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I used to want to donate to Mozilla Foundation, but I've long lost any hope that the corporation would spend that money in a way that makes sense to me. The pes

I used to want to donate to Mozilla Foundation, but I've long lost any hope that the corporation would spend that money in a way that makes sense to me. The pessimist on me would expect donated money to be spent on more built-in "campaigns", "studies" or ads. Or maybe a bonus for their executives. I just want Firefox to be faster. I'm donating to Floorp (a Firefox fork), at least they seem focused on making the browser better.

skywal_l 1y ago
It's kind of disheartening to see what happened to the Mozilla Foundation. And it makes me kind of afraid of what's going to happen to linux once Linus is out. It seems that a great project requires a great BDFL, otherwise it will be taken over by ghouls.
- WHA8m 1y ago
  Isn't the Linux ecosystem much more healthy and decentralized than Mozilla? We're so so blessed with Linus and everyone is afraid of the moment the project has to stand without him. But I'm confident he's aware and working towards that point in time. I'm not too much into it though, so this is more or less assumptions.
  - Gentil 1y ago
    Linux is a trademark of Linus. Which is why Linux Foundation which is run by corporates like Microsoft, Google etc is staying aside. After Linus, it would like corporate board memebers changing CEOs at their wish.
    - ensignavenger 1y ago
      The Linux Foundation also runs several other projects, none of which do I see being ran terribly poorly from a corporate meddling point. I can only hope that is a strong signal of things to come.
      - Gentil 1y ago
        Did I say anything is run poorly? Or good for that matter? The difference is intent. Run for community and run for corporate are both different. Currenlty Linus is the only thing standing in the way of LF pulling another Rust Foundation. Cos it's run by corporates as well. Time will tell.
        ensignavenger 1y ago
        What do you mean by "pulling another Rust Foundation"?
        Gentil 1y ago
        Rust foundation has not been very community friendly. That's cos corporates run it. There was a fork of the language called crab or something cos of this at one point. Take Linus out of the scenario, it's the same thing that's probable about Linux Foundation.
  - mycatisblack 1y ago
    Has he ever hinted about successors?
    - WHA8m 1y ago
      I did a quick search. Names were named by him here [1] in 2024 - but not as successors per se. More like candidates for important roles in the future. This [2] interview from 2020 touches the subject as well. I interpret it in a way that he tries to cultivate an environment where a good leader/successor/main-whatever emerges somewhat naturally. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/990534/ https://lwn.net/Articles/990534/ [2] https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-says-no-need-to-name-successor-as-that-will-happen-on-its-own.html https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-say... (Prime example of my personal behavior which I really don't like: Put a half-baked assumption/hearsay on the internet. Get 2 replies. Start actually researching the topic only afterwards.)
  - arp242 1y ago
    Same with e.g. PostgreSQL. But these are fundamentally different type of projects. Many businesses and products run on top of Linux and/or PostgreSQL. There is a very clear and obvious incentive to contribute, because that will help you run your business better. With user-oriented software such as a browser, this is a lot less clear-cut. Organisations like Slack, or Etsy, or Dropbox: sure, they've contributed resources to stuff they use like Linux, PosgreSQL, PHP, Python, etc. But what do they get out of contributing to Firefox? Not so obvious. I think this is one reason (among others) that Open Source has long been the norm in some fields oriented towards servers and programmers, and a lot less so in others.
    - blackenedgem 1y ago
      With PostgreSQL my biggest concern is what happens when we no longer have Tom Lane, Petere, etc. Rather than the project dying I see the opposite happening; it gets feature crept by contributors adding in their own custom behaviour and it becoming too complex. There's always a large overhead of adding something new and it's always the experienced devs on the project that know where the right balance is.
      - arp242 1y ago
        No project or development style is perfect and they all come with their own set of upsides and downsides. PostgreSQL is no exception. Maybe the PostgreSQL 20 years from now will be a different type of project with different types of trade-offs. That doesn't mean it will be worse. I'm not so worried about this.
  - sealeck 1y ago
    > Isn't the Linux ecosystem much more healthy and decentralized than Mozilla? Is it? IME Linux kernel development is a somewhat toxic place.
    - kbelder 1y ago
      >IME Linux kernel development is a somewhat toxic place. I think that's why it's healthier. A bit like the human immune system.
- phendrenad2 1y ago
