7 ms·

Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

tempfile 2y ago
The CEO pay rises will continue until morale improves.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
  The CEO and their "strong cadre of 16 directors" because it’s obviously required to write a HTML parser.
someotherperson 2y ago
> While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run Not focusing on Firefox is what brought it to its state today, so what should Mozilla do? Focus even less on Firefox and instead on ads, AI and begging. Insane. EDIT: As an aside, it looks like Mozilla's VC fund invested in the funding round[0] of one of the former board members[1] of mozilla.ai which is kinda weird. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/credo-ai-series-b--3b7e7c13 https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/credo-ai-series-b--... [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-investing-in-trustworthy-ai/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-i...
- bananapub 2y ago
  what does that even mean? "focussing on Firefox" isolates you from the vast majority of people who don't use it, and provides €0 of revenue per year to work on Firefox at all.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    On the other hand, advertising doesn't do much to help Mozilla if it removes the main differentiator Firefox has from vastly more popular competitors. Firefox with "privacy respecting advertising" sounds an awful lot like Chrome with compatibility issues.
    - philipov 2y ago
      Yes. There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. If they mess with extensions like Chrome did, they're going to lose their user base. A much higher proportion of us are only using Firefox because it's not connected to AdTech.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        > There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. Sure there is; print ads are fine, and nothing prevents that style being used on the web (in fact, I'm aware of a local paper that does do that). It's just that advertisers really want to spy on users, so they pretty much always do.
        galleywest200 2y ago
        One good example I like to show for this kind of web advertising is https://theweekinchess.com/ https://theweekinchess.com/ Basic image/hyperlinked banner ads, located to the side and non-disruptive, and relative to the topic of the website you are currently visiting.
        philipov 2y ago
        I don't want the advertisers who are spying on us to get a second chance to reconsider a more ethical way of doing business. I want their industry driven into the ground and destroyed for the crimes they've already committed. Only after that happens can we can talk about privacy-respecting advertising being possible.
      - bad_user 2y ago
- rocmcd 2y ago
  Mozilla really is in a bad spot if advertising, AI, and fundraising are the only innovative ideas their leadership could come up with. I will begrudgingly still use Firefox as my daily driver, but the mismanagement being shown is really appalling and I worry about the future of a free and open Internet. Suffice to say that we all deserve better.
  - exceptione 2y ago
    The internet and browsers are a public good, no society functions without. As the US has transitioned into a kleptocracy, it would be even more logical for the EU to financially support teams developing important open source projects. Same thing for Linux and Libre Office perhaps.
    - JimDabell 2y ago
      Mozilla got billions from Google and squandered it. If the EU were to fund a browser, I would prefer it to be Ladybird rather than throwing even more money into Mozilla’s bottomless pit.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Agreed, even if I am quite vocal about the state of Linux Desktop, as ex-believer, european distributions of FOSS OSes are the only viable way from US tech stacks. Yes, I am quite aware of the contributions they also make to those platforms, but at lease those can be forked from, that ain't happening with what Google/Apple/Microsoft are selling as mainstream OSes.
    - bad_user 2y ago
      The idea of EU funding Mozilla is naive, and if this is the best people can come up with, I'm not blaming Mozilla going for ads. For one, Mozilla is still a US entity. As an EU citizen, I'd rather have my taxes go towards funding EU entities, especially in this climate. And I'd rather have that EU entity fork Chromium, starting to contribute to its development, as that would be a wiser bet. And also, governments funding projects such as Firefox is a bad idea because the citizens of those governments come first. As one example, many online BBC shows are geo-blocked in my country. The EU is meant to serve its citizens, not the world, and you don't want the open Internet to depend on whom people vote for in the following election cycle. The only way to fund a project that has global reach is via a sustainable business model, not taxes.
RobotToaster 2y ago
I'm guessing the "evolution" of their leadership isn't going to involve their CEO taking a cut to her seven million dollars salary?
- tombert 2y ago
  Of course not, why should the CEO be forced to use last year's model of yacht? Frankly I don't know how anyone lives with less than ten million these days.
  - DrBenCarson 2y ago
