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Mozilla has been going down a bizarre path for a while. If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated, then we'd have the

by Laaas 4y ago

Mozilla has been going down a bizarre path for a while. If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated, then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox. (What _really_ showed me Mozilla is going crazy is when they fired sunfishcode (IIRC) and the Servo team! Both were essential to their success. It makes little sense.)

fnimick 4y ago
[flagged]
jraph 4y ago
> If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out. > First, though, there's a matter that we should all be clear about: Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-proposition-8/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce... I guess we could point out that the Mozilla Board should have seen this coming and not encouraged him to be the CEO, but they could also have been criticized for this. > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately. The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1] [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
- tripleo1 4y ago
  > > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox > I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately. > The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1] And LibreWolf is pretty much Firefox with uBlock origin. But Brave is popular and Vivaldi is popular (among some). A successful mega project is supposed to have (gently) knockoffs.
- BrendanEich 4y ago
  You don't know what you're talking about.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- moralestapia 4y ago
  >Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out. Sure, but for those that don't know the story, Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw). Brendan's resignation was his way of saying "f*ck this crap, I have better stuff to do", and he showed. >they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place. LOL, are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla? HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    I don't think anyone questioned the legality, but you seem to be conflating that with morality. evil (to use your term) is a moral judgement, not a legal one.
    - moralestapia 4y ago
      What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue. Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        > What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue. > Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was. That's a philosophical point, a student's thought experiment taking the (positivist?) requirement for objectivity to a logical extreme - and it's a very incomplete experiment that takes only the first step. Reality doesn't work that way: Most information and decisions in life are subjective and we have many tools for doing it that way. Subjectivity doesn't make something arbitrary or meaningless or infinitely relative. Almost everything important is subjective, including morality.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fhd2 4y ago
I agree, Mozilla has been on a very weird path since then. Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the shady things I know about. I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this pretty publicly.
- BrendanEich 4y ago
  It seems what you "know about" "injecting ads" comes from malicious claims that you repeat without checking them out carefully. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138152. Why spout off on browsers as a business without doing your own research? I know, it's HN, but it's also 2023. Mozilla seems to be getting more money from Google now (https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202..., see also Chair compensation at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...), even though Firefox share per statcounter.com is flat or down (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-202201-202302 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2022...). It's possible to make money as an independent browser if you put the user first and deal them in on >= what you make from the gross. That's what Brave does, and we're building out search ads now to do the same. These revshare and payment rails use crypto, no "dabbling".
- seanw444 4y ago
  Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was that enough companies and individuals would donate to support its development as a common interest, because obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly. Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.

by Laaas 4y ago

fnimick 4y ago

[flagged]

jraph 4y ago

> If only Brendan Eich could have stayed at Mozilla instead of getting excommunicated Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out. > First, though, there's a matter that we should all be clear about: Brendan Eich was not fired. After his appointment, there was backlash from the Mozilla Community. He came under pressure to resign and he did. The Mozilla Board that appointed him knew about his donation; they did not "remove him because of his views." If that alone was the issue, they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-proposition-8/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ce... I guess we could point out that the Mozilla Board should have seen this coming and not encouraged him to be the CEO, but they could also have been criticized for this. > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately. The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1] [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-best-on-Firefox https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

tripleo1 4y ago
> > then we'd have the best of Brave and Firefox > I don't think so. Mozilla is tied to its agreement with Google and I believe they are limited in what they can do privacy wise. Unfortunately. > The Brave browser is mostly a fancy Chromium and you can achieve similar results by taking an ungoogled chromium and adding uBlock Origin to it. But you are better off installing uBlock Origin on Firefox [1] And LibreWolf is pretty much Firefox with uBlock origin. But Brave is popular and Vivaldi is popular (among some). A successful mega project is supposed to have (gently) knockoffs.
BrendanEich 4y ago
You don't know what you're talking about.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
moralestapia 4y ago
>Mozilla actually encouraged him to stay by giving him the role of CEO. He decided to step out. Sure, but for those that don't know the story, Brendan was being portrayed as being evil incarnate because of the donations (which were a perfectly legal thing to do, btw). Brendan's resignation was his way of saying "f*ck this crap, I have better stuff to do", and he showed. >they simply wouldn't have given him the job in the first place. LOL, are you aware that Brendan co-founded Mozilla? HE was the one that gave them THEIR jobs.
- asddubs 4y ago
  I don't think anyone questioned the legality, but you seem to be conflating that with morality. evil (to use your term) is a moral judgement, not a legal one.
  - moralestapia 4y ago
    What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue. Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > What he did wasn't immoral. Whether you agree with that or not that's a different topic, and if you disagree with that let me remind you that people have different points of view and that shouldn't be an issue. > Since morality is subjective in the end, the only discussion worth having is whether or not what he did was legal, which it was. That's a philosophical point, a student's thought experiment taking the (positivist?) requirement for objectivity to a logical extreme - and it's a very incomplete experiment that takes only the first step. Reality doesn't work that way: Most information and decisions in life are subjective and we have many tools for doing it that way. Subjectivity doesn't make something arbitrary or meaningless or infinitely relative. Almost everything important is subjective, including morality.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fhd2 4y ago

I agree, Mozilla has been on a very weird path since then. Not sure Eich would have made a positive difference though. Brave's main claim to fame is that they took Chromium and added an ad blocker. At the same time, they dabble(d?) in injecting ads and crypto, to just name the shady things I know about. I suppose there just isn't much money in building a non-compromising browser, and Mozilla is struggling with this pretty publicly.

BrendanEich 4y ago
It seems what you "know about" "injecting ads" comes from malicious claims that you repeat without checking them out carefully. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26138152. Why spout off on browsers as a business without doing your own research? I know, it's HN, but it's also 2023. Mozilla seems to be getting more money from Google now (https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202..., see also Chair compensation at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...), even though Firefox share per statcounter.com is flat or down (https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-202201-202302 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2022...). It's possible to make money as an independent browser if you put the user first and deal them in on >= what you make from the gross. That's what Brave does, and we're building out search ads now to do the same. These revshare and payment rails use crypto, no "dabbling".
seanw444 4y ago
Well the whole point was that there wasn't supposed to be any money in building it. That's why Mozilla is a nonprofit (in theory at least). Originally the idea was that enough companies and individuals would donate to support its development as a common interest, because obviously people want a good private browser, right? Now the status quo has shifted to a big corporation making money off of peoples' browsing habits via closed-source components, and then paying the nonprofit to have a consistently worse browser to prevent a full monopoly. Mozilla now is best described as a vassal.