7 ms·

Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects. Mozilla must die,

Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects. Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.

doubled112 1y ago
And Thunderbird?
- kbrosnan 1y ago
  It is the MZLA Technologies Corporation a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation a wholly owned part of the Mozilla Foundation.
  - edoceo 1y ago
    How did they even get this corporation owned by a foundation situation? That just seems like some kind of tax trick.
    - boomboomsubban 1y ago
      Yes. Mozilla was originally only the non profit, but it was ruled that selling the search rights violated nonprofit status. So they paid a couple million in back taxes and had to spin off a corporate entity that's fully owned by the nonprofit.
      - Henchman21 1y ago
        Do you have any info on this lawsuit? I am struggling to find it.
        boomboomsubban 1y ago
        It wasn't a lawsuit, the IRS audited them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#IRS_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#IRS_audit
        Henchman21 1y ago
        Thank you!
    - thayne 1y ago
      It's a "we want to sell something, but non-profits aren't allowed to do that" trick. And it means the for-profit subsidiary has to pay normal taxes. OpenAI is structured the same way, so they can sell access to their models. At least until it switches to being entirely for-profit, if that is allowed to happen.
    - no_wizard 1y ago
      Novo Norodisk has a similar corporate structure, being owned majority by the Novodisk Foundation[0] [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisks-unique-structure-gives-it-an-extra-edge--and-risk-110030324.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisks-unique-structur...
- alfiedotwtf 1y ago
  Last time I heard, Thunderbird has zero people on it for years but eventually they manage to afford to pay someone part time to work on it :smh:
  - raxxorraxor 1y ago
    I did change quite significantly in recent times, so there is certainly work done. On the other hand it is a mail client and it does exactly what it is supposed to do for years on end. And I believe it is the best mail client too.
  - e2le 1y ago
    Thunderbird is quite healthy and received $8.6M in donations in 2023[0] which is used to employ 24 people[1]. Unlike Firefox, donations are used to fund development. [0]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/10/thunderbird-annual-report-2023-2024/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/10/thunderbird-annual-repo... [1]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
    - alfiedotwtf 1y ago
      To be honest, I'm pleasantly surprised. Thanks for the info.
    - godshatter 1y ago
      I guess what we need is a non-profit fork of Firefox that takes donations directly and focuses only on the browser.
- major505 1y ago
  My guess. is going to be sold to a tech giant, and probably extinct. Maybe Microsoft buy it and rename as outlook for Linux.
whyenot 1y ago
Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.
- jonwinstanley 1y ago
  As I understand it, Google pay for the searches passed on by the browser. So as long as they have users, they’ll get paid.
  - mewse-hn 1y ago
    The DoJ is arguing in court that Google should be barred from paying off Mozilla because of Google's search monopoly https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-r...
    - echelon 1y ago
      That's so hilariously backwards. Google should be split into several business units [1], should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be forced to invest several billion of its war chest into competitors. That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls. The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane. It's absolutely bonkers. There is so much value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega monopoly is pouring value into commoditizing everything to keep eyeballs and attention and dollars and a taxation regime the size of a medium-sized country in its gravitational singularity. Google is an invasive species in every market. We need the EU/DOJ/BRICS equivalent of Chicxulub-level regulation to end its throat-grip predation on everyone. [1] Six "Baby Bells", or "Tiny Googs": Search, Android, Deepmind, Cloud, YouTube, Ads. Shuffle everything else into another bin or spin it off independently. Waymo, etc. [2] You could put Google with the Ads business as there is (1) no synergy between Chrome<->Android<->Search anymore, and (2) if Ads fucks it up, it doesn't kill the broader browser market or web ecosystem.
28304283409234 1y ago
I switched to Vivaldi after 23 years of Mozilla. Could not be happier.
- netsharc 1y ago
  Another Vivaldi user here, who "grew up" with the old pre-Chinese Opera... Sadly Vivaldi is also dependent on Chromium, and will also have to lose Manifest v2 support when that time comes.
  - zamadatix 1y ago
    That a browser either maintain your own entire browser engine or you can't support additional types of extensions is a false dichotomy. Vivaldi chooses nto to support it just as much as the choose to integrate VPN, an email client, RSS, Atom, a completely custom UI, and probably other things I'm forgetting that Chromium doesn't ship for them. What is changing is what Chromium will maintain, what Vivaldi decides to continue supporting is their own choice. My guess is it will be more random crap as well, but not because Chromium is/isn't supporting those things.
Henchman21 1y ago
All my hopes are with Ladybird now
- lillecarl 1y ago
  My hopes are with Servo, I like the novelty of it being implemented in Rust rather than C/C++. I follow Ladybird and appreciate their work. Especially implementing everything from standards, fixing standards and keeping it easy to follow the standards in code (and I'm proud Andreas is Swedish too). But for something with the surface area of "everything you can do with a computer and it's uncle" a memory safe language feels like the right choice. Just a knee-jerk opinion since I'm not a browser dev and existing sandboxing seems to work well enough, but an opinion nonetheless.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    I’m not super familiar with Servo; I’d heard of the Mozilla layoffs but hadn’t followed the work. I believe I can now split my hopes between the Ladybird and Servo; thank you!
  - pabs3 1y ago
    Ladybird is moving to Swift IIRC?
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      I believe you are correct: https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031
      - major505 1y ago
        Has anyone here ever used switf ouside the apple ecosystem? If so, how is the experience going? I think in swift like C# and Microsoft. Yeah, you can and I do run a lot of C# code in other platforms. But if you really wanna use everything it has to offer, it needs to be in windows, at least in the development stages.
magicalhippo 1y ago
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. As someone who grew up on Netscape Navigator, the current situation gives me flashback to how Netscape had to die so Mozilla could be born...
- mbreese 1y ago
  I mean… Phoenix was the original code name for Firefox, so maybe it was just foreshadowing.
