13 ms·

Mozilla launches venture fund to fuel responsible tech companies

143 points by laurex 4y ago

slim 4y ago
This is early stage funding. So basically $30 million are expected to be spent without any return or accountability (probably in middle east and africa, given the CEO profile)
preinheimer 4y ago
Mozilla: Please please please just concentrate on making an awesome browser people want to use. Then market it.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  They have failed at that, so now they're just figuring out ways to spend the free money they have.
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    They didn't fail they were sabatoged by an incompetent CEO.
    - umeshunni 4y ago
      which one?
      - account42 4y ago
        Perhaps the one that has multiplied her own salary while the browser gets less and less relevant. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- multiplegeorges 4y ago
  So, where in your plan do they make money?
  - claudiulodro 4y ago
    Same way anyone with a platform product makes money: premium tiers or paid extensions.
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      And yet the market leader by a wide margin doesn't do any of that. They are bankrolled by a near monopoly on ads in various markets.
  - nmilo 4y ago
    They're a non-profit.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      They still have bills to pay. Being a non-profit doesn't mean they don't need revenue.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        For starters they can fire the CEO that's seen their market share decrease by an order of magnitude while seeing her pay increase by an order of magnitude. After that go down the org chart and fire everyone not coding for the browser. Then you can live off donations until the end of time.
        paulryanrogers 4y ago
        This strategy won't work if no one is organizing the work ahead. They can't be coding full time and administrating a project as complex as a modern browser. Especially not when competing against a complex beast like Chrome. (Though I do agree there may be too much money going into admin.)
- cbtacy 4y ago
  Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund') != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    So what? Corp is owned by Foundation and pays Foundation millions every year. They even pay for the Foundation's legal services. Mozilla Foundation is Mozilla Corporation's albatross.
  - account42 4y ago
    That the foundation doesn't seem to have any interest in the browser seems to be one of the big issues of the Mozilla setup to me. Then again the Corp and Foundation share leadership.
- jitix 4y ago
  I had been a Firefox user since 2009 but over the last few years general sites like news and blogs slowly started breaking layouts and events, with JavaScript heavy sites sometimes crashing, esp on m1 air. I found toggling JavaScript and installing extensions is too tedious, esp on iOS devices so I had to move to safari as my primary with brave as a backup. I still have Firefox on all my devices and seriously hope they focus on engineering instead of playing ideology when their revenue stream is shaky at best. I’d honestly pay for tab continuity and other UX improvements as a feature if they improve their css and js engines. I know that chromium has now become what IE was at one point but if Firefox can’t render properly and provide consistent js performance I find it harder and harder to recommend to non technical users. This is from someone who evangelized FF in the 2010s and got many friends on board.
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Javascript off by default makes websites better more often than it breaks websites. I find that whitelisting sites that need first party javascript doesn't take much time and covers 99% of cases; very rarely does a website actually require 3rd party javascript to be whitelisted.
- godelski 4y ago
  > concentrate on making an awesome browser Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does. I'll be honest, it is difficult to distinguish between browsers these days. But we have holy wars like vim vs emacs, when really the differences are quite small and rather dumb. The reason I use Firefox is literally three things: 1) I don't want Chrome to have a monopoly, 2) I get ad blocking on my phone, 3) if I'm going to install an ad blocker on my browser, I also want my browser to not be tracking me. I'll be honest, these are the only truly unique features (that I use). Otherwise it is near indistinguishable from Chrome. I'm happy with FF and while that's still true I don't mind Mozilla branching out. If I wasn't happy, then yeah, there's a priority issue. But honestly, what's so important that's missing? I don't get this holy war. It just seems like war for the sake of war, and no one benefits from that except those on top.
  - jjcon 4y ago
    > Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does. Give me 4x less battery draw and I'll try Firefox again, I want to use and like Firefox but every time I give it a go power usage remains a massive issue. I get at least 4x less power draw in the same activities on chromium based browsers and safari.
  - Kuinox 4y ago
    I spent my last evening, and this one, on working around the fact that firefox still doesn't support modules in WebWorkers. And yes, I have a valid reason to use webworker: I'm making writing an online compiler playground. More than half the time, the firefox debugger plainly crash when opening my app, and I have to open a new tab and retry. For some reason I can't put a breakpoint on the statement after an if on the same line. And these are my issue only on the last hour ! I'm using firefox everyday but yes, there is room for improvement. I expected them to add Time Travel Debugging: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-is-testing-time-travel-debugging/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-is-te... It was working on mac, then they fired a lot of staff, including the one who were developing it, and now they made their own company out of it: https://www.replay.io/ https://www.replay.io/ And to the one who says "you can contribute", yeah no, I tried, the official docs (back then) gave you the non-optimal ste^s (full clone of the repo (multiples hours due to upstream servers being slow), full local compilation). The worst of it is, the doc tell you to compile firefox, so multiples minutes of wait to test a change, a change made to the devtools, which is entierely written in JS. Oh and of course, you can't plug a debugger on the devtools, so you are stuck with console.logs. Edit: minutes after writing this comments, my just tab crashed: https://i.imgur.com/s1y1JsO.png https://i.imgur.com/s1y1JsO.png