  GHOULS doesn't even begin to describe the people who take over these foundations. They are parasites who seek out nonprofits to infiltrate, and once they gain a position of power they bring in their pals and set up shop. Suddenly the CoC is weaponized to crush dissent, the decisions are made behind closed doors, and the organization starts contributing to political organizations that help their class of parasites spread. And there are WAY more of them than there are good-hearted honest people starting foundations. When a new foundation is created, these parasites line up to see who can corrupt it first.
immibis 1y ago
It would be possible to create a new foundation that works on Firefox and is not Mozilla.
- fabrice_d 1y ago
  It is possible to create a new foundation that works on a new browser product based on Gecko indeed. You just can't call it Firefox because of trademark ownership. It would be interesting to see how it collaborates / competes with the origin project, how fast and how far they diverge etc.
  - altairprime 1y ago
    You can if you arrange with Foundation to license the trademark under non-profit terms. Not that this is likely to be done by anyone, but if anyone could do it, I’d like to think the Servo group could.
weego 1y ago
The sheer volume of sidequest projects they've put resources into that were clearly self-indulgence projects from internal staff, that had no obvious market need or target user-base put me off years ago. They're kept in existence as a cost of doing business for the likes of Google, purely to ward off browser monopoly claims, and absolutely do not deserve to be taken seriously, or be given private funding.
- pca006132 1y ago
  I feel like these are stuff that the C-suite needs for justifying their pay. If it is "boring browser development", it will show that they are doing nothing, redundant, and cannot have bonuses and salary raise.
  - Traubenfuchs 1y ago
    I‘d argue you don‘t need a C-suite to develop firefox and that‘s the root of the problem.
    - wafflemaker 1y ago
      So a foundation model instead, like discussed in: [Open Source Security] Open Source Foundations with Kelley Misata of Suricata #openSourceSecurity https://podcastaddict.com/open-source-security/episode/193380285 https://podcastaddict.com/open-source-security/episode/19338... via @PodcastAddict I'm genuinely curious, no experience in any of that.
      - josephg 1y ago
        Yep. Also worth reading: Reinventing Organisations by Laloux. Incredible book - absolute book of the year for me. They talk about the history of organisations and how organisations can be run differently & better. And they research companies who are trying this stuff out today, and talk about what they do. The modern CEO idea is pretty silly on the face of it. We take the - ideally - smartest person at a company, divorce them from grounded reality, then burden them with all the hardest decisions your company has to face. All while disempowering the people on the ground who do all the actual work. In many ways it’s a pretty stupid way to run a company. There’s plenty of other options. Just the other week the economist did an interview with the CEO of Supercell, a Nordic video game company. They have the same idea - the ceo in many ways doesn’t run the company, which frees him up to do actually useful work. And it lets the team leads take initiative and lead. Much better model in my opinion.
Neywiny 1y ago
Agreed. Until I upgraded phones and just couldn't be bothered anymore, I kept around an old build of Firefox from before they messed up extensions. I have to run nightly now to get my extensions and just pause updates at relatively bug-free builds. It's absurd how they took the one selling point and lost it. I've even switched to edge canary because it gives me extensions and didn't have a few regressions (that eventually got fixed) that prevented smooth video watching
- IlikeKitties 1y ago
  > It's absurd how they took the one selling point and lost it. No, it's obvious. Google Pays for Firefox. Google doesn't want Adblock Extensions.
  - Tijdreiziger 1y ago
    No, contrary to you and GP, the stable version of Firefox for Android (on the Google Play Store) supports all Firefox extensions, including ad blockers. There was a short period in the switch-over from Fennec (old FF for Android) to Fenix (new FF for Android) when the stable version didn’t support all extensions, but this hasn’t been the case anymore for years now.
    - joshuaissac 1y ago
      > There was a short period in the switch-over from Fennec (old FF for Android) to Fenix (new FF for Android) when the stable version didn’t support all extensions, but this hasn’t been the case anymore for years now. They got rid of extensions in August 2020 and brought them back in December 2023.[1] Fenix has lacked full extension support for more than half of its existence since release, and it has been less than two years since extensions were brought back. 1. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/new-extensions-youll-love-now-available-on-firefox-for-android/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/new-extensions-youll-lov...
layer8 1y ago
The article doesn’t advocate for donations, however.
mrjay42 1y ago
Oh well, thanks for mentioning Floorp, I'm gonna try it right now. I use Firefox, but I'm curious about whether I'll 'feel' a difference with Floorp, in terms of performance.
