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They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or su

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period. - Make whatever partnerships are needed to have a steady stream of income, be that donation or selling out to Google or Bing. Firefox is in trouble. Firefox is also Mozilla's raison d'être, and they should embrace that. We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight.

maverick74 5y ago
- phrz 5y ago
  In corporate leadership, homophobia is not a "personal view," it is a matter of governance and directly impacts talent acquisition. Further, Brave browser is a Chromium browser that does little to stop the browser engine monopoly at risk here—it does nothing meaningful for browser diversity. Not one comprehensible point is made here besides, I suppose, treating Eich's firing as a political issue.
  - maverick74 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
onion2k 5y ago
This set of policies would spell the end of Mozilla, and the end of Firefox unless the community (or another org) picked it up. Mozilla is mostly funded by search engine companies, the largest being Google, and any direct attempt to compete with Chrome would probably end a significant chunk of that funding. Like it or not, unless Mozilla does what Google sees as acceptable, Firefox can't continue. The only way to turn Firefox around and continue development would be to find an alternative benefactor.
- wyclif 5y ago
  Mozilla is mostly funded by search engine companies, the largest being Google Not only that, but this creates perverse incentives for Mozilla. Google funds Mozilla to avoid charges of monopoly, and that disincentives Mozilla to compete with Google and make Firefox a competitive browser to Chromium.
- account42 5y ago
  Mozilla is currently funded by Google but why are you assuming that a non-profit oriented Mozilla could not find other funding sources? All their past attemts seem to be about monetizing the browser but just like Google has been throwing cash at them there will be others whose motives are more alligned with Mozilla doing the same. As far as I am aware there is no way to donate to the development of Firefox and even if there was I and many others would not do so while Mozilla while the Google funding steers Mozilla's interests. Would Mozilla be able to get as much without Google as they get from Google? Probably not, but if they do follow the suggestions of the OP then hopefully they would not need as much.
wolpoli 5y ago
I would instead argue that Firefox's Gecko engine is beyond saving and that any money invested in it now would be better donated to other community projects because there isn't enough resource to catch up. Sticking with Gecko will eventually lead to the dismise of Firefox the organization. Microsoft, with their resource and their ability to bundle Microsoft Edge in with Windows, couldn't get any appreciable amount of marketshare. Firefox, with less resource than Microsoft, won't fare any better. Rebuilding Firefox with Chronium would salvage whatever the mindshare/marketshare left. Then Firefox could still wield some influence with their marketshare and the threat of forking Chronium.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  I'm 100% onboard with Chromium being the universal de facto standard for the web as long as it's open. Really, all I want from a browser is Chromium, full features without disabled APIs, with a few extras like Sync, P2P stuff, and codecs, fully open. Right now, I think anyone with name recognition and marketing ability could probably develop a winning browser for 50k or so. Just... take chromium, add sync, and an ad blocker for high bandwidth video ads. Done. You have made the world's best browser, the rest is business stuff.
- voidlogic 5y ago
  Why do you think the engine is beyond saving? I use Firefox everyday and have absolutely zero complaints...
  - wolpoli 5y ago
    Mozilla itself didn't think the Gecko engine itself has a long term future either. After all, Mozilla funded the development of the new Servo engine for eight whole years, and it slowly replaced pieces of Gecko with Servo. After Mozilla laid off all Servo developers in 2020, the future doesn't look bright for Gecko or Firefox.
aeturnum 5y ago
I agree with your topline goal, but I am surprised by the way you think about it. Most of what you recommend has no obvious connection to firefox-the-program. Like... > - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian > - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. > - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). > - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period. All of these are good suggestions if the problem is that Firefox is running out of money or has too few resources. But that's not my impression at all! Google's strategy with Chrome demonstrates how valuable it is to develop other compelling services that use cutting-edge standards supported by your browser. Google does it in a way where they freeze out other compatible browsers, but Mozilla does not have to. I would say that the number one thing that Mozilla can do to support the web is to make web standards meaningful again - and the best way to do that is to develop things aside from web browsers to demonstrate the value of those standards. > We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. I don't think Mozilla having non-Firefox projects harms Firefox. I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center, with many other ongoing projects.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  My impression is that Mozilla is too focused on basically everything that isn't Firefox - to me, it's axiomatic that Firefox wouldn't be in such a horrifying shape if they were focused on it. They are lacking for attention, and not money, which is why they should jettison everything that isn't Firefox or doesn't serve Firefox. Anyone else can do funny extensions or VPN or what have you got, but browser-making is Mozilla's core competency that no one in the FOSS ecosystem has mastered to the extent they did. It seems evident to me that if they made Firefox into a power user browser again, somehow, then power users would flock to it again and bring in some of their peers and family, putting it back in a safe 10-15% range of market share where it can't be picked off or ignored by Google. And I know that power users are leaving en masse - I stuck with them through thick and thin for nearly 15 years, and I'm finally getting ready to leave if the situation doesn't improve. > I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center Neither Mozilla not Firefox are healthy, in my assessment. And this is exactly because they are getting sidetracked instead of centering on Firefox.
topspin 5y ago
"- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money" That has to be the first on the list, because that is the prerequisite for everything else. Unfortunately there is no mechanism to achieve this within Mozilla. The people that need to go won't; they've got their trophy titles and they've feathered their nest as they want it. Thus Mozilla and Firefox with it are doomed. Solving that would take a fork, just like it did with Netscape. It would also require an endowment of capital to fund a core of developers for years just to catch up with blink/webkit/etc. At this point the best plan might be to adopt the latter. Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge. So at this point what is the value proposition of saving Firefox? That's a rhetorical question; I get it. I just don't know if it's enough to attract the developers and funding to do it. It's conceivable; one could imagine a leader with the passion to inspire people and attract the funding and developers. Maybe that person exists. If so they won't be doing it under Mozilla.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge. And in the end, it's all WebKit derivatives under the hood. That is the danger. There used to be three major distinct engines (Firefox, IE/Trident, WebKit) plus a boatload of specialized ones (Opera)... and that competition bred improvements and features. These days it's all about walled gardens, which is what the "market" (aka a bunch of ultra rich companies) wants, and Firefox is the last truly independent fighter standing. Sadly, Firefox has been mismanaged for almost a decade now.
  - dTal 5y ago
    We are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Just as "the open web" is becoming fully viable as an application platform, it is morphing into "Google's VM".
  - topspin 5y ago