thesuitonym 1y ago
I'm curious what the governance structure of Mozilla is that keeps things this way. People have been upset for quite a while at the direction Mozilla is going in, yet there seems to be no coalition to oust the current leadership. Is this impossible for some reason?
- wolpoli 1y ago
  There is no way for anyone to get Mozilla to change because the current board picks new board members.
- sciurus 1y ago
  The leadership has been ousted. > This includes major growth in our Boards, with 40% new Board members since we began our efforts to evolve and grow back in 2022. We’ve also been bringing in new executive talent, including a new MoFo Executive Director and a Managing Partner for Mozilla Ventures. By the end of the year, we hope to have new, permanent CEOs for both MoCo and Mozilla.ai... With these changes, Mitchell Baker ends her tenure as Chair and a member of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation boards. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
  - Volker-E 1y ago
    Surman same problematic "leadership" type.
  - wolpoli 1y ago
    It's good to know they have brought in new talents. Note that Mozilla Corporations, Mozilla Ventures, and Mozilla.ai mentioned in the articles are all subsidiaries of Mozilla Foundation. If there are issues with the subsidaries' leadership, they could be easily removed by the foundation. If there are issue with Mozilla foundation's leadership then, according to the bylaws, it's not possible for the foundation's board to be removed unless they self remove. Section 3.3 Election Of Directors, Term. All directors of the Foundation shall be elected annually by the Board of Directors and shall hold office until their respective successors are elected and have qualified, or until their death, resignation or removal. Section 3.5 Removal. Any director may be removed from office, with or without cause, by the vote of a majority of the other directors then in office. https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...
modzu 1y ago
mozilla has been broken for a long time. spiritually and intellectually, brave is the successor
- rnd0 1y ago
  From what I understand, Brave is a shit-show in its' own right.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I use Brave and it's totally fine. People love to complain about it on HN but I have never had any bad experiences.
    - major505 1y ago
      I use too, but is not without its problem. It does implement a lot of adds in things like the new tab page, and it did some controversial stuff (they use to replace page ads with their own, essencially stealing the page monetization, dont know if they still do). For a while Brave is going to be my stop gap browser. Hopping that Ladybird can soon replace it. For all its flaws, Brave still annoys me less than Mozilla assh*les. I also tried Zen Browser... lovely, but is pretty much Mozilla with a bunch of addons. The problem is, is not clear how much of the invasive Mozilla telemetry they left on their code base. Unfourtunally, any browser that orginates from mozilla bullshit, for now, I kind consider fruit of a posionous tree.
- agiacalone 1y ago
  Sorry, but I'm not going to trust any browser based on Chrome. Even Brave. It's not long until Brave won't be able to support Manifest V2 as Google has every interest to kill it completely.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    > It's not long until Brave won't be able to support Manifest V2 That's true but not that big of a deal in their case. The built-in ad blocker works quite well and removes the need to run uBlock Origin.
binkHN 1y ago
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. Ugh. This sounds so horrible, but this is probably the truest statement on this entire page.
- 0xEF 1y ago
  What's even more wild is that many users, even on HN, don't seem to pick up on the fact that the alternatives to Firefox are either Chrome or Chrome in different colored trenchcoats. Firefox is like the last bastion of user choice when it comes to deciding how we interact with the Internet, a choice that has been subtly but steadily stripped from us for years. My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? While I stand fast on the ground that Google wants to monopolize our web experience, it really seems like the community at large is just...letting it happen. The only strong contender that I've seen built from FF is Iceweasel/cat which works fine for my needs, but is definitely not winning any popularity contests despite actively knocking out those non-free parts of FF.
  - vhantz 1y ago
    > why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way chromium is? Ease of integration. It's impossible to integrate Firefox compared to chromium. Unless this is solved, Firefox will die. The hope is new engines like Servo (maybe ladybird), where they are actually putting time and resources to make it easy to integrate. I'll never switch to chromiumia, but as soon as one of those new engines is mature enough, I'm definitely dropping Firefox.
  - ii41 1y ago
    > My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? I actually looked into this. Say you consider yourself as part of the FOSS community, and want to build a new browser, and you start to look for your options. The only things readily available as libraries are webkit (currently owned and open sourced by Apple) and webkit-gtk (based on the former). Apple is like Apple and doesn't really want you to use their open source lib, so even though webkit-gtk team made it happen anyway, good luck if you want to do it yourself. If you decide to just use webkit-gtk, you've made a decision similar to lots of other members of the FOSS community in this area (luakit, the Rust webview crate, etc.). Another option is Qt WebEngine. It's based on Chromium. It's part of the Qt ecosystem and though I think you can use it as a standalone library, carving it out still requires some engineering. So these are the options that are available as libraries. And where are the Firefox ones? Servo makes it clear at the beginning of The Servo Book that it isn't available as a library yet. And Gecko? Firefox source doesn't even include a directory named gecko. It's so tightly coupled with the other parts that you'll need a lot of engineering to carve it out. And this is in contrast to Blink, the engine of Chromium, which is nicely placed in its own directory, having its own webpage with some learning resources.
fransje26 1y ago
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. The day that happens, the only thing we are left with is Chrome..
- Vilian 1y ago
  Mozilla ≠ firefox
  - ImJamal 1y ago
    Who is going to fund Firefox if not Mozilla? Maybe a new organization can pop up or maybe a new one won't.
    - godshatter 1y ago
      Many corporations won't want to fund something that's privacy oriented when they make money on using or selling personal data. Maybe security or privacy oriented corporations will step up with money or labor.
    - major505 1y ago
      Guess it falls back to us, the users. To fix the crapshow Mozilla has done. There are a bunch of small different iniciatives that use Firefox codebase. We just need to wait and see who will prevail.

Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects. Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.

doubled112 1y ago

And Thunderbird?

kbrosnan 1y ago
It is the MZLA Technologies Corporation a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation a wholly owned part of the Mozilla Foundation.
- edoceo 1y ago
  How did they even get this corporation owned by a foundation situation? That just seems like some kind of tax trick.
  - boomboomsubban 1y ago
    Yes. Mozilla was originally only the non profit, but it was ruled that selling the search rights violated nonprofit status. So they paid a couple million in back taxes and had to spin off a corporate entity that's fully owned by the nonprofit.
    - Henchman21 1y ago
      Do you have any info on this lawsuit? I am struggling to find it.
      - boomboomsubban 1y ago
        It wasn't a lawsuit, the IRS audited them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#IRS_audit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#IRS_audit
        Henchman21 1y ago
        Thank you!
  - thayne 1y ago
    It's a "we want to sell something, but non-profits aren't allowed to do that" trick. And it means the for-profit subsidiary has to pay normal taxes. OpenAI is structured the same way, so they can sell access to their models. At least until it switches to being entirely for-profit, if that is allowed to happen.
  - no_wizard 1y ago
    Novo Norodisk has a similar corporate structure, being owned majority by the Novodisk Foundation[0] [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisks-unique-structure-gives-it-an-extra-edge--and-risk-110030324.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/novo-nordisks-unique-structur...
alfiedotwtf 1y ago
Last time I heard, Thunderbird has zero people on it for years but eventually they manage to afford to pay someone part time to work on it :smh:
- raxxorraxor 1y ago
  I did change quite significantly in recent times, so there is certainly work done. On the other hand it is a mail client and it does exactly what it is supposed to do for years on end. And I believe it is the best mail client too.
- e2le 1y ago
  Thunderbird is quite healthy and received $8.6M in donations in 2023[0] which is used to employ 24 people[1]. Unlike Firefox, donations are used to fund development. [0]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/10/thunderbird-annual-report-2023-2024/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/10/thunderbird-annual-repo... [1]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
  - alfiedotwtf 1y ago
    To be honest, I'm pleasantly surprised. Thanks for the info.
  - godshatter 1y ago
    I guess what we need is a non-profit fork of Firefox that takes donations directly and focuses only on the browser.
major505 1y ago
My guess. is going to be sold to a tech giant, and probably extinct. Maybe Microsoft buy it and rename as outlook for Linux.