- PaulKeeble 1y ago
  I don't feel that firefox is slow on anything I use it on other than Android. Its reasonably responsive on all the machines I have ever used it with including some pretty old laptops. It seems pretty smooth, its been a while since I used chrome.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  The only thing that firefox seems slow to me on is some of the online browser benchmarks. Day to day? I don't even notice. One thing that I noticed that -can- slow down firefox rendering a lot is using dark reader, but that isn't FF fault.
hengheng 1y ago
There is a sad parallel to Wikimedia Foundation, rooted in the same argument: We don't know the correct price. These entities are effectively monopolies with no competitors, and there is no public negotiation on what the annual budget of these entities should be. So once they get away with nag screens on the world's biggest billboards, CEO pay is suddenly 'justified'. But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight.
- sealeck 1y ago
  > But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight. Certainly when it comes to Wikipedia: there is oversight. I know people don't like the fact that Wikipedia spends money on things other than server racks, but spending money on developing the community is a pretty legitimate thing to do! How else can you maintain such an encylopedia? You need to attract knowledgeable people to write and review articles!
  - hengheng 1y ago
    If only.
    - sealeck 1y ago
      A very informative comment.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    The exact same way it always worked. It's also obscenely disingenuous to ask for donations like they do with this current model. Downright insulting.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
    I don't think there are objections to Wikipedia developing the community. The objections are primarily around the aggressive and deceptive fundraising. Wikipedia collects donations by essentially saying (in some years more directly, otherwise more implying) "if you don't donate Wikipedia WILL DIE", rather than "Please give us some money so we can build an even bigger community to make Wikipedia even better". They are also making the banners incredibly obnoxious. From "donate or ask later", full-screen interstitials, to delayed popups that interrupt you after you've started reading, and with increasing frequency. During their "yearly" fundraisers (I think it's actually 2-3x a year, masked behind "local" vs. "global" campaigns) they pop them up every few days on every device you use, and now they're introducing "experimental" banners every month (again per device) so several times per month, and more frequently if they delete cookies. [1] [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Proposed_changes_to_fundraising_banner_tests https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Proposed_ch...
nashashmi 1y ago
It might not be that hard to finance Firefox improvements. We should establish a Firefox improvement group. And then set a plan for bug improvements roadmap. Then publish that roadmap and set up a fund for the programmers. I think what you are asking for is better steering of the Mozilla foundation. And maybe better steering for Firefox development. Possibly with less opinions. We might be better off supporting servo devs instead.
Uehreka 1y ago
I get why people are pissed at Mozilla, but I do feel like people on HN also underestimate how much hating Mozilla is becoming a hacker tribal signifier. It almost feel like each commenter is competing to out-hate the others or to add a layer of “in fact its so bad that we should (consequences)”. Like, in general, I find that any HN thread where most of the comments are just agreeing, one-upping and yes-anding while invoking the same talking points and terminology (CEO ghouls, etc.) is probably a topic we might need to chill out on.
- agilob 1y ago
  > It almost feel like each commenter is competing to out-hate the others or to add a layer Let's start hating and discussing how much Chrome leads are paid too.
- thoroughburro 1y ago
  You imply it’s the hackers or Hacker News that has changed to create a negative atmosphere. From my perspective, however, it’s the direct result of a very long series of hostile-to-hackers decisions made by Mozilla.
  - Uehreka 1y ago
    To quote myself: > I get why people are pissed at Mozilla My issue is that when you try to have discourse but everyone’s on the same side, it can easily devolve into a circlejerk where everyone is trying to see who can most dramatically burn the strawman. These kinds of feedback loops are just bad—it doesn’t really matter who the target is or how malicious they are—because they cause the participants to drift further and further from the reality of the conflict. In the best case, if the target really is bad, the participants may just look foolish when they later deploy their anti-strawman ballistic missile against someone who actually has a slightly good pro-target argument they hadn’t thought of. In the worst case, this is how mobs work themselves up to eventually justify violence against a target that’s totally harmless. One thing’s for sure though, once a circlejerk like this starts, rational thought ends.
