16 ms·

Why Mozilla Matters

307 points by gkanai 14y ago

tjansen 14y ago
When you still need to explain why Mozilla matters, despite a market share of ~20%, I guess it's already doomed... Practically nobody uses a browser, or any other product, only to "fight monoculture". It may be an honorable goal, but a product needs compelling advantages beyond that.
- robotmay 14y ago
  The reason I use Firefox over Chrome is mostly down to memory usage with a large amount of tabs open. Chrome really starts chugging when you get over 40 tabs (and it's a pain to organise them too). It also has some really weird caching problems which you only seem to stumble upon if you're doing a lot of web development.
  - Xion 14y ago
    That's a bit ironic. I remember not so long ago I've heard many people who switched to Chrome were deeming Firefox "memory hungry". I haven't heard similar complaints about Chrome up until now.
    - mhd 14y ago
      Firefox improved quite a bit with the more recent rapid release cycle. And don't forget the "organise" part. Once you get beyond a certain amount of tabs in a window, the usual tabbed arangement shows its weakness -- and at this point, you probably need something like XUL to expand the GUI, what Chrome/Safari have to offer in this regard just doesn't seem to cut it. TreeStyle Tabs is basically my #1 reason why I'm sticking with Firefox.
      - kanzure 14y ago
        > TreeStyle Tabs is basically my #1 reason why I'm sticking with Firefox. Tree Style Tabs is, of course, one of the greatest things ever to happen to Firefox. It's on the list immediately after FireBug. These days, I have been switching over to xmonad (and other simple window managers). Instead of using tabs inside of a browser, I use windows for each page. Next, I have a global key binding (C-o) that brings up windows as I type out tags which I can set with C-j. This way, I don't need tabs anymore, and I don't need impossibly long lists. I can just type the thing I want. C-o mdn, done. C-o google, done. C-o gmail, done. C-o irssi, yep. I am still trying to figure out if this is better than constantly seeing a list of open tabs.
        mhd 14y ago
        That's a bit similar to the way I did it way back when Firefox came out. One of the early window managers that supported this, probably pwm. And it does work quite okay as a simple tab substitute for most applications. For browsers, I would need some kind of hierarchy support, though. A bit harder to do in a window manager, but then you'd have it for all kinds of applications. Maybe even combine it with some additional exposed information -- so without support you manager your hierarchy yourself, but if there's an easy way to get a buffer list, the top-level would be from the wm, and the second level from that list. I would need some kind of display for a browser, though. I'm fine with on-demand buffer lists in editors (and actually turn off sidebars when I use Sublime), but for my browsing habits I'm better off with a list that's always visible.
        onedognight 14y ago
        FWIW, you xmonad technique is easily emulated in Firefox. Try C-l mdn, etc. The awesome bar really is awesome. Not only does it search open tabs, but it also searches your history and titles and it learns.
    - Wilya 14y ago
      It depends on the usage. Users have different habits. Firefox's memory usage is a bit less predictable (and can get crazy, especially when you leave badly coded js websites open for days in a row) and there are more situations when you say to yourself "I'm leaking memory, I'd better restart", but Chrome memory usage grows faster when you open more tabs. Plus, Chrome UI is less suited to many tabs: favicons stop appearing beyond around 30 tabs (for me, it's probably machine-dependent), and the omnibar doesn't give you a way to switch to already open tabs by default. Plus, Chrome autoupdates aren't exactly optimized for low-end configs.
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      Chrome is great at releasing memory (since it often is just killing a process) and it does tend to use less memory with few tabs. But even from Chrome's birth, Firefox was already using less memory with lots of tabs.
    - josteink 14y ago
      I've seen Chrome claim up to 512MB ram per tab on several occasions when you keep it running for a while. Chrome could be enough to use my (old) system's 8GB of RAM. Now I have a 32GB system so it's less of an issue, but Chrome is still seriously a memory hog.
    - nnethercote 14y ago
      It's a very common observation that Chrome can't handle more than a few 10s of tabs. In comparison, I know several people who regularly have more than 500 tabs open in Firefox -- 1200 is the highest number I've heard, though not all of these were loaded at once thanks to Firefox's "Don't load tabs until selected" option.
