4 ms·

HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. Rust was a side proj

by dralley 2mo ago

HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. Rust was a side project, asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM, IIRC LetsEncrypt was a side project (or at least a side project of Mozilla engineers, if not official), significant parts of the initial R&D for AV1 and Opus came out of Mozilla, Servo was largely a side project at the point that it got cancelled (the parts that had been largely successful had already been merged into Firefox, the rest was either nowhere near ready or being completely rewritten or both, and the main application for it at the time was some attempts to make a browser for running web apps in VR headsets at high framerates). Thunderbird was a side project. But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money, like the branded VPN service. Or projects like FirefoxOS, which ultimately failed but still resulted in a lot of improvements to Firefox and web standards. And it wasn't a bad idea either, it just put the cart (mobile OS) before the horse (the web APIs that are needed to make a browser-based mobile OS successful, like access to GPS and IMU hardware, which didn't exist at the time) without the heft to really push through the barriers while competing directly with Apple and Google. It seems like people define "frivolous side projects" as "anything Mozilla did that didn't end up being incredibly successful" and anything that did become incredibly successful gets taken for granted. "What did Rome ever do for us" rewritten as a tech parable. (don't tell me that "we're going to create a whole new language to fix security issues in our web browser" didn't sound a bit frivolous in 2012)

hn_submit 2mo ago
Mozilla should've finished rewriting Firefox completely in Rust to give them an Unique Selling Point. They didn't because of management's hubris to build their own mobile operating system to take on Google (its largest financier). Google probably warned them that it would pull back its money if FirefoxOS managed to grab any significant market share. So it was destined to fail from day one. I'm surprised they didn't integrate their own internet search engine into Firefox. But the contract with Google probably prohibits it and Google would immediately pull the plug on Firefox if it got wind of it anyway.
- dralley 2mo ago
  >Mozilla should've finished rewriting Firefox completely in Rust to give them an Unique Selling Point. They didn't because of management's hubris to build their own mobile operating system to take on Google (its largest financier). Firefox is like 25 million lines of code. Incredibly complex code, much of it decades old and wrapped in layers of legacy architectural patterns (see XUL, XBL), with severe backwards compatibility considerations (if you break existing websites or people's extensions, they might switch and not come back). You suggest that NOT rewriting all of that in a couple of years is "hubris"?!? Rust 1.0 didn't happen until 2015 mind you, and Firefox OS was canceled in 2016. The timeline doesn't even make sense. This kind of nonsense is why I can't take HN seriously when it comes to discussions about Mozilla. Criticisms are perfectly fine (and there are plenty of legitimate criticism to make) but people just abandon all logic when it comes to them for some reason and upvote mindless drivel because Mozilla Bad. FYI, there are more than 6 million lines of Rust in Firefox, so it's not like it hasn't been happening.
  - hn_submit 2mo ago
    Porting code from one language to another is much faster than writing it from scratch. I'm currently porting my own code from Python to C++ and it's a snap. Mozilla could've chosen to port the C++ code to Rust, but they didn't because they had other "frivolous" priorities.
    - 2tx81z 2mo ago
      LOL, I love how people love to say what Mozilla _should_ do but clearly have no fuckin clue what goes on in that place.
      - bulbar 2mo ago
        People seem to underestimate what a (even somewhat) large codebase entails. Even switching the compiler version is serious effort. Replacing the compiler can already be unfeasible, but apparently, switching the whole language seems to be super simple from the outside.
cogman10 2mo ago
> But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money Yeah, for 2 reasons. 1. Mozilla is a non-profit that takes donations. 2. These "money makers" make their money by tricking Mozilla users into selling their private data to advertisers. And if you pay attention, you'll notice that people don't generally complain because Facebook gave us React or Llama. They complain about the facebook moneymaker of selling private data and advertising. But even then, they don't complain as much about facebook because facebook doesn't take donations.
- halJordan 2mo ago
  Any other non profit maintaining an open source project gets passes bc "volunteers don't owe you anything" and "submit your own patch" catechisms.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    I'm not sure I'm aware of any other non-profit open source software maintainer who pays the bills by selling users' data. Are there any you are thinking of who get a pass?
    - dralley 2mo ago
      Mozilla doesn't sell user's data, they sell user's search traffic. Not the same, given that the latter requires a service rendered.
      - cogman10 2mo ago
        Mozilla does sell users' data. That's how the sponsored links and stories work > Occasionally, sponsors may pay Mozilla to specifically boost the score of their site during frecency ranking. In these cases, the shortcut is based on your history, but shown in the sponsored section. This still happens entirely on your device; your copy of Firefox has a list of participating sites, which receive a higher score during local ranking. [1] While the ranking happens on device, a smart sponsor will glean information from end users that click through because those links almost certainly track where the users come from. This is selling users' private data to advertisers. And with firefox vpn, I'm sorry but that's a MITM. If you aren't paying a VPN provider, they are collecting and selling your data. This is how every advert tracker works. They transparently and slowly gather data based on how you browse the internet. Just because firefox makes some efforts to slow it down, doesn't mean they aren't still participating in the market of selling user data. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy?utm_source=firefox-browser&utm_medium=firefox-browser&utm_content=inproduct&as=u https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy?utm_sou...
pjmlp 2mo ago
> asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM Only because Mozilla refused to adopt PNaCL, people keep forgetting about this little detail when praising asm.js. Rust while an interesting side project, the ideas were from Cyclone which probably would still be around if Rust hadn't happened, and it only really took off, because it became interesting for Amazon, Google and Microsoft, when despite all that money, Mozilla killed the team, and they picked a few of the core team.
pseudalopex 2mo ago
> HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. HN is not a person. People's opinions differ. This is not 2 faced.
KetoManx64 2mo ago
You forgot to mention their rebranding earlier this year: "Kit the non-binary mascot"