buscoquadnary 4y ago
For the love of God can you please just focus on the browser. Right now Firefox is the one thing standing between all web protocols being decided by Google and an open net. You'll do a hell of a lot more good by ensuring Alphabet doesn't get to arbitrarily redefine protocols embed tracking in all the web and make the entire internet cater to the whims of the tech giants than any other bullshit social justice, environmental responsibility, or other virtue signaling or political bull hockey you people are currently engaged in.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  Or just spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy focused) group that does not have any connection to management and staff who get paid from deals with "tech" companies. Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers for people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox with "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low resource computer. Browsers not designed for advertising. Browsers designed for commerce. For banking. Browsers designed for fast information retrieval. "Secure" browsers with tiny attack surfaces. And so on. Specialised browsers. All that Mozilla code should be useful to more than just "tech" companies. For the avoidance of doubt, the idea of the web browser should not be solely a neverending popularity contest to crown one program that will obviate all others. There should also be (more) unpopular, boring browsers for doing routine, boring web-based things. The whole "web advocacy" schtick comes across as hollow when the company treats a web browser like some "holy" program that no one else can tinker with. That is exactly why we have the situation with Google. "Web protocols" are decided by whomever writes the browser, and according to Mozilla's view of the web, only a handful of people can write browsers. As it happens they work for advertising companies, companies that are becoming advertising companies or a company paid by advertising companies (Mozilla). The web is more than a f'ing advertising medium. It is a public resource. Mozilla just cannot get over itself and see how dysfunctional this has become. Mozilla thinks the web is dead without advertising. It is the other way around. The web is getting suffocated by the influence of browser-enabled advertising spend. And then we have the obvious conflict of interest. Mozilla execs get paid from deals with "tech" companies. We are then asked to believe Mozilla is going to make these companies more "responsible". Difficult to see how that is going to work when those companies are the ones paying Mozilla. Maybe if Mozilla threatened to "democratise" the web browser so it was not the exclusive domain of "tech" companies. A web with many clients. Those companies have come to rely on the power over web users they have through controlling "the" browser.
getcrunk 4y ago
I was going to say that I think this is a good idea. Yay! Potential new things that I'd like to use and help privacy and are decentralized should get funded! Then I looked at their three initial investments and realized that's not exactly what they are going for, at least not right now. But for the future of the web and firefox, Mozilla needs to be more than self sufficient and this is a good way to work towards that. I'm mixed as to the recent moves by them, but at least they aren't doing nothing.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
So is this the latest scheme to embezzle the money? I am ashamed I used to donate to you useless people. I am ashamed I ever promoted firefox. > To fuel an ecosystem of products and technology that respect users Bring back the XUL extensions!
- prepend 4y ago
  Something similar. I was a pretty regular doner to Mozilla for many years. I stopped because Mozilla spends money on lots of stuff I don’t care about and not on the browser. I hope this works out for them. But I’m not sure the elevator pitch for Mozilla as a charity. Why do people donate to them?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    To play devil's advocate: If Mozilla were purely focused on doing good for the internet, and had a funding problem that threatened their ability to do that, it's possible that carefully investing money in places that do some good and gives them returns is a good way to try and solve both problems at once. Not that I have any faith in them. But this could be a good thing.
    - prepend 4y ago
      It definitely could be a good thing. But it’s like if Doctors Without Borders/MSF started a soup kitchen in DC. Soup kitchens are good things, but if I donate to MSF I want my money to go towards a specific cause, not domestic soup kitchens. There are already charity index funds for people who want to donate.
  - leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
    They gave grants to change master/slave terminology in documentation. After that, I can't donate and assume the won't wizz away my money on some stupid endeavor.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
fxtentacle 4y ago
Apparently, Firefox is not sexy enough anymore. So now the CEO needs another shiny new thing for his/her CV.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  It’s not and hasn’t been for a very long time. I don’t think Mozilla is gonna find their Satya Nadella to shake things up. They’re stuck in this “ethical” realm that failing businesses like to hide and play victim. To be fair, they were always ethical, back then there was an Angelina Jolie philanthropic vibe. These days it looks more like the owner of an old Subaru Outback smothered in PETA stickers
dbingham 4y ago