    If the CEO made $0, what would the impact on Mozilla’s balance sheet be? Hint: not significant
    - tombert 2y ago
      Probably not very significant, though it's always frustrating when you read about mass layoffs at these corporations, only to see that the executives are all still getting raises and bonuses.
      - DrBenCarson 2y ago
        Emotional frustration yes totally understandable But from a strictly business standpoint, it’s a bit of an absurd position
        spwa4 2y ago
        Business used to consider it equally important that employees, customers and shareholders were all happy. Frankly, it is easy to see that on the level of an entire economy, unless all 3 are happy, disasters are unavoidable. But now every company thinks they can force everything on customers (idiotic ideas like "self-care"), the government, or even just the environment, usually doing enormous damage for 1/100th of that damage in gains. At least we can rest assured of one thing: this trend WILL end. Through rational thinking? Through tears? Through violence? Through total catastrophe? That's the question. But end it will. Guaranteed.
guardiangod 2y ago
I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. Then the people who wants to work on/support Firefox can solely work on Firefox, and other people who wants to pursue whatever tech-of-the-day is (eg. crypto, VPN, AI) can push whatever agenda they want in their own org. Instead of the current state where the other-agendas people are riding on Firefox's brand name recognition while starving Firefox into oblivion.
- hysan 2y ago
  > I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. They won’t do this because then they can’t redirect any of the donations and funding that people give to Firefox to <insert non-browser project here>.
  - BrendanEich 2y ago
    None of the donations to the parent Mozilla Foundation pay for Firefox development. This is a common misconception, Mozilla's own fund-raising makes it more common than it would be if they were explicit in stating where donations go and what they fund and do not fund.
    - hysan 2y ago
      That’s good to know. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Is it possible to donate directly to Firefox?
      - BrendanEich 2y ago
        No, not as far as I know. And definitely no tax-deductible way to do it.
hellcow 2y ago
The absolute last thing I want from Mozilla is advertising. Blocking ads with uBlock Origin is the entire reason I use Firefox today. I don’t know how you can be this out of touch with your users.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  many posts on Usenet from 35 years ago speak in lengthy detail about "how the Internet will be ruined by ads" and then lots of chatter about who would do that, and why.. source: one of the authors of those emails
TheChaplain 2y ago
I've noticed Mozilla bringing a lot more behind closed doors, from BugZilla to their restricted Jira. Guess it is just a matter of time until Firefox is behind a walls too?
- altairprime 2y ago
  That tendency began after Gamergate made aggregate vitriol an acceptable persuasion technique and has been accelerating since, in parallel to the predictable decline of open source contributions as the first generation of mobile-first desktop-never people that don’t understand file folder storage hierarchies. When there’s no one left who wants to contribute code, there’s no point in investing further in community-accessible ticketing systems, and the vitriol outweighs diffs by a factor of ten thousand to one or more.
devwastaken 2y ago
Donating to Mozilla is the same as burning money to keep warm. old orgs lose the people that made them and they become aimless inefficient monsters propped up by nepotism rather than competition. Mozilla has constantly ignored the market and their users. Time for other orgs to take it up and time for Mozilla to not renew.
spankalee 2y ago
I wish Mozilla would get into revenue generating, web-maximalist products like an office suite alternative to Google Workspace and Microsoft. I think there are a fair number of people who want a significant brand behind these, but also an alternative to the mega-corp offerings. ie, instead of Thunderbird (which I know isn't developed by Mozilla anymore), create a hosted email platform with a PWA that can run and store data locally. These types of products would have a virtuous relationship with Firefox.
- lurk2 2y ago
  It would be interesting to see Mozilla diversify itself from its Google stipend, but there seems to be an inherent conflict of interest at play when a non-profit like Mozilla starts to expand its offerings beyond the core product; the tendency is for leadership to use these projects for empire-building. Wikipedia suffers from a similar problem where the core product is great, but the parent foundation uses the product to finance other projects that are only tangentially related to the product itself.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Mozilla faces a very similar set of challenges as other "umbrella" open source organizations like Apache, MediaWiki, and the Linux Foundation that have notably low overlap with the current boardmembers.
  - spankalee 2y ago
