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> IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, and also keeping them accountable and criticizing them where criticism is due. If there is no alternative

> IMO there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, and also keeping them accountable and criticizing them where criticism is due. If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable. > They are still roughly the good guys, even if sometimes misguided. There aren't any good guys here, there are just people doing people things. Mozilla is more than sometimes misguided, they've been essentially permanently distracted from Firefox as the core mission for more than ten years now. Their organization is designed in a way that makes funding Firefox directly impossible, and they haven't made any moves to fix it. Instead they set up failed side project after failed side project and repeatedly alienate their core with ads, while insisting that donations couldn't possibly work in spite of the fact that Thunderbird clearly shows that they can—as long as the project is unshackled from the mess that is Mozilla. It might well be that the best thing that could happen for Firefox would be for it to get evicted from Mozilla like Thunderbird was.

aquova 2y ago
> If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable. Except they're not indispensable. They're now the fourth place browser in terms of market share on a good day, and dwindling. They need all the good will they can get, and this sort of discussion amongst their most hardcore audience is exactly what keeps them accountable.
- AstralStorm 2y ago
  Can you name other browser engines in play? I'm waiting. While neither Mozilla nor Firefox are not indispensable, Gecko is. We literally have three working rendering engines: Chromium/V3, Gecko/Spidermonkey and ... Long nothing ... WebKit/KHTML?
  - Philpax 2y ago
    Ladybird and Servo are coming up, but I suppose you're covering that with "working".
    - Laesx 2y ago
      Servo is still going? Thought it was pretty much on life support after being abandoned by Mozilla.
      - LoganDark 2y ago
        Servo as a fully-featured web browser does indeed not seem to exist anymore but some of its components such as Webrender still do and are actively maintained.
        johnny22 2y ago
        servo was never a fully featured web browser and was never proposed to be iirc. It was proposed as experimental from the start. The most we got at the time was browser.html
        LoganDark 2y ago
        Back in... 2018? there was a Servo binary you could download that had an address bar and could be used to browse the web. That actually started to get stripped down over time, the later binaries had less and less functionality, until now I don't even think there are any. Servo spearheaded a lot of projects, like bindings to macOS frameworks from Rust, that would have been used to create a more comprehensive browser, but then got torn down once the larger thing was canceled in favor of certain components, like webrender. I don't know when exactly it was canceled - maybe around the time Firefox Quantum shipped. Note that I never said it was ever not experimental. Just that it would have been more until it was canceled.
        yencabulator 2y ago
homebrewer 2y ago
Do note that Thunderbird can afford to keep a relatively tiny team (compared to Firefox) because it stands on the shoulder of giants (Firefox) for its UI and HTML renderer. That Thunderbird is able to cover its expenses with donations really doesn't prove that Firefox will also be able to do so, but that doesn't excuse Mozilla from not even trying. > failed side project after failed side project Rust and MDN have been huge successes. Their mobile OS is still alive and kicking, although other people are making money from that now. They also put in a ton of resources into decreasing FF memory footprint as part of the failed mobile OS effort, which benefits all of us.
- demosthanos 2y ago
  > Rust and MDN have been huge successes Neither is an income stream, and Rust was evicted while it was still taking off and is no longer a Mozilla project.
  - AstralStorm 2y ago
    The big question is why anything there has to be an income stream. If there are users, and there is a need, we should directly furnish the project with a bunch of hired employees rather than indirectly pay some manager, rely on charity or ads. Yes, I know, how unamerican of me. ;)
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > we should directly furnish the project with a bunch of hired employees Who is “we”?
      - lyu07282 2y ago
        We should be able to directly donate to fund the salary of full-time engineers working on Firefox and only Firefox, completely circumventing the PMC. It might also be possible to fork and spin off Firefox into a new non-profit, circumventing Mozilla if some of the devs organize it.
layer8 2y ago
You keep them accountable by calling them out in public, as with the recent ToS change, where it made them clarify and improve the new wording. Keep calling them out on stuff that isn’t acceptable.
- tokai 2y ago
  We have called them out for years, and its not getting better.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > You keep them accountable by calling them out in public This is performative. Mozilla is accountable to a small circle of donors, and they mostly see Firefox as a monetisation vector.
  - sciens3_ 2y ago
    > and they mostly see Firefox as a monetisation vector. They could’ve gone the Wikipedia route and heavily asked for donations, but, instead, they’ve chosen to sell user data. That’s why I must leave. At least Google was very obviously reliant on advertising. Mozilla had no excuse other than desperation and pure idiotic evil.
    - handoflixue 2y ago
      What specific data is being sold?
      - sciens3_ 2y ago
        [dead]

aquova 2y ago

> If there is no alternative to supporting Mozilla, how do we keep them accountable? If they know that they're the only hope for a cross-platform browser that isn't developed by Google, then they know that any outrage is a bluff that can't have teeth because they're indispensable. Except they're not indispensable. They're now the fourth place browser in terms of market share on a good day, and dwindling. They need all the good will they can get, and this sort of discussion amongst their most hardcore audience is exactly what keeps them accountable.

AstralStorm 2y ago
Can you name other browser engines in play? I'm waiting. While neither Mozilla nor Firefox are not indispensable, Gecko is. We literally have three working rendering engines: Chromium/V3, Gecko/Spidermonkey and ... Long nothing ... WebKit/KHTML?
- Philpax 2y ago
  Ladybird and Servo are coming up, but I suppose you're covering that with "working".
  - Laesx 2y ago
    Servo is still going? Thought it was pretty much on life support after being abandoned by Mozilla.
    - LoganDark 2y ago
      Servo as a fully-featured web browser does indeed not seem to exist anymore but some of its components such as Webrender still do and are actively maintained.
      - johnny22 2y ago
        servo was never a fully featured web browser and was never proposed to be iirc. It was proposed as experimental from the start. The most we got at the time was browser.html
        LoganDark 2y ago
        Back in... 2018? there was a Servo binary you could download that had an address bar and could be used to browse the web. That actually started to get stripped down over time, the later binaries had less and less functionality, until now I don't even think there are any. Servo spearheaded a lot of projects, like bindings to macOS frameworks from Rust, that would have been used to create a more comprehensive browser, but then got torn down once the larger thing was canceled in favor of certain components, like webrender. I don't know when exactly it was canceled - maybe around the time Firefox Quantum shipped. Note that I never said it was ever not experimental. Just that it would have been more until it was canceled.
        yencabulator 2y ago

homebrewer 2y ago

Do note that Thunderbird can afford to keep a relatively tiny team (compared to Firefox) because it stands on the shoulder of giants (Firefox) for its UI and HTML renderer. That Thunderbird is able to cover its expenses with donations really doesn't prove that Firefox will also be able to do so, but that doesn't excuse Mozilla from not even trying. > failed side project after failed side project Rust and MDN have been huge successes. Their mobile OS is still alive and kicking, although other people are making money from that now. They also put in a ton of resources into decreasing FF memory footprint as part of the failed mobile OS effort, which benefits all of us.

demosthanos 2y ago
> Rust and MDN have been huge successes Neither is an income stream, and Rust was evicted while it was still taking off and is no longer a Mozilla project.
- AstralStorm 2y ago
  The big question is why anything there has to be an income stream. If there are users, and there is a need, we should directly furnish the project with a bunch of hired employees rather than indirectly pay some manager, rely on charity or ads. Yes, I know, how unamerican of me. ;)
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > we should directly furnish the project with a bunch of hired employees Who is “we”?
    - lyu07282 2y ago
      We should be able to directly donate to fund the salary of full-time engineers working on Firefox and only Firefox, completely circumventing the PMC. It might also be possible to fork and spin off Firefox into a new non-profit, circumventing Mozilla if some of the devs organize it.

layer8 2y ago

You keep them accountable by calling them out in public, as with the recent ToS change, where it made them clarify and improve the new wording. Keep calling them out on stuff that isn’t acceptable.

tokai 2y ago
We have called them out for years, and its not getting better.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> You keep them accountable by calling them out in public This is performative. Mozilla is accountable to a small circle of donors, and they mostly see Firefox as a monetisation vector.
- sciens3_ 2y ago
  > and they mostly see Firefox as a monetisation vector. They could’ve gone the Wikipedia route and heavily asked for donations, but, instead, they’ve chosen to sell user data. That’s why I must leave. At least Google was very obviously reliant on advertising. Mozilla had no excuse other than desperation and pure idiotic evil.
  - handoflixue 2y ago
    What specific data is being sold?
    - sciens3_ 2y ago
      [dead]