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This Mozilla "situation" comes up here from time to time, unfortunately as a long time Firefox user all I have to say is: Mitchell Baker and their clique will o

This Mozilla "situation" comes up here from time to time, unfortunately as a long time Firefox user all I have to say is: Mitchell Baker and their clique will only leave when Mozilla is completely dead and even by that time she'll retire and will make a wonderful post about her "legacy" in opensource and the Web. I will not go further because it will turn into an all-bashing post, but Mozilla ( as you like to think of it ) is dead and has been dead for a long time. Deal with it.

phpisthebest 3y ago
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- asystole 3y ago
  Everything coming out of them recently, including the mailshots I see and even the onboarding copy, seems to indicate they see themselves as a political advocacy org first and a browser developer second.
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    >they see themselves as a political advocacy org first and a browser developer second. That would be an improvement. Being a browser developer does not factor in anything they focus on.
  - ydlr 3y ago
    The tragedy of it is that building Firefox is the most impactful political advocacy they do.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Developing and operating open technology is political advocacy. Technology and its implementation is simply the expression of the ideology, rights, etc. Leadership choices, as well as their efficacy and compensation is still an important discussion.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      > Developing and operating open technology is political advocacy. That's fine, they should leave it at that and do it the best they can because that is presumably their competency. But they can't help themselves and insist on engaging various other political endeavors which they just aren't good at but probably sounds good when they brag about it to their friends at dinner parties. Like operating 'online spaces' for African lesbian women in tech or whatever the heck they're calling it, which amounts to them somehow blowing millions of dollars to host a mastadon instance, which isn't needed by anybody because all the marginalized groups they claim to be serving already have online spaces of their own on Facebook, discord, etc.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Agreed! This is what governance and oversight is for!
    - asystole 3y ago
      No, it’s not. Software development is software development. Political advocacy is political advocacy.
      - deleted 3y ago
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      - deleted 3y ago
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- freedomben 3y ago
  Importantly, that was also the reason that Brendan Eich used Chromium as a base for Brave, rather than Firefox. Had that even not occurred, we might be in a position where more than one organization had a business interest is Firefox, which would be a complete game changer.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Do you have a source for this?
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Not linkable, just my memory from a podcast interview at the time. IIRC the firing wasn't the only reason to go Chromium-based, but it made the decision a lot easier
      - lern_too_spel 3y ago
        If it were any reason at all, Brave would have chosen Chromium to start with. It didn't.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    I really doubt that is true. Speaking from the experience of working in a project that tried to build "enterprise Chrome OS, but based on Firefox instead", I can tell you that Firefox is still a lot harder to fork and customize than Chromium is.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      thanks, I'm sure there were more factors involved than just the firing, so that would make a lot of sense. Given your experience, If one were to fork Firefox entirely from Mozilla, very loosely, if one were a non-profit dedicated to just the browser and not trying to build a diversified company around it, what type of funding do you think an org would need to keep up with web technology changes and build a foundational engineering team?
- wredue 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - richbell 3y ago
    I'm only aware of his views against gay marriage. Do you have more info on him being openly racist and sexist? Searching for his name + racist or sexist doesn't seem to yield any results. Off topic, but I think your edit is against the spirit of HN and weakens your comment.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Unsourced and non-specific disparagement might be the reason for the downvotes here. People like to read posts that make them feel they have a better understanding of the world rather than a particular poster's political viewpoints. I think including either sources or specifics (e.g. a specific statement he's made or what sort of "sexism" or "racism" he indulges in) would result in less downvotes.
Riverheart 3y ago
Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Yes, Mozilla is different now, yes the CEO makes too much money but if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it in instead of seeing it as a money sink to satisfy people who can’t be satisfied. Seriously, Mozilla cant win. A large voice of people constantly scold Mozilla for anything it does. We’ve heard from Firefox devs on how this bash fest affects them and we expect them to crank out awesome software despite the abuse. Instead of picking the lesser of two evils they say oh, Firefox is N milliseconds slower than Chrome so I’ll use the greater of two evils. Can we stop beating a dead horse? If you don’t like Firefox or Mozilla fine but don’t act like it’s unusable as a browser. It’s fine, it works, I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition. Sure it may be slow for YOU (whatever your use case is) or maybe your extensions broke but average users who rely power users to recommend a browser don’t care. If they can open Facebook and Netflix it’s fine. So use Chrome yourself and recommend Firefox to the people this crap doesn’t matter to. And maybe, if they see the numbers tick up, they’ll change course.
- javajosh 3y ago
  Two things can be true at once: Firefox is a great browser that needs greater market share, and the CEO pay is out-of-whack. The solution is to use the browser but a) not give money to the foundation, and b) complain and expect change.
  - Riverheart 3y ago
    I said the CEO makes too much money so I don’t know what the point of your post is. I think it’s pretty clear all the complaining hasn’t done anything as this conversation has been going on for years but I don’t expect that to stop anyone from getting easy HN karma.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition. I use FF is my daily driver for home stuff; work in chrome/edge. When I see things that are wrong, I point them out. We can champion FF for the good things it does and absolutely we can bash CxO club for slowly running it to the ground. << Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Not accurate, this is likely one of the few ways we can exert some minimal level of influence over this. And besides, what did not complaining ever achieve?
kriro9jdjfif 3y ago
Agree. I’ve git submoduled Firefox and other projects and have local AI help edit and build them. Have made zero changes to FF itself, but overall have found local AI a huge help in managing it all.
runjake 3y ago
The article states that Mozilla is far from dying and that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox.
- irrational 3y ago
  Away from Firefox? They don't have anything useful other than Firefox. Trash everything else and devote all resources to Firefox.
- wincy 3y ago
  Too bad every product that’s actually useful gets deprecated. Lockwise was great and it got deprecated.
- ranger_danger 3y ago
  it's only not dead yet because google is paying them to try to "avoid" being anti-competitive themselves. they're the single biggest investor by far.
- bakugo 3y ago
  >that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox And Firefox is their only worthwhile product, so moving away from Firefox means they're dying.
  - ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
    I don't know what I'd do if Firefox died. Maybe it's time Firefox starts diversifying itself away from Mozilla.
    - sgift 3y ago
      And with which business model? That's the elephant in the room here. If it's only about unpaid developers, Firefox already has these currently in addition to the Mozilla employees, but if it wants to stay relevant it needs paid developers working on it full-time.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I’ve lead those threads in the past with hopes that someone would give a glimmer of hope Honestly, this news/post made me lose the final shred of hope I had. :/
- echelon 3y ago
  The best thing we can do for the web at this point is talk to our politicians about the incredible power that Google and Apple wield. They either need to be split up, or their platforms entirely opened up to competition via standardization [1], first class third-party support [2], no more preferential dogfooding [3], and no more ad sales protection rackets [4]. [1] Google no longer unilaterally pulls on web standards. Google and Apple adopt a shared, first-class standard for native app development. Web gets "as native" APIs. [2] No requirement of app store for distribution. Web installs and web as native. No scare walls or hidden-in-the-settings feature flags. The browser runtimes have full extension support with no removal of hooks necessary for eg. adblocking. [3] First party apps are not defaults, not preinstalled, and more importantly, cannot re-assert themselves as defaults. [4] If someone searches for your company or product by name, or a 1 edit distance variation, competitor ads can't show up before your website or app.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I mean between them, MSFT they have totally captured congress Unless people start running for office that won’t just do what corporations want then it’s futile.
onyxringer 3y ago
[dead]
neurostimulant 3y ago
Firefox might be dead soon but Mozilla will probably live on as a VPN company. Opera is also like that. The original browser is dead, replaced by a Chromium reskin, and they're making money from microlending in Africa instead.
deleted 3y ago
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phpisthebest 3y ago

[flagged]

asystole 3y ago
Everything coming out of them recently, including the mailshots I see and even the onboarding copy, seems to indicate they see themselves as a political advocacy org first and a browser developer second.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  >they see themselves as a political advocacy org first and a browser developer second. That would be an improvement. Being a browser developer does not factor in anything they focus on.
- ydlr 3y ago
  The tragedy of it is that building Firefox is the most impactful political advocacy they do.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Developing and operating open technology is political advocacy. Technology and its implementation is simply the expression of the ideology, rights, etc. Leadership choices, as well as their efficacy and compensation is still an important discussion.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    > Developing and operating open technology is political advocacy. That's fine, they should leave it at that and do it the best they can because that is presumably their competency. But they can't help themselves and insist on engaging various other political endeavors which they just aren't good at but probably sounds good when they brag about it to their friends at dinner parties. Like operating 'online spaces' for African lesbian women in tech or whatever the heck they're calling it, which amounts to them somehow blowing millions of dollars to host a mastadon instance, which isn't needed by anybody because all the marginalized groups they claim to be serving already have online spaces of their own on Facebook, discord, etc.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Agreed! This is what governance and oversight is for!
  - asystole 3y ago
    No, it’s not. Software development is software development. Political advocacy is political advocacy.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
freedomben 3y ago
Importantly, that was also the reason that Brendan Eich used Chromium as a base for Brave, rather than Firefox. Had that even not occurred, we might be in a position where more than one organization had a business interest is Firefox, which would be a complete game changer.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Do you have a source for this?
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Not linkable, just my memory from a podcast interview at the time. IIRC the firing wasn't the only reason to go Chromium-based, but it made the decision a lot easier
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      If it were any reason at all, Brave would have chosen Chromium to start with. It didn't.
- rglullis 3y ago
  I really doubt that is true. Speaking from the experience of working in a project that tried to build "enterprise Chrome OS, but based on Firefox instead", I can tell you that Firefox is still a lot harder to fork and customize than Chromium is.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    thanks, I'm sure there were more factors involved than just the firing, so that would make a lot of sense. Given your experience, If one were to fork Firefox entirely from Mozilla, very loosely, if one were a non-profit dedicated to just the browser and not trying to build a diversified company around it, what type of funding do you think an org would need to keep up with web technology changes and build a foundational engineering team?
wredue 3y ago
[flagged]
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  [flagged]
- richbell 3y ago
  I'm only aware of his views against gay marriage. Do you have more info on him being openly racist and sexist? Searching for his name + racist or sexist doesn't seem to yield any results. Off topic, but I think your edit is against the spirit of HN and weakens your comment.
- concordDance 3y ago
  Unsourced and non-specific disparagement might be the reason for the downvotes here. People like to read posts that make them feel they have a better understanding of the world rather than a particular poster's political viewpoints. I think including either sources or specifics (e.g. a specific statement he's made or what sort of "sexism" or "racism" he indulges in) would result in less downvotes.

Riverheart 3y ago

Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Yes, Mozilla is different now, yes the CEO makes too much money but if more people used their browser more they might invest more in it in instead of seeing it as a money sink to satisfy people who can’t be satisfied. Seriously, Mozilla cant win. A large voice of people constantly scold Mozilla for anything it does. We’ve heard from Firefox devs on how this bash fest affects them and we expect them to crank out awesome software despite the abuse. Instead of picking the lesser of two evils they say oh, Firefox is N milliseconds slower than Chrome so I’ll use the greater of two evils. Can we stop beating a dead horse? If you don’t like Firefox or Mozilla fine but don’t act like it’s unusable as a browser. It’s fine, it works, I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition. Sure it may be slow for YOU (whatever your use case is) or maybe your extensions broke but average users who rely power users to recommend a browser don’t care. If they can open Facebook and Netflix it’s fine. So use Chrome yourself and recommend Firefox to the people this crap doesn’t matter to. And maybe, if they see the numbers tick up, they’ll change course.

javajosh 3y ago
Two things can be true at once: Firefox is a great browser that needs greater market share, and the CEO pay is out-of-whack. The solution is to use the browser but a) not give money to the foundation, and b) complain and expect change.
- Riverheart 3y ago
  I said the CEO makes too much money so I don’t know what the point of your post is. I think it’s pretty clear all the complaining hasn’t done anything as this conversation has been going on for years but I don’t expect that to stop anyone from getting easy HN karma.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< I don’t why everyone is so bothered by minor details when their goals and clearly better than their competition. I use FF is my daily driver for home stuff; work in chrome/edge. When I see things that are wrong, I point them out. We can champion FF for the good things it does and absolutely we can bash CxO club for slowly running it to the ground. << Honestly these kinds of posts are tiresome and unhelpful. Not accurate, this is likely one of the few ways we can exert some minimal level of influence over this. And besides, what did not complaining ever achieve?

kriro9jdjfif 3y ago

Agree. I’ve git submoduled Firefox and other projects and have local AI help edit and build them. Have made zero changes to FF itself, but overall have found local AI a huge help in managing it all.

runjake 3y ago

The article states that Mozilla is far from dying and that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox.

irrational 3y ago
Away from Firefox? They don't have anything useful other than Firefox. Trash everything else and devote all resources to Firefox.
wincy 3y ago
Too bad every product that’s actually useful gets deprecated. Lockwise was great and it got deprecated.
ranger_danger 3y ago
it's only not dead yet because google is paying them to try to "avoid" being anti-competitive themselves. they're the single biggest investor by far.
bakugo 3y ago
>that it’s diversifying itself away from Firefox And Firefox is their only worthwhile product, so moving away from Firefox means they're dying.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  I don't know what I'd do if Firefox died. Maybe it's time Firefox starts diversifying itself away from Mozilla.
  - sgift 3y ago
    And with which business model? That's the elephant in the room here. If it's only about unpaid developers, Firefox already has these currently in addition to the Mozilla employees, but if it wants to stay relevant it needs paid developers working on it full-time.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I’ve lead those threads in the past with hopes that someone would give a glimmer of hope Honestly, this news/post made me lose the final shred of hope I had. :/

echelon 3y ago
The best thing we can do for the web at this point is talk to our politicians about the incredible power that Google and Apple wield. They either need to be split up, or their platforms entirely opened up to competition via standardization [1], first class third-party support [2], no more preferential dogfooding [3], and no more ad sales protection rackets [4]. [1] Google no longer unilaterally pulls on web standards. Google and Apple adopt a shared, first-class standard for native app development. Web gets "as native" APIs. [2] No requirement of app store for distribution. Web installs and web as native. No scare walls or hidden-in-the-settings feature flags. The browser runtimes have full extension support with no removal of hooks necessary for eg. adblocking. [3] First party apps are not defaults, not preinstalled, and more importantly, cannot re-assert themselves as defaults. [4] If someone searches for your company or product by name, or a 1 edit distance variation, competitor ads can't show up before your website or app.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  I mean between them, MSFT they have totally captured congress Unless people start running for office that won’t just do what corporations want then it’s futile.

onyxringer 3y ago

[dead]

neurostimulant 3y ago

Firefox might be dead soon but Mozilla will probably live on as a VPN company. Opera is also like that. The original browser is dead, replaced by a Chromium reskin, and they're making money from microlending in Africa instead.

deleted 3y ago

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