9 ms·

State of Mozilla

58 points by socratics 3y ago

tokai 3y ago
Would love to see a proper Firefox fork without the drama of Pale Moon. Something supported by a small focused org. There should be donations enough out there, if it could keep out of opinionated technical and social decisions.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
(Writing from FF) $7bn. 2.66% market share. "Expanding our Board to create the internet we want" Sure, as long as the music is playing. [Edit] Looks like the music will stop earlier than suspected, https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2023/11/firefox-brink/ https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2023/11/firefox-brink/
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  Also laying off rank-and-file worker to save costs.
  - dotancohen 3y ago
    Also, purge technical CEO for political reasons then replace him with MBA trophy politically correct CEO that takes home four times the pay while laying off engineers.
    - 127361 3y ago
      That was the turning point for Mozilla, after that it started to become involved in activism, including social justice and identity politics.
    - tristan957 3y ago
      Do people forget Mitchell Baker has been a Mozilla employee for decades?
      - KingOfCoders 3y ago
        I do personally think tech companies [0] are better of if the CEO is a visionary techie instead of a lawyer. [0] Mozilla and others might not think they are a tech company but a activist plattform, so this is irrelevant to them from their perspective
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        When would you say were Mozilla's best years?
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        From the techie perspective, Mozilla didn't have "best years" I think. As a Mosaic/Netscape/FF user, I liked Mozilla for two things, adhering to standards compared to IE and being open source (the second being the reason I still use it today, not because of technology (I don't like tab management with 50+ tabs open e.G, never liked the environment implementation)). I don't consider Firefox a technological marvel, but IE looked very bad. Firefox for me never innovated enough or seemed to have the user in mind. From my perspective the USP was always "We're the open source one" which wasn't enough when Chrome arrived. Not an Opera user, but from the sidelines it always looked like Opera was innovating more.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Mozilla's CEOs from 2008 to 2013 had technical backgrounds. And Bill Gates had vision and technical experience of course. So it seems hard to say technical CEOs are better consistently. Even if better means more innovative.
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        "And Bill Gates had vision and technical experience of course." I think the developer, developer, developer days of M$ (ha, anyone?) were quite good. I did like MS Basic on CP/M (before using Turbo Pascal, first time I felt like a professional!). I started my Amiga development with AmigaBasic drawing lines and circles (before switching to 68k assembler).
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      The Mozilla board appointed Eich CEO. He resigned after proving unable to manage predictable grass roots opposition. And he refused Mozilla's offer to remain in another role. Chris Beard didn't make 4x what Eich did. Mitchell Baker didn't replace Eich and doesn't have an MBA. What would make either of them a trophy CEO?
      - BrendanEich 3y ago
        As far as I know, you weren't privy to confidential legal docs to which only I among the two of us could possibly have been a party, so you can stop making stuff up and cease the mindless parroting of incomplete and one-sided statements from 2014 Mozilla foundation crisis PR staff who never worked for me. The record of Mozilla mis-management and CEO over-compensation after I left, about which I'm free to comment, is plain for all to see.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        You know perfectly well the circumstances of your departure were reported in the press. I added only the opinion the opposition was predictable. Your vague complaints about Mozilla's statements stopped short of claiming they were false. And a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods without recourse would be extraordinary. The most reasonable inference is Mozilla's statements were substantially true. Even if statements by both parties are assumed incomplete and 1 sided.
        justinclift 3y ago
        > a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods without recourse Wouldn't that include most employee termination agreements, where the (newly ex-) employee has to keep their mouth shut regardless of what their employer does or did?
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        "And a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods" Gag contracts I have seen, gag the person leaving and getting the money, not the company. Companies have the challenge that thousands of employees can't say something, it's hard to enforce and easy to trip over and get burned.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    To pay board members bigger bonuses **
- NlightNFotis 3y ago
  Where did you source the $7bn value from? I have trouble reconciling this with the information present on the financial statement. They have net assets of $1.2bn, and revenue for the year was $593mn minus $425mn for expenses.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation Income $5bn from 2015 to 2020 + 2021 ($585M),2022 ($828M),2023. Without the $1bn assets it's $6.000.000.000 spent on ~3% market share, down from 39% in 2009.
Kye 3y ago
Couldn't they just make a list here? I can't really follow what's going on with stuff popping in as I scroll.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  I'm not sure if putting this content into a list would have helped, the main impression is that leadership wrote a brochure to entice investors but then published it under the title "State of Mozilla". This looks like its only fluffy aspirational stuff rather than the clear presentation of its current status the title implies.
goda90 3y ago
Ironic that this website feels pretty janky on Firefox for Android. The Read link under "Internet by the people for the people" leads to a page that has lots of rendering artifacts as your scroll through it, like colors blinking in, and also it fills your browsing history with every swipe. Below the financial statement and form 990 links there's just tons of blank space separated into different color segments. I have no clue if those are supposed to have content? Update: Desktop browser mode shows that I am missing content. Also I was surprised at the amount that Privacy Badger and Ublock Origin were blocking. Disabling them didn't help the mobile rendering though.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  pixel 6a, firefox with ublock origin - no artifacts, no missing content I can find. Maybe its privacy badger?
  - goda90 3y ago
    Or maybe it could be screen size or Android version, since turning off privacy badger didn't change anything. I have an LG V60.
    - LegitShady 3y ago
      you have an extra 60 vertical pixels - I'm not sure it matters.
- phatfish 3y ago
  I'm running Firefox + uBlock on Android. Works fine. The blocked domains are all Google (unsurprisingly).
sheepz 3y ago
Is it just me or has Mozilla been taken over by grifters?
- godzillabrennus 3y ago
  Seems that way to me. I remember when Firefox was the market leader in every way by far back when IE was the de facto browser for folks. Sad to see where they are now… they still haven’t even made containers part of core…
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  Yes. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
- pixxel 3y ago
  >grifters AKA Google employees, heh
spinningslate 3y ago
Any accountants in the room? It'd be good to get an informed view on the financial statement. In particular, the oft-spoken view that Mozilla is so critically dependent on Google funding that it is, in practice, prevented from doing anything that would displease big G.
- NlightNFotis 3y ago
  You don't need an accountant for that - you can read the financial statement (this one is pretty simple). From about $593mil revenue in their income statement (page 4), $510mil is derived from _Royalties_. Later, on page 13, they explain what _Royalties_ consists of, and I quote: > Royalties - Mozilla provides the Firefox web browser, which is a free and open-source web browser initially developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Corporation. Mozilla incorporates search engines of its customers as a default status or an optional status available in the Firefox web browser. Mozilla generally receives royalties at a certain percentage of revenues earned by its customers through their search engines incorporated in the Firefox web browser. Now, I leave it to your judgement if you think that a company that derives 86% of its revenue from the above is dependent on Google ;-)
margorczynski 3y ago
It's good that Mozilla is still there to provide an alternative to the proprietary browsers and is fighting for open Internet standards. But the management direction and the aggressive political stance it took in the last years is not really good for the project. Also big kudos for Rust, been playing around with it and it really is a great improvement over archaic languages like C or C++.
- eimrine 3y ago
  I have heard some statements that Rust is bad because of its non-free components such as Cargo.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    You heard wrong? https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo
    - eimrine 3y ago
      I mean the approval process for packages in Cargo is controlled by vendor.
      - zamadatix 3y ago
        Do you mean the default crates.io registry Cargo uses? Cargo is the package manager, it supports alternative registry definitions and local packages all set in the dependency file. You can run your own private or public registry, or use someone else's, and publish anything you want.
      - margorczynski 3y ago
        By that reasoning almost every Linux distro is also non-free as it uses a default repository for packages.
      - M2Ys4U 3y ago
        One can use cargo without using crates.io, though due to network effects it'd be a pain to do
eimrine 3y ago
IMO Mozilla has turned into a wrong way since the shitshow with Brendan Eich.
- vGPU 3y ago
  According to Brave’s stats, they get ~63M MAU. Firefox is now sitting under 200M. That’s a loss of >50M users in two years. Looks like Eich might have been Mozilla’s hidden force keeping the project on the rails.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Firefox's market share loss started years before Eich left.
    - BrendanEich 3y ago
      So it's my fault when Firefox lost share to Chrome, and a mysterious coincidence, or at best nothing to my credit, that Brave grew from 0 to ~60M from 2015 when I cofounded it -- makes sense! Your obsession with me, evident in the need to well-ackshually almost every HN post that might be considered positive about my work, is frankly creepy. I've already been erased from Mozilla's site, a la Stalin-era pre-photoshop photo touchups. No worries -- let it go, the past is in the past.
      - vGPU 3y ago
        The man, the myth, the legend! I would just like to thank you for continuing to stand up for what you believe in and fighting the good fight. Blessings be upon you :)
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        Such wild extrapolations from a simply stated fact. They suggested you kept Firefox on the rails. Pointing out it was off the rails didn't imply you derailed it. > Your obsession with me, evident in the need to well-ackshually almost every HN post that might be considered positive about my work, is frankly creepy. This is nonsense. My comments about Brave have been infrequent and neutral or slightly positive mostly. Recently I did list common criticisms to correct a claim about why people disliked Brave. My criticisms of Mozilla and Firefox have been non technical decisions made after you left mostly if not only. And even pointing out when Firefox's decline began wasn't all about you. Any future for Firefox depends on understanding its decline. > I've already been erased from Mozilla's site, a la Stalin-era pre-photoshop photo touchups. Were you removed from any photos in this way? Or was it histrionic exaggeration? Mozilla's site hosts posts by you, posts by others mentioning you, historical documents by you, and credits for your work. > No worries -- let it go, the past is in the past. I hope you believe this some day. For your sake.
tempest_ 3y ago
I await the usual complaints about Mozilla's side projects as well as the dependence on the search box money from Google. Firefox is never going to be a thing as long as humanity moves from desktops to mobiles where changing the built in browser is very uncommon.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  I use FF on desktop and mobile (although FF on mobile crashes on me, sometimes does not refresh etc.- Android)
  - tempest_ 3y ago
    So do I, but I am here with you on hacker news and this site is not a representative sample at all. I have never had mobile FF crash on me, largely been a good experience.
    - anonymousab 3y ago
      > I have never had mobile FF crash on me A few months ago they released a version of Nightly that would crash for most users on startup every time. It was up on the Play store for several days. That would normally be a buyer-beware situation as with any dev build, but Mozilla had purposely locked several important features - such as about:config configuration and loading any extension - behind the Nightly version, forcing users into that kind of experience.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      Most of the problems I have are that when opening a new tab, FF does not show the content. I need to copy paste the url to another tab, and then it works.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  > as long as humanity moves from desktops to mobiles where changing the built in browser is very uncommon. That might change soon. Seems the EU is planning to mandate allowing the browser to be changed on iOS.
Unfrozen0688 3y ago
I dont like Brave because of the Crypto stuff. But they have way better communication around this with more simple tweets and posts of what they ACTUALLY do. What is even going on, on this page? So much coroprate speak I feel like I am reading my for-profit company intranet page.
- this_user 3y ago
  That might be the point. Disguise that they are mainly lining their own pockets and wasting money on pointless projects while completely neglecting their actual core product that has been losing market share for years.
- closewith 3y ago
  Agreed. Nothing could exemplify the distance between Mozilla and Firefox users more than this page.
- onli 3y ago
  You are right, the site is corporate gibberish. It links to one important thing, the 2022 financial statement, https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202.... According to a summary I read elsewhere it's actually good news: Almost the same total income while lowering the percentage that comes from google (a bit) and raising the percentage and total amount that comes from their own projects. Lots of money in the bank. Still paying way too much to management, but I didn't expect any improvement there anyway - is there even one success story out there about moving a project like this back to a real not-for-profit/reasonable governance, without bloated CEO etc salaries?
  - xethos 3y ago
    > is there even one success story out there about moving a project like this back to a real not-for-profit/reasonable governance Wasn't Thunderbird under Mozilla manglement initially? And, after a few rough years post-spinoff, they're doing pretty well it seems [0]. To the point I'm looking forward to their '23 financial report - I'm happy to continue to donate, and seeing the rise as others join in is pretty nice :) [0] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
KingOfCoders 3y ago
Someone in the future needs to compare Mozilla development and Ladybird development.
- 127361 3y ago
  And no SJW bullshit or "code of conduct" in the whole SerenityOS project either. So it's free of this bullshit politics. And such politics tends to attract parasites which take over the organization to promote their personal agendas - which is precisely what has happened to Mozilla.
  - 127361 3y ago
    By the way, I have left the community and found something else to do after the introduction of these codes of conduct in open source. Over and done with it.
okasaki 3y ago
I wonder how many on the Mozilla Board of Directors and Chief Whatever Officers getting paid millions regularly use Firefox vs Chrome or Safari.
sannysanoff 3y ago
so what is the state of mozilla?
- eimrine 3y ago
  You will not find the real answer on Mozilla's website.
- blibble 3y ago
  completely captured by the professional management class
  - 127361 3y ago
    This. It was only a matter of time.
- meiraleal 3y ago
  Extracting the last dollars available before Firefox becomes legacy like Netscape.
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
Mozilla considered harmful. A bizarre money redistribution (and storage?) operation. The only thing people at large really want from it, Firefox, is an underfunded afterthought. https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...
- 127361 3y ago
  I really wish Mozilla would stay out of politics, especially identity politics. And I've seen some pro-censorship advocacy from them in the name of Internet "safety."
  - Zardoz84 3y ago
    could you tell more ?
    - 127361 3y ago
      https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
      - mavhc 3y ago
        They're anti insurrection? What a novel political idea
        127361 3y ago
        They should stay out of politics completely. This incident is a matter for law enforcement to deal with, not Mozilla. Mozilla is a tech firm, it's purpose is to develop a Web browser, period. It should not be involved in social policies. I personally abhor Donald Trump, by the way. But I still think deplatforming and censorship are wrong.
        3y ago
schmorptron 3y ago
At least they're trying to get firefox usage back up. I've seen some ads for it on instagram here in europe.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  If they really were trying they'd make material improvements to the browser to entice new inexperienced Firefox users, for instance by shipping an adblocker, turned on by default, like Brave has. Of course experienced users can install an adblocker themselves, but there is no growth potential in maintaining the status quo. Buying ads is pointless if they can't clearly communicate unambiguous objective practical upsides to switching. For bonus points, this would also silence their critics who say Mozilla is Google's lapdog. But of course they cannot do this because the critics are correct.
xhubin 3y ago
In the hopes of someone at Mozilla reading this, I don't like you or anything of what you do, you're simply just more tolerable than google but you are not fun, not great, not good, your browser is ok but as a company you are just annoying and i wish you'd shut up more.
meiraleal 3y ago
The state of Firefox is terrible. The state of Mozilla? I couldn't get it from this terrible website. Which tells a lot about the state of Firefox.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Many bizarre graphics, but none visualizing market share.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
Does it say they are shutting up shop with immediate effect? I'm not sure because somebody stuck a "display: none" attribute on the <body>. Now if that doesn't accurately reflect mozilla these I don't know what does. "nothing to see here"
shinryuu 3y ago
As usual, you see a lot of hate against Mozilla's management team on HN. It makes me wonder, the people who hold these views, do they begrudingly use firefox? Do they use a different browser?
- everdrive 3y ago
  At this point there’s really no other browser. There’s Chromium, and there’s Firefox. With manifest V3 being removed from Chromium, the non-Firefox alternatives might as well all be identical.
- 127361 3y ago
  Yes, I gave up on Firefox many years ago and use Chromium now. This is because of the identity politics and feminist "code of conduct" speech code being pushed by the organization. I know Google is no better, but I still did it to make a statement to Mozilla. Enough people doing that might get them to stop this nonsense.
- probably_wrong 3y ago
  I am on record saying that I think Mozilla's management does not care about Firefox and are milking it to position Mozilla as some kind of big "Internet freedom" player. I also use Firefox, and I plan to keep using it while waiting for the current managers to get replaced by someone who actually understands that you need a strong browser to even have a place at the table.
  - shinryuu 3y ago
    I'm curious, what would caring about Firefox look like to you? They've released around 12 new versions of Firefox during 2023. The side projects that some complains about I to some respect think is a good thing as it can help to diversify revenue sources. The only way Firefox is ever going to be a cashcow is how it is a cashcow today which at the end of the day puts Mozilla in a somewhat precarious situation.
    - probably_wrong 3y ago
lucideer 3y ago
Nothing much changed in terms of % here YoY: still almost 50% of salaries going to management, ~25% of total company expenditure. I wonder if Mitchell has given herself another enormous raise on top of last year's 5 million. A few folk commenting on Mozilla's dependence on Google for revenue; it would certainly be easier to reason about reducing that dependence if their expenditure was a little more transparent: killing various projects as cost cutting measures seems odd in the context of their published management salary figures.
- loganmarchione 3y ago
  $6.9m/yr in 2022
  - jacknews 3y ago
    gross I don't mean that in the 'before costs/taxes' sense.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  I don't think just reading page 5* in the auditors report and picking out "Management and general" as the total comp to management is going to give an accurate view of what the chair is getting. Something more complicated is going on, for instance if you look at the tax filings, page 10, you find that total functional expenses is 30 million, with leadership making up 6.5 of those. On page 7 you can Mitchell that is getting about 7 million total (but not from Mozilla itself apparently) while the rest of the board is only getting around 350 k each. Also note that on page 2 they put their fellowship and awards programs under the headline "Leadership development", an expense to the tune of 19 million. *All page numbers refer to the number written on the pages in the pdf.
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Mozilla Corporation paid Baker's salary. The tax forms were for Mozilla Foundation only. The annual report combined all Mozilla entities.
- 3y ago
busterarm 3y ago
This website wastes gobs of space to communicate very little content and a mission that seems very confused.
joduplessis 3y ago
Honestly - surprised how much activist/inclusive/political content there is here. "....leading the charge towards realizing a more safe, kind internet..." - really?
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  > Honestly - surprised how much activist/inclusive/political content there is here. That's because Mozilla are an explicitly political organisation...
epilys 3y ago
Ctrl+F for "Firefox" returns one result, a "Download Firefox" link. What is Mozilla if not Firefox? (rhetorical question)
richrichie 3y ago
Way too many women with perfect professional portraits. Feels contrived and orchestrated. Where are the toiling C++ engineers on the page?
sorenjan 3y ago
Three of the four new board members mention AI when asked why they joined Mozilla. I can't think of anything AI related that Mozilla has done, and nothing indicates that they will be relevant in the field in the future either. It's a stated goal by Mozilla to "include more expertise about AI", but I don't see the point. https://stateof.mozilla.org/#diversity https://stateof.mozilla.org/#diversity
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  https://mozilla.ai/ https://mozilla.ai/
shinryuu 3y ago
Link to public data around firefox usage. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
dcchambers 3y ago
This is pretty sad. I get that for _reasons_ they can't just come right out and say "it doesn't look good," but what they have put together is worse. It's just corpo-speak designed to avoid addressing the harsh reality: that mozilla and firefox are in real trouble. In doing so, it's obvious that things are bad and people that used to care have moved on (or have been forced out). A "state of the platform" without any kinds of metrics/numbers presented front and center means that they are trying to hide things. Until they are willing to candidly admit that, it's never going to improve. People that donate to Mozilla need to demand better.
workfromspace 3y ago
https://archive.is/O96Wa https://archive.is/O96Wa (original URL requires JS)
iteratethis 3y ago
Not much has changed since their realization 3 years ago that they need to diversify their revenue. It was then presented as an urgent life/death matter and justification for multiple rounds of layoffs, but very little progress was made as far as I can tell. In the "mission" statement they're doubling down on a total lack of self-reflection. They actually think they're in the position to "shape" markets and the internet in general. How so? Just look at AI. How is a 10M Mozilla proof of concept going to move the needle against Google and OpenAI/Microsoft throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it? Where exactly is Mozilla's relevance in influencing anything at all? And yes, the political brand is annoying and distracting. The "do-good" internet traditionally aligns to liberal, moderate progressive politics. Mozilla's current "woke" brand is not the same thing. It reeks of DEI, identity politics, intersectional feminism, anti-whiteness. I don't care if you subscribe to these politics, I'm saying it's not moderate nor neutral. It's sub brand of highly polarized US politics that is widely unpopular outside of it. If you claim to stand for the worldwide internet, this is not "inclusive". Luckily though, it turns out to be a case of woke capitalism. The budget for software development is 221M, the budget for "leadership" 109M. They do a lot of leading at Mozilla. Nobody knows what exactly is led as zero promises or roadmaps are tangible or deliver anything. When you check board members, fellows and grants...it just leaves you puzzled at what these people do, how it helps, and how it moves the needle. They can't help themselves. They are used to getting free money by literally doing nothing: keeping the search box aimed at Google. Next they piss it all away on useless initiatives where failure has no consequences.

58 points by socratics 3y ago

Would love to see a proper Firefox fork without the drama of Pale Moon. Something supported by a small focused org. There should be donations enough out there, if it could keep out of opinionated technical and social decisions.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

(Writing from FF) $7bn. 2.66% market share. "Expanding our Board to create the internet we want" Sure, as long as the music is playing. [Edit] Looks like the music will stop earlier than suspected, https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2023/11/firefox-brink/ https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2023/11/firefox-brink/

WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
Also laying off rank-and-file worker to save costs.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Also, purge technical CEO for political reasons then replace him with MBA trophy politically correct CEO that takes home four times the pay while laying off engineers.
  - 127361 3y ago
    That was the turning point for Mozilla, after that it started to become involved in activism, including social justice and identity politics.
  - tristan957 3y ago
    Do people forget Mitchell Baker has been a Mozilla employee for decades?
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      I do personally think tech companies [0] are better of if the CEO is a visionary techie instead of a lawyer. [0] Mozilla and others might not think they are a tech company but a activist plattform, so this is irrelevant to them from their perspective
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        When would you say were Mozilla's best years?
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        From the techie perspective, Mozilla didn't have "best years" I think. As a Mosaic/Netscape/FF user, I liked Mozilla for two things, adhering to standards compared to IE and being open source (the second being the reason I still use it today, not because of technology (I don't like tab management with 50+ tabs open e.G, never liked the environment implementation)). I don't consider Firefox a technological marvel, but IE looked very bad. Firefox for me never innovated enough or seemed to have the user in mind. From my perspective the USP was always "We're the open source one" which wasn't enough when Chrome arrived. Not an Opera user, but from the sidelines it always looked like Opera was innovating more.
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Mozilla's CEOs from 2008 to 2013 had technical backgrounds. And Bill Gates had vision and technical experience of course. So it seems hard to say technical CEOs are better consistently. Even if better means more innovative.
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        "And Bill Gates had vision and technical experience of course." I think the developer, developer, developer days of M$ (ha, anyone?) were quite good. I did like MS Basic on CP/M (before using Turbo Pascal, first time I felt like a professional!). I started my Amiga development with AmigaBasic drawing lines and circles (before switching to 68k assembler).
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    The Mozilla board appointed Eich CEO. He resigned after proving unable to manage predictable grass roots opposition. And he refused Mozilla's offer to remain in another role. Chris Beard didn't make 4x what Eich did. Mitchell Baker didn't replace Eich and doesn't have an MBA. What would make either of them a trophy CEO?
    - BrendanEich 3y ago
      As far as I know, you weren't privy to confidential legal docs to which only I among the two of us could possibly have been a party, so you can stop making stuff up and cease the mindless parroting of incomplete and one-sided statements from 2014 Mozilla foundation crisis PR staff who never worked for me. The record of Mozilla mis-management and CEO over-compensation after I left, about which I'm free to comment, is plain for all to see.
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        You know perfectly well the circumstances of your departure were reported in the press. I added only the opinion the opposition was predictable. Your vague complaints about Mozilla's statements stopped short of claiming they were false. And a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods without recourse would be extraordinary. The most reasonable inference is Mozilla's statements were substantially true. Even if statements by both parties are assumed incomplete and 1 sided.
        justinclift 3y ago
        > a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods without recourse Wouldn't that include most employee termination agreements, where the (newly ex-) employee has to keep their mouth shut regardless of what their employer does or did?
        KingOfCoders 3y ago
        "And a legal agreement allowing 1 party to publish substantial falsehoods" Gag contracts I have seen, gag the person leaving and getting the money, not the company. Companies have the challenge that thousands of employees can't say something, it's hard to enforce and easy to trip over and get burned.
- vGPU 3y ago
  To pay board members bigger bonuses **
NlightNFotis 3y ago
Where did you source the $7bn value from? I have trouble reconciling this with the information present on the financial statement. They have net assets of $1.2bn, and revenue for the year was $593mn minus $425mn for expenses.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation Income $5bn from 2015 to 2020 + 2021 ($585M),2022 ($828M),2023. Without the $1bn assets it's $6.000.000.000 spent on ~3% market share, down from 39% in 2009.

Kye 3y ago

Couldn't they just make a list here? I can't really follow what's going on with stuff popping in as I scroll.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
I'm not sure if putting this content into a list would have helped, the main impression is that leadership wrote a brochure to entice investors but then published it under the title "State of Mozilla". This looks like its only fluffy aspirational stuff rather than the clear presentation of its current status the title implies.

goda90 3y ago

Ironic that this website feels pretty janky on Firefox for Android. The Read link under "Internet by the people for the people" leads to a page that has lots of rendering artifacts as your scroll through it, like colors blinking in, and also it fills your browsing history with every swipe. Below the financial statement and form 990 links there's just tons of blank space separated into different color segments. I have no clue if those are supposed to have content? Update: Desktop browser mode shows that I am missing content. Also I was surprised at the amount that Privacy Badger and Ublock Origin were blocking. Disabling them didn't help the mobile rendering though.

LegitShady 3y ago
pixel 6a, firefox with ublock origin - no artifacts, no missing content I can find. Maybe its privacy badger?
- goda90 3y ago
  Or maybe it could be screen size or Android version, since turning off privacy badger didn't change anything. I have an LG V60.
  - LegitShady 3y ago
    you have an extra 60 vertical pixels - I'm not sure it matters.
phatfish 3y ago
I'm running Firefox + uBlock on Android. Works fine. The blocked domains are all Google (unsurprisingly).

sheepz 3y ago

Is it just me or has Mozilla been taken over by grifters?

godzillabrennus 3y ago
Seems that way to me. I remember when Firefox was the market leader in every way by far back when IE was the de facto browser for folks. Sad to see where they are now… they still haven’t even made containers part of core…
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
Yes. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
pixxel 3y ago
>grifters AKA Google employees, heh

spinningslate 3y ago

Any accountants in the room? It'd be good to get an informed view on the financial statement. In particular, the oft-spoken view that Mozilla is so critically dependent on Google funding that it is, in practice, prevented from doing anything that would displease big G.

NlightNFotis 3y ago
You don't need an accountant for that - you can read the financial statement (this one is pretty simple). From about $593mil revenue in their income statement (page 4), $510mil is derived from _Royalties_. Later, on page 13, they explain what _Royalties_ consists of, and I quote: > Royalties - Mozilla provides the Firefox web browser, which is a free and open-source web browser initially developed by Mozilla Foundation and the Corporation. Mozilla incorporates search engines of its customers as a default status or an optional status available in the Firefox web browser. Mozilla generally receives royalties at a certain percentage of revenues earned by its customers through their search engines incorporated in the Firefox web browser. Now, I leave it to your judgement if you think that a company that derives 86% of its revenue from the above is dependent on Google ;-)

margorczynski 3y ago

It's good that Mozilla is still there to provide an alternative to the proprietary browsers and is fighting for open Internet standards. But the management direction and the aggressive political stance it took in the last years is not really good for the project. Also big kudos for Rust, been playing around with it and it really is a great improvement over archaic languages like C or C++.

eimrine 3y ago
I have heard some statements that Rust is bad because of its non-free components such as Cargo.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  You heard wrong? https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo
  - eimrine 3y ago
    I mean the approval process for packages in Cargo is controlled by vendor.
    - zamadatix 3y ago
      Do you mean the default crates.io registry Cargo uses? Cargo is the package manager, it supports alternative registry definitions and local packages all set in the dependency file. You can run your own private or public registry, or use someone else's, and publish anything you want.
    - margorczynski 3y ago
      By that reasoning almost every Linux distro is also non-free as it uses a default repository for packages.
    - M2Ys4U 3y ago
      One can use cargo without using crates.io, though due to network effects it'd be a pain to do

eimrine 3y ago

IMO Mozilla has turned into a wrong way since the shitshow with Brendan Eich.

vGPU 3y ago
According to Brave’s stats, they get ~63M MAU. Firefox is now sitting under 200M. That’s a loss of >50M users in two years. Looks like Eich might have been Mozilla’s hidden force keeping the project on the rails.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Firefox's market share loss started years before Eich left.
  - BrendanEich 3y ago
    So it's my fault when Firefox lost share to Chrome, and a mysterious coincidence, or at best nothing to my credit, that Brave grew from 0 to ~60M from 2015 when I cofounded it -- makes sense! Your obsession with me, evident in the need to well-ackshually almost every HN post that might be considered positive about my work, is frankly creepy. I've already been erased from Mozilla's site, a la Stalin-era pre-photoshop photo touchups. No worries -- let it go, the past is in the past.
    - vGPU 3y ago
      The man, the myth, the legend! I would just like to thank you for continuing to stand up for what you believe in and fighting the good fight. Blessings be upon you :)
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Such wild extrapolations from a simply stated fact. They suggested you kept Firefox on the rails. Pointing out it was off the rails didn't imply you derailed it. > Your obsession with me, evident in the need to well-ackshually almost every HN post that might be considered positive about my work, is frankly creepy. This is nonsense. My comments about Brave have been infrequent and neutral or slightly positive mostly. Recently I did list common criticisms to correct a claim about why people disliked Brave. My criticisms of Mozilla and Firefox have been non technical decisions made after you left mostly if not only. And even pointing out when Firefox's decline began wasn't all about you. Any future for Firefox depends on understanding its decline. > I've already been erased from Mozilla's site, a la Stalin-era pre-photoshop photo touchups. Were you removed from any photos in this way? Or was it histrionic exaggeration? Mozilla's site hosts posts by you, posts by others mentioning you, historical documents by you, and credits for your work. > No worries -- let it go, the past is in the past. I hope you believe this some day. For your sake.

tempest_ 3y ago

I await the usual complaints about Mozilla's side projects as well as the dependence on the search box money from Google. Firefox is never going to be a thing as long as humanity moves from desktops to mobiles where changing the built in browser is very uncommon.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
I use FF on desktop and mobile (although FF on mobile crashes on me, sometimes does not refresh etc.- Android)
- tempest_ 3y ago
  So do I, but I am here with you on hacker news and this site is not a representative sample at all. I have never had mobile FF crash on me, largely been a good experience.
  - anonymousab 3y ago
    > I have never had mobile FF crash on me A few months ago they released a version of Nightly that would crash for most users on startup every time. It was up on the Play store for several days. That would normally be a buyer-beware situation as with any dev build, but Mozilla had purposely locked several important features - such as about:config configuration and loading any extension - behind the Nightly version, forcing users into that kind of experience.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Most of the problems I have are that when opening a new tab, FF does not show the content. I need to copy paste the url to another tab, and then it works.
nicoburns 3y ago
> as long as humanity moves from desktops to mobiles where changing the built in browser is very uncommon. That might change soon. Seems the EU is planning to mandate allowing the browser to be changed on iOS.

Unfrozen0688 3y ago

I dont like Brave because of the Crypto stuff. But they have way better communication around this with more simple tweets and posts of what they ACTUALLY do. What is even going on, on this page? So much coroprate speak I feel like I am reading my for-profit company intranet page.

this_user 3y ago
That might be the point. Disguise that they are mainly lining their own pockets and wasting money on pointless projects while completely neglecting their actual core product that has been losing market share for years.
closewith 3y ago
Agreed. Nothing could exemplify the distance between Mozilla and Firefox users more than this page.
onli 3y ago
You are right, the site is corporate gibberish. It links to one important thing, the 2022 financial statement, https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-2022-fs-final-0908.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202.... According to a summary I read elsewhere it's actually good news: Almost the same total income while lowering the percentage that comes from google (a bit) and raising the percentage and total amount that comes from their own projects. Lots of money in the bank. Still paying way too much to management, but I didn't expect any improvement there anyway - is there even one success story out there about moving a project like this back to a real not-for-profit/reasonable governance, without bloated CEO etc salaries?
- xethos 3y ago
  > is there even one success story out there about moving a project like this back to a real not-for-profit/reasonable governance Wasn't Thunderbird under Mozilla manglement initially? And, after a few rough years post-spinoff, they're doing pretty well it seems [0]. To the point I'm looking forward to their '23 financial report - I'm happy to continue to donate, and seeing the rise as others join in is pretty nice :) [0] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...

KingOfCoders 3y ago

Someone in the future needs to compare Mozilla development and Ladybird development.

127361 3y ago
And no SJW bullshit or "code of conduct" in the whole SerenityOS project either. So it's free of this bullshit politics. And such politics tends to attract parasites which take over the organization to promote their personal agendas - which is precisely what has happened to Mozilla.
- 127361 3y ago
  By the way, I have left the community and found something else to do after the introduction of these codes of conduct in open source. Over and done with it.

okasaki 3y ago

I wonder how many on the Mozilla Board of Directors and Chief Whatever Officers getting paid millions regularly use Firefox vs Chrome or Safari.

sannysanoff 3y ago

so what is the state of mozilla?

eimrine 3y ago
You will not find the real answer on Mozilla's website.
blibble 3y ago
completely captured by the professional management class
- 127361 3y ago
  This. It was only a matter of time.
meiraleal 3y ago
Extracting the last dollars available before Firefox becomes legacy like Netscape.

Traubenfuchs 3y ago

Mozilla considered harmful. A bizarre money redistribution (and storage?) operation. The only thing people at large really want from it, Firefox, is an underfunded afterthought. https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

127361 3y ago
I really wish Mozilla would stay out of politics, especially identity politics. And I've seen some pro-censorship advocacy from them in the name of Internet "safety."
- Zardoz84 3y ago
  could you tell more ?
  - 127361 3y ago
    https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
    - mavhc 3y ago
      They're anti insurrection? What a novel political idea
      - 127361 3y ago
        They should stay out of politics completely. This incident is a matter for law enforcement to deal with, not Mozilla. Mozilla is a tech firm, it's purpose is to develop a Web browser, period. It should not be involved in social policies. I personally abhor Donald Trump, by the way. But I still think deplatforming and censorship are wrong.
        3y ago

schmorptron 3y ago

At least they're trying to get firefox usage back up. I've seen some ads for it on instagram here in europe.

lupusreal 3y ago
If they really were trying they'd make material improvements to the browser to entice new inexperienced Firefox users, for instance by shipping an adblocker, turned on by default, like Brave has. Of course experienced users can install an adblocker themselves, but there is no growth potential in maintaining the status quo. Buying ads is pointless if they can't clearly communicate unambiguous objective practical upsides to switching. For bonus points, this would also silence their critics who say Mozilla is Google's lapdog. But of course they cannot do this because the critics are correct.

xhubin 3y ago

In the hopes of someone at Mozilla reading this, I don't like you or anything of what you do, you're simply just more tolerable than google but you are not fun, not great, not good, your browser is ok but as a company you are just annoying and i wish you'd shut up more.

meiraleal 3y ago

The state of Firefox is terrible. The state of Mozilla? I couldn't get it from this terrible website. Which tells a lot about the state of Firefox.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Many bizarre graphics, but none visualizing market share.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago

Does it say they are shutting up shop with immediate effect? I'm not sure because somebody stuck a "display: none" attribute on the <body>. Now if that doesn't accurately reflect mozilla these I don't know what does. "nothing to see here"

shinryuu 3y ago

As usual, you see a lot of hate against Mozilla's management team on HN. It makes me wonder, the people who hold these views, do they begrudingly use firefox? Do they use a different browser?

everdrive 3y ago
At this point there’s really no other browser. There’s Chromium, and there’s Firefox. With manifest V3 being removed from Chromium, the non-Firefox alternatives might as well all be identical.
127361 3y ago
Yes, I gave up on Firefox many years ago and use Chromium now. This is because of the identity politics and feminist "code of conduct" speech code being pushed by the organization. I know Google is no better, but I still did it to make a statement to Mozilla. Enough people doing that might get them to stop this nonsense.
probably_wrong 3y ago
I am on record saying that I think Mozilla's management does not care about Firefox and are milking it to position Mozilla as some kind of big "Internet freedom" player. I also use Firefox, and I plan to keep using it while waiting for the current managers to get replaced by someone who actually understands that you need a strong browser to even have a place at the table.
- shinryuu 3y ago
  I'm curious, what would caring about Firefox look like to you? They've released around 12 new versions of Firefox during 2023. The side projects that some complains about I to some respect think is a good thing as it can help to diversify revenue sources. The only way Firefox is ever going to be a cashcow is how it is a cashcow today which at the end of the day puts Mozilla in a somewhat precarious situation.
  - probably_wrong 3y ago

lucideer 3y ago

Nothing much changed in terms of % here YoY: still almost 50% of salaries going to management, ~25% of total company expenditure. I wonder if Mitchell has given herself another enormous raise on top of last year's 5 million. A few folk commenting on Mozilla's dependence on Google for revenue; it would certainly be easier to reason about reducing that dependence if their expenditure was a little more transparent: killing various projects as cost cutting measures seems odd in the context of their published management salary figures.

loganmarchione 3y ago
$6.9m/yr in 2022
- jacknews 3y ago
  gross I don't mean that in the 'before costs/taxes' sense.
SiempreViernes 3y ago
I don't think just reading page 5* in the auditors report and picking out "Management and general" as the total comp to management is going to give an accurate view of what the chair is getting. Something more complicated is going on, for instance if you look at the tax filings, page 10, you find that total functional expenses is 30 million, with leadership making up 6.5 of those. On page 7 you can Mitchell that is getting about 7 million total (but not from Mozilla itself apparently) while the rest of the board is only getting around 350 k each. Also note that on page 2 they put their fellowship and awards programs under the headline "Leadership development", an expense to the tune of 19 million. *All page numbers refer to the number written on the pages in the pdf.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Mozilla Corporation paid Baker's salary. The tax forms were for Mozilla Foundation only. The annual report combined all Mozilla entities.
3y ago

busterarm 3y ago

This website wastes gobs of space to communicate very little content and a mission that seems very confused.

joduplessis 3y ago

Honestly - surprised how much activist/inclusive/political content there is here. "....leading the charge towards realizing a more safe, kind internet..." - really?

M2Ys4U 3y ago
> Honestly - surprised how much activist/inclusive/political content there is here. That's because Mozilla are an explicitly political organisation...

epilys 3y ago

Ctrl+F for "Firefox" returns one result, a "Download Firefox" link. What is Mozilla if not Firefox? (rhetorical question)

richrichie 3y ago

Way too many women with perfect professional portraits. Feels contrived and orchestrated. Where are the toiling C++ engineers on the page?

sorenjan 3y ago

Three of the four new board members mention AI when asked why they joined Mozilla. I can't think of anything AI related that Mozilla has done, and nothing indicates that they will be relevant in the field in the future either. It's a stated goal by Mozilla to "include more expertise about AI", but I don't see the point. https://stateof.mozilla.org/#diversity https://stateof.mozilla.org/#diversity

pseudalopex 3y ago
https://mozilla.ai/ https://mozilla.ai/

shinryuu 3y ago

Link to public data around firefox usage. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

dcchambers 3y ago

This is pretty sad. I get that for _reasons_ they can't just come right out and say "it doesn't look good," but what they have put together is worse. It's just corpo-speak designed to avoid addressing the harsh reality: that mozilla and firefox are in real trouble. In doing so, it's obvious that things are bad and people that used to care have moved on (or have been forced out). A "state of the platform" without any kinds of metrics/numbers presented front and center means that they are trying to hide things. Until they are willing to candidly admit that, it's never going to improve. People that donate to Mozilla need to demand better.

workfromspace 3y ago

https://archive.is/O96Wa https://archive.is/O96Wa (original URL requires JS)

iteratethis 3y ago

Not much has changed since their realization 3 years ago that they need to diversify their revenue. It was then presented as an urgent life/death matter and justification for multiple rounds of layoffs, but very little progress was made as far as I can tell. In the "mission" statement they're doubling down on a total lack of self-reflection. They actually think they're in the position to "shape" markets and the internet in general. How so? Just look at AI. How is a 10M Mozilla proof of concept going to move the needle against Google and OpenAI/Microsoft throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it? Where exactly is Mozilla's relevance in influencing anything at all? And yes, the political brand is annoying and distracting. The "do-good" internet traditionally aligns to liberal, moderate progressive politics. Mozilla's current "woke" brand is not the same thing. It reeks of DEI, identity politics, intersectional feminism, anti-whiteness. I don't care if you subscribe to these politics, I'm saying it's not moderate nor neutral. It's sub brand of highly polarized US politics that is widely unpopular outside of it. If you claim to stand for the worldwide internet, this is not "inclusive". Luckily though, it turns out to be a case of woke capitalism. The budget for software development is 221M, the budget for "leadership" 109M. They do a lot of leading at Mozilla. Nobody knows what exactly is led as zero promises or roadmaps are tangible or deliver anything. When you check board members, fellows and grants...it just leaves you puzzled at what these people do, how it helps, and how it moves the needle. They can't help themselves. They are used to getting free money by literally doing nothing: keeping the search box aimed at Google. Next they piss it all away on useless initiatives where failure has no consequences.