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> they have to pay their employees somehow What are their employees doing though? If they're churning out BS like this, are they even necessary? Most Firefox

> they have to pay their employees somehow What are their employees doing though? If they're churning out BS like this, are they even necessary? Most Firefox features that gave it marketshare long ago have been left to rot if not outright deprecated. What remains is a terrible Chrome knockoff. --- Edit: this comment is rage/venting so I'll elaborate: my problem with Mozilla's recent (~5 years?) evolution is that Firefox's power-user features that not only gave it its original marketshare but are the last line of defense in an increasingly user-hostile web are being left to rot if not outright killed off while being replaced by useless garbage like this and while their marketshare continues to dwindle (no surprise there considering any differentiating features are on the back-burner), their CEO increased their compensation to ridiculous levels. Firefox is the most user-hostile FOSS software I know of - on-par if not worse than a lot of paid, proprietary software. Upon first run it'll load several tabs with Google Analytics spyware, has Pocket, ads/sponsored links and telemetry enabled by default (the latter is in breach of the GDPR) and makes bold claims about privacy while it doesn't even come with a built-in adblocker (even its strongest tracking protection is inferior to uBlock Origin and not even enabled by default). Every update will interrupt your flow with a useless "what's new" tab (and I think the recent "Colorways" update had its own tab/modal in addition to the usual update). I'm worried this new development will also have its own annoying notification next time I start the browser.

yoasif_ 5y ago
> What are their employees doing though? This really isn't hard to find: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/
- lucideer 5y ago
  While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. Mozilla recently laid off a significant portion of Firefox developers, while announcing that they are "reducing investment in [...] platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team", all the while increasing upper management remuneration (management had already made up close to 50% of salary expenditure in recent foundation financial reports)
  - yoasif_ 5y ago
    > While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. The diffs are linked and it is pretty easy to see if the authors have mozilla.com email addresses. I don't really think it is all that simplistic - you can very easily see what at least a portion of their employees are doing. I think people can fairly easily judge based on that whether they think they are necessary. Perhaps if the poster had asked a different question, a more "sufficient" response could have been provided.
pelagicAustral 5y ago
whoa! Don't hold back...
lancesells 5y ago
I'm always confused by the Mozilla hate here on HN. I mean Firefox works quite well as far as a browser goes, it's infinitely less evil than Google who is molding the web to their advantage and it's way more customizable than Safari.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It is - my comment is just pent up rage/venting in hindsight, I'll edit it. Yes, I agree that it's still less evil, but it used to be so much better and clearly going downhill. Initiatives like this don't inspire confidence it's going to become any better.
- ChrisSD 5y ago
  It's truly weird and I don't understand it. I mean not to defend Firefox but the HN reaction is almost comically extreme. --- Chrome: ...and so our company's puppy kicking campaign was a total success. In other news, we're updating our terms of service so that you agree to hand over your first born child. HN: Meh, I'll still use Chrome though. ---- Firefox: Today we fixed a bug that... HN: OMG FIREFOX SUCKS. I'M USING CHROME NOW.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    You can use de-Googled variants of Chrome that serve less telemetry, by default, and are more private, by default, than Firefox. They're also faster. And they're open source.
    - opan 5y ago
      If variants are on the table, there's also IceCat and LibreWolf for the Firefox side.
    - prometheon1 5y ago
      Do these forks also undo the changes that google makes to chromium to push their agenda?
- hartator 5y ago

yoasif_ 5y ago

> What are their employees doing though? This really isn't hard to find: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/ https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/

lucideer 5y ago
While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. Mozilla recently laid off a significant portion of Firefox developers, while announcing that they are "reducing investment in [...] platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team", all the while increasing upper management remuneration (management had already made up close to 50% of salary expenditure in recent foundation financial reports)
- yoasif_ 5y ago
  > While the comment above is certainly hyperbolic, a Mercurial link listing non-hyperlinked usernames of committers that may or may not be direct employees is a somewhat simplistic & ultimately insufficient response. The diffs are linked and it is pretty easy to see if the authors have mozilla.com email addresses. I don't really think it is all that simplistic - you can very easily see what at least a portion of their employees are doing. I think people can fairly easily judge based on that whether they think they are necessary. Perhaps if the poster had asked a different question, a more "sufficient" response could have been provided.

pelagicAustral 5y ago

whoa! Don't hold back...

lancesells 5y ago

I'm always confused by the Mozilla hate here on HN. I mean Firefox works quite well as far as a browser goes, it's infinitely less evil than Google who is molding the web to their advantage and it's way more customizable than Safari.

Nextgrid 5y ago
It is - my comment is just pent up rage/venting in hindsight, I'll edit it. Yes, I agree that it's still less evil, but it used to be so much better and clearly going downhill. Initiatives like this don't inspire confidence it's going to become any better.
ChrisSD 5y ago
It's truly weird and I don't understand it. I mean not to defend Firefox but the HN reaction is almost comically extreme. --- Chrome: ...and so our company's puppy kicking campaign was a total success. In other news, we're updating our terms of service so that you agree to hand over your first born child. HN: Meh, I'll still use Chrome though. ---- Firefox: Today we fixed a bug that... HN: OMG FIREFOX SUCKS. I'M USING CHROME NOW.
- dleslie 5y ago
  You can use de-Googled variants of Chrome that serve less telemetry, by default, and are more private, by default, than Firefox. They're also faster. And they're open source.
  - opan 5y ago
    If variants are on the table, there's also IceCat and LibreWolf for the Firefox side.
  - prometheon1 5y ago
    Do these forks also undo the changes that google makes to chromium to push their agenda?
hartator 5y ago