whyenot 1y ago

Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.

jonwinstanley 1y ago
As I understand it, Google pay for the searches passed on by the browser. So as long as they have users, they’ll get paid.
- mewse-hn 1y ago
  The DoJ is arguing in court that Google should be barred from paying off Mozilla because of Google's search monopoly https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-r...
  - echelon 1y ago
    That's so hilariously backwards. Google should be split into several business units [1], should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be forced to invest several billion of its war chest into competitors. That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls. The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane. It's absolutely bonkers. There is so much value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega monopoly is pouring value into commoditizing everything to keep eyeballs and attention and dollars and a taxation regime the size of a medium-sized country in its gravitational singularity. Google is an invasive species in every market. We need the EU/DOJ/BRICS equivalent of Chicxulub-level regulation to end its throat-grip predation on everyone. [1] Six "Baby Bells", or "Tiny Googs": Search, Android, Deepmind, Cloud, YouTube, Ads. Shuffle everything else into another bin or spin it off independently. Waymo, etc. [2] You could put Google with the Ads business as there is (1) no synergy between Chrome<->Android<->Search anymore, and (2) if Ads fucks it up, it doesn't kill the broader browser market or web ecosystem.

28304283409234 1y ago

I switched to Vivaldi after 23 years of Mozilla. Could not be happier.

netsharc 1y ago
Another Vivaldi user here, who "grew up" with the old pre-Chinese Opera... Sadly Vivaldi is also dependent on Chromium, and will also have to lose Manifest v2 support when that time comes.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  That a browser either maintain your own entire browser engine or you can't support additional types of extensions is a false dichotomy. Vivaldi chooses nto to support it just as much as the choose to integrate VPN, an email client, RSS, Atom, a completely custom UI, and probably other things I'm forgetting that Chromium doesn't ship for them. What is changing is what Chromium will maintain, what Vivaldi decides to continue supporting is their own choice. My guess is it will be more random crap as well, but not because Chromium is/isn't supporting those things.

Henchman21 1y ago

All my hopes are with Ladybird now

lillecarl 1y ago
My hopes are with Servo, I like the novelty of it being implemented in Rust rather than C/C++. I follow Ladybird and appreciate their work. Especially implementing everything from standards, fixing standards and keeping it easy to follow the standards in code (and I'm proud Andreas is Swedish too). But for something with the surface area of "everything you can do with a computer and it's uncle" a memory safe language feels like the right choice. Just a knee-jerk opinion since I'm not a browser dev and existing sandboxing seems to work well enough, but an opinion nonetheless.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  I’m not super familiar with Servo; I’d heard of the Mozilla layoffs but hadn’t followed the work. I believe I can now split my hopes between the Ladybird and Servo; thank you!
- pabs3 1y ago
  Ladybird is moving to Swift IIRC?
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    I believe you are correct: https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031 https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031
    - major505 1y ago
      Has anyone here ever used switf ouside the apple ecosystem? If so, how is the experience going? I think in swift like C# and Microsoft. Yeah, you can and I do run a lot of C# code in other platforms. But if you really wanna use everything it has to offer, it needs to be in windows, at least in the development stages.

magicalhippo 1y ago

> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. As someone who grew up on Netscape Navigator, the current situation gives me flashback to how Netscape had to die so Mozilla could be born...

mbreese 1y ago
I mean… Phoenix was the original code name for Firefox, so maybe it was just foreshadowing.

thesuitonym 1y ago

I'm curious what the governance structure of Mozilla is that keeps things this way. People have been upset for quite a while at the direction Mozilla is going in, yet there seems to be no coalition to oust the current leadership. Is this impossible for some reason?

wolpoli 1y ago
There is no way for anyone to get Mozilla to change because the current board picks new board members.
sciurus 1y ago
The leadership has been ousted. > This includes major growth in our Boards, with 40% new Board members since we began our efforts to evolve and grow back in 2022. We’ve also been bringing in new executive talent, including a new MoFo Executive Director and a Managing Partner for Mozilla Ventures. By the end of the year, we hope to have new, permanent CEOs for both MoCo and Mozilla.ai... With these changes, Mitchell Baker ends her tenure as Chair and a member of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation boards. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
- Volker-E 1y ago
  Surman same problematic "leadership" type.
- wolpoli 1y ago
  It's good to know they have brought in new talents. Note that Mozilla Corporations, Mozilla Ventures, and Mozilla.ai mentioned in the articles are all subsidiaries of Mozilla Foundation. If there are issues with the subsidaries' leadership, they could be easily removed by the foundation. If there are issue with Mozilla foundation's leadership then, according to the bylaws, it's not possible for the foundation's board to be removed unless they self remove. Section 3.3 Election Of Directors, Term. All directors of the Foundation shall be elected annually by the Board of Directors and shall hold office until their respective successors are elected and have qualified, or until their death, resignation or removal. Section 3.5 Removal. Any director may be removed from office, with or without cause, by the vote of a majority of the other directors then in office. https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...

modzu 1y ago

mozilla has been broken for a long time. spiritually and intellectually, brave is the successor

rnd0 1y ago
From what I understand, Brave is a shit-show in its' own right.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  I use Brave and it's totally fine. People love to complain about it on HN but I have never had any bad experiences.
  - major505 1y ago
    I use too, but is not without its problem. It does implement a lot of adds in things like the new tab page, and it did some controversial stuff (they use to replace page ads with their own, essencially stealing the page monetization, dont know if they still do). For a while Brave is going to be my stop gap browser. Hopping that Ladybird can soon replace it. For all its flaws, Brave still annoys me less than Mozilla assh*les. I also tried Zen Browser... lovely, but is pretty much Mozilla with a bunch of addons. The problem is, is not clear how much of the invasive Mozilla telemetry they left on their code base. Unfourtunally, any browser that orginates from mozilla bullshit, for now, I kind consider fruit of a posionous tree.
agiacalone 1y ago
Sorry, but I'm not going to trust any browser based on Chrome. Even Brave. It's not long until Brave won't be able to support Manifest V2 as Google has every interest to kill it completely.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  > It's not long until Brave won't be able to support Manifest V2 That's true but not that big of a deal in their case. The built-in ad blocker works quite well and removes the need to run uBlock Origin.

binkHN 1y ago

> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. Ugh. This sounds so horrible, but this is probably the truest statement on this entire page.

0xEF 1y ago
What's even more wild is that many users, even on HN, don't seem to pick up on the fact that the alternatives to Firefox are either Chrome or Chrome in different colored trenchcoats. Firefox is like the last bastion of user choice when it comes to deciding how we interact with the Internet, a choice that has been subtly but steadily stripped from us for years. My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? While I stand fast on the ground that Google wants to monopolize our web experience, it really seems like the community at large is just...letting it happen. The only strong contender that I've seen built from FF is Iceweasel/cat which works fine for my needs, but is definitely not winning any popularity contests despite actively knocking out those non-free parts of FF.
- vhantz 1y ago
  > why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way chromium is? Ease of integration. It's impossible to integrate Firefox compared to chromium. Unless this is solved, Firefox will die. The hope is new engines like Servo (maybe ladybird), where they are actually putting time and resources to make it easy to integrate. I'll never switch to chromiumia, but as soon as one of those new engines is mature enough, I'm definitely dropping Firefox.
- ii41 1y ago
  > My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? I actually looked into this. Say you consider yourself as part of the FOSS community, and want to build a new browser, and you start to look for your options. The only things readily available as libraries are webkit (currently owned and open sourced by Apple) and webkit-gtk (based on the former). Apple is like Apple and doesn't really want you to use their open source lib, so even though webkit-gtk team made it happen anyway, good luck if you want to do it yourself. If you decide to just use webkit-gtk, you've made a decision similar to lots of other members of the FOSS community in this area (luakit, the Rust webview crate, etc.). Another option is Qt WebEngine. It's based on Chromium. It's part of the Qt ecosystem and though I think you can use it as a standalone library, carving it out still requires some engineering. So these are the options that are available as libraries. And where are the Firefox ones? Servo makes it clear at the beginning of The Servo Book that it isn't available as a library yet. And Gecko? Firefox source doesn't even include a directory named gecko. It's so tightly coupled with the other parts that you'll need a lot of engineering to carve it out. And this is in contrast to Blink, the engine of Chromium, which is nicely placed in its own directory, having its own webpage with some learning resources.

fransje26 1y ago

> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. The day that happens, the only thing we are left with is Chrome..

Vilian 1y ago
Mozilla ≠ firefox
- ImJamal 1y ago
  Who is going to fund Firefox if not Mozilla? Maybe a new organization can pop up or maybe a new one won't.
  - godshatter 1y ago
    Many corporations won't want to fund something that's privacy oriented when they make money on using or selling personal data. Maybe security or privacy oriented corporations will step up with money or labor.
  - major505 1y ago
    Guess it falls back to us, the users. To fix the crapshow Mozilla has done. There are a bunch of small different iniciatives that use Firefox codebase. We just need to wait and see who will prevail.