No. This is not how we build a better internet. You can try to say "These companies will be responsible, and about people." all you want. But if the fundamental structure is still a for-profit corporation with equity investors expecting a return then that will inevitably trump whatever public good these companies were supposed to have at heart. The only way we can actually achieve a better internet and a better tech sector is by changing the fundamental structure of the companies that build it. That doesn't have to mean they don't make money, but it does mean that making a profit for investors cannot be part of it. Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans. These might actually change the dynamics. But investor owned, for-profit companies funded by venture capital will not. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise.
- boole1854 4y ago
  > Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans. Serious question: is there any evidence to suggest that non-profits and employee-owned businesses are on average better at serving the public good? There are power asymmetries inside non-profits and employee-owned businesses, and these can lead to the 'power brokers' inside these organizations steering or commandeering the organizations for their own benefit.
  - fabianhjr 4y ago
    Yes, GEO Coop keeps a fact-sheet: https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet With most citations being from: https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives For example: > Since most cooperatives are owned and controlled by local residents, it is more likely to promote community growth than an investor-oriented firm. Since cooperative business objectives are needs oriented, cooperatives are more likely to stay in the community (Zeuli, Freshwater et al 2003).
    - boole1854 4y ago
      Awesome, thanks
pjmlp 4y ago
3% and decreasing, already tier 2 in many companies browser compatibility matrixes. What about doing just the browser?
pessimizer 4y ago
I'm willing to be neutral about this as long as zero (0) executives from Mozilla take jobs at these "responsible tech companies." Otherwise, imo it's just people setting up their next gig with google's money laundered through Mozilla.
boole1854 4y ago
For perspective, Mozilla is sitting on $800+ million in net assets, most of which is cash and investments. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-2020-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...
snapcaster 4y ago
This makes me so angry to see. I feel like all the things I find important in technology are getting obliterated and the organizations I used to rely on turn out to be useless. If we ever lose Linus it's fucking over
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It seems like almost every non corporate org has been misdirected in to harmful social justice work. Wikipedia spending 98% of their budget on non Wikipedia related expenses for example. Mozilla working on censorship and deplatforming efforts, even the Tor project feels compromised. Pretty much the only org that still has its original goals in tact seems to be the EFF. I’d be happy to donate to Wikipedia again if they actually spent the money on their tech. I don’t care if they want to rewrite the whole site in Rust, it’s better than spending it on non tech rubbish.
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    We're watching the birth and growth of a new religion. Similar patterns happened during the start of Christianity in Rome and Islam in North Africa. Institutions repurposed, language was repurposed and edited, exponential growth of ideologically possessed population, and eventually massive social upheaval. There's not a word for it yet - "wokism" maybe - but we're in for a doozey.
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      I don't think that's really true. True believers are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs. Most woke crazies can't handle the slightest adversity or pushback, when management is no longer on their side it's over
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    Don't forget about the ACLU and their recent involvement in the Amber Heard debacle. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial/629808/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...
fabianhjr 4y ago
Invest in tech worker cooperatives instead of for-profit corporations; it seems like more of the same Silicon Valley VC money pumping otherwise. :|
camdenlock 4y ago
“Responsible” according to whom? As if everyone agrees. Hint: we all have our own opinions. You’re free to give away your money as you see fit, but man, such sanctimonious and collectivizing language is lame.
aliqot 4y ago
Do the moves that got you to the dance please.
Khaine 4y ago
Its time for Firefox to become phoenix again, and relaunch from the ashes of Mozilla
Gigachad 4y ago
solarkraft 4y ago
Just today I ranted about how much Firefox sucks nowadays. It would never actually load the page until it was restarted. And after doing so it took 2-4x as long as Chrome for the same page. Can Mozilla ever not?
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  Hmm, I was puzzled when Ubuntu doesnt report any FF update but FF did, and requires a restart. Why did they ditch the tried and tested method?
dbcooper 4y ago
There desperately needs to be a fork of Firefox that sheds the terrible organisation that is Mozilla. They have destroyed a great product and paid themselves handsomely to do so. Technically incompetent, but full of cunning.
- EMM_386 4y ago
  You seriously can't just "fork" a web browser these days and run with it. I mean, sure, technically you can, and there are. These are enormously complex pieces of software. Even Microsoft threw in the towel. You need a large corporation, with a large amount of money (in this case, most coming from Google) to sustain this sort of inititiative.
  - account42 4y ago
    Do we need a large corporation building our roads, pumping our water, etc? Sure, the work on these is sometimes done by corporations, but the they are (ideally) publicly owned and and any for-profit entity is (ideally) accountable to the public. I think we need the same for our core internet infrastructure, including browsers. The Mozilla foundation could have been that but they don't seem to be interested in funding and developing the browser in a publicly-accountable way. On the other hand, browser are only so complex because other giant corporations (or one in particular) push for them to be so complex. This should also be fixed via anti-trust enforcement. Then finally, I think you also overstate what it takes to maintain a browser. Especially when you keep the scope reasonable (focus on web pages, don't chase the never ending torrent of features added for web apps) then even creating one from scratch is doable for a relatively small team: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/ https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...