      - groby_b 14y ago
        500 open tabs? Good lord, I don't have that many bookmarks! I'm really curious, why would one do that?
        shitlord 14y ago
        I've had a little over a hundred open at one point... I go browsing on HN and reddit a lot. I click on a bunch of different links to open in new tabs, and once the tabs start overflowing, I move them to different tab groups, and eventually and forget about them. Since I usually close my browser when I am done browsing and reopen it when I want to browse again, it does not make much of a difference in terms of snappiness.
    - dredmorbius 14y ago
      It's a mixed bag. Firefox uses far less memory per tab, but still chugs down more memory with time. Chrome uses metric shit-tons of memory, but its multi-threading allows individually killing tabs (or just massacring them in bulk if necessary, which it is). When memory's tight, Firefox seems to bog down as a whole, while Chrome gets boggy on individual pages (and you can kill/reload these as needed). I find myself using both though I'll fairly routinely go through and kill off Chrome tabs, and periodically restart Firefox, to keep memory management reasonable. Firefox's tab and state management is far superior to Chrome. Chrome plays better with some advanced sites (notably Google's own webpages, surprise, surprise).
  - nathan_long 14y ago
    I've heard several people say they keep lots of tabs open like you do and I'm curious why. Personally, I find I never need more than ~10 for the task at hand. Also, if I ever DO have more than that open, the titles get too small to read and I start forgetting what I have. I either go flipping through all of them to find one, or I just give up and open a duplicate tab, making the problem worse. Instead, if I want to look at something later, I usually tag it in Pinboard. Later, I can scroll down through a readable list of things I've recently bookmarked, or if I vaguely remember it, I can search by tags or text to find it. Given this, I can't see a reason to have so many tabs open. Can you explain why you like to work that way?
    - robotmay 14y ago
      It's honestly out of laziness. I mostly just keep opening tabs and can't be arsed to go back through them and decide which ones to keep. I've tried using all manner of sites like Pinboard, but none of them work as I like. I want a one-click bookmark button where I don't have to tag anything. Maybe I should finally get around to building the bookmarking app I really want.
      - takluyver 14y ago
        I'm trying Pocket for a similar reason. It adds a little icon by the bookmark icon. There's no tagging or anything required, the things I save go into a private queue 'in the cloud', and it even syncs to my phone.
        robotmay 14y ago
        I can't remember why I stopped using Pocket. I really need to write down reasons why I stop using software/libraries etc; there always comes a time when I need to justify it and I can never remember the reason :D
      - Shorel 14y ago
        I do use Instapaper for that. With some one-click extension.
      - 14y ago
- Svip 14y ago
  I think that is a little petty. While I may be a vivid Mozilla supporter (and user of Firefox!), I did too get the strange feel of it being a bit of a 'whining'. At least the title gave that impression. But reading the entry, it is actually rather good reasoning for why Mozilla won't switch to WebKit. I am not sure WebKit-dev really needs more companies telling them what to do. Or fight over what to be done. While others may disagree, I consider XUL a compelling advantage over the alternatives, because I can modify my browser to my liking, without writing my own browser from scratch. I am not trying to be conservative, but I like the way Firefox does things. Yes, there are issues, it is hardly perfect (I use Chromium to watch Flash and use Java at home, because I fear Firefox's heavy memory footprint[1]). And Firefox's desktop share has remained rather stable the past year, along with Chrome's share.[2] [1] Although, in fairness, I do usually have over 100 tabs open. [2] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/internet-explorer-still-growing-as-windows-7-starts-its-decline/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/intern...
- Offler 14y ago
  Then I suggest you read the article as he gives a very good explanation.
  - tjansen 14y ago
    He gives a lot of political reasons for that, and I agree fully with them, but in the end the only thing that matters is the resulting product. Don't get me wrong, I am very thankful for what Mozilla did for the web at a time when IE was practically the only browser. And I also see that they continue innovate. Mozilla can only survive if a sizable percentage of end users perceive Firefox as the best browser for them, and this usually means that Firefox needs to provide the best user experience. Personally I think that other browsers currently provide a better user experience, and I see a lot of people around me switching from FF to Chrome. The reason for that is not Webkit , but Firefox's user interface.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Funny, this is the same argumentation I see on open vs commercial software. In the end only the product matters.
- Proleps 14y ago
  I use Firefox because it is free software. It feels more honest than Chrome, IE or Opera.
  - Drakim 14y ago
    Is Firefox more free than Chromium?
    - Proleps 14y ago
      Some parts of Chromium lack a free license[1], but is is a lot more free than Chrome. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29#Licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29#Lice...
