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I wish Mozilla would explore paying its CEO less and putting Rust, Servo, and embedding Firefox through the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) at the forefront of

I wish Mozilla would explore paying its CEO less and putting Rust, Servo, and embedding Firefox through the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) at the forefront of their projects. We can do social experiments when your org and its projects aren't fading into niche communities and disuse. Wasteful organization with terrible leadership.

eitland 4y ago
As far as I can see it the single most important thing about Mozilla today is that they keep alive one of two mainstream renderers that aren't owned by Google. I think everyone who has followed the industry for long enough knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. For now at least there exist two other teams outside of Google that knows how to create browsers and two working codebases so one doesn't have to start from scratch.
- qball 4y ago
  >knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. It doesn't even need to be the only option; Manifest V3 (making adblockers impossible) already exists.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    Are you familiar with declarativeNetRequest? It's already in use by tools like AdGuard and uBlock Origin Lite. I've tested both and they work very well. I think it's very clear that adblockers are still possible in MV3, despite concerns. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-mv3-exp/apjcbfpjihpedihablmalmbbhjpklbdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      DNR doesn't cover all use cases that uBO tries to address, AFAIK, so some tracking will still be possible. Regardless, the point about a Google-only web resulting in restrictions stands even without that: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
      - toastal 4y ago
        I'm also happy that the project focuses on Fx’s performance first and foremost
      - SquareWheel 4y ago
        I read through the page and these features seem... not great? Some of them might be considered anti-features. The Browser Launch feature says that Firefox always waits for extensions to load network requests whereas Chrome gives an option to wait via a setting. So in this case, you're trading performance (parallelizing the work) for privacy (may not catch a tracking request). It's a tradeoff I'm sure many are willing to make, but I like that Chrome offers the setting. I tend to err towards performance, myself. WebAssembly says it isn't used - not because it isn't available - but because it would add an extra permission to the manifest. That is to say, Chrome informs you of this when installing extensions and Firefox doesn't. That's a minor implementation detail at best, and I think a case can be made that providing more granular scopes is a positive thing. Then pre-fetching. Are they really disabling a major performance feature by default? I've used pre-fetching to good effect when the browser's resource scanner ran at the wrong times. The option should exist but this is a terrible default. The other features are more reasonable. HTML filtering could be useful for adversarial sites like Twitch.tv that actively fight adblockers. Storage Compression seems like a useful optimization if you have a lot of extensions installed that populate IndexedDB. I'm assuming it's caching those values rather than doing a "first time setup" every time a new private window is launched. I'll readily admit there may be more intent behind these features than is expressed in these blurbs, but on initial glance I wouldn't say anything here is critical. The pre-fetching one in particular seems like a negative.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    MV3 doesn’t matter, though. It will only limit people who use the adtech browser. FF (and possibly the adtech downstream users, like edge or brave) will have their own version that extends the spec (thus not limiting (it’s not impossible) adblockers), while mostly keeping compatibility.
  - ivolimmen 4y ago
    Manifest V3 will be a good step forward for Mozilla and FireFox as I anticipate loads of people to abandon ship...
ohgodplsno 4y ago
Servo had always been an experimental renderer and most of its successful parts have already been merged in Firefox. It's been years, can you stop beating this merged horse? Embedding Firefox doesn't increase marketshare and protects more people from tracking. Nobody gives a shit that your Electron app runs with Firefox and not Chromium. Now, I do agree that the Mozilla CEO pay is way too high, but holy fuck find something new and useful to complain about.
- GeckoEidechse 4y ago
  In regards to Mozilla creating an Electron alternative, they already tried that. It was called Proton and it never caught on but was solely bleeding money so they had to shut it down again.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    Proton was never mature or stable so saying it "never caught on" is a bit of a joke. It was never released. It also wasn't equivalent to Electron for a bunch of big architectural reasons related to required changes to Gecko that the team never prioritises because Proton wasn't a priority project. > was solely bleeding money Yes. Because unreleased in-progress projects should be profitable before they're released in order to be viable. How much money was it bleeding? Do you have eyes on these accounts?
- modo_mario 4y ago
  >Servo had always been an experimental renderer and most of its successful parts have already been merged in Firefox. Wasn't it supposed to be a full on replacement? I get that they were still a long way off but it seemed like they got really far and what was there was super promising.
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    Nope. Servo was always a research project, meant to explore what was possible. Making a new browser engine from scratch is a stupidly long undertaking, and unless you're the SerenityOS guy that can afford to not have half the sites not working because you'll be working on it for the rest of your life, the only people that believed it would be a full on replacement and pushed that theory were reddit zealots. Servo gave the following to Firefox: * Proof that Rust can both be used to make browser engine components and easily integrate, with really good performance. Servo served as a way also to test out Rust changes and pain points that needed to be addressed. * Stylo, a CSS rules engine. * Neqo, an HTTP/3 library * WebRender, the multithreaded rendering architecture that everyone was really thinking of when mentioning Servo Which is really pretty much all of Servo. Html5ever is fun but unneeded.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
"Our intention is to contribute to the healthy and sustainable growth of a federated social space that doesn't just operate but thrives on its own terms, independent of profit- and control-motivated tech firms." And where will Mozilla get the funds to pay for this project. From "tech" company (Google) ad services revenue of course. Mozilla will feed its users' web searches to Google, take millions of dollars in return, and then use it to free us from "tech" company tyranny. Hold on. What. Under the current arrangement, Mozilla cannot survive without "tech" companies. They have no other viable source of funding. Before Google, it was Yahoo. This headline sounds like it came from The Onion. Something like "Phillip Morris to explore healthy tobacco alternative". Mozilla announcements seem to presume that their audience are complete morons who will believe anything.
closewith 4y ago
I wish Mozilla would offer a way to make ring-fenced donations. I love and use Firefox daily, and would happily pay a monthly "support" subscription or make monthly donations to the Firefox project, if I could be assured the funds would be spent on Firefox.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Yes...but ~every politician and sleazy executive knows this trick: function Accept_Designated_Firefox_Donation( $Amount ) { $Firefox_Designated_Budget_Allocation += $Amount; $Firefox_General_Budget_Allocation -= $Amount; $Crap_You_Hate_General_Budget_Allocation += $Amount; }