    "That is the danger." As I said, I get it. Getting it doesn't fund stuff, however.
generalizations 5y ago
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.
- throwaway4200 5y ago
  What makes you think Brendan Eich would have been a good CEO? He was CTO of Mozilla during the period that Chrome was eating Firefox's lunch. He was probably more responsible for Firefox product decisions at that time than CEO Mitchell Baker.
  - sfink 5y ago
    Point of clarification: Mitchell Baker was not CEO at that time (and never had been). She was chair of the board. The previous full CEO was Gary Kovacs, succeeded by acting CEO Jay Sullivan, then Eich for 9 days.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      Mitchell was CEO before John Lilly.
      - sfink 5y ago
        Doh! I stand corrected.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    "throwaway" is fitting, given the quality of this comment. I was CTO from 2005 (when we incorporated Mozilla Corporation for taxpaying reasons; before that I had a Chief Architect title; I was also on the Mozilla Foundation board) through 2014. Firefox market share grew until 2011. Whatever the causes of Firefox peaking then, if you blame me for the fall during my last three years there, you can credit me for the rise from 2004-2011. Use a consistent yardstick.
perryizgr8 5y ago
I'll add one more to this: Use all/most of the money from the Google deal to build a fund. Even doing this for a couple years will build a huge backup plan for Firefox and they can look at not relying on the deal for survival. Instead work off the interest earned on the fund.
forgotmysn 5y ago
Assuming the board are unable or unwilling to salvage FF for the sake of Mozilla, would it be worth considering starting a new non-profit browser based on FF? A new organization without all that baggage? WaterWolf or something?
crossroadsguy 5y ago
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share) And people wonder why non-profits and NGOs don’t attract the best talent. This entitled mindset is the why. That people who want to do good work should earn less. Perfect! Let them pay for their vacation with goodwill and air. This is especially rich coming from the HN crowd. Everybody wants a revolutionary but in the neighbour’s house.
- account42 5y ago
  There is a vast ocean between strugling to pay for your vacation and making millions every year. And there is no "the HN crowd" - don't fall into the trap of assinging to collective consciousness for groups and then complaining that it does not behave rationally.
pers0n 5y ago
FF user since it was called the Phoenix Project. Donating money isn't going to help them. It might help them look good to some techies that follow that information, but otherwise most wont care. Mozilla needs to focus on other products to use in tandem w FF. Email service that is private, VPN (i think they have a partnership), Thunderbird, zoom like platform. They need office/business solutions most likely. Devtools, dev services, etc. I'm not saying forget FF, but they can't just focus on 1 product or they are doomed.
- endemic 5y ago
  I know their phone project fizzled, but I wonder if there's a market for a Chromebook competitor. Position it as a privacy-respecting product for schools. Introduce kids to the idea that Chrome != The Internet.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    https://www.kaiostech.com/ https://www.kaiostech.com/ is the lineal descendant of FirefoxOS. It got to scale on the same plan: attack the low end of the Android market where the fatter, more recent versions do not fit.
jefftk 5y ago
> until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives Do you mean WebKit derivatives? Or are you predicting that Apple would switch to Chromium? (No way)
- wmil 5y ago
  Imagine going back to 1997 and trying to convince tech people that one day KHTML on ARM would be the most popular web browsing platform.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    It would have been easier to convince someone in ‘99 that Trident on Itanium would be dominant.
jms703 5y ago
This. However, I think they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. They have wasted so much money on the wrong things, IMO.
- Shared404 5y ago
  >they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. Unfortunately, that reason (browser engine diversity)is compelling to people who understand the situation, but not general consumers - and it's impossible to make general consumers care, unless maybe Firefox went for an edgy "rebel against the man" vibe.
  - carapace 5y ago
    I feel like I understand the situation but I'm doubtful that browser engine diversity is compelling. It seems like duplicate effort. As long as Chromium accepts pull requests, what's the problem with browser monoculture? (In case it's not clear, I'm asking in earnest. I'm not trolling.) - - - - edit: Okay, pull requests alone are not enough, but the objections y'all are raising seem like they could all be answered by forking, no? If Google upsets their users then a different browser has a chance to gain users: - Ad-blocking - Better extension API - Maintaining backwards compatibility - No Manifest V3 - Better vision of the web than Google In other words, effort expended on duplicate functionality for it's own sake is wasted. Why not let Google do the heavy lifting and then improve on their work, rather than trying to compete head-to-head on the whole enchilada (of a complete browser engine)?
    - kmeisthax 5y ago
      The problem with browser monoculture is that it will erode the authority of the spec over time. Having multiple independent implementations of the same spec means that developers won't be able to merely code to one browser and treat it's quirks as gospel. A good example of what happens if you only have one implementation is Flash Player. People programmed to the implementation and not the (non-existant) spec. So any reimplementation of Flash Player is largely an exercise in chasing after implementation bugs in the Player that badly-developed movies rely upon. Even Adobe's official internal documentation on SWF and AVM2 is woefully incomplete, because the actual "spec" is the proprietary source code of the player and whatever tribal knowledge had been accrued from decades of maintaining it. The sole implementation in this case (Chromium) being Free Software does alleviate this a little, but the spec is still more of a suggestion than a reality.
phkahler 5y ago
>> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight. There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succeed. Firefox is very usable and increasing its market share starts with you. Or to use another cliche - be the change you wish to see. That's not to say Mozilla doesn't need to get their shit together, but if market share drops too low they will not be able to get money to do the things they need to do.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  I want Firefox to succeed. But that doesn't mean I will use an inferior browser, especially when I feel the decision makers at Mozilla are out of sync.
- garciasn 5y ago
  They offer nothing I cannot get elsewhere and thus I have no reason to switch. When it first came out, Firefox was faster, lighter and offered way better function than the alternatives at the time. Since then, competition has been fierce in the browser market and they’ve done little to distinguish themselves in any major way from their competitive set. Until they do something so vastly incomparable in the market, they gonna continue to falter.
  - bentcorner 5y ago
    Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.
    - yeeeloit 5y ago
      What are you talking about exactly? Is this an extension for FF?
paxys 5y ago
You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health. Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct competition feasible. Giving Mozilla a few hundred million dollars extra isn't going to make a difference.
- zerocrates 5y ago
  I know you're saying this not the question being asked, but what's your source for their revenue growing anywhere near that rate, or indeed at all? As far as I can see their revenue peaked around FY 2017 at $562 million. In 2018 that number was about $450 million and short of expenses, they were short of expenses again for 2019 but for a $338 million settlement from Yahoo/Verizon. The most recent reported year, 2020, saw a slight drop in their search income but a sharper cut to expenses (mostly by cutting about $60 million in "software development" expenses), putting them back on track, in a way. They've had a steady increase in subscription income, but it's still dwarfed by the current search deal (in 2020, just shy of $25 million in subscriptions vs. over $440 million from search).
