone market into a large enough business to get there when competing with cheap knock-off Android devices. If they'd started years earlier or gotten a major vendor on-board, maybe, but at their funding levels there was no way to make the numbers work and it was pretty clear at the time that this was a low-probability gamble.
  - elb2020 5y ago
    It seems to me, that once a company reaches a tipping point of more than 50% non-engineers in upper management, it's the demise of the company as an engineering company, and it will slowly drift in the direction of being a technology holding company only.
  - iamdanieljohns 5y ago
    where can I find this statistics?
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/public-records/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/public-records/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2020/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2020/ All the "audited financial statements". It should be the second full-page chart.
zucker42 5y ago
It happened when Mozilla laid off 25% of their staff. Servo was probably part of that because it was more of a research project than part of the core business.
- jppope 5y ago
  Isn't their core business just helping google avoid anti-trust issues by being the "other" browser?
  - NetOpWibby 5y ago
    OOF
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    Well. Can't step on Google's embedability then.

potiuper 5y ago

2020,8,11 https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees-while-it-refocuses-on-commercial-products/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-lays-off-250-employees...

Melatonic 5y ago

I really hope that does not end up being the case because Firefox is better than ever in my opinion

YPPH 5y ago

>it basically cedes the entire web to Google Refocusing on making Mozilla a viable entity without the need for cash splashes from Google is doing precisely the opposite. By diluting Google's financial control it ensures decision-making is both actually and ostensibly impartial. Gecko is still a perfectly functioning browser engine. It's far easier to keep Gecko up to date with modern web standards than reinventing the wheel. As nice as it would be to have a free and open source browser engine written in a memory safe language, I can't see there being a lot of money in it for Mozilla.

Dylan16807 5y ago
In 2013 Mozilla spent $197M on software development and $30M on general/administrative. In 2020 it was $242M and $137M. The future-focused servo team was not the place to cut a couple million.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  > In 2013 Mozilla spent $197M on software development and $30M on general/administrative. > In 2020 it was $242M and $137M. > The future-focused servo team was not the place to cut a couple million. Wasn't it just after 2013 when the replacement politically-correct CEO got quadruple the pay of the not-politically-correct engineer CEO?
  - smcl 5y ago
    That's a bit of an oversimplification, it's not like they had a choice between adequately funding R&D projects or Doing Political Correctness and chose the latter. Besides, remember that Eich was appointed in 2014 and had only a short stint at CEO, so I don't think you can attribute the 2013 figures to him I think all of us on HN are a bit saddened about Mozilla cutting back on the Rust and Servo teams, but political-correctness isn't the reason behind that. Let's not turn this into one of those discussions.
    - leeroyjenkins11 5y ago
      They did give like a 10k grant for people to remove master/slave terminology from docs, so who knows what other PC work they were funding.
      - ramesh31 5y ago
        >They did give like a 10k grant for people to remove master/slave terminology from docs, so who knows what other PC work they were funding. As a black person in tech, I can't tell you how much that whole debacle drives me insane. I never once in my life ever made the association between "master branch" and "slave master". But now every single time I pull a repo with a "main" branch instead of "master", I have to think about it and play along to assuage someone's white guilt. I absolutely refuse to ever make the switch.
        acdha 5y ago
        I think changing the default in Git was fine — it's such a small amount of work and doesn't affect existing projects — but what I really wish was that more people had taken this as the cue to ask what “master” even meant for their project. I've tried to switch my projects to names which actually describe what we use them for — e.g. tracking branches like development, staging, production representing what is currently being deployed to those environments — and that's been far more worthwhile because it brings clarity to discussions and simplifies things like CI/CD scripting.
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  I wouldn't be this cynical if everyone said the same thing to the Firefox OS back then. It turned out that Firefox OS did have much potential to countries with less mobile penetration, as observed from KaiOS's success in India. Was the Firefox OS less future-focused than Servo? I don't think so, and given that Servo actually did survive long enough to give back to the mainline Gecko (in the form of WebRender and so on). It might or might not make actual sense to conclude that as the ROI shrinks, but it is always easier to claim the decision was wrong after that decision.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Well, many claimed that back when decisions were being taken. They could have scrapped FFOS much sooner than they did. > Firefox OS did have much potential to countries with less mobile penetration, as observed from KaiOS's success in India. Such "success" is inevitably fleeting. Eventually a "developing" market develops to demand more established and desirable products. Nokia had those markets under lock and key for a long time, back when EU/US had already moved on to iPhone-like products; but then consumers inevitably gravitated towards the fashionable.
    - thematrixturtle 5y ago
      Not if the platform can leverage its position to move upmarket, as Japanese, Korean and now Chinese manufacturers have.
    - acdha 5y ago
      > Nokia had those markets under lock and key for a long time, back when EU/US had already moved on to iPhone-like products; but then consumers inevitably gravitated towards the fashionable. “fashionable” is the wrong word: it should be “functional”. Those old Nokia phones were very good at being phones but that's it — maybe a minimal messaging app, but anyone who used one knows just how limited those old mobile OSes were. I think FirefoxOS was an interesting idea but there are really important thresholds you need to be able to hit and that was the critical error they made. There was no plausible way to grow the low-end feature phone market into a large enough business to get there when competing with cheap knock-off Android devices. If they'd started years earlier or gotten a major vendor on-board, maybe, but at their funding levels there was no way to make the numbers work and it was pretty clear at the time that this was a low-probability gamble.
- elb2020 5y ago
  It seems to me, that once a company reaches a tipping point of more than 50% non-engineers in upper management, it's the demise of the company as an engineering company, and it will slowly drift in the direction of being a technology holding company only.
- iamdanieljohns 5y ago
  where can I find this statistics?
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/public-records/ https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/who-we-are/public-records/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2020/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2020/ All the "audited financial statements". It should be the second full-page chart.

zucker42 5y ago

It happened when Mozilla laid off 25% of their staff. Servo was probably part of that because it was more of a research project than part of the core business.

jppope 5y ago
Isn't their core business just helping google avoid anti-trust issues by being the "other" browser?
- NetOpWibby 5y ago
  OOF
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Well. Can't step on Google's embedability then.