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This brings up an interesting point. It is my opinion that we're in the reverse now. Mozilla seems deadset on ruining Firefox's competitive advantages -- some t

by tomrod 5y ago

This brings up an interesting point. It is my opinion that we're in the reverse now. Mozilla seems deadset on ruining Firefox's competitive advantages -- some through reasonable evolution (forcing new features on the community that only a small subset ask for) to user hostility (Firefox mobile redesign that dropped summer 2021, tanking its Android reviews after it dropped extension support [and for me, text scaling managed via about:config killed accessibility]). While I can appreciate that there is funding to be found in password managers and VPN services, I'd much rather see Rust take over the world!

toyg 5y ago
Rust taking over the world would bring Mozilla the same sort of income that "Java taking over the world" brought SUN. It's fundamentally irrelevant, in the great scheme of things, because monetising a programming language has always been very hard (and now all competitors are free, they've effectively been commoditised). I don't think they're "ruining" FF; if anything they're again entirely focused on it after a decade spent in the wilderness throwing money at doomed efforts. But they seem somewhat lost on their actual mission, and make it very hard to like them. Mozilla is not about making a browser, nor it is a social-justice charity. It should be a beacon of public interest in the darkness of everyday commercialisation of the web. The browser should be a mean to that end, not the be-all of the company.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >if anything they're again entirely focused on it after a decade spent in the wilderness throwing money at doomed efforts But what features have they really added lately? I looked over the the change logs over the last year and the only notable new features to the browser was a theme color wheel and adding search results (Ctrl + F) showing up on the scroll bar. It doesn't seem like they are innovating the browsing experience.
  - toyg 5y ago
    They're focusing on monetising the browser experience as a whole, with services like the VPN - not necessarily on pure browser features. It's still more than they were doing in the FFOS years.
pigeons 5y ago
They've dropped that password manager "Lockwise" faster than a google product.

by tomrod 5y ago

toyg 5y ago

Rust taking over the world would bring Mozilla the same sort of income that "Java taking over the world" brought SUN. It's fundamentally irrelevant, in the great scheme of things, because monetising a programming language has always been very hard (and now all competitors are free, they've effectively been commoditised). I don't think they're "ruining" FF; if anything they're again entirely focused on it after a decade spent in the wilderness throwing money at doomed efforts. But they seem somewhat lost on their actual mission, and make it very hard to like them. Mozilla is not about making a browser, nor it is a social-justice charity. It should be a beacon of public interest in the darkness of everyday commercialisation of the web. The browser should be a mean to that end, not the be-all of the company.

charcircuit 5y ago
>if anything they're again entirely focused on it after a decade spent in the wilderness throwing money at doomed efforts But what features have they really added lately? I looked over the the change logs over the last year and the only notable new features to the browser was a theme color wheel and adding search results (Ctrl + F) showing up on the scroll bar. It doesn't seem like they are innovating the browsing experience.
- toyg 5y ago
  They're focusing on monetising the browser experience as a whole, with services like the VPN - not necessarily on pure browser features. It's still more than they were doing in the FFOS years.

pigeons 5y ago

They've dropped that password manager "Lockwise" faster than a google product.