- soundnote 5y ago
  I don't think that's true: Brave is actively building independent revenue-generating services so they have a footprint on the web instead of just being a company that makes a window to the web. And they are growing. The big thing there is just positioning, and being aggressive in the right places. That's the fundamental problem with Mozilla: MS, Google and Apple can leverage web footprint and physical platforms to market their products and generate revenue for browser development. Plus Apple's happy to take money from Google. Brave's building some kind of revenue-generating platform that stands on its own. I don't know if Mozilla has a vision in that kind of way. Hell, Firefox OS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS This rant is pertinent: http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.html#adam%27s-rant http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...
- 5y ago
missedthecue 5y ago
Cutting organizational expenses might be good for unrelated reasons, but I don't see how that increases the market share of Firefox, and I can think of a few ways it could decrease their market share.
- bonestamp2 5y ago
  I guess the idea would be to only cut organizational expenses that aren't serving the purpose of increasing firefox market share.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  If the goal is to plow all available resources into Firefox, then cutting down on expenses that don't directly or indirectly support the existence of Firefox seems key.
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  What he said was: get rid of the people who are not interested in making the Firefox browser better. Get rid of the distractions. Focus on the browser.
- godshatter 5y ago
  My goal, if I were CEO, would be to reduce organizational expenses (and increase other forms of revenue) to the point where the 100s of millions of dollars from Google ($562 million in 2017) was not required for covering the cost of firefox development and spend all those millions on advertising firefox until Google stopped giving it. I can't see where having such a large part of your finances coming from your biggest direct competitor could ever be a good thing, but at least spending it on increasing firefox's market share directly through advertising would have a certain irony associated with it. At least of the Alanis Morisette variety.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> [...] (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). This might be a perverse incentive depending on if your goal is to make Firefox a good browser or just a popular one.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  True, but at this point it doesn't feel to me that the community has that much to lose. If we're truly sub-5% like Statcounter says, then as long as we minimally muzzle this particular paperclip maximiser (say, the browser engine must remain Gecko or an in-house project and cannot be Blink, user privacy must be no worse than currently, selling data or "partnering with" third parties is disallowed) and let it run for a couple of years, at least we'll get a viable browser out of it.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    > If we're truly sub-5% like Statcounter says You know, that's the real question we should make before going on this entire exercise. Are the usage statistics any reliable? Firefox is the one browser that blocks the things those sites use to measure market share. Why would we expect their results to be real?
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      I think they are closer to the truth than not. Despite my constant advocacy for Firefox for over a decade, a family member whom I respect greatly told me directly and in no uncertain terms that they do not wish to use Firefox and wish to switch to Chrome instead because of numerous issues they have observed. And the worst part is that as much as I wanted it to, Firefox wasn't up to it. I cannot help but think that this is a microcosm of what's happening more broadly.
loudtieblahblah 5y ago
If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Google will set the standard, taking input from any other tech player big enough to have a seat at the table. Its bad enough ISO certification boards and official positions of the W3C can be bought or corrupted. Let there be only one engine, controlled by Google? And even the pretense of a open and fair playing field goes away. Open source and open protocols were not resistant enough to for profit corporations. Now our standards are dwindling, open source projects and standards boards re completely co-opted, and the conversation on mailing lists and forums sounds like the never ending squabbling and finger wagging from your Fortune 500 HR department. Foss and open standards have been captured by capital. And it shows in the culture. Hell, it shows in the conversations around places like this.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Exactly. This is why Mozilla, as the only credible custodian of the only credible Chromium/Blink/WebKit competitor, needs to wake up and die trying to stop that future, if needed. If they lose that war, there is no reason for them to exist over Brave or Vivaldi, for example.
- antupis 5y ago
  Yeah we would get "IE6" from google not like first 2-4 years but soonish.
  - nikau 5y ago
    Difference is Chrome source is available to fork if Google cross the line.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Well, we've already done that. Google a) dominates the standards bodies and b) releases "standard" features that are only standard because Chrome says so
ameminator 5y ago
I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that engine more useable and better than the base chromium engine. If they had been able to keep the Rust foundation on board, it would have also made sense. However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on the wrong products.
- Brakenshire 5y ago
  The obvious thing to do was continue to invest in Servo. If they could have produced a parallel layout engine, which could provide app like animations without fiddling on desktop and Android, and then make that easy to embed, they could have made real inroads into blink/webkit.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Yeah but Mozilla has been subverted, since the current CEO got on they are a lightning rod for Google against browser monopoly legal attention, while trying everything possible to neuter them from being a real threat. Thus she cut the thing most likely to provide a real threat to chrome.
  - ameminator 5y ago
    You're absolutely right. The fact that so many other browsers are based on chromium, is a blatant condemnation of how the Servo engine has not met an important demand. If Servo was properly useable outside of Firefox, we would have seen more open-source browsers use it.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Thunderbird was on my mind when I was writing this. I think it ultimately comes down to whether they can afford any missteps or side concerns at all - and if the answer is "no", then Thunderbird must be cut loose no matter its value. It can always be mothballed until the times get better, or it can even be given "on loan" for some fixed duration to another trusted FOSS foundation and re-adopted when the time is up. As good as Thunderbird is, I wouldn't want it to be anywhere near the top of Mozilla's priorities list right now.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
can we just eat the execs? on a more serious note, what if mozilla fires ALL execs? will it just crumble under its own weight or will that "industry linked remuneration" be replaced with more money for actual developers who get things done and are not in for the quick buck like address bar ads?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  I'm hoping for the latter. Or if not, the that if the Firefox collapsed, it would re-emerge in some fashion as a grassroots community project with non-Mozilla governance.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    You know… you don't have to wait for the company to collapse.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      Perhaps we have to. Look at what happened to youtube-dl - even before the DMCA takedown, nobody was doing anything about the leadership being AWOL despite the huge PR backlog. Then, when it was taken down, various forks popped up, including yt-dlp which became a natural potential successor. They injected lots of potential, because the main authority was absent and they seized initiative. Even after youtube-dl came back, they eventually went under a new management. The entire space of YouTube/video downloaders is better off for the DMCA incident, even if taken by itself it was a harmful event. Mozilla falling might just reenergise Firefox, though I'd obviously much rather they undergo a priority shift instead, so we can keep continuity.
      - pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
        That’s rather inaccurate; yt-dlp grew out of youtube-dlc, which was started by the author of this ticket: <https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26462 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26462>, filed in August 2020, some time before the DMCA in November 2020.
newbie789 5y ago
Jayakumark 5y ago
Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
- rekabis 5y ago
  [flagged]
- wyclif 5y ago
  A big part of the problem IMO is that Mitchell Baker is a lawyer, not a technologist or engineer. She does not understand how software companies are supposed to function.
- doetoe 5y ago
  I used to strongly support the mission of Mozilla. When I first read about the practices of upper management I felt like a fool for ever having donated in the past. That is not going to happen again and I don't even like Firefox so much anymore because of it.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    The donations go to the Foundation (woke activism), not the Corporation (Firefox etc. development) anyway.
- andriesm 5y ago
  Well they fired the previous competent CEO for political reasons. If politics and what you do in your private time is more important than competence, then this is what you get. Well deserved. FireFox getting it what it deserves. If you hire CEOs based on being women or having nice private beliefs, instead of competence you can eat failure all day long as far as I'm concerned.
- jslove 5y ago
  previous one - now stellar ceo wasn't great either
dpark 5y ago
Thanks, Bain and Company.
Permit 5y ago
> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion Why stop there? Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?
- mcv 5y ago
  > Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"? Aren't they? Do Mozilla developers work there just to get rich, or because they care about open source?
- Hnaomyiph 5y ago
  The CEO and upper management do loads to steer the ship. If all they care about is enriching themselves, they will likely struggle to find developers who are in it for the passion. Look at Google. It is a late-stage, post-IPO business that’s now, frankly, ran by the CFO with a CEO who cares only about the board and an ever-increasing stock number. The people who have passion left for the most part. Replaced by those who only seek to enrich themselves and climb the perf ladder. Would those who have passion stuck around if Google was ran by people who still had passion? I’d imagine a much greater number of them would still be there.
  - Permit 5y ago
    I guess my post was meant to capture the idea: "Do you find it suspicious that you are recommending CEO/Management be in it for the passion (and low pay!) but seemingly not expecting software engineers to make the same sacrifices?" > Would those who have passion stuck around if Google was ran by people who still had passion? I’d imagine a much greater number of them would still be there. Why not just lower compensation for software engineers? Then all the dispassionate perf-chasing engineers will leave for greener pastures and you'll only be left with people who are passionate about the products Google builds, no?
    - account42 5y ago
      > not expecting software engineers to make the same sacrifices? Are you talking about the same sacrifices? I haven't seen anyone here asking the CEO to not be paid at all, only those questioning the absurd amount. I don't think going from 1 000 000 to 100 000 (which would be a lot lower than what it was before, just to show the extreme) is even remotely the same "sacrifice" as going from 100 000 to 10 000 per year. But to answer you original question, yes, Mozilla should also be looking for developers that believe in the mission instead of just trying to maximize their wealth. That should probably include moving the company somewhere cheaper.
brundolf 5y ago
Another interesting idea: what if they courted alternate browser projects and/or environments like electron to use the Firefox engine the way those currently tend to use Chromium? I don’t know if Firefox is currently harder to integrate than Chromium, or if they would just need to gain some sort of edge (no pun intended). But they could for example: - Provide first-class documentation for integrating - Provide some kind of stripped-down version that’s optimized for Electron-type scenarios; perhaps they could make it more resource-light for this usecase than Chromium is Gaining marketshare this way could garner better support from websites and/or libraries, and might also prompt corporate support from invested companies
- zsims 5y ago
  Some of the reasons for why it's not used as a base were discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900496
  - brundolf 5y ago
    Welp, there you go
jacquesm 5y ago
I would happily support this.
zo1 5y ago
They must definitely fire some of their developers too https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_developer_literally_gives_users_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...
- celdon25 5y ago
  Yikes, I see quite a lot of grandstanding in that thread, and the linked Github issue.
samwillis 5y ago
Agree with this. I feel they should start trying to out “out innovate” the other browser developers. Stop playing politics, which Google will always win, and just start making new “cool shit” that developers want to use! Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use. Also, they should be attacking things like electron, and “hybrid” mobile app development. Build a toolkit based on Gecko for cross platform development that addresses the problems with electron.
- account42 5y ago
  > Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use. I think they should be doing the opposite: Adding features the users want to use and keeping the web as simple as they can get away with. Google is already busy giving web developers whatever APIs they want, that is not a fight Firefox can win.
pohl 5y ago
They should also consider more "Oxidation" of Firefox components, if only because it lowers the bar for mere mortals to make open source contributions.
mccorrinall 5y ago
I wish they would gift Thunderbird a few new features, such as Mozilla Account Support. :(
mulmen 5y ago
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO. But all those projects have commercial support in some way because other companies rely on them and provide resources. It's unclear to me how Firefox achieves the same. Maybe that's a question a CEO can answer. If you think you need a CEO then it makes perfect sense to me to pay them a competitive salary. For the same reason you should pay your devs a competitive salary. You can't just say "they should work for less". That's unfair and unrealistic. Either you need one and should pay for a good one, or you don't need one at all. > Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian. Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO. It doesn't matter what the top position is called: CEO, the Grand Warlock of Yendor, or Benevolent Dictator For Life. CEO ≈ whoever is in charge and entrusted with enough authority that they can elevate or kill whatever they are managing, and that was probably the intended meaning. > Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache? Apache has a reputation as the graveyard of open source software. If Firefox gets donated to them, it's curtains. Maybe if they went elsewhere it could work. Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully.
  - alan-hn 5y ago
    >Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully. And perhaps restart servo development?
javitury 5y ago
What do you think of Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) or Rust? Do you think they were a mistake?
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Rust is the most interesting thing to come from Mozilla in years. It was from an earlier era where they innovated instead of just campaigned against powerful web features and tried to be a FOSS version of Apple.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Not necessarily. I do think that UX redesigns, and social and political advocacy were definitely mistakes, though.

