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- They lost focus with just about every other project other than Firefox & Thunderbird which were the actual products I donated money for - They are (recently)

- They lost focus with just about every other project other than Firefox & Thunderbird which were the actual products I donated money for - They are (recently) very top heavy for a non-profit foundation and are spending non-negligible amounts of money on C-level and execs - Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet - (Personally) their recent trends of UX with 'dummyfication' and mimicking chrome is a terrible loss

asu_thomas 3y ago
Thanks for explaining. I can't help but ask why you believe these things have happened? What went wrong and what is the alternative to Firefox? I am approximately as cynical as they come, and I'm not sure how Firefox could even exist if Google weren't keeping Mozilla alive (on life support), so I am intrigued by your criticism. I'd like to understand your viewpoint and what ideology is behind it, if any. In your view, what should be done?
- benterix 3y ago
  Yeah, I'm asking myself the same questions, too. It's obvious they have been trying many options. Some of them worked, some didn't. I criticized some of them in the past but objectively, if I was in their position, I might have made worse mistakes.
  - godelski 3y ago
    That's actually pretty big to say. All I have to say is really just make sure you make criticisms rather than complaints. They need to be constructive (__actionable__) and less emotional. Otherwise the truth is that you may be just throwing fuel onto the fire rather than water. It's easy to get these two confused.
maleldil 3y ago
> They lost focus with just about every other project other than Firefox & Thunderbird which were the actual products I donated money for > Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet How would they get more sources of funding if not exploring other projects? Firefox would never pay for itself. I totally agree with the exec thing, however.
- input_sh 3y ago
  You see, Mozilla is stuck in this limbo where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources (Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Firefox Private Network, MDN Plus) because they're not focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird. Sometimes literally in the same comment, as the one above. In other words, HN crowd will shit on them regardless of what they do.
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    > where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources What aggravates me is nobody is asking why do you need so much cash? - Why has it become so big that it needs to spend 81M on Management payroll per year? [0] - Why has it grown so big that it needs to spend 21M in external consultants per year? [0] - Why do you need 1000+ staff to roll out an open source browser engine / browser and an email client? Mozilla had almost 8M in no strings attached donations in 2021. If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things. This is even without taking into account Investment returns. The cow grew too fat and too close to SF's money vortex. [0] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
    - maleldil 3y ago
      I think this is valid criticism, but it's more nuanced than the usual "mozilla bad because google money" and "mozilla bad because not firefox". Thank you for providing data. Is there a more sustainable path where they don't rely on Google so much? Maybe? Developing a browser doesn't seem to be cheap. Do we know how many resources are used in Firefox versus the rest? I'd like to see a strong argument that Mozilla could be fully/more independent while still developing Firefox. The thing is, even if they're badly managed today, they're still the best agent fighting for the open web. Apple helps, but I don't think they care much about it and would happily change if it were better for their bottom line.
blackoil 3y ago
> money with strings attached from Alphabet What are those strings, apart from being default search engine?
godelski 3y ago
Have you considered that they are doing some of these things to survive? That Chrome nearly killed them? Literally the strings attached from Alphabet are that they give you Google as a default search engine. Default, as in... you can change it... trivially. This isn't like they are installing a keylogger into your browser and using it to learn about your behaviors. It isn't like they are making their browser the default on your phones and devices. It isn't like they are focused on selling ads and generating long URLs that have tracking data attached to them. Sorry, I got a little side tracked, but I guess that makes two of us.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  What made Firefox originally successful (and gave it significant marketshare against a preinstalled incumbent) was the features. They simply made a better browser than the status-quo at the time. I don't understand nor approve their current strategy of trying to make a Chrome clone - even if they actually make a perfect copy, why would people use it instead of Chrome itself? The only way for Firefox to survive and thrive is to differentiate itself from the incumbents and offer features that those incumbents can't offer due to conflicts of interest such as built-in ad blocking. Make a better browser and people will come. At the moment there is no reason for any non-technical user to use it over Chrome, since in its default configuration it's no better (and being non-technical means they are not aware of add-ons/etc). Give non-technical users an actual reason to pick it over Chrome. Worse, their current strategy is actually alienating their current (mostly-technical) users, effectively working against their already-tiny marketshare.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >Make a better browser and people will come. With magic money? Do you think mozilla employees and firefox employees should starve? Should they be making firefox entirely as charity? The other browsers are made by a GigaCorp that extracts a tax from pretty much everything on the internet, especially if you want to do any advertising, and another Megacorp that has billions upon billions of dollars in cash just waiting for a need and also extracts 30% on ANY financial transaction using their hardware. Imagine people pushing stupid hard for everyone to use Meta's MetaVerse instead of VRChat because VRChat once had an advertising ID in their code or something. Like sure, that's not awesome, but like, what the fuck is the alternative?
gmerc 3y ago
So basically you want them to fund the top end engineers working on it … how?
- iakov 3y ago
  Do you think that the funds go to the top end engineers? I'd say that most of it goes to the bloated management structure and C-level employees.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    The top end engineers are currently paid competitively. That’s a fact.