    - 1y ago
WhyNotHugo 1y ago
I wish there were a way to donate to the devs who work on Firefox directly. Like a pool where we donate and money goes to devs to work on user-centric features (eg: I’d also want to exclude those working on first party spyware and adware).
- EasyMark 1y ago
  The devs who work on firefox as paid well by mozilla. You could probably donate to volunteers who make some of the more useful extensions that you use maybe?
dartharva 1y ago
It's not the pessimist in you, it's your rational brain doing basic pattern recognition. Mozilla has consistently been losing donor trust for over a decade.
exiguus 1y ago
That reminds me of the people who give money on the street and say “but not for drugs or alcohol”.
hahahaseattle 1y ago
Sounds exactly like paying taxes in Seattle...
sergiotapia 1y ago
Donate to Ladybird, Firefox and forks are unfortunately over. Ladybird has a chance to become a new truly open source browser written from scratch.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  ladybird is 5 to 10 years off
  - 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
    I'm regularly building and playing around with it and the progress is remarkable. I don't think they will need 5 years before it's a usable alternative.
  - sergiotapia 1y ago
    next year the fire starts. > Ladybird is currently in heavy development. We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026. I'll do my part and use it as soon as it's "released" alpha. This is very cool!
MrAlex94 1y ago
I maintain Waterfox, so I recognise this isn’t a great look criticising another fork. But there’s a contradiction in abandoning Mozilla over spending and leadership concerns whilst supporting Floorp, which initially used open source extensions to build up their USP, then switched to a non-open licence to prevent others from doing what they had done. They only reverted after community backlash (or being “inspired” if I recall correctly). You’re comfortable supporting a project that actively betrayed open source principles, whilst writing off Mozilla for issues like executive compensation. It doesn’t strike me as more morally consistent than supporting the organisation that actually develops the underlying engine?
crossroadsguy 1y ago
I agree with your opinion of that corp which as of today exists solely to employ the highly paid CEO for doing less than nothing. Or something on those lines. But Firefox (+ forks) is a lost cause. One simple non-statistical reason, I mean it seems so, is that whenever I see that “I donate to Firefox fork” mentioned somewhere, it’s almost always a different fork. So maybe now Firefox will die a 100 deaths.
RataNova 1y ago
When donations feel like they're funding bloat instead of a better browser, it's hard to justify hitting that donate button
mdaniel 1y ago
https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core [a submodule of their main repo] is noticeably missing any licensing information I went there to find out how they're tracking upstream releases, because that's my major heartburn about any fork of one of the biggest attack targets on a personal computer. Since 12.0.14 doesn't tell me anything about what version of Firefox it's built against, I guess https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/blob/v12.0.14/browser/config/version.txt https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/blob/v12.0.14/brow... is the best one can do and since it says 128.anything and the current production release is 140.0.4 I got my answer
- dustyharddrive 1y ago
  That's the latest ESR (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/notes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/notes/), which seems good enough for Tor Browser.
jrm4 1y ago
Yeah, always thought this was incredibly short-sighted. You have an orders-of-magnitude smaller non-profit-ish thing going toe to toe with THREE of the hugest and most powerful companies to ever exist -- and generally holding their own for freedom. It's good to be critical and influence, they do make bad decisions sometimes. But COME ON, given what they're up against, most of the time I want y'all to just shut up and keep giving them money.
EasyMark 1y ago
I just want to see a pie chart with how they spend any donations. I also don't mind their forays into stuff like free speech and internet privacy, but beyond that they should stay out of politics. That said I have donated a few times since I use firefox as my primary browser. Their activities are far superior to anything that Brave and Google are up to
tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
No worries, if you donate to "Mozilla", i.e. the Mozilla Foundation, you're unlikely to fund built-in "campaigns", "studies" or ads. You're more likely to fund sociology-style campaigns and studies that have absolutely nothing to do with Firefox (https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/what-we-fund/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/what-we-fund/), because the development is done by the corporation. Yet when you search for "donate to firefox" you will first find one of two Mozilla Foundation donation page... Just making it possible to actually donate "to Firefox" would probably help a lot...