    This is why I think that web-centric, open source, hosted core apps would be nice to see. If you want to use the web as your primary application runtime, you're currently stuck with closed-source apps, or pretty bad open source apps that are difficult to integrate. Sandstorm did (and still is as a community project) try to integrate some existing apps into a cohesive-ish platform with nice security guarantees, but it wasn't really made accessible to every day users. Something similar to Google Workspace, but open source and hosted by a foundation could be a nice default starting point and/or a principled platform to use, for a lot of users.
drpossum 2y ago
Genuinely disgusted to read any of that. All they can think of is ads, AI, and "fundraising campaigns" (which I presume will be more popup garbage)? This has pushed me to move to librewolf
- drpossum 2y ago
  Posting from librewolf. Easier than I thought. Anyone else on the fence come join me.
coastalpuma 2y ago
[dead]
perihelions 2y ago
This isn't really "growing" Mozilla (they laid off 30% of their people a few months ago[0]); this is adding three people to their board of directors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42054867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42054867 ("Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division (techcrunch.com)")
- altairprime 2y ago
  That’s 30% of Foundation, not Corporation.
28304283409234 2y ago
Let. Me. Pay. For. Firefox. I pay for other services online. I pay for VPN, for ElementaryOS, for Fastmail. Paying is fine. I pay, you give me a service that does not spy on me. It is not that hard.
- ris 2y ago
  Have you ever donated? What services do you want that shouldn't be available to non-paying users.
  - 28304283409234 2y ago
    > Have you ever donated? To Mozilla? No. Donations are not the same as paying for a specific product or service. I do not want to support their other adventures. > What services do you want that shouldn't be available to non-paying users. Librewolf, but by Mozilla.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
    Donating does not fund firefox. They "embezzle" it into funding all their other shit like internet censorship ("We need more than deplatforming" https://archive.li/U6aXc https://archive.li/U6aXc) Yes I did donate in the distant past.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    There is no way to donate to Firefox.
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  And now I just learned about NextDNS. I'm going to pay for that. Back in the day, people were unwilling to pay for Netscape, and Mozilla was born. Today, the world has shifted again, and there are more than enough people with enough money willing to pay for software. And again, Netscape^WMozilla is late to grok this.
jaredcwhite 2y ago
"While Firefox remains the core of what we do" Um excuse me? Mozilla has been asleep at the wheel for years, letting Firefox languish while Mozilla plays squirrel with a dozen other things nobody knows or cares about. In fact, I guarantee you that outside of nerd culture, nobody has any idea what Mozilla is. But maybe they have heard of Firefox. You should be shouting *Firefox Firefox Firefox!* from the rooftops with a massive new ad campaign aimed at growing marketshare rapidly. Then find creative ways to respectfully monetize your enthusiastic fanbase. This seems like Software Business 101 to me, which is why I am continually mystified you seem unable to grasp these basics.
- altairprime 2y ago
  The fanbase has no money to offer Firefox. As with all free products in today’s wage-inequality world, no one can afford to pay for a browser, so no one will voluntarily — and if they try to charge money, users will just switch to Chrome. So either the mission of “free open web” goes out the door or they end up sacrifice their Necko/Gecko clusterfuck in order to cut the hundreds of jobs it takes to maintain creaky old C++ browser engine. Ten bucks says they announce their intentions to migrate to WebKit or Servo in the next year.
throwaway733967 2y ago
[flagged]
zaruvi 2y ago
I really hope the Ladybird browser project succeeds in the next few years, because it seems that Mozilla is digging Firefox' grave deeper with every step they take.
pjmlp 2y ago
I guess I am going to miss Firefox, at least it gave birth to Rust.
pixxel 2y ago
[dead]
anotherhue 2y ago
If you're reading this and having the standard rage reaction to Baker's salary and the squandering of Firefox, instead consider donating directly to Ladybird. The community can solve for this. https://donorbox.org/ladybird https://donorbox.org/ladybird https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/
- mdaniel 2y ago
  What exactly would one get as return on that investment, given <https://ladybird.org/#faq https://ladybird.org/#faq>: - We are targeting Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS - We don't have anyone actively working on Windows support, and there are considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like environment - We don't have anyone actively working on an Android or iOS port - now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain I wish them luck, but yikes what a very, very deep hole they are trying to dig themselves out of just to reach alpha that thumbs its nose at Windows and the entire mobile market The hubris of writing a web browser in C++ after looking at Chromium and thinking, "pffft, those morons clearly don't know how to avoid UAF bugs"