  - doublerabbit 4y ago
    > These are enormously complex pieces of software. Then the "internet" should be rewritten. If the browser is now on such a complexity level that making a new browser is "impossible" than it's safe to declare the internet as dead. How is the internet to evolve otherwise?
shaburn 4y ago
So the primary opensource path to the internet now has a moral and politic agenda?
- the_why_of_y 4y ago
  For values of "now" >= 2007, yes. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/
metadat 4y ago
It is disappointing every time the next swing in Mozilla's focus further reduces the amount of resources and mindshare allocated to providing safe, trustworthy and quality web browsers and related web tools. Mozilla has been hijacked for years now. Is there a way to recover the original spirit in which it was first founded?
- wolpoli 4y ago
  The Mozilla Foundation has no members. The directors elect the next set of directors, so the current group sets the future direction of the foundation. There isn't really a way to recover the original spirit of the foundation unless they have a change of mind. https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  It was over after the Brendan Eich debacle
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    I was supportive of getting rid of him at the time, but after seeing what that path lead to, I now think we need to just stick to business and keep people private lives out. I really don't agree with what he was doing but that shouldn't matter for the purposes of running a successful company and product. To have a functioning society we basically have to accept using products and projects from objectionable people because almost everyone is objectionable in the perspective of someone else.
  - metadat 4y ago
    I wasn't familiar with this bit of history. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 Unfortunate.. especially considering OkC is now wholly owned by Match. They stand only for making money, so the whole esposé effort effectively ended up as a no-oo.
    - 4y ago
godelski 4y ago
I always find the backlash against Mozilla odd here. Not to say that they don't have lots of problems, but the top comment here is about cronyism. But as an alternative browser are we better to support Chrome? A singular company that wants to control the way the internet works (which means chromium is playing with fire too). These threads just fill with Mozilla hate which in turn promotes people's usage of Chrome. It's okay to not like Mozilla, but we do need to recognize that innovation and what's best for us and the internet relies on there being adequate competition. So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner. A similar pattern seems to happen with other technologies. Signal is a great example. If we place apps/corporations as binary good or evil, the truth is that they are ALL evil. But that does not allow us to put pressure to push them to do good. It prevents us from promoting competition. And remember that a lot of people, even here on HN, don't understand the complexities and nuances that you're expressing your viewpoint from. So don't grab your pitch-fork, grab your pen. Do be critical, but not sensational. There is a difference between complaining and critiquing and social media tends to promote the former because people fighting encourages more engagement (not a metric HN heavily relies upon). It's up to us to break this cycle and choose how we speak and act online. It's clear at this point that those with the platforms aren't going to encourage this behavior, so we have to take the hard route. We can be critical without being sensational.
- jjcon 4y ago
  > So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner. I don't think hiding our criticism for "the greater good" is an appropriate path forward at all. Mozilla and Firefox have real problems and plugging our ears while they go up in flames isn't going to help. At least if we are vocal in our desires they have a chance to listen and right the ship (if there is any hope of that at this point). Personally I'm all for the standardization around the blink engine (which has been contributed to by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and tons others) at this point. I see it as similar to the internet backend standardizing around linux. It makes it way easier for developers to reliably test against an ever evolving and complex web.
  - 4y ago
UberFly 4y ago
Besides all the publicly stated reasons for doing this, is this just an excess money dump in order to retain non-profit status? Like the Gates and Zuckerberg Foundations, etc do for tax reasons?
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
It would be nice instead if Mozilla invested in its web browser for a change.
g8oz 4y ago
Similar to the Wikimedia Foundation, empire builders are running amok at Mozilla. Expanded mandates + expanded headcount = more clout.
didip 4y ago
What are you doing, Mozilla? I thought you are dying?
v3ss0n 4y ago
Dear Mozilla. Can you venture fund yourselves to fuel development of Firefox so it is less sucky? Or just fully fun development of rust and rust ecosystem and get out of browser business.
- aitchnyu 4y ago
  Is Mozilla advancing rust or other interesting tech now?
  - v3ss0n 4y ago
    Rust is born out of Firefox project. Firefox is now written in rust.
    - Rebelgecko 4y ago
      To be more specific, less than 10% of Firefox is written in rust, according to their lines of code stats. Looking at how Servo was put out to pasture, I dont know how much that will grow under Mozilla's stewardship?
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      That was the original idea, until they fired most of the developers that eventually found a job at Apple, Amazon, Oxide, Microsoft, Google, Ferrous Systems... They are now driving where Rust goes, and it isn't in Firefox which has stop rewriting stuff and now adopted WebAssembly sandboxing instead. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-webassembly/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-weba...
elkos 4y ago
Has Mozilla provided $35M for open-source foundations that work in initiatives compatible to the Mozilla Foundation?