skywal_l 1y ago

It's kind of disheartening to see what happened to the Mozilla Foundation. And it makes me kind of afraid of what's going to happen to linux once Linus is out. It seems that a great project requires a great BDFL, otherwise it will be taken over by ghouls.

WHA8m 1y ago
Isn't the Linux ecosystem much more healthy and decentralized than Mozilla? We're so so blessed with Linus and everyone is afraid of the moment the project has to stand without him. But I'm confident he's aware and working towards that point in time. I'm not too much into it though, so this is more or less assumptions.
- Gentil 1y ago
  Linux is a trademark of Linus. Which is why Linux Foundation which is run by corporates like Microsoft, Google etc is staying aside. After Linus, it would like corporate board memebers changing CEOs at their wish.
  - ensignavenger 1y ago
    The Linux Foundation also runs several other projects, none of which do I see being ran terribly poorly from a corporate meddling point. I can only hope that is a strong signal of things to come.
    - Gentil 1y ago
      Did I say anything is run poorly? Or good for that matter? The difference is intent. Run for community and run for corporate are both different. Currenlty Linus is the only thing standing in the way of LF pulling another Rust Foundation. Cos it's run by corporates as well. Time will tell.
      - ensignavenger 1y ago
        What do you mean by "pulling another Rust Foundation"?
        Gentil 1y ago
        Rust foundation has not been very community friendly. That's cos corporates run it. There was a fork of the language called crab or something cos of this at one point. Take Linus out of the scenario, it's the same thing that's probable about Linux Foundation.
- mycatisblack 1y ago
  Has he ever hinted about successors?
  - WHA8m 1y ago
    I did a quick search. Names were named by him here [1] in 2024 - but not as successors per se. More like candidates for important roles in the future. This [2] interview from 2020 touches the subject as well. I interpret it in a way that he tries to cultivate an environment where a good leader/successor/main-whatever emerges somewhat naturally. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/990534/ https://lwn.net/Articles/990534/ [2] https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-says-no-need-to-name-successor-as-that-will-happen-on-its-own.html https://itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/torvalds-say... (Prime example of my personal behavior which I really don't like: Put a half-baked assumption/hearsay on the internet. Get 2 replies. Start actually researching the topic only afterwards.)
- arp242 1y ago
  Same with e.g. PostgreSQL. But these are fundamentally different type of projects. Many businesses and products run on top of Linux and/or PostgreSQL. There is a very clear and obvious incentive to contribute, because that will help you run your business better. With user-oriented software such as a browser, this is a lot less clear-cut. Organisations like Slack, or Etsy, or Dropbox: sure, they've contributed resources to stuff they use like Linux, PosgreSQL, PHP, Python, etc. But what do they get out of contributing to Firefox? Not so obvious. I think this is one reason (among others) that Open Source has long been the norm in some fields oriented towards servers and programmers, and a lot less so in others.
  - blackenedgem 1y ago
    With PostgreSQL my biggest concern is what happens when we no longer have Tom Lane, Petere, etc. Rather than the project dying I see the opposite happening; it gets feature crept by contributors adding in their own custom behaviour and it becoming too complex. There's always a large overhead of adding something new and it's always the experienced devs on the project that know where the right balance is.
    - arp242 1y ago
      No project or development style is perfect and they all come with their own set of upsides and downsides. PostgreSQL is no exception. Maybe the PostgreSQL 20 years from now will be a different type of project with different types of trade-offs. That doesn't mean it will be worse. I'm not so worried about this.
- sealeck 1y ago
  > Isn't the Linux ecosystem much more healthy and decentralized than Mozilla? Is it? IME Linux kernel development is a somewhat toxic place.
  - kbelder 1y ago
    >IME Linux kernel development is a somewhat toxic place. I think that's why it's healthier. A bit like the human immune system.
phendrenad2 1y ago
GHOULS doesn't even begin to describe the people who take over these foundations. They are parasites who seek out nonprofits to infiltrate, and once they gain a position of power they bring in their pals and set up shop. Suddenly the CoC is weaponized to crush dissent, the decisions are made behind closed doors, and the organization starts contributing to political organizations that help their class of parasites spread. And there are WAY more of them than there are good-hearted honest people starting foundations. When a new foundation is created, these parasites line up to see who can corrupt it first.