The CEO pay rises will continue until morale improves.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
The CEO and their "strong cadre of 16 directors" because it’s obviously required to write a HTML parser.

> While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run Not focusing on Firefox is what brought it to its state today, so what should Mozilla do? Focus even less on Firefox and instead on ads, AI and begging. Insane. EDIT: As an aside, it looks like Mozilla's VC fund invested in the funding round[0] of one of the former board members[1] of mozilla.ai which is kinda weird. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/credo-ai-series-b--3b7e7c13 https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/credo-ai-series-b--... [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-investing-in-trustworthy-ai/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/introducing-mozilla-ai-i...

bananapub 2y ago
what does that even mean? "focussing on Firefox" isolates you from the vast majority of people who don't use it, and provides €0 of revenue per year to work on Firefox at all.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  On the other hand, advertising doesn't do much to help Mozilla if it removes the main differentiator Firefox has from vastly more popular competitors. Firefox with "privacy respecting advertising" sounds an awful lot like Chrome with compatibility issues.
  - philipov 2y ago
    Yes. There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. If they mess with extensions like Chrome did, they're going to lose their user base. A much higher proportion of us are only using Firefox because it's not connected to AdTech.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      > There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. Sure there is; print ads are fine, and nothing prevents that style being used on the web (in fact, I'm aware of a local paper that does do that). It's just that advertisers really want to spy on users, so they pretty much always do.
      - galleywest200 2y ago
        One good example I like to show for this kind of web advertising is https://theweekinchess.com/ https://theweekinchess.com/ Basic image/hyperlinked banner ads, located to the side and non-disruptive, and relative to the topic of the website you are currently visiting.
      - philipov 2y ago
        I don't want the advertisers who are spying on us to get a second chance to reconsider a more ethical way of doing business. I want their industry driven into the ground and destroyed for the crimes they've already committed. Only after that happens can we can talk about privacy-respecting advertising being possible.
    - bad_user 2y ago
rocmcd 2y ago
Mozilla really is in a bad spot if advertising, AI, and fundraising are the only innovative ideas their leadership could come up with. I will begrudgingly still use Firefox as my daily driver, but the mismanagement being shown is really appalling and I worry about the future of a free and open Internet. Suffice to say that we all deserve better.
- exceptione 2y ago
  The internet and browsers are a public good, no society functions without. As the US has transitioned into a kleptocracy, it would be even more logical for the EU to financially support teams developing important open source projects. Same thing for Linux and Libre Office perhaps.
  - JimDabell 2y ago
    Mozilla got billions from Google and squandered it. If the EU were to fund a browser, I would prefer it to be Ladybird rather than throwing even more money into Mozilla’s bottomless pit.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Agreed, even if I am quite vocal about the state of Linux Desktop, as ex-believer, european distributions of FOSS OSes are the only viable way from US tech stacks. Yes, I am quite aware of the contributions they also make to those platforms, but at lease those can be forked from, that ain't happening with what Google/Apple/Microsoft are selling as mainstream OSes.
  - bad_user 2y ago
    The idea of EU funding Mozilla is naive, and if this is the best people can come up with, I'm not blaming Mozilla going for ads. For one, Mozilla is still a US entity. As an EU citizen, I'd rather have my taxes go towards funding EU entities, especially in this climate. And I'd rather have that EU entity fork Chromium, starting to contribute to its development, as that would be a wiser bet. And also, governments funding projects such as Firefox is a bad idea because the citizens of those governments come first. As one example, many online BBC shows are geo-blocked in my country. The EU is meant to serve its citizens, not the world, and you don't want the open Internet to depend on whom people vote for in the following election cycle. The only way to fund a project that has global reach is via a sustainable business model, not taxes.

RobotToaster 2y ago

I'm guessing the "evolution" of their leadership isn't going to involve their CEO taking a cut to her seven million dollars salary?

tombert 2y ago
Of course not, why should the CEO be forced to use last year's model of yacht? Frankly I don't know how anyone lives with less than ten million these days.
- DrBenCarson 2y ago
  If the CEO made $0, what would the impact on Mozilla’s balance sheet be? Hint: not significant
  - tombert 2y ago
    Probably not very significant, though it's always frustrating when you read about mass layoffs at these corporations, only to see that the executives are all still getting raises and bonuses.
    - DrBenCarson 2y ago
      Emotional frustration yes totally understandable But from a strictly business standpoint, it’s a bit of an absurd position
      - spwa4 2y ago
        Business used to consider it equally important that employees, customers and shareholders were all happy. Frankly, it is easy to see that on the level of an entire economy, unless all 3 are happy, disasters are unavoidable. But now every company thinks they can force everything on customers (idiotic ideas like "self-care"), the government, or even just the environment, usually doing enormous damage for 1/100th of that damage in gains. At least we can rest assured of one thing: this trend WILL end. Through rational thinking? Through tears? Through violence? Through total catastrophe? That's the question. But end it will. Guaranteed.

guardiangod 2y ago

I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. Then the people who wants to work on/support Firefox can solely work on Firefox, and other people who wants to pursue whatever tech-of-the-day is (eg. crypto, VPN, AI) can push whatever agenda they want in their own org. Instead of the current state where the other-agendas people are riding on Firefox's brand name recognition while starving Firefox into oblivion.

hysan 2y ago
> I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. They won’t do this because then they can’t redirect any of the donations and funding that people give to Firefox to <insert non-browser project here>.
- BrendanEich 2y ago
  None of the donations to the parent Mozilla Foundation pay for Firefox development. This is a common misconception, Mozilla's own fund-raising makes it more common than it would be if they were explicit in stating where donations go and what they fund and do not fund.
  - hysan 2y ago
    That’s good to know. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Is it possible to donate directly to Firefox?
    - BrendanEich 2y ago
      No, not as far as I know. And definitely no tax-deductible way to do it.

hellcow 2y ago

The absolute last thing I want from Mozilla is advertising. Blocking ads with uBlock Origin is the entire reason I use Firefox today. I don’t know how you can be this out of touch with your users.

mistrial9 2y ago
many posts on Usenet from 35 years ago speak in lengthy detail about "how the Internet will be ruined by ads" and then lots of chatter about who would do that, and why.. source: one of the authors of those emails

TheChaplain 2y ago

I've noticed Mozilla bringing a lot more behind closed doors, from BugZilla to their restricted Jira. Guess it is just a matter of time until Firefox is behind a walls too?

altairprime 2y ago
That tendency began after Gamergate made aggregate vitriol an acceptable persuasion technique and has been accelerating since, in parallel to the predictable decline of open source contributions as the first generation of mobile-first desktop-never people that don’t understand file folder storage hierarchies. When there’s no one left who wants to contribute code, there’s no point in investing further in community-accessible ticketing systems, and the vitriol outweighs diffs by a factor of ten thousand to one or more.

devwastaken 2y ago

Donating to Mozilla is the same as burning money to keep warm. old orgs lose the people that made them and they become aimless inefficient monsters propped up by nepotism rather than competition. Mozilla has constantly ignored the market and their users. Time for other orgs to take it up and time for Mozilla to not renew.

spankalee 2y ago

I wish Mozilla would get into revenue generating, web-maximalist products like an office suite alternative to Google Workspace and Microsoft. I think there are a fair number of people who want a significant brand behind these, but also an alternative to the mega-corp offerings. ie, instead of Thunderbird (which I know isn't developed by Mozilla anymore), create a hosted email platform with a PWA that can run and store data locally. These types of products would have a virtuous relationship with Firefox.

lurk2 2y ago
It would be interesting to see Mozilla diversify itself from its Google stipend, but there seems to be an inherent conflict of interest at play when a non-profit like Mozilla starts to expand its offerings beyond the core product; the tendency is for leadership to use these projects for empire-building. Wikipedia suffers from a similar problem where the core product is great, but the parent foundation uses the product to finance other projects that are only tangentially related to the product itself.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Mozilla faces a very similar set of challenges as other "umbrella" open source organizations like Apache, MediaWiki, and the Linux Foundation that have notably low overlap with the current boardmembers.
- spankalee 2y ago
  This is why I think that web-centric, open source, hosted core apps would be nice to see. If you want to use the web as your primary application runtime, you're currently stuck with closed-source apps, or pretty bad open source apps that are difficult to integrate. Sandstorm did (and still is as a community project) try to integrate some existing apps into a cohesive-ish platform with nice security guarantees, but it wasn't really made accessible to every day users. Something similar to Google Workspace, but open source and hosted by a foundation could be a nice default starting point and/or a principled platform to use, for a lot of users.