eitland 4y ago

As far as I can see it the single most important thing about Mozilla today is that they keep alive one of two mainstream renderers that aren't owned by Google. I think everyone who has followed the industry for long enough knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. For now at least there exist two other teams outside of Google that knows how to create browsers and two working codebases so one doesn't have to start from scratch.

qball 4y ago
>knows that if Chromium is the only option then Google will abuse it some way or another. It doesn't even need to be the only option; Manifest V3 (making adblockers impossible) already exists.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  Are you familiar with declarativeNetRequest? It's already in use by tools like AdGuard and uBlock Origin Lite. I've tested both and they work very well. I think it's very clear that adblockers are still possible in MV3, despite concerns. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-mv3-exp/apjcbfpjihpedihablmalmbbhjpklbdf https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adguard-adblocker-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite/ddkjiahejlhfcafbddmgiahcphecmpfh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-lite...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    DNR doesn't cover all use cases that uBO tries to address, AFAIK, so some tracking will still be possible. Regardless, the point about a Google-only web resulting in restrictions stands even without that: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
    - toastal 4y ago
      I'm also happy that the project focuses on Fx’s performance first and foremost
    - SquareWheel 4y ago
      I read through the page and these features seem... not great? Some of them might be considered anti-features. The Browser Launch feature says that Firefox always waits for extensions to load network requests whereas Chrome gives an option to wait via a setting. So in this case, you're trading performance (parallelizing the work) for privacy (may not catch a tracking request). It's a tradeoff I'm sure many are willing to make, but I like that Chrome offers the setting. I tend to err towards performance, myself. WebAssembly says it isn't used - not because it isn't available - but because it would add an extra permission to the manifest. That is to say, Chrome informs you of this when installing extensions and Firefox doesn't. That's a minor implementation detail at best, and I think a case can be made that providing more granular scopes is a positive thing. Then pre-fetching. Are they really disabling a major performance feature by default? I've used pre-fetching to good effect when the browser's resource scanner ran at the wrong times. The option should exist but this is a terrible default. The other features are more reasonable. HTML filtering could be useful for adversarial sites like Twitch.tv that actively fight adblockers. Storage Compression seems like a useful optimization if you have a lot of extensions installed that populate IndexedDB. I'm assuming it's caching those values rather than doing a "first time setup" every time a new private window is launched. I'll readily admit there may be more intent behind these features than is expressed in these blurbs, but on initial glance I wouldn't say anything here is critical. The pre-fetching one in particular seems like a negative.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  MV3 doesn’t matter, though. It will only limit people who use the adtech browser. FF (and possibly the adtech downstream users, like edge or brave) will have their own version that extends the spec (thus not limiting (it’s not impossible) adblockers), while mostly keeping compatibility.
- ivolimmen 4y ago
  Manifest V3 will be a good step forward for Mozilla and FireFox as I anticipate loads of people to abandon ship...