by dralley 2mo ago

hn_submit 2mo ago

Mozilla should've finished rewriting Firefox completely in Rust to give them an Unique Selling Point. They didn't because of management's hubris to build their own mobile operating system to take on Google (its largest financier). Google probably warned them that it would pull back its money if FirefoxOS managed to grab any significant market share. So it was destined to fail from day one. I'm surprised they didn't integrate their own internet search engine into Firefox. But the contract with Google probably prohibits it and Google would immediately pull the plug on Firefox if it got wind of it anyway.

dralley 2mo ago
>Mozilla should've finished rewriting Firefox completely in Rust to give them an Unique Selling Point. They didn't because of management's hubris to build their own mobile operating system to take on Google (its largest financier). Firefox is like 25 million lines of code. Incredibly complex code, much of it decades old and wrapped in layers of legacy architectural patterns (see XUL, XBL), with severe backwards compatibility considerations (if you break existing websites or people's extensions, they might switch and not come back). You suggest that NOT rewriting all of that in a couple of years is "hubris"?!? Rust 1.0 didn't happen until 2015 mind you, and Firefox OS was canceled in 2016. The timeline doesn't even make sense. This kind of nonsense is why I can't take HN seriously when it comes to discussions about Mozilla. Criticisms are perfectly fine (and there are plenty of legitimate criticism to make) but people just abandon all logic when it comes to them for some reason and upvote mindless drivel because Mozilla Bad. FYI, there are more than 6 million lines of Rust in Firefox, so it's not like it hasn't been happening.
- hn_submit 2mo ago
  Porting code from one language to another is much faster than writing it from scratch. I'm currently porting my own code from Python to C++ and it's a snap. Mozilla could've chosen to port the C++ code to Rust, but they didn't because they had other "frivolous" priorities.
  - 2tx81z 2mo ago
    LOL, I love how people love to say what Mozilla _should_ do but clearly have no fuckin clue what goes on in that place.
    - bulbar 2mo ago
      People seem to underestimate what a (even somewhat) large codebase entails. Even switching the compiler version is serious effort. Replacing the compiler can already be unfeasible, but apparently, switching the whole language seems to be super simple from the outside.

cogman10 2mo ago

> But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money Yeah, for 2 reasons. 1. Mozilla is a non-profit that takes donations. 2. These "money makers" make their money by tricking Mozilla users into selling their private data to advertisers. And if you pay attention, you'll notice that people don't generally complain because Facebook gave us React or Llama. They complain about the facebook moneymaker of selling private data and advertising. But even then, they don't complain as much about facebook because facebook doesn't take donations.

halJordan 2mo ago
Any other non profit maintaining an open source project gets passes bc "volunteers don't owe you anything" and "submit your own patch" catechisms.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  I'm not sure I'm aware of any other non-profit open source software maintainer who pays the bills by selling users' data. Are there any you are thinking of who get a pass?
  - dralley 2mo ago
    Mozilla doesn't sell user's data, they sell user's search traffic. Not the same, given that the latter requires a service rendered.
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      Mozilla does sell users' data. That's how the sponsored links and stories work > Occasionally, sponsors may pay Mozilla to specifically boost the score of their site during frecency ranking. In these cases, the shortcut is based on your history, but shown in the sponsored section. This still happens entirely on your device; your copy of Firefox has a list of participating sites, which receive a higher score during local ranking. [1] While the ranking happens on device, a smart sponsor will glean information from end users that click through because those links almost certainly track where the users come from. This is selling users' private data to advertisers. And with firefox vpn, I'm sorry but that's a MITM. If you aren't paying a VPN provider, they are collecting and selling your data. This is how every advert tracker works. They transparently and slowly gather data based on how you browse the internet. Just because firefox makes some efforts to slow it down, doesn't mean they aren't still participating in the market of selling user data. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy?utm_source=firefox-browser&utm_medium=firefox-browser&utm_content=inproduct&as=u https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy?utm_sou...

pjmlp 2mo ago

> asm.js was a side project that turned into WASM Only because Mozilla refused to adopt PNaCL, people keep forgetting about this little detail when praising asm.js. Rust while an interesting side project, the ideas were from Cyclone which probably would still be around if Rust hadn't happened, and it only really took off, because it became interesting for Amazon, Google and Microsoft, when despite all that money, Mozilla killed the team, and they picked a few of the core team.

pseudalopex 2mo ago

> HN is incredibly inconsistent and two-faced about which Mozilla side projects are "frivolous" and which ought to be defended to the death. HN is not a person. People's opinions differ. This is not 2 faced.

KetoManx64 2mo ago

You forgot to mention their rebranding earlier this year: "Kit the non-binary mascot"