immibis 1y ago

It would be possible to create a new foundation that works on Firefox and is not Mozilla.

fabrice_d 1y ago
It is possible to create a new foundation that works on a new browser product based on Gecko indeed. You just can't call it Firefox because of trademark ownership. It would be interesting to see how it collaborates / competes with the origin project, how fast and how far they diverge etc.
- altairprime 1y ago
  You can if you arrange with Foundation to license the trademark under non-profit terms. Not that this is likely to be done by anyone, but if anyone could do it, I’d like to think the Servo group could.

weego 1y ago

The sheer volume of sidequest projects they've put resources into that were clearly self-indulgence projects from internal staff, that had no obvious market need or target user-base put me off years ago. They're kept in existence as a cost of doing business for the likes of Google, purely to ward off browser monopoly claims, and absolutely do not deserve to be taken seriously, or be given private funding.

pca006132 1y ago
I feel like these are stuff that the C-suite needs for justifying their pay. If it is "boring browser development", it will show that they are doing nothing, redundant, and cannot have bonuses and salary raise.
- Traubenfuchs 1y ago
  I‘d argue you don‘t need a C-suite to develop firefox and that‘s the root of the problem.
  - wafflemaker 1y ago
    So a foundation model instead, like discussed in: [Open Source Security] Open Source Foundations with Kelley Misata of Suricata #openSourceSecurity https://podcastaddict.com/open-source-security/episode/193380285 https://podcastaddict.com/open-source-security/episode/19338... via @PodcastAddict I'm genuinely curious, no experience in any of that.
    - josephg 1y ago
      Yep. Also worth reading: Reinventing Organisations by Laloux. Incredible book - absolute book of the year for me. They talk about the history of organisations and how organisations can be run differently & better. And they research companies who are trying this stuff out today, and talk about what they do. The modern CEO idea is pretty silly on the face of it. We take the - ideally - smartest person at a company, divorce them from grounded reality, then burden them with all the hardest decisions your company has to face. All while disempowering the people on the ground who do all the actual work. In many ways it’s a pretty stupid way to run a company. There’s plenty of other options. Just the other week the economist did an interview with the CEO of Supercell, a Nordic video game company. They have the same idea - the ceo in many ways doesn’t run the company, which frees him up to do actually useful work. And it lets the team leads take initiative and lead. Much better model in my opinion.

Neywiny 1y ago

Agreed. Until I upgraded phones and just couldn't be bothered anymore, I kept around an old build of Firefox from before they messed up extensions. I have to run nightly now to get my extensions and just pause updates at relatively bug-free builds. It's absurd how they took the one selling point and lost it. I've even switched to edge canary because it gives me extensions and didn't have a few regressions (that eventually got fixed) that prevented smooth video watching

IlikeKitties 1y ago
> It's absurd how they took the one selling point and lost it. No, it's obvious. Google Pays for Firefox. Google doesn't want Adblock Extensions.
- Tijdreiziger 1y ago
  No, contrary to you and GP, the stable version of Firefox for Android (on the Google Play Store) supports all Firefox extensions, including ad blockers. There was a short period in the switch-over from Fennec (old FF for Android) to Fenix (new FF for Android) when the stable version didn’t support all extensions, but this hasn’t been the case anymore for years now.
  - joshuaissac 1y ago
    > There was a short period in the switch-over from Fennec (old FF for Android) to Fenix (new FF for Android) when the stable version didn’t support all extensions, but this hasn’t been the case anymore for years now. They got rid of extensions in August 2020 and brought them back in December 2023.[1] Fenix has lacked full extension support for more than half of its existence since release, and it has been less than two years since extensions were brought back. 1. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/new-extensions-youll-love-now-available-on-firefox-for-android/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/new-extensions-youll-lov...

layer8 1y ago

The article doesn’t advocate for donations, however.

mrjay42 1y ago

Oh well, thanks for mentioning Floorp, I'm gonna try it right now. I use Firefox, but I'm curious about whether I'll 'feel' a difference with Floorp, in terms of performance.