  - mpyne 14y ago
    I keep Firefox up-to-date because it's the only web browser on Linux that appears to support the PKCS#11/Client-SSL/CoolKey/etc. needed to support using smartcards for SSL-enabled authentication on websites.
- Ygg2 14y ago
  I don't think fighting a monoculture is a bad thing. Monoculture is bad in the long run, there are several implications to it mostly security wise. So its not just monoculture. It's also Mozilla's wast ecosystem of customization and the good will it's projects generate. Look at it this way - Did Chrome made/sponsor PDF reader in JS? Did it sponsor a Flash VM in JS? Did Google Chrome team made tools other than would help all vendors equally? Dart and NaCl are valiant efforts but they help Chrome first and other browsers second.
  - hollerith 14y ago
    >I don't think fighting a monoculture is a bad thing. he didn't imply it was bad, just that no one in this environment is going to switch to or stick with Firefox just to fight monoculture.
- guelo 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. The last time we had a corporate controlled monoculture there really was little practical reason to switch away from Microsoft to Mozilla except the idealism of fighting against corporate control, in fact, there were plenty of practical reasons not to switch since a big chunk of the web at the time worked only on IE browsers. But significant people did switch, enough to make a difference.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  I think you missed an important point. OP is not arguing people should be using Firefox or other Mozilla products to "fight monoculture". OP is arguing that in order to deliver browsers (and other products) with compelling advantages in a way that advances Mozilla's mission, Mozilla needs to maintain their own rendering engine(s).
  - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
    What good is having an independent rendering engine if essentially every other aspect of Firefox as of late has been a copy of how Chrome or Safari handles things? I'm talking about stuff like getting rid of the traditional menu bar and status bar, hiding the protocol in the URL input field, support for SPDY, the new tab page, silent updates, the built-in PDF viewer of the upcoming Firefox 19, and forth. Meanwhile, we've also seen them spinning their wheels with failed me-too initiatives like Firefox for Mobile and Firefox OS, rather than producing any true innovation. Ever since Firefox 4, all that Mozilla has managed to deliver is the Chrome experience, but in a less-effective manner. It makes perfect sense why people are leaving Firefox for Chrome; they'll get a nearly identical UI in Chrome, but they'll get new features sooner, and with better performance.
    - alistair77 14y ago
      I use Firefox Nightly and the latest Chrome stable. You're just plain incorrect. The Firefox user experience is very different to Chrome. Sure there are similarities but it's ridiculous to claim it's just a copy. They've taken a completely different approach to their built-in PDF viewer and as a developer I can tell you there's a huge number of differences in the way that FF and Chrome handle networking and interface standards. And, yes, these are noticeable to my non-developer friends and family. The reason so many non-techies are using Chrome is that Google has a much stronger brand presence than Mozilla and has, at least in the UK, spent a fortune on advertising. I love both of these browsers for different reasons. Please don't claim they're the same just for the sake of making a point.
      - blibble 14y ago
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
rurounijones 14y ago
Well that seemed like a very well-reasoned and well-written article without. I found myself nodding along with a lot of it. The part about there not really being "One Webkit" is the bit that stuck out for me since it seems (warning: generalization ahead) most outsiders (even web-developers based on articles and comments I have observed on HN) do believe that Webkit is mostly one engine worked on by one basically happy family of corporate sponsors.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
joycer 14y ago
I use Firefox for the reasons stated in the article. What I want to know is why do I still see errors on specific websites that say I need Chrome to view this page. I think Mozilla matters, but are they interested in keeping pace on what matters to their users: the best usability; or are they more interested in this blog's bullet points? If only the latter, then I say I support your efforts and hope you continue the good work, but I should start looking for a web browser that is trying to be that.
OGinparadise 14y ago
IE does MS bidding. Chrome does Google's bidding. So, I hope Firefox stays and I hope that the $1 billion Google gave them doesn't change their priorities.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  Just because Google gave them $1 billion doesn't mean it impacts their priorities (see: Apple and the rumored billions Google gives them for being the iOS search engine placement). It also matters what other offers are on the table. I bet Microsoft would be willing to pay plenty for Bing placement in Firefox. Both Mozilla and Microsoft clearly considered the possibility seriously (remember Firefox with Bing?). Also remember that, initially, Firefox's Google contract expired without being renewed. Instead, the renewal came a few weeks later. At the time there was plenty of speculation that Google was letting Mozilla twist in the wind. Considering how much Google came back with, it certainly looks like any twisting went in the other direction.