143 points by laurex 4y ago

slim 4y ago

This is early stage funding. So basically $30 million are expected to be spent without any return or accountability (probably in middle east and africa, given the CEO profile)

preinheimer 4y ago

Mozilla: Please please please just concentrate on making an awesome browser people want to use. Then market it.

umeshunni 4y ago
They have failed at that, so now they're just figuring out ways to spend the free money they have.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  They didn't fail they were sabatoged by an incompetent CEO.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    which one?
    - account42 4y ago
      Perhaps the one that has multiplied her own salary while the browser gets less and less relevant. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
multiplegeorges 4y ago
So, where in your plan do they make money?
- claudiulodro 4y ago
  Same way anyone with a platform product makes money: premium tiers or paid extensions.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    And yet the market leader by a wide margin doesn't do any of that. They are bankrolled by a near monopoly on ads in various markets.
- nmilo 4y ago
  They're a non-profit.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    They still have bills to pay. Being a non-profit doesn't mean they don't need revenue.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      For starters they can fire the CEO that's seen their market share decrease by an order of magnitude while seeing her pay increase by an order of magnitude. After that go down the org chart and fire everyone not coding for the browser. Then you can live off donations until the end of time.
      - paulryanrogers 4y ago
        This strategy won't work if no one is organizing the work ahead. They can't be coding full time and administrating a project as complex as a modern browser. Especially not when competing against a complex beast like Chrome. (Though I do agree there may be too much money going into admin.)
cbtacy 4y ago
Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund') != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  So what? Corp is owned by Foundation and pays Foundation millions every year. They even pay for the Foundation's legal services. Mozilla Foundation is Mozilla Corporation's albatross.
- account42 4y ago
  That the foundation doesn't seem to have any interest in the browser seems to be one of the big issues of the Mozilla setup to me. Then again the Corp and Foundation share leadership.
jitix 4y ago
I had been a Firefox user since 2009 but over the last few years general sites like news and blogs slowly started breaking layouts and events, with JavaScript heavy sites sometimes crashing, esp on m1 air. I found toggling JavaScript and installing extensions is too tedious, esp on iOS devices so I had to move to safari as my primary with brave as a backup. I still have Firefox on all my devices and seriously hope they focus on engineering instead of playing ideology when their revenue stream is shaky at best. I’d honestly pay for tab continuity and other UX improvements as a feature if they improve their css and js engines. I know that chromium has now become what IE was at one point but if Firefox can’t render properly and provide consistent js performance I find it harder and harder to recommend to non technical users. This is from someone who evangelized FF in the 2010s and got many friends on board.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Javascript off by default makes websites better more often than it breaks websites. I find that whitelisting sites that need first party javascript doesn't take much time and covers 99% of cases; very rarely does a website actually require 3rd party javascript to be whitelisted.
godelski 4y ago
> concentrate on making an awesome browser Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does. I'll be honest, it is difficult to distinguish between browsers these days. But we have holy wars like vim vs emacs, when really the differences are quite small and rather dumb. The reason I use Firefox is literally three things: 1) I don't want Chrome to have a monopoly, 2) I get ad blocking on my phone, 3) if I'm going to install an ad blocker on my browser, I also want my browser to not be tracking me. I'll be honest, these are the only truly unique features (that I use). Otherwise it is near indistinguishable from Chrome. I'm happy with FF and while that's still true I don't mind Mozilla branching out. If I wasn't happy, then yeah, there's a priority issue. But honestly, what's so important that's missing? I don't get this holy war. It just seems like war for the sake of war, and no one benefits from that except those on top.
- jjcon 4y ago
  > Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does. Give me 4x less battery draw and I'll try Firefox again, I want to use and like Firefox but every time I give it a go power usage remains a massive issue. I get at least 4x less power draw in the same activities on chromium based browsers and safari.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  I spent my last evening, and this one, on working around the fact that firefox still doesn't support modules in WebWorkers. And yes, I have a valid reason to use webworker: I'm making writing an online compiler playground. More than half the time, the firefox debugger plainly crash when opening my app, and I have to open a new tab and retry. For some reason I can't put a breakpoint on the statement after an if on the same line. And these are my issue only on the last hour ! I'm using firefox everyday but yes, there is room for improvement. I expected them to add Time Travel Debugging: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-is-testing-time-travel-debugging/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-is-te... It was working on mac, then they fired a lot of staff, including the one who were developing it, and now they made their own company out of it: https://www.replay.io/ https://www.replay.io/ And to the one who says "you can contribute", yeah no, I tried, the official docs (back then) gave you the non-optimal ste^s (full clone of the repo (multiples hours due to upstream servers being slow), full local compilation). The worst of it is, the doc tell you to compile firefox, so multiples minutes of wait to test a change, a change made to the devtools, which is entierely written in JS. Oh and of course, you can't plug a debugger on the devtools, so you are stuck with console.logs. Edit: minutes after writing this comments, my just tab crashed: https://i.imgur.com/s1y1JsO.png https://i.imgur.com/s1y1JsO.png