ohgodplsno 4y ago

Servo had always been an experimental renderer and most of its successful parts have already been merged in Firefox. It's been years, can you stop beating this merged horse? Embedding Firefox doesn't increase marketshare and protects more people from tracking. Nobody gives a shit that your Electron app runs with Firefox and not Chromium. Now, I do agree that the Mozilla CEO pay is way too high, but holy fuck find something new and useful to complain about.

GeckoEidechse 4y ago
In regards to Mozilla creating an Electron alternative, they already tried that. It was called Proton and it never caught on but was solely bleeding money so they had to shut it down again.
- lucideer 4y ago
  Proton was never mature or stable so saying it "never caught on" is a bit of a joke. It was never released. It also wasn't equivalent to Electron for a bunch of big architectural reasons related to required changes to Gecko that the team never prioritises because Proton wasn't a priority project. > was solely bleeding money Yes. Because unreleased in-progress projects should be profitable before they're released in order to be viable. How much money was it bleeding? Do you have eyes on these accounts?
modo_mario 4y ago
>Servo had always been an experimental renderer and most of its successful parts have already been merged in Firefox. Wasn't it supposed to be a full on replacement? I get that they were still a long way off but it seemed like they got really far and what was there was super promising.
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  Nope. Servo was always a research project, meant to explore what was possible. Making a new browser engine from scratch is a stupidly long undertaking, and unless you're the SerenityOS guy that can afford to not have half the sites not working because you'll be working on it for the rest of your life, the only people that believed it would be a full on replacement and pushed that theory were reddit zealots. Servo gave the following to Firefox: * Proof that Rust can both be used to make browser engine components and easily integrate, with really good performance. Servo served as a way also to test out Rust changes and pain points that needed to be addressed. * Stylo, a CSS rules engine. * Neqo, an HTTP/3 library * WebRender, the multithreaded rendering architecture that everyone was really thinking of when mentioning Servo Which is really pretty much all of Servo. Html5ever is fun but unneeded.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

"Our intention is to contribute to the healthy and sustainable growth of a federated social space that doesn't just operate but thrives on its own terms, independent of profit- and control-motivated tech firms." And where will Mozilla get the funds to pay for this project. From "tech" company (Google) ad services revenue of course. Mozilla will feed its users' web searches to Google, take millions of dollars in return, and then use it to free us from "tech" company tyranny. Hold on. What. Under the current arrangement, Mozilla cannot survive without "tech" companies. They have no other viable source of funding. Before Google, it was Yahoo. This headline sounds like it came from The Onion. Something like "Phillip Morris to explore healthy tobacco alternative". Mozilla announcements seem to presume that their audience are complete morons who will believe anything.

closewith 4y ago

I wish Mozilla would offer a way to make ring-fenced donations. I love and use Firefox daily, and would happily pay a monthly "support" subscription or make monthly donations to the Firefox project, if I could be assured the funds would be spent on Firefox.

bell-cot 4y ago
Yes...but ~every politician and sleazy executive knows this trick: function Accept_Designated_Firefox_Donation( $Amount ) { $Firefox_Designated_Budget_Allocation += $Amount; $Firefox_General_Budget_Allocation -= $Amount; $Crap_You_Hate_General_Budget_Allocation += $Amount; }