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    That's why I said I hope, money does have a way to corrupt things. Sometime it starts as a noble thing: "let's do this one thing because it's a necessary evil..." (see: Apple and the rumored billions Google gives them for being the iOS search engine placement) Yeah but Google is trying, hoping and praying to destroy Apple's 50-Billion-in-profit business.
    - graue 14y ago
      I disagree with your last statement. The most convincing explanation I've seen of Google's motivations with Android is that Android is a hedge in case Google is locked out of other platforms. They make money from people using Google services, regardless of whether the services are used from an iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Google and Apple certainly compete in many areas, but Google isn't trying to "destroy" Apple's business, nor is that even realistic.
- drhowarddrfine 14y ago
blumentopf 14y ago
I have a hard time believing Brendan's pledge to diversity given Mozilla's non-support for Gecko embedding. There's a number of Gecko-based browsers, e.g. Camino, and they've left their users in the lurch by ending support for Gecko embedding: http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding Mike Pinkerton has for years been voicing rightful criticism that Mozilla is focussing on Firefox and nothing else, see e.g. this interview of 2006: http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? Instead they've done the exact opposite.
- fpgeek 14y ago
  > If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? I think Mozilla's announcement makes their reasoning fairly clear: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... My summary is: - The old embedding infrastructure was difficult to use and expensive to maintain - It was also a technical dead end - Better embedding infrastructure depended on complex architectural changes to Firefox - Firefox is Mozilla's bread-and-butter, in terms of visibility, influence and revenue - Mozilla has ambitious goals and does not have infinite resources Forget for a moment that we're talking about Mozilla, Firefox and Gecko embedding. In a different context, what would you do?
  - batgaijin 14y ago
    Yeah I think it's worth it once we have the rust-based one. I mean come on, Firefox isn't even distributed in 64-bit as an official option. It's really on it's last legs waiting for the next gust to carry it.
    - pcwalton 14y ago
      There are 64 bit versions of Firefox available for Mac and Linux.
Nitramp 14y ago
> [...] Don’t get me wrong. I am not here to criticize WebKit. [...] Well, no. The whole "Thoughts on WebKit" section of the article spells out problems with WebKit that do not exist in Mozilla-land; most people would call that criticizing. Which is perfectly fine (how would you write this article without critically comparing the different projects), but please be honest about it and spell it out.
- sixbrx 14y ago
  I might not be at the party to drink the spiked punch, but that doesn't mean I won't partake a bit...
NinjaWarrior 14y ago
If you don't like monocultures, you shouldn't have hated plug-ins. And Firefox OS should allow users to install browsers other than Firefox. I'm very sad that not only Flash 11 but also Silverlight and Unity Web Player are all doomed by the enthusiasm of the "open" standards. Therefore, I feel that current Mozilla is full of hypocrisy. And Mozilla, you must implement the Web Audio API ASAP. Without this, all interactive "HTML5" demos with audio will be developed only for WebKit browsers. "We innovate early, often"? I don't think so.
- air 14y ago
  Monoculture means here that everyone is running the same implementation. Flash 11, Silverlight and Unity Web Player are all examples of that. Allowing opaque plugins encourages weakly specified technologies with just one defacto implementation and leads to monocultures.
- loudmax 14y ago
  If Flash, Silverlight, and Unity Web Player were based on open standards and they each had as many competing implementations as there are web browsers, then they might be a real way forward. They're each useful in their own way, but their application is limited because they're each locked to a proprietary implementation. Granted, Silverlight was "open" in the sense that it had defined specs, but the specs were clearly written by a single company, and competing implementations would be at a significant disadvantage.
  - camus 14y ago
    Adobe/Macromedia tried to take a step into standardisation for Flash ( ES4 ) it failed ,because some were pushing crappy alternatives ( Microsoft and Silverlight ) and Mozilla had cold feet ( tamarin ... ). Funny how some now try to shove you typescript when we could have had a better language back then. It doesnt mean that we will still be writing some javascript in 10 years ,hopefully we wont.