buscoquadnary 4y ago

For the love of God can you please just focus on the browser. Right now Firefox is the one thing standing between all web protocols being decided by Google and an open net. You'll do a hell of a lot more good by ensuring Alphabet doesn't get to arbitrarily redefine protocols embed tracking in all the web and make the entire internet cater to the whims of the tech giants than any other bullshit social justice, environmental responsibility, or other virtue signaling or political bull hockey you people are currently engaged in.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
Or just spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy focused) group that does not have any connection to management and staff who get paid from deals with "tech" companies. Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers for people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox with "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low resource computer. Browsers not designed for advertising. Browsers designed for commerce. For banking. Browsers designed for fast information retrieval. "Secure" browsers with tiny attack surfaces. And so on. Specialised browsers. All that Mozilla code should be useful to more than just "tech" companies. For the avoidance of doubt, the idea of the web browser should not be solely a neverending popularity contest to crown one program that will obviate all others. There should also be (more) unpopular, boring browsers for doing routine, boring web-based things. The whole "web advocacy" schtick comes across as hollow when the company treats a web browser like some "holy" program that no one else can tinker with. That is exactly why we have the situation with Google. "Web protocols" are decided by whomever writes the browser, and according to Mozilla's view of the web, only a handful of people can write browsers. As it happens they work for advertising companies, companies that are becoming advertising companies or a company paid by advertising companies (Mozilla). The web is more than a f'ing advertising medium. It is a public resource. Mozilla just cannot get over itself and see how dysfunctional this has become. Mozilla thinks the web is dead without advertising. It is the other way around. The web is getting suffocated by the influence of browser-enabled advertising spend. And then we have the obvious conflict of interest. Mozilla execs get paid from deals with "tech" companies. We are then asked to believe Mozilla is going to make these companies more "responsible". Difficult to see how that is going to work when those companies are the ones paying Mozilla. Maybe if Mozilla threatened to "democratise" the web browser so it was not the exclusive domain of "tech" companies. A web with many clients. Those companies have come to rely on the power over web users they have through controlling "the" browser.

getcrunk 4y ago

I was going to say that I think this is a good idea. Yay! Potential new things that I'd like to use and help privacy and are decentralized should get funded! Then I looked at their three initial investments and realized that's not exactly what they are going for, at least not right now. But for the future of the web and firefox, Mozilla needs to be more than self sufficient and this is a good way to work towards that. I'm mixed as to the recent moves by them, but at least they aren't doing nothing.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

So is this the latest scheme to embezzle the money? I am ashamed I used to donate to you useless people. I am ashamed I ever promoted firefox. > To fuel an ecosystem of products and technology that respect users Bring back the XUL extensions!

prepend 4y ago
Something similar. I was a pretty regular doner to Mozilla for many years. I stopped because Mozilla spends money on lots of stuff I don’t care about and not on the browser. I hope this works out for them. But I’m not sure the elevator pitch for Mozilla as a charity. Why do people donate to them?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  To play devil's advocate: If Mozilla were purely focused on doing good for the internet, and had a funding problem that threatened their ability to do that, it's possible that carefully investing money in places that do some good and gives them returns is a good way to try and solve both problems at once. Not that I have any faith in them. But this could be a good thing.
  - prepend 4y ago
    It definitely could be a good thing. But it’s like if Doctors Without Borders/MSF started a soup kitchen in DC. Soup kitchens are good things, but if I donate to MSF I want my money to go towards a specific cause, not domestic soup kitchens. There are already charity index funds for people who want to donate.
- leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
  They gave grants to change master/slave terminology in documentation. After that, I can't donate and assume the won't wizz away my money on some stupid endeavor.
  - pyuser583 4y ago

fxtentacle 4y ago

Apparently, Firefox is not sexy enough anymore. So now the CEO needs another shiny new thing for his/her CV.

pipeline_peak 4y ago
It’s not and hasn’t been for a very long time. I don’t think Mozilla is gonna find their Satya Nadella to shake things up. They’re stuck in this “ethical” realm that failing businesses like to hide and play victim. To be fair, they were always ethical, back then there was an Angelina Jolie philanthropic vibe. These days it looks more like the owner of an old Subaru Outback smothered in PETA stickers

dbingham 4y ago

No. This is not how we build a better internet. You can try to say "These companies will be responsible, and about people." all you want. But if the fundamental structure is still a for-profit corporation with equity investors expecting a return then that will inevitably trump whatever public good these companies were supposed to have at heart. The only way we can actually achieve a better internet and a better tech sector is by changing the fundamental structure of the companies that build it. That doesn't have to mean they don't make money, but it does mean that making a profit for investors cannot be part of it. Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans. These might actually change the dynamics. But investor owned, for-profit companies funded by venture capital will not. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise.