PaulKeeble 1y ago
I don't feel that firefox is slow on anything I use it on other than Android. Its reasonably responsive on all the machines I have ever used it with including some pretty old laptops. It seems pretty smooth, its been a while since I used chrome.
EasyMark 1y ago
The only thing that firefox seems slow to me on is some of the online browser benchmarks. Day to day? I don't even notice. One thing that I noticed that -can- slow down firefox rendering a lot is using dark reader, but that isn't FF fault.

hengheng 1y ago

There is a sad parallel to Wikimedia Foundation, rooted in the same argument: We don't know the correct price. These entities are effectively monopolies with no competitors, and there is no public negotiation on what the annual budget of these entities should be. So once they get away with nag screens on the world's biggest billboards, CEO pay is suddenly 'justified'. But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight.

sealeck 1y ago
> But that illusion only works when there is zero oversight. Certainly when it comes to Wikipedia: there is oversight. I know people don't like the fact that Wikipedia spends money on things other than server racks, but spending money on developing the community is a pretty legitimate thing to do! How else can you maintain such an encylopedia? You need to attract knowledgeable people to write and review articles!
- hengheng 1y ago
  If only.
  - sealeck 1y ago
    A very informative comment.
- Levitz 1y ago
  The exact same way it always worked. It's also obscenely disingenuous to ask for donations like they do with this current model. Downright insulting.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
  I don't think there are objections to Wikipedia developing the community. The objections are primarily around the aggressive and deceptive fundraising. Wikipedia collects donations by essentially saying (in some years more directly, otherwise more implying) "if you don't donate Wikipedia WILL DIE", rather than "Please give us some money so we can build an even bigger community to make Wikipedia even better". They are also making the banners incredibly obnoxious. From "donate or ask later", full-screen interstitials, to delayed popups that interrupt you after you've started reading, and with increasing frequency. During their "yearly" fundraisers (I think it's actually 2-3x a year, masked behind "local" vs. "global" campaigns) they pop them up every few days on every device you use, and now they're introducing "experimental" banners every month (again per device) so several times per month, and more frequently if they delete cookies. [1] [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Proposed_changes_to_fundraising_banner_tests https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising#Proposed_ch...

nashashmi 1y ago

It might not be that hard to finance Firefox improvements. We should establish a Firefox improvement group. And then set a plan for bug improvements roadmap. Then publish that roadmap and set up a fund for the programmers. I think what you are asking for is better steering of the Mozilla foundation. And maybe better steering for Firefox development. Possibly with less opinions. We might be better off supporting servo devs instead.

Uehreka 1y ago

I get why people are pissed at Mozilla, but I do feel like people on HN also underestimate how much hating Mozilla is becoming a hacker tribal signifier. It almost feel like each commenter is competing to out-hate the others or to add a layer of “in fact its so bad that we should (consequences)”. Like, in general, I find that any HN thread where most of the comments are just agreeing, one-upping and yes-anding while invoking the same talking points and terminology (CEO ghouls, etc.) is probably a topic we might need to chill out on.

agilob 1y ago
> It almost feel like each commenter is competing to out-hate the others or to add a layer Let's start hating and discussing how much Chrome leads are paid too.
thoroughburro 1y ago
You imply it’s the hackers or Hacker News that has changed to create a negative atmosphere. From my perspective, however, it’s the direct result of a very long series of hostile-to-hackers decisions made by Mozilla.
- Uehreka 1y ago
  To quote myself: > I get why people are pissed at Mozilla My issue is that when you try to have discourse but everyone’s on the same side, it can easily devolve into a circlejerk where everyone is trying to see who can most dramatically burn the strawman. These kinds of feedback loops are just bad—it doesn’t really matter who the target is or how malicious they are—because they cause the participants to drift further and further from the reality of the conflict. In the best case, if the target really is bad, the participants may just look foolish when they later deploy their anti-strawman ballistic missile against someone who actually has a slightly good pro-target argument they hadn’t thought of. In the worst case, this is how mobs work themselves up to eventually justify violence against a target that’s totally harmless. One thing’s for sure though, once a circlejerk like this starts, rational thought ends.
  - 1y ago

WhyNotHugo 1y ago

I wish there were a way to donate to the devs who work on Firefox directly. Like a pool where we donate and money goes to devs to work on user-centric features (eg: I’d also want to exclude those working on first party spyware and adware).