- padenot 14y ago
  The Web Audio spec is more a user manual than a spec, to be fair. We are implementing the API at the moment, but the spec is so unclear that it is impossible to implement it properly. We have a couple things done and working, though. And about "We innovate early, often", keep in mind that we had a counter-proposal to the Web Audio API, that we implemented. The W3C has chosen Google's instead of ours, and I believe that the fact we are late to implement this particular spec is quite normal.
skatepark 14y ago
Mozilla -- and Brendan Eich specifically -- have held back the web as a platform for years. Brendan Eich is myopically focused on the DOM and JavaScript monoculture -- rather than the underlying potential of the web: a standardized and completely open application platform. I assume this is due to his own vested interests and personal investment as the author of JavaScript, but it has been incredibly damaging to the web as a whole. For Google to push anything forward (NaCL, PNaCL, dart), they need at least one other major browser vendor to join them. Apple and Microsoft have vertically integrated native application markets, and have no reason to further the development of the web. That leaves Mozilla. If Mozilla genuinely cares about providing an open application platform (ala Firefox OS), they'll put Brendan Eich out to pasture and focus on moving past his stranglehold on JavaScript+HTML.
- bzbarsky 14y ago
  NaCL is tied to particular hardware. PNaCL doesn't exist yet, so there is nothing to push. Dart is a much more interesting question. That said, is there really value in having two and only two languages available (and leaks when you try to use both together in nontrivial ways) compared to using JavaScript as a compilation target? I guess it depends on how good a fit Dart is for your use cases...
  - skatepark 14y ago
    JavaScript as a compilation target is ineffecient for both runtime and development; it's a hack. PNaCL -- and any other alternatives -- are in no small part incomplete because Eich has stated repeatedly in no uncertain terms that its JavaScript or nothing. If you want to produce an alternative, there's no chance of it being accepted. Imagine this sort of total language myopia in any other general purpose platform.
    - BrendanEich 14y ago
      Yup, I did it all -- mwah-hah-hah! I made Apple and Microsoft, iOS WebKit minions at Apple especially, even SJ, do my bidding in resisting poor pretty PNaCl. Get your tums out, pal. We're taking PNaCl down for good this year with http://asmjs.org/ http://asmjs.org/. Cross-browser. /be
byefruit 14y ago
Clearly Mozilla matters to Brendan Eich because without it he would struggle to find somewhere to meet his atleast $500k/year[1] pay package? Mozilla's board are accountable only to themselves. It's a personal playground and cash machine for Baker and Eich. [1] http://thetruthaboutmozilla.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/analyzing-mozilla%E2%80%99s-2006-financials/ http://thetruthaboutmozilla.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/analyzi...
- BrendanEich 14y ago
  I know, don't feed the troll, _ad hominem_ arguments are fallacies on their face, and all that. But so that there is no confusion on the part of readers who haven't been around the block, or around the valley, and therefore might be taken in by your libels, here's a personal testament: You (byefruit) may be young, and/or not in my Silicon Valley job market. Look at my peers of around the same age as me. Many are independently wealthy. Those at executive or C-level (Chief of...) positions make similar salaries, not counting stock options from public companies which generally remunerate them to a much greater degree. I'm not looking for a new job, but I get head-hunter contacts often enough. From the non-startups, the promised packages are as good or better in terms of salary. Doing a startup would mean a reduction in exchange for more founders' equity. I have had invitations and targeted recruiting pitches from Google starting in 2002 and running up to this year. Had I gone in 2002, I would be set for life. I'm not independently wealthy, in spite of a decent salary for someone at my age and level. Getting Firefox out, restarting JS standardization, helping build Mozilla, competing with Chrome, starting Mozilla Research (http://www.mozilla.org/research/ http://www.mozilla.org/research/), launching Firefox OS -- these add up to hard work, as hard as I've ever done save for the crazy Netscape days in 1995-6. This is especially true lately with lots of travel, which is not easy on my wife and small children. Meanwhile, open source means living in a fishbowl, and Mozilla with its mission and people-first social movement roots means finding a business structure that doesn't loot our brand or screw volunteers by trying to cash out via an IPO or acquisition. The structure that we chose was a U.S. 501(c)(3) Foundation, with IRS approval up front, but then with IRS reneging after a couple of years, followed by a fight to deny us our status and tax our early revenue that had been declared tax-free at the time by that same agency. In the course of this "package audit", I had the joy of a personal IRS audit, which I passed cleanly (I defended myself). And Mozilla prevailed on the question of its public benefit status. I don't live in Atherton or Palo Alto. I don't drive a fancy car. I'm in a house built in 1960 that was enlarged in the '70s but is modest by any standard (and very messy right now!). So, do you really think I am just in this for the money? This is not a boast, it doesn't make me great or even good. Like most who have some years of