drpossum 2y ago

Genuinely disgusted to read any of that. All they can think of is ads, AI, and "fundraising campaigns" (which I presume will be more popup garbage)? This has pushed me to move to librewolf

drpossum 2y ago
Posting from librewolf. Easier than I thought. Anyone else on the fence come join me.

coastalpuma 2y ago

[dead]

perihelions 2y ago

This isn't really "growing" Mozilla (they laid off 30% of their people a few months ago[0]); this is adding three people to their board of directors. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42054867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42054867 ("Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division (techcrunch.com)")

altairprime 2y ago
That’s 30% of Foundation, not Corporation.

28304283409234 2y ago

Let. Me. Pay. For. Firefox. I pay for other services online. I pay for VPN, for ElementaryOS, for Fastmail. Paying is fine. I pay, you give me a service that does not spy on me. It is not that hard.

ris 2y ago
Have you ever donated? What services do you want that shouldn't be available to non-paying users.
- 28304283409234 2y ago
  > Have you ever donated? To Mozilla? No. Donations are not the same as paying for a specific product or service. I do not want to support their other adventures. > What services do you want that shouldn't be available to non-paying users. Librewolf, but by Mozilla.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y ago
  Donating does not fund firefox. They "embezzle" it into funding all their other shit like internet censorship ("We need more than deplatforming" https://archive.li/U6aXc https://archive.li/U6aXc) Yes I did donate in the distant past.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  There is no way to donate to Firefox.
28304283409234 2y ago
And now I just learned about NextDNS. I'm going to pay for that. Back in the day, people were unwilling to pay for Netscape, and Mozilla was born. Today, the world has shifted again, and there are more than enough people with enough money willing to pay for software. And again, Netscape^WMozilla is late to grok this.

jaredcwhite 2y ago

"While Firefox remains the core of what we do" Um excuse me? Mozilla has been asleep at the wheel for years, letting Firefox languish while Mozilla plays squirrel with a dozen other things nobody knows or cares about. In fact, I guarantee you that outside of nerd culture, nobody has any idea what Mozilla is. But maybe they have heard of Firefox. You should be shouting *Firefox Firefox Firefox!* from the rooftops with a massive new ad campaign aimed at growing marketshare rapidly. Then find creative ways to respectfully monetize your enthusiastic fanbase. This seems like Software Business 101 to me, which is why I am continually mystified you seem unable to grasp these basics.

altairprime 2y ago
The fanbase has no money to offer Firefox. As with all free products in today’s wage-inequality world, no one can afford to pay for a browser, so no one will voluntarily — and if they try to charge money, users will just switch to Chrome. So either the mission of “free open web” goes out the door or they end up sacrifice their Necko/Gecko clusterfuck in order to cut the hundreds of jobs it takes to maintain creaky old C++ browser engine. Ten bucks says they announce their intentions to migrate to WebKit or Servo in the next year.

throwaway733967 2y ago

[flagged]

zaruvi 2y ago

I really hope the Ladybird browser project succeeds in the next few years, because it seems that Mozilla is digging Firefox' grave deeper with every step they take.

pjmlp 2y ago

I guess I am going to miss Firefox, at least it gave birth to Rust.

pixxel 2y ago

[dead]

anotherhue 2y ago

If you're reading this and having the standard rage reaction to Baker's salary and the squandering of Firefox, instead consider donating directly to Ladybird. The community can solve for this. https://donorbox.org/ladybird https://donorbox.org/ladybird https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/

mdaniel 2y ago
What exactly would one get as return on that investment, given <https://ladybird.org/#faq https://ladybird.org/#faq>: - We are targeting Summer 2026 for a first Alpha version on Linux and macOS - We don't have anyone actively working on Windows support, and there are considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like environment - We don't have anyone actively working on an Android or iOS port - now we have almost half a million lines of modern C++ to maintain I wish them luck, but yikes what a very, very deep hole they are trying to dig themselves out of just to reach alpha that thumbs its nose at Windows and the entire mobile market The hubris of writing a web browser in C++ after looking at Chromium and thinking, "pffft, those morons clearly don't know how to avoid UAF bugs"