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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 HT

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.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > We should be able to directly donate to fund the salary of full-time engineers working on Firefox and only Firefox Money is fungible. If you want to do this, frankly, donate to LibreWolf.
yu3zhou4 2y ago
Can you share more about their mobile OS? I thought it's discontinued
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  I guess they are talking about KaiOS, which had initial success, shipping on more 100M devices in India. Unfortunately they have been struggling to expand outside of India and even in India these days since their partner (Reliance Jio) is not pushing new devices there so much. Another major pain point is they lost support from WhatsApp, which is really the king maker in many countries when it comes to mass market adoption of a mobile platform.
  - rjsw 2y ago
    The version of Firefox in KaiOS has lagged a long way behind the current desktop one.
    - fabrice_d 2y ago
      Yes, it's been a struggle to ship newer version. It looks like they are preparing a new release based on gecko 123 (https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g/blob/gonk/config/milestone.txt https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g/blob/gonk/config/mile...).
masklinn 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. Also, and mainly, because that's a lot less of a moving target. - there's not much that's new to email, there are some recent ideas like jmap but they're not exactly hard requirements - UI requirements are largely fixed and a pretty minor concern - and between web clients and completely broken ones (cough cough outlook) email HTML rendering is pretty damn far from any sort of leading edge

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.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > We should be able to directly donate to fund the salary of full-time engineers working on Firefox and only Firefox Money is fungible. If you want to do this, frankly, donate to LibreWolf.

yu3zhou4 2y ago

Can you share more about their mobile OS? I thought it's discontinued

fabrice_d 2y ago
I guess they are talking about KaiOS, which had initial success, shipping on more 100M devices in India. Unfortunately they have been struggling to expand outside of India and even in India these days since their partner (Reliance Jio) is not pushing new devices there so much. Another major pain point is they lost support from WhatsApp, which is really the king maker in many countries when it comes to mass market adoption of a mobile platform.
- rjsw 2y ago
  The version of Firefox in KaiOS has lagged a long way behind the current desktop one.
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    Yes, it's been a struggle to ship newer version. It looks like they are preparing a new release based on gecko 123 (https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g/blob/gonk/config/milestone.txt https://github.com/kaiostech/gecko-b2g/blob/gonk/config/mile...).

masklinn 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. Also, and mainly, because that's a lot less of a moving target. - there's not much that's new to email, there are some recent ideas like jmap but they're not exactly hard requirements - UI requirements are largely fixed and a pretty minor concern - and between web clients and completely broken ones (cough cough outlook) email HTML rendering is pretty damn far from any sort of leading edge