sustained work and credit/blame on their backs, I am little by myself. I'm much less than some truly great people who work for a good cause for no more, and often a lot less, than I make. I am 100% sure that I could not persuade most of Mozilla's top talent of anything if I were merely an empty suit adding no value and sucking a big salary. So it is just galling to hear your spin on thetruthaboutmozilla, which by the way seemed in that 2007 piece to say that I was worth every penny (not that I'm giving it any credence :-|). If I'm right that Mozilla matters, then it matters no matter what I make or where I go. If I'm valuable to Mozilla, then my staying will help. I have to consider that too, in negotiating compensation. "Know thyself" is as important now as it was at Delphi in ancient Greece. I'm not at Mozilla to make money. I'm here to make the web better for everyone, users, developers, your parents -- without having to face business-agenda or personal-financial conflicts of interest. Aristotle and Jesus agreed on this point regarding money (Mammon) vs. "the good" (God): you can't serve two masters. So, enough about me. Whom or what do you serve, and why? /be
noahl 14y ago
I might be behind the times, but the thing that was by far the most interesting to me was Servo [0]. He's absolutely right - all of the current rendering/JavaScript engines are going to need significant work to take advantage of massively-parallel hardware in the next few years. (I say this after seeing the work required to port ordinary CPU code to CUDA. OpenCL should be similar.) The idea of Mozilla not just switching to WebKit but actually trying to leapfrog it to a new, even better rendering engine is awesome. [0] https://github.com/mozilla/servo https://github.com/mozilla/servo
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  And of course, with servo being written in Rust, that makes it doubly interesting. "To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
acdha 14y ago
For me the question for the larger web community boils down to this: we benefit as a whole when there are multiple high-quality browser engines but the implementors do not directly receive a significant share of those benefits (i.e. Opera implemented some things, helped the standards improve, and 99% of the web didn't benefit until the corresponding WebKit or Gecko implementation). If we want that to change – particularly for ambitious projects like major security or parallelism improvements – it seems like there has to be some way to bring the scale back to the level where a small group can effectively enter the field.
mindcrime 14y ago
Mozilla had their shot at being the leading edge browser, and, heck, maybe they even were for a while. But at some point in the history of Mozilla / Seamonkey / Firefox they started to care way too much about "market share" and started treating IE as though it was the target. Discussions about implementing new standards or new features ended with "but IE doesn't do that", etc. And then Mozilla became very inimical towards the idea of implementing forward looking things, and giving ideas a chance to win or lose in the "marketplace" (not a perfect metaphor, but whatever). Remember the debacle over mng support? The argument basically reduced to "nobody's using it" at a time when no browsers supported it. And nobody was going to use it, until some browser(s) did support it. But IE didn't, and IE was the target. Oh yeah, there was some argument about the size of the code, etc., yada yada, but even when the developers reduced the size of the mng code dramatically, it was still rejected. Mozilla leadership never seemed willing to try and lead and expect IE to begin to see Firefox as the target. XForms? Mozilla absolutely should have implemented XForms properly. The one place they did actually get "ahead of the curve" a bit was SVG, and - while still hardly dominant - SVG has finally made into IE. Honestly, while Firefox is a great product in many ways (I'm using it to compose this post) I think it has fallen short of what it could be, and one reason for that - IMO - is an overly dogmatic, top-heavy leadership model and lack of willingness to incorporate feedback from the larger OSS community.
- tedmielczarek 14y ago
  You're trying to make a technical argument and referencing MNG and XForms. I'm really not sure where you're going with that.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    The point is that it doesn't f%!@#ng matter... Mozilla, at one time, tried to foster this idea that they were the "browser for developers" and had this notion of implementing new technologies and letting them fight it out in the marketplace, yada yada. But they didn't actually do that. They made heavy-handed decisions about what technologies would or wouldn't "win", mostly based in trying to replicate IE. And now they're still talking about "innovating faster" blah, blah, and I'm still not buying it. Mozilla has shown little interest in leading in terms of browser innovation, from what I've seen. Of course, the argument now has probably changed from "IE doesn't do that" to "Chrome doesn't do that", but whatever... Edit: Also, just to be clear... I'm not saying Mozilla never do anything innovative. They were, for example, one of the first, if not the first, browsers to support MathML. They were also early to the SVG party. I just think they fell short of what they could have been, if they'd been more aggressive towards incorporating new things. shrug
mtgx 14y ago
I wonder if Mozilla plans on rewriting Firefox with Rust. Would that be too big of a task for Mozilla? They should also make the decision if they stick with Gecko or not at that point.