EasyMark 1y ago
The devs who work on firefox as paid well by mozilla. You could probably donate to volunteers who make some of the more useful extensions that you use maybe?

dartharva 1y ago

It's not the pessimist in you, it's your rational brain doing basic pattern recognition. Mozilla has consistently been losing donor trust for over a decade.

exiguus 1y ago

That reminds me of the people who give money on the street and say “but not for drugs or alcohol”.

hahahaseattle 1y ago

Sounds exactly like paying taxes in Seattle...

sergiotapia 1y ago

Donate to Ladybird, Firefox and forks are unfortunately over. Ladybird has a chance to become a new truly open source browser written from scratch.

EasyMark 1y ago
ladybird is 5 to 10 years off
- 0x000xca0xfe 1y ago
  I'm regularly building and playing around with it and the progress is remarkable. I don't think they will need 5 years before it's a usable alternative.
- sergiotapia 1y ago
  next year the fire starts. > Ladybird is currently in heavy development. We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026. I'll do my part and use it as soon as it's "released" alpha. This is very cool!

MrAlex94 1y ago

I maintain Waterfox, so I recognise this isn’t a great look criticising another fork. But there’s a contradiction in abandoning Mozilla over spending and leadership concerns whilst supporting Floorp, which initially used open source extensions to build up their USP, then switched to a non-open licence to prevent others from doing what they had done. They only reverted after community backlash (or being “inspired” if I recall correctly). You’re comfortable supporting a project that actively betrayed open source principles, whilst writing off Mozilla for issues like executive compensation. It doesn’t strike me as more morally consistent than supporting the organisation that actually develops the underlying engine?

crossroadsguy 1y ago

I agree with your opinion of that corp which as of today exists solely to employ the highly paid CEO for doing less than nothing. Or something on those lines. But Firefox (+ forks) is a lost cause. One simple non-statistical reason, I mean it seems so, is that whenever I see that “I donate to Firefox fork” mentioned somewhere, it’s almost always a different fork. So maybe now Firefox will die a 100 deaths.

RataNova 1y ago

When donations feel like they're funding bloat instead of a better browser, it's hard to justify hitting that donate button

mdaniel 1y ago

https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp-core [a submodule of their main repo] is noticeably missing any licensing information I went there to find out how they're tracking upstream releases, because that's my major heartburn about any fork of one of the biggest attack targets on a personal computer. Since 12.0.14 doesn't tell me anything about what version of Firefox it's built against, I guess https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/blob/v12.0.14/browser/config/version.txt https://github.com/Floorp-Projects/Floorp/blob/v12.0.14/brow... is the best one can do and since it says 128.anything and the current production release is 140.0.4 I got my answer

dustyharddrive 1y ago
That's the latest ESR (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/notes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/notes/), which seems good enough for Tor Browser.

jrm4 1y ago

Yeah, always thought this was incredibly short-sighted. You have an orders-of-magnitude smaller non-profit-ish thing going toe to toe with THREE of the hugest and most powerful companies to ever exist -- and generally holding their own for freedom. It's good to be critical and influence, they do make bad decisions sometimes. But COME ON, given what they're up against, most of the time I want y'all to just shut up and keep giving them money.

EasyMark 1y ago

I just want to see a pie chart with how they spend any donations. I also don't mind their forays into stuff like free speech and internet privacy, but beyond that they should stay out of politics. That said I have donated a few times since I use firefox as my primary browser. Their activities are far superior to anything that Brave and Google are up to

tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago

No worries, if you donate to "Mozilla", i.e. the Mozilla Foundation, you're unlikely to fund built-in "campaigns", "studies" or ads. You're more likely to fund sociology-style campaigns and studies that have absolutely nothing to do with Firefox (https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/what-we-fund/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/what-we-fund/), because the development is done by the corporation. Yet when you search for "donate to firefox" you will first find one of two Mozilla Foundation donation page... Just making it possible to actually donate "to Firefox" would probably help a lot...