boole1854 4y ago
> Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans. Serious question: is there any evidence to suggest that non-profits and employee-owned businesses are on average better at serving the public good? There are power asymmetries inside non-profits and employee-owned businesses, and these can lead to the 'power brokers' inside these organizations steering or commandeering the organizations for their own benefit.
- fabianhjr 4y ago
  Yes, GEO Coop keeps a fact-sheet: https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet With most citations being from: https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives For example: > Since most cooperatives are owned and controlled by local residents, it is more likely to promote community growth than an investor-oriented firm. Since cooperative business objectives are needs oriented, cooperatives are more likely to stay in the community (Zeuli, Freshwater et al 2003).
  - boole1854 4y ago
    Awesome, thanks

pjmlp 4y ago

3% and decreasing, already tier 2 in many companies browser compatibility matrixes. What about doing just the browser?

pessimizer 4y ago

I'm willing to be neutral about this as long as zero (0) executives from Mozilla take jobs at these "responsible tech companies." Otherwise, imo it's just people setting up their next gig with google's money laundered through Mozilla.

boole1854 4y ago

For perspective, Mozilla is sitting on $800+ million in net assets, most of which is cash and investments. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-2020-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...

snapcaster 4y ago

This makes me so angry to see. I feel like all the things I find important in technology are getting obliterated and the organizations I used to rely on turn out to be useless. If we ever lose Linus it's fucking over

Gigachad 4y ago
It seems like almost every non corporate org has been misdirected in to harmful social justice work. Wikipedia spending 98% of their budget on non Wikipedia related expenses for example. Mozilla working on censorship and deplatforming efforts, even the Tor project feels compromised. Pretty much the only org that still has its original goals in tact seems to be the EFF. I’d be happy to donate to Wikipedia again if they actually spent the money on their tech. I don’t care if they want to rewrite the whole site in Rust, it’s better than spending it on non tech rubbish.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  We're watching the birth and growth of a new religion. Similar patterns happened during the start of Christianity in Rome and Islam in North Africa. Institutions repurposed, language was repurposed and edited, exponential growth of ideologically possessed population, and eventually massive social upheaval. There's not a word for it yet - "wokism" maybe - but we're in for a doozey.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    I don't think that's really true. True believers are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs. Most woke crazies can't handle the slightest adversity or pushback, when management is no longer on their side it's over
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  Don't forget about the ACLU and their recent involvement in the Amber Heard debacle. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial/629808/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...

fabianhjr 4y ago

Invest in tech worker cooperatives instead of for-profit corporations; it seems like more of the same Silicon Valley VC money pumping otherwise. :|

camdenlock 4y ago

“Responsible” according to whom? As if everyone agrees. Hint: we all have our own opinions. You’re free to give away your money as you see fit, but man, such sanctimonious and collectivizing language is lame.

aliqot 4y ago

Do the moves that got you to the dance please.

Khaine 4y ago

Its time for Firefox to become phoenix again, and relaunch from the ashes of Mozilla

Gigachad 4y ago

solarkraft 4y ago

Just today I ranted about how much Firefox sucks nowadays. It would never actually load the page until it was restarted. And after doing so it took 2-4x as long as Chrome for the same page. Can Mozilla ever not?

aitchnyu 4y ago
Hmm, I was puzzled when Ubuntu doesnt report any FF update but FF did, and requires a restart. Why did they ditch the tried and tested method?

dbcooper 4y ago

There desperately needs to be a fork of Firefox that sheds the terrible organisation that is Mozilla. They have destroyed a great product and paid themselves handsomely to do so. Technically incompetent, but full of cunning.

EMM_386 4y ago
You seriously can't just "fork" a web browser these days and run with it. I mean, sure, technically you can, and there are. These are enormously complex pieces of software. Even Microsoft threw in the towel. You need a large corporation, with a large amount of money (in this case, most coming from Google) to sustain this sort of inititiative.
- account42 4y ago
  Do we need a large corporation building our roads, pumping our water, etc? Sure, the work on these is sometimes done by corporations, but the they are (ideally) publicly owned and and any for-profit entity is (ideally) accountable to the public. I think we need the same for our core internet infrastructure, including browsers. The Mozilla foundation could have been that but they don't seem to be interested in funding and developing the browser in a publicly-accountable way. On the other hand, browser are only so complex because other giant corporations (or one in particular) push for them to be so complex. This should also be fixed via anti-trust enforcement. Then finally, I think you also overstate what it takes to maintain a browser. Especially when you keep the scope reasonable (focus on web pages, don't chase the never ending torrent of features added for web apps) then even creating one from scratch is doable for a relatively small team: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform-browser-project/ https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  > These are enormously complex pieces of software. Then the "internet" should be rewritten. If the browser is now on such a complexity level that making a new browser is "impossible" than it's safe to declare the internet as dead. How is the internet to evolve otherwise?

shaburn 4y ago

So the primary opensource path to the internet now has a moral and politic agenda?

the_why_of_y 4y ago
For values of "now" >= 2007, yes. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

metadat 4y ago

It is disappointing every time the next swing in Mozilla's focus further reduces the amount of resources and mindshare allocated to providing safe, trustworthy and quality web browsers and related web tools. Mozilla has been hijacked for years now. Is there a way to recover the original spirit in which it was first founded?

wolpoli 4y ago
The Mozilla Foundation has no members. The directors elect the next set of directors, so the current group sets the future direction of the foundation. There isn't really a way to recover the original spirit of the foundation unless they have a change of mind. https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...
throwayyy479087 4y ago
It was over after the Brendan Eich debacle
- Gigachad 4y ago
  I was supportive of getting rid of him at the time, but after seeing what that path lead to, I now think we need to just stick to business and keep people private lives out. I really don't agree with what he was doing but that shouldn't matter for the purposes of running a successful company and product. To have a functioning society we basically have to accept using products and projects from objectionable people because almost everyone is objectionable in the perspective of someone else.
- metadat 4y ago
  I wasn't familiar with this bit of history. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536 Unfortunate.. especially considering OkC is now wholly owned by Match. They stand only for making money, so the whole esposé effort effectively ended up as a no-oo.
  - 4y ago

godelski 4y ago

I always find the backlash against Mozilla odd here. Not to say that they don't have lots of problems, but the top comment here is about cronyism. But as an alternative browser are we better to support Chrome? A singular company that wants to control the way the internet works (which means chromium is playing with fire too). These threads just fill with Mozilla hate which in turn promotes people's usage of Chrome. It's okay to not like Mozilla, but we do need to recognize that innovation and what's best for us and the internet relies on there being adequate competition. So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner. A similar pattern seems to happen with other technologies. Signal is a great example. If we place apps/corporations as binary good or evil, the truth is that they are ALL evil. But that does not allow us to put pressure to push them to do good. It prevents us from promoting competition. And remember that a lot of people, even here on HN, don't understand the complexities and nuances that you're expressing your viewpoint from. So don't grab your pitch-fork, grab your pen. Do be critical, but not sensational. There is a difference between complaining and critiquing and social media tends to promote the former because people fighting encourages more engagement (not a metric HN heavily relies upon). It's up to us to break this cycle and choose how we speak and act online. It's clear at this point that those with the platforms aren't going to encourage this behavior, so we have to take the hard route. We can be critical without being sensational.

jjcon 4y ago
> So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner. I don't think hiding our criticism for "the greater good" is an appropriate path forward at all. Mozilla and Firefox have real problems and plugging our ears while they go up in flames isn't going to help. At least if we are vocal in our desires they have a chance to listen and right the ship (if there is any hope of that at this point). Personally I'm all for the standardization around the blink engine (which has been contributed to by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and tons others) at this point. I see it as similar to the internet backend standardizing around linux. It makes it way easier for developers to reliably test against an ever evolving and complex web.
- 4y ago

UberFly 4y ago

Besides all the publicly stated reasons for doing this, is this just an excess money dump in order to retain non-profit status? Like the Gates and Zuckerberg Foundations, etc do for tax reasons?

alfiedotwtf 4y ago

It would be nice instead if Mozilla invested in its web browser for a change.

g8oz 4y ago

Similar to the Wikimedia Foundation, empire builders are running amok at Mozilla. Expanded mandates + expanded headcount = more clout.

didip 4y ago

What are you doing, Mozilla? I thought you are dying?

v3ss0n 4y ago

Dear Mozilla. Can you venture fund yourselves to fuel development of Firefox so it is less sucky? Or just fully fun development of rust and rust ecosystem and get out of browser business.

aitchnyu 4y ago
Is Mozilla advancing rust or other interesting tech now?
- v3ss0n 4y ago
  Rust is born out of Firefox project. Firefox is now written in rust.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    To be more specific, less than 10% of Firefox is written in rust, according to their lines of code stats. Looking at how Servo was put out to pasture, I dont know how much that will grow under Mozilla's stewardship?
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    That was the original idea, until they fired most of the developers that eventually found a job at Apple, Amazon, Oxide, Microsoft, Google, Ferrous Systems... They are now driving where Rust goes, and it isn't in Firefox which has stop rewriting stuff and now adopted WebAssembly sandboxing instead. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-webassembly/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-weba...

elkos 4y ago

Has Mozilla provided $35M for open-source foundations that work in initiatives compatible to the Mozilla Foundation?