- tedmielczarek 14y ago
  Uh, have you heard of Servo? https://github.com/mozilla/servo https://github.com/mozilla/servo It's that, as a research project.
- zobzu 14y ago
  They are developing them in parallel. Since rust is still an experimental project (the language isn't even finalized) it wouldn't make sense to replace firefox with it _now_. So there is no "at that point" decision. Firefox+Gecko codebase is here to stay for a few years.
anotherevan 14y ago
As soon as I saw the headline that Opera was switching to WebKit, I thought, "I bet I know what announcement Mozilla will be making on April first..."

307 points by gkanai 14y ago

When you still need to explain why Mozilla matters, despite a market share of ~20%, I guess it's already doomed... Practically nobody uses a browser, or any other product, only to "fight monoculture". It may be an honorable goal, but a product needs compelling advantages beyond that.

robotmay 14y ago
The reason I use Firefox over Chrome is mostly down to memory usage with a large amount of tabs open. Chrome really starts chugging when you get over 40 tabs (and it's a pain to organise them too). It also has some really weird caching problems which you only seem to stumble upon if you're doing a lot of web development.
- Xion 14y ago
  That's a bit ironic. I remember not so long ago I've heard many people who switched to Chrome were deeming Firefox "memory hungry". I haven't heard similar complaints about Chrome up until now.
  - mhd 14y ago
    Firefox improved quite a bit with the more recent rapid release cycle. And don't forget the "organise" part. Once you get beyond a certain amount of tabs in a window, the usual tabbed arangement shows its weakness -- and at this point, you probably need something like XUL to expand the GUI, what Chrome/Safari have to offer in this regard just doesn't seem to cut it. TreeStyle Tabs is basically my #1 reason why I'm sticking with Firefox.
    - kanzure 14y ago
      > TreeStyle Tabs is basically my #1 reason why I'm sticking with Firefox. Tree Style Tabs is, of course, one of the greatest things ever to happen to Firefox. It's on the list immediately after FireBug. These days, I have been switching over to xmonad (and other simple window managers). Instead of using tabs inside of a browser, I use windows for each page. Next, I have a global key binding (C-o) that brings up windows as I type out tags which I can set with C-j. This way, I don't need tabs anymore, and I don't need impossibly long lists. I can just type the thing I want. C-o mdn, done. C-o google, done. C-o gmail, done. C-o irssi, yep. I am still trying to figure out if this is better than constantly seeing a list of open tabs.
      - mhd 14y ago
        That's a bit similar to the way I did it way back when Firefox came out. One of the early window managers that supported this, probably pwm. And it does work quite okay as a simple tab substitute for most applications. For browsers, I would need some kind of hierarchy support, though. A bit harder to do in a window manager, but then you'd have it for all kinds of applications. Maybe even combine it with some additional exposed information -- so without support you manager your hierarchy yourself, but if there's an easy way to get a buffer list, the top-level would be from the wm, and the second level from that list. I would need some kind of display for a browser, though. I'm fine with on-demand buffer lists in editors (and actually turn off sidebars when I use Sublime), but for my browsing habits I'm better off with a list that's always visible.
      - onedognight 14y ago
        FWIW, you xmonad technique is easily emulated in Firefox. Try C-l mdn, etc. The awesome bar really is awesome. Not only does it search open tabs, but it also searches your history and titles and it learns.
  - Wilya 14y ago
    It depends on the usage. Users have different habits. Firefox's memory usage is a bit less predictable (and can get crazy, especially when you leave badly coded js websites open for days in a row) and there are more situations when you say to yourself "I'm leaking memory, I'd better restart", but Chrome memory usage grows faster when you open more tabs. Plus, Chrome UI is less suited to many tabs: favicons stop appearing beyond around 30 tabs (for me, it's probably machine-dependent), and the omnibar doesn't give you a way to switch to already open tabs by default. Plus, Chrome autoupdates aren't exactly optimized for low-end configs.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    Chrome is great at releasing memory (since it often is just killing a process) and it does tend to use less memory with few tabs. