5 ms·

I feel like this question is a decade too late, but FF is open source right? Why hasn't Mozilla been jettisoned years ago?

boomboomsubban 3y ago
Because despite what everybody seems to think, Mozilla spends several hundred millions of dollars every year developing Firefox, and that's not the kind of thing the community can just fork and replace.
- harpiaharpyja 3y ago
  I see. I asked the question because I legitimately didn't know, and haven't heard any conversation about it. Maybe that's because continuing Firefox outside of Mozilla seems like an insurmountable task, but doing nothing seems like a guaranteed dead end. I've been waiting a very long time for the ship to right, and it ain't happening. I guess if what's Firefox needs is a reliable source of funding, at least recognizing that is a necessary first step. Who knows, maybe it could happen somehow.
- wannacboatmovie 3y ago
  WHAT? That seems like a gross misuse of funds because they're definitely not spending hundreds of millions fixing bugs. They must be spending it on useless changes like the 300th UI refresh no one asked for. Firefox still sucks in every way imaginable and it's not measurably getting better. That number is shockingly unbelievable. Their crapware is not worth that budget. For comparison, look at what the OpenBSD team has accomplished (and continues to accomplish) with a small core team and they surely do not have hundreds of millions.
  - boomboomsubban 3y ago
    Feel free to build your own browser engine that stays up to date with the current web, supports nearly a hundred languages, and runs on basically every computer with a shoestring budget. It must be easy, that's why there are so many hobby projects that manage it.
  - vinhill 3y ago
    This year there was a post here on Firefox overtaking chrome in speedometer 2, so there certainly is measurable progress. Another option is to look at the interop2023 effort and how many test failures were fixed in Cross-Platform tests.
edflsafoiewq 3y ago
Because a living community of developers able to work on a codebase is far more valuable than the codebase itself.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

Because despite what everybody seems to think, Mozilla spends several hundred millions of dollars every year developing Firefox, and that's not the kind of thing the community can just fork and replace.

harpiaharpyja 3y ago
I see. I asked the question because I legitimately didn't know, and haven't heard any conversation about it. Maybe that's because continuing Firefox outside of Mozilla seems like an insurmountable task, but doing nothing seems like a guaranteed dead end. I've been waiting a very long time for the ship to right, and it ain't happening. I guess if what's Firefox needs is a reliable source of funding, at least recognizing that is a necessary first step. Who knows, maybe it could happen somehow.
wannacboatmovie 3y ago
WHAT? That seems like a gross misuse of funds because they're definitely not spending hundreds of millions fixing bugs. They must be spending it on useless changes like the 300th UI refresh no one asked for. Firefox still sucks in every way imaginable and it's not measurably getting better. That number is shockingly unbelievable. Their crapware is not worth that budget. For comparison, look at what the OpenBSD team has accomplished (and continues to accomplish) with a small core team and they surely do not have hundreds of millions.
- boomboomsubban 3y ago
  Feel free to build your own browser engine that stays up to date with the current web, supports nearly a hundred languages, and runs on basically every computer with a shoestring budget. It must be easy, that's why there are so many hobby projects that manage it.
- vinhill 3y ago
  This year there was a post here on Firefox overtaking chrome in speedometer 2, so there certainly is measurable progress. Another option is to look at the interop2023 effort and how many test failures were fixed in Cross-Platform tests.

edflsafoiewq 3y ago

Because a living community of developers able to work on a codebase is far more valuable than the codebase itself.