asu_thomas 3y ago

Thanks for explaining. I can't help but ask why you believe these things have happened? What went wrong and what is the alternative to Firefox? I am approximately as cynical as they come, and I'm not sure how Firefox could even exist if Google weren't keeping Mozilla alive (on life support), so I am intrigued by your criticism. I'd like to understand your viewpoint and what ideology is behind it, if any. In your view, what should be done?

benterix 3y ago
Yeah, I'm asking myself the same questions, too. It's obvious they have been trying many options. Some of them worked, some didn't. I criticized some of them in the past but objectively, if I was in their position, I might have made worse mistakes.
- godelski 3y ago
  That's actually pretty big to say. All I have to say is really just make sure you make criticisms rather than complaints. They need to be constructive (__actionable__) and less emotional. Otherwise the truth is that you may be just throwing fuel onto the fire rather than water. It's easy to get these two confused.

maleldil 3y ago

> They lost focus with just about every other project other than Firefox & Thunderbird which were the actual products I donated money for > Ideologically I disagree with them taking money with strings attached from Alphabet How would they get more sources of funding if not exploring other projects? Firefox would never pay for itself. I totally agree with the exec thing, however.

input_sh 3y ago
You see, Mozilla is stuck in this limbo where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources (Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Firefox Private Network, MDN Plus) because they're not focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird. Sometimes literally in the same comment, as the one above. In other words, HN crowd will shit on them regardless of what they do.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  > where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources What aggravates me is nobody is asking why do you need so much cash? - Why has it become so big that it needs to spend 81M on Management payroll per year? [0] - Why has it grown so big that it needs to spend 21M in external consultants per year? [0] - Why do you need 1000+ staff to roll out an open source browser engine / browser and an email client? Mozilla had almost 8M in no strings attached donations in 2021. If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things. This is even without taking into account Investment returns. The cow grew too fat and too close to SF's money vortex. [0] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-2021-fs-final-1010.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-202...
  - maleldil 3y ago
    I think this is valid criticism, but it's more nuanced than the usual "mozilla bad because google money" and "mozilla bad because not firefox". Thank you for providing data. Is there a more sustainable path where they don't rely on Google so much? Maybe? Developing a browser doesn't seem to be cheap. Do we know how many resources are used in Firefox versus the rest? I'd like to see a strong argument that Mozilla could be fully/more independent while still developing Firefox. The thing is, even if they're badly managed today, they're still the best agent fighting for the open web. Apple helps, but I don't think they care much about it and would happily change if it were better for their bottom line.

blackoil 3y ago

> money with strings attached from Alphabet What are those strings, apart from being default search engine?

godelski 3y ago

Have you considered that they are doing some of these things to survive? That Chrome nearly killed them? Literally the strings attached from Alphabet are that they give you Google as a default search engine. Default, as in... you can change it... trivially. This isn't like they are installing a keylogger into your browser and using it to learn about your behaviors. It isn't like they are making their browser the default on your phones and devices. It isn't like they are focused on selling ads and generating long URLs that have tracking data attached to them. Sorry, I got a little side tracked, but I guess that makes two of us.

Nextgrid 3y ago
What made Firefox originally successful (and gave it significant marketshare against a preinstalled incumbent) was the features. They simply made a better browser than the status-quo at the time. I don't understand nor approve their current strategy of trying to make a Chrome clone - even if they actually make a perfect copy, why would people use it instead of Chrome itself? The only way for Firefox to survive and thrive is to differentiate itself from the incumbents and offer features that those incumbents can't offer due to conflicts of interest such as built-in ad blocking. Make a better browser and people will come. At the moment there is no reason for any non-technical user to use it over Chrome, since in its default configuration it's no better (and being non-technical means they are not aware of add-ons/etc). Give non-technical users an actual reason to pick it over Chrome. Worse, their current strategy is actually alienating their current (mostly-technical) users, effectively working against their already-tiny marketshare.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >Make a better browser and people will come. With magic money? Do you think mozilla employees and firefox employees should starve? Should they be making firefox entirely as charity? The other browsers are made by a GigaCorp that extracts a tax from pretty much everything on the internet, especially if you want to do any advertising, and another Megacorp that has billions upon billions of dollars in cash just waiting for a need and also extracts 30% on ANY financial transaction using their hardware. Imagine people pushing stupid hard for everyone to use Meta's MetaVerse instead of VRChat because VRChat once had an advertising ID in their code or something. Like sure, that's not awesome, but like, what the fuck is the alternative?

gmerc 3y ago

So basically you want them to fund the top end engineers working on it … how?

iakov 3y ago
Do you think that the funds go to the top end engineers? I'd say that most of it goes to the bloated management structure and C-level employees.
- gmerc 3y ago
  The top end engineers are currently paid competitively. That’s a fact.