maverick74 5y ago

phrz 5y ago
In corporate leadership, homophobia is not a "personal view," it is a matter of governance and directly impacts talent acquisition. Further, Brave browser is a Chromium browser that does little to stop the browser engine monopoly at risk here—it does nothing meaningful for browser diversity. Not one comprehensible point is made here besides, I suppose, treating Eich's firing as a political issue.
- maverick74 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

onion2k 5y ago

This set of policies would spell the end of Mozilla, and the end of Firefox unless the community (or another org) picked it up. Mozilla is mostly funded by search engine companies, the largest being Google, and any direct attempt to compete with Chrome would probably end a significant chunk of that funding. Like it or not, unless Mozilla does what Google sees as acceptable, Firefox can't continue. The only way to turn Firefox around and continue development would be to find an alternative benefactor.

wyclif 5y ago
Mozilla is mostly funded by search engine companies, the largest being Google Not only that, but this creates perverse incentives for Mozilla. Google funds Mozilla to avoid charges of monopoly, and that disincentives Mozilla to compete with Google and make Firefox a competitive browser to Chromium.
account42 5y ago
Mozilla is currently funded by Google but why are you assuming that a non-profit oriented Mozilla could not find other funding sources? All their past attemts seem to be about monetizing the browser but just like Google has been throwing cash at them there will be others whose motives are more alligned with Mozilla doing the same. As far as I am aware there is no way to donate to the development of Firefox and even if there was I and many others would not do so while Mozilla while the Google funding steers Mozilla's interests. Would Mozilla be able to get as much without Google as they get from Google? Probably not, but if they do follow the suggestions of the OP then hopefully they would not need as much.

wolpoli 5y ago

I would instead argue that Firefox's Gecko engine is beyond saving and that any money invested in it now would be better donated to other community projects because there isn't enough resource to catch up. Sticking with Gecko will eventually lead to the dismise of Firefox the organization. Microsoft, with their resource and their ability to bundle Microsoft Edge in with Windows, couldn't get any appreciable amount of marketshare. Firefox, with less resource than Microsoft, won't fare any better. Rebuilding Firefox with Chronium would salvage whatever the mindshare/marketshare left. Then Firefox could still wield some influence with their marketshare and the threat of forking Chronium.

eternityforest 5y ago
I'm 100% onboard with Chromium being the universal de facto standard for the web as long as it's open. Really, all I want from a browser is Chromium, full features without disabled APIs, with a few extras like Sync, P2P stuff, and codecs, fully open. Right now, I think anyone with name recognition and marketing ability could probably develop a winning browser for 50k or so. Just... take chromium, add sync, and an ad blocker for high bandwidth video ads. Done. You have made the world's best browser, the rest is business stuff.
voidlogic 5y ago
Why do you think the engine is beyond saving? I use Firefox everyday and have absolutely zero complaints...
- wolpoli 5y ago
  Mozilla itself didn't think the Gecko engine itself has a long term future either. After all, Mozilla funded the development of the new Servo engine for eight whole years, and it slowly replaced pieces of Gecko with Servo. After Mozilla laid off all Servo developers in 2020, the future doesn't look bright for Gecko or Firefox.

aeturnum 5y ago

I agree with your topline goal, but I am surprised by the way you think about it. Most of what you recommend has no obvious connection to firefox-the-program. Like... > - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian > - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. > - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). > - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period. All of these are good suggestions if the problem is that Firefox is running out of money or has too few resources. But that's not my impression at all! Google's strategy with Chrome demonstrates how valuable it is to develop other compelling services that use cutting-edge standards supported by your browser. Google does it in a way where they freeze out other compatible browsers, but Mozilla does not have to. I would say that the number one thing that Mozilla can do to support the web is to make web standards meaningful again - and the best way to do that is to develop things aside from web browsers to demonstrate the value of those standards. > We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. I don't think Mozilla having non-Firefox projects harms Firefox. I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center, with many other ongoing projects.

selfhoster11 5y ago
My impression is that Mozilla is too focused on basically everything that isn't Firefox - to me, it's axiomatic that Firefox wouldn't be in such a horrifying shape if they were focused on it. They are lacking for attention, and not money, which is why they should jettison everything that isn't Firefox or doesn't serve Firefox. Anyone else can do funny extensions or VPN or what have you got, but browser-making is Mozilla's core competency that no one in the FOSS ecosystem has mastered to the extent they did. It seems evident to me that if they made Firefox into a power user browser again, somehow, then power users would flock to it again and bring in some of their peers and family, putting it back in a safe 10-15% range of market share where it can't be picked off or ignored by Google. And I know that power users are leaving en masse - I stuck with them through thick and thin for nearly 15 years, and I'm finally getting ready to leave if the situation doesn't improve. > I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center Neither Mozilla not Firefox are healthy, in my assessment. And this is exactly because they are getting sidetracked instead of centering on Firefox.

topspin 5y ago

"- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money" That has to be the first on the list, because that is the prerequisite for everything else. Unfortunately there is no mechanism to achieve this within Mozilla. The people that need to go won't; they've got their trophy titles and they've feathered their nest as they want it. Thus Mozilla and Firefox with it are doomed. Solving that would take a fork, just like it did with Netscape. It would also require an endowment of capital to fund a core of developers for years just to catch up with blink/webkit/etc. At this point the best plan might be to adopt the latter. Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge. So at this point what is the value proposition of saving Firefox? That's a rhetorical question; I get it. I just don't know if it's enough to attract the developers and funding to do it. It's conceivable; one could imagine a leader with the passion to inspire people and attract the funding and developers. Maybe that person exists. If so they won't be doing it under Mozilla.

mschuster91 5y ago
> Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge. And in the end, it's all WebKit derivatives under the hood. That is the danger. There used to be three major distinct engines (Firefox, IE/Trident, WebKit) plus a boatload of specialized ones (Opera)... and that competition bred improvements and features. These days it's all about walled gardens, which is what the "market" (aka a bunch of ultra rich companies) wants, and Firefox is the last truly independent fighter standing. Sadly, Firefox has been mismanaged for almost a decade now.
- dTal 5y ago
  We are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Just as "the open web" is becoming fully viable as an application platform, it is morphing into "Google's VM".
- topspin 5y ago
  "That is the danger." As I said, I get it. Getting it doesn't fund stuff, however.

generalizations 5y ago

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.

throwaway4200 5y ago
What makes you think Brendan Eich would have been a good CEO? He was CTO of Mozilla during the period that Chrome was eating Firefox's lunch. He was probably more responsible for Firefox product decisions at that time than CEO Mitchell Baker.
- sfink 5y ago
  Point of clarification: Mitchell Baker was not CEO at that time (and never had been). She was chair of the board. The previous full CEO was Gary Kovacs, succeeded by acting CEO Jay Sullivan, then Eich for 9 days.
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    Mitchell was CEO before John Lilly.
    - sfink 5y ago
      Doh! I stand corrected.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  "throwaway" is fitting, given the quality of this comment. I was CTO from 2005 (when we incorporated Mozilla Corporation for taxpaying reasons; before that I had a Chief Architect title; I was also on the Mozilla Foundation board) through 2014. Firefox market share grew until 2011. Whatever the causes of Firefox peaking then, if you blame me for the fall during my last three years there, you can credit me for the rise from 2004-2011. Use a consistent yardstick.

perryizgr8 5y ago

I'll add one more to this: Use all/most of the money from the Google deal to build a fund. Even doing this for a couple years will build a huge backup plan for Firefox and they can look at not relying on the deal for survival. Instead work off the interest earned on the fund.

forgotmysn 5y ago

Assuming the board are unable or unwilling to salvage FF for the sake of Mozilla, would it be worth considering starting a new non-profit browser based on FF? A new organization without all that baggage? WaterWolf or something?

crossroadsguy 5y ago

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share) And people wonder why non-profits and NGOs don’t attract the best talent. This entitled mindset is the why. That people who want to do good work should earn less. Perfect! Let them pay for their vacation with goodwill and air. This is especially rich coming from the HN crowd. Everybody wants a revolutionary but in the neighbour’s house.

account42 5y ago
There is a vast ocean between strugling to pay for your vacation and making millions every year. And there is no "the HN crowd" - don't fall into the trap of assinging to collective consciousness for groups and then complaining that it does not behave rationally.

pers0n 5y ago

FF user since it was called the Phoenix Project. Donating money isn't going to help them. It might help them look good to some techies that follow that information, but otherwise most wont care. Mozilla needs to focus on other products to use in tandem w FF. Email service that is private, VPN (i think they have a partnership), Thunderbird, zoom like platform. They need office/business solutions most likely. Devtools, dev services, etc. I'm not saying forget FF, but they can't just focus on 1 product or they are doomed.

endemic 5y ago
I know their phone project fizzled, but I wonder if there's a market for a Chromebook competitor. Position it as a privacy-respecting product for schools. Introduce kids to the idea that Chrome != The Internet.
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  https://www.kaiostech.com/ https://www.kaiostech.com/ is the lineal descendant of FirefoxOS. It got to scale on the same plan: attack the low end of the Android market where the fatter, more recent versions do not fit.

jefftk 5y ago

> until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives Do you mean WebKit derivatives? Or are you predicting that Apple would switch to Chromium? (No way)

wmil 5y ago
Imagine going back to 1997 and trying to convince tech people that one day KHTML on ARM would be the most popular web browsing platform.
- jagger27 5y ago
  It would have been easier to convince someone in ‘99 that Trident on Itanium would be dominant.

jms703 5y ago

This. However, I think they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. They have wasted so much money on the wrong things, IMO.

Shared404 5y ago
>they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. Unfortunately, that reason (browser engine diversity)is compelling to people who understand the situation, but not general consumers - and it's impossible to make general consumers care, unless maybe Firefox went for an edgy "rebel against the man" vibe.
- carapace 5y ago
  I feel like I understand the situation but I'm doubtful that browser engine diversity is compelling. It seems like duplicate effort. As long as Chromium accepts pull requests, what's the problem with browser monoculture? (In case it's not clear, I'm asking in earnest. I'm not trolling.) - - - - edit: Okay, pull requests alone are not enough, but the objections y'all are raising seem like they could all be answered by forking, no? If Google upsets their users then a different browser has a chance to gain users: - Ad-blocking - Better extension API - Maintaining backwards compatibility - No Manifest V3 - Better vision of the web than Google In other words, effort expended on duplicate functionality for it's own sake is wasted. Why not let Google do the heavy lifting and then improve on their work, rather than trying to compete head-to-head on the whole enchilada (of a complete browser engine)?
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    The problem with browser monoculture is that it will erode the authority of the spec over time. Having multiple independent implementations of the same spec means that developers won't be able to merely code to one browser and treat it's quirks as gospel. A good example of what happens if you only have one implementation is Flash Player. People programmed to the implementation and not the (non-existant) spec. So any reimplementation of Flash Player is largely an exercise in chasing after implementation bugs in the Player that badly-developed movies rely upon. Even Adobe's official internal documentation on SWF and AVM2 is woefully incomplete, because the actual "spec" is the proprietary source code of the player and whatever tribal knowledge had been accrued from decades of maintaining it. The sole implementation in this case (Chromium) being Free Software does alleviate this a little, but the spec is still more of a suggestion than a reality.

phkahler 5y ago

>> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight. There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succeed. Firefox is very usable and increasing its market share starts with you. Or to use another cliche - be the change you wish to see. That's not to say Mozilla doesn't need to get their shit together, but if market share drops too low they will not be able to get money to do the things they need to do.

perryizgr8 5y ago
I want Firefox to succeed. But that doesn't mean I will use an inferior browser, especially when I feel the decision makers at Mozilla are out of sync.
garciasn 5y ago
They offer nothing I cannot get elsewhere and thus I have no reason to switch. When it first came out, Firefox was faster, lighter and offered way better function than the alternatives at the time. Since then, competition has been fierce in the browser market and they’ve done little to distinguish themselves in any major way from their competitive set. Until they do something so vastly incomparable in the market, they gonna continue to falter.
- bentcorner 5y ago
  Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.
  - yeeeloit 5y ago
    What are you talking about exactly? Is this an extension for FF?

paxys 5y ago

You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health. Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct competition feasible. Giving Mozilla a few hundred million dollars extra isn't going to make a difference.

zerocrates 5y ago
I know you're saying this not the question being asked, but what's your source for their revenue growing anywhere near that rate, or indeed at all? As far as I can see their revenue peaked around FY 2017 at $562 million. In 2018 that number was about $450 million and short of expenses, they were short of expenses again for 2019 but for a $338 million settlement from Yahoo/Verizon. The most recent reported year, 2020, saw a slight drop in their search income but a sharper cut to expenses (mostly by cutting about $60 million in "software development" expenses), putting them back on track, in a way. They've had a steady increase in subscription income, but it's still dwarfed by the current search deal (in 2020, just shy of $25 million in subscriptions vs. over $440 million from search).
soundnote 5y ago
I don't think that's true: Brave is actively building independent revenue-generating services so they have a footprint on the web instead of just being a company that makes a window to the web. And they are growing. The big thing there is just positioning, and being aggressive in the right places. That's the fundamental problem with Mozilla: MS, Google and Apple can leverage web footprint and physical platforms to market their products and generate revenue for browser development. Plus Apple's happy to take money from Google. Brave's building some kind of revenue-generating platform that stands on its own. I don't know if Mozilla has a vision in that kind of way. Hell, Firefox OS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS This rant is pertinent: http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.html#adam%27s-rant http://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2021_09_06.ht...
5y ago

missedthecue 5y ago

Cutting organizational expenses might be good for unrelated reasons, but I don't see how that increases the market share of Firefox, and I can think of a few ways it could decrease their market share.

bonestamp2 5y ago
I guess the idea would be to only cut organizational expenses that aren't serving the purpose of increasing firefox market share.
selfhoster11 5y ago
If the goal is to plow all available resources into Firefox, then cutting down on expenses that don't directly or indirectly support the existence of Firefox seems key.
readthenotes1 5y ago
What he said was: get rid of the people who are not interested in making the Firefox browser better. Get rid of the distractions. Focus on the browser.
godshatter 5y ago
My goal, if I were CEO, would be to reduce organizational expenses (and increase other forms of revenue) to the point where the 100s of millions of dollars from Google ($562 million in 2017) was not required for covering the cost of firefox development and spend all those millions on advertising firefox until Google stopped giving it. I can't see where having such a large part of your finances coming from your biggest direct competitor could ever be a good thing, but at least spending it on increasing firefox's market share directly through advertising would have a certain irony associated with it. At least of the Alanis Morisette variety.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> [...] (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). This might be a perverse incentive depending on if your goal is to make Firefox a good browser or just a popular one.

selfhoster11 5y ago
True, but at this point it doesn't feel to me that the community has that much to lose. If we're truly sub-5% like Statcounter says, then as long as we minimally muzzle this particular paperclip maximiser (say, the browser engine must remain Gecko or an in-house project and cannot be Blink, user privacy must be no worse than currently, selling data or "partnering with" third parties is disallowed) and let it run for a couple of years, at least we'll get a viable browser out of it.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > If we're truly sub-5% like Statcounter says You know, that's the real question we should make before going on this entire exercise. Are the usage statistics any reliable? Firefox is the one browser that blocks the things those sites use to measure market share. Why would we expect their results to be real?
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    I think they are closer to the truth than not. Despite my constant advocacy for Firefox for over a decade, a family member whom I respect greatly told me directly and in no uncertain terms that they do not wish to use Firefox and wish to switch to Chrome instead because of numerous issues they have observed. And the worst part is that as much as I wanted it to, Firefox wasn't up to it. I cannot help but think that this is a microcosm of what's happening more broadly.

loudtieblahblah 5y ago

If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Google will set the standard, taking input from any other tech player big enough to have a seat at the table. Its bad enough ISO certification boards and official positions of the W3C can be bought or corrupted. Let there be only one engine, controlled by Google? And even the pretense of a open and fair playing field goes away. Open source and open protocols were not resistant enough to for profit corporations. Now our standards are dwindling, open source projects and standards boards re completely co-opted, and the conversation on mailing lists and forums sounds like the never ending squabbling and finger wagging from your Fortune 500 HR department. Foss and open standards have been captured by capital. And it shows in the culture. Hell, it shows in the conversations around places like this.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Exactly. This is why Mozilla, as the only credible custodian of the only credible Chromium/Blink/WebKit competitor, needs to wake up and die trying to stop that future, if needed. If they lose that war, there is no reason for them to exist over Brave or Vivaldi, for example.
antupis 5y ago
Yeah we would get "IE6" from google not like first 2-4 years but soonish.
- nikau 5y ago
  Difference is Chrome source is available to fork if Google cross the line.
dmitriid 5y ago
> If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Well, we've already done that. Google a) dominates the standards bodies and b) releases "standard" features that are only standard because Chrome says so

ameminator 5y ago

I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that engine more useable and better than the base chromium engine. If they had been able to keep the Rust foundation on board, it would have also made sense. However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on the wrong products.

Brakenshire 5y ago
The obvious thing to do was continue to invest in Servo. If they could have produced a parallel layout engine, which could provide app like animations without fiddling on desktop and Android, and then make that easy to embed, they could have made real inroads into blink/webkit.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Yeah but Mozilla has been subverted, since the current CEO got on they are a lightning rod for Google against browser monopoly legal attention, while trying everything possible to neuter them from being a real threat. Thus she cut the thing most likely to provide a real threat to chrome.
- ameminator 5y ago
  You're absolutely right. The fact that so many other browsers are based on chromium, is a blatant condemnation of how the Servo engine has not met an important demand. If Servo was properly useable outside of Firefox, we would have seen more open-source browsers use it.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Thunderbird was on my mind when I was writing this. I think it ultimately comes down to whether they can afford any missteps or side concerns at all - and if the answer is "no", then Thunderbird must be cut loose no matter its value. It can always be mothballed until the times get better, or it can even be given "on loan" for some fixed duration to another trusted FOSS foundation and re-adopted when the time is up. As good as Thunderbird is, I wouldn't want it to be anywhere near the top of Mozilla's priorities list right now.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

can we just eat the execs? on a more serious note, what if mozilla fires ALL execs? will it just crumble under its own weight or will that "industry linked remuneration" be replaced with more money for actual developers who get things done and are not in for the quick buck like address bar ads?

selfhoster11 5y ago
I'm hoping for the latter. Or if not, the that if the Firefox collapsed, it would re-emerge in some fashion as a grassroots community project with non-Mozilla governance.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  You know… you don't have to wait for the company to collapse.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Perhaps we have to. Look at what happened to youtube-dl - even before the DMCA takedown, nobody was doing anything about the leadership being AWOL despite the huge PR backlog. Then, when it was taken down, various forks popped up, including yt-dlp which became a natural potential successor. They injected lots of potential, because the main authority was absent and they seized initiative. Even after youtube-dl came back, they eventually went under a new management. The entire space of YouTube/video downloaders is better off for the DMCA incident, even if taken by itself it was a harmful event. Mozilla falling might just reenergise Firefox, though I'd obviously much rather they undergo a priority shift instead, so we can keep continuity.
    - pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
      That’s rather inaccurate; yt-dlp grew out of youtube-dlc, which was started by the author of this ticket: <https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26462 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/26462>, filed in August 2020, some time before the DMCA in November 2020.

newbie789 5y ago

Jayakumark 5y ago

Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/ https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...

rekabis 5y ago
[flagged]
wyclif 5y ago
A big part of the problem IMO is that Mitchell Baker is a lawyer, not a technologist or engineer. She does not understand how software companies are supposed to function.
doetoe 5y ago
I used to strongly support the mission of Mozilla. When I first read about the practices of upper management I felt like a fool for ever having donated in the past. That is not going to happen again and I don't even like Firefox so much anymore because of it.
- soundnote 5y ago
  The donations go to the Foundation (woke activism), not the Corporation (Firefox etc. development) anyway.
andriesm 5y ago
Well they fired the previous competent CEO for political reasons. If politics and what you do in your private time is more important than competence, then this is what you get. Well deserved. FireFox getting it what it deserves. If you hire CEOs based on being women or having nice private beliefs, instead of competence you can eat failure all day long as far as I'm concerned.
jslove 5y ago
previous one - now stellar ceo wasn't great either

dpark 5y ago

Thanks, Bain and Company.

Permit 5y ago

> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion Why stop there? Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?

mcv 5y ago
> Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"? Aren't they? Do Mozilla developers work there just to get rich, or because they care about open source?
Hnaomyiph 5y ago
The CEO and upper management do loads to steer the ship. If all they care about is enriching themselves, they will likely struggle to find developers who are in it for the passion. Look at Google. It is a late-stage, post-IPO business that’s now, frankly, ran by the CFO with a CEO who cares only about the board and an ever-increasing stock number. The people who have passion left for the most part. Replaced by those who only seek to enrich themselves and climb the perf ladder. Would those who have passion stuck around if Google was ran by people who still had passion? I’d imagine a much greater number of them would still be there.
- Permit 5y ago
  I guess my post was meant to capture the idea: "Do you find it suspicious that you are recommending CEO/Management be in it for the passion (and low pay!) but seemingly not expecting software engineers to make the same sacrifices?" > Would those who have passion stuck around if Google was ran by people who still had passion? I’d imagine a much greater number of them would still be there. Why not just lower compensation for software engineers? Then all the dispassionate perf-chasing engineers will leave for greener pastures and you'll only be left with people who are passionate about the products Google builds, no?
  - account42 5y ago
    > not expecting software engineers to make the same sacrifices? Are you talking about the same sacrifices? I haven't seen anyone here asking the CEO to not be paid at all, only those questioning the absurd amount. I don't think going from 1 000 000 to 100 000 (which would be a lot lower than what it was before, just to show the extreme) is even remotely the same "sacrifice" as going from 100 000 to 10 000 per year. But to answer you original question, yes, Mozilla should also be looking for developers that believe in the mission instead of just trying to maximize their wealth. That should probably include moving the company somewhere cheaper.

brundolf 5y ago

Another interesting idea: what if they courted alternate browser projects and/or environments like electron to use the Firefox engine the way those currently tend to use Chromium? I don’t know if Firefox is currently harder to integrate than Chromium, or if they would just need to gain some sort of edge (no pun intended). But they could for example: - Provide first-class documentation for integrating - Provide some kind of stripped-down version that’s optimized for Electron-type scenarios; perhaps they could make it more resource-light for this usecase than Chromium is Gaining marketshare this way could garner better support from websites and/or libraries, and might also prompt corporate support from invested companies

zsims 5y ago
Some of the reasons for why it's not used as a base were discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900496
- brundolf 5y ago
  Welp, there you go

jacquesm 5y ago

I would happily support this.

zo1 5y ago

They must definitely fire some of their developers too https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_developer_literally_gives_users_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...

celdon25 5y ago
Yikes, I see quite a lot of grandstanding in that thread, and the linked Github issue.

samwillis 5y ago

Agree with this. I feel they should start trying to out “out innovate” the other browser developers. Stop playing politics, which Google will always win, and just start making new “cool shit” that developers want to use! Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use. Also, they should be attacking things like electron, and “hybrid” mobile app development. Build a toolkit based on Gecko for cross platform development that addresses the problems with electron.

account42 5y ago
> Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use. I think they should be doing the opposite: Adding features the users want to use and keeping the web as simple as they can get away with. Google is already busy giving web developers whatever APIs they want, that is not a fight Firefox can win.

pohl 5y ago

They should also consider more "Oxidation" of Firefox components, if only because it lowers the bar for mere mortals to make open source contributions.

mccorrinall 5y ago

I wish they would gift Thunderbird a few new features, such as Mozilla Account Support. :(

mulmen 5y ago

> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO. But all those projects have commercial support in some way because other companies rely on them and provide resources. It's unclear to me how Firefox achieves the same. Maybe that's a question a CEO can answer. If you think you need a CEO then it makes perfect sense to me to pay them a competitive salary. For the same reason you should pay your devs a competitive salary. You can't just say "they should work for less". That's unfair and unrealistic. Either you need one and should pay for a good one, or you don't need one at all. > Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian. Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?

selfhoster11 5y ago
> If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO. It doesn't matter what the top position is called: CEO, the Grand Warlock of Yendor, or Benevolent Dictator For Life. CEO ≈ whoever is in charge and entrusted with enough authority that they can elevate or kill whatever they are managing, and that was probably the intended meaning. > Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache? Apache has a reputation as the graveyard of open source software. If Firefox gets donated to them, it's curtains. Maybe if they went elsewhere it could work. Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully.
- alan-hn 5y ago
  >Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully. And perhaps restart servo development?

javitury 5y ago

What do you think of Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) or Rust? Do you think they were a mistake?

eternityforest 5y ago
Rust is the most interesting thing to come from Mozilla in years. It was from an earlier era where they innovated instead of just campaigned against powerful web features and tried to be a FOSS version of Apple.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Not necessarily. I do think that UX redesigns, and social and political advocacy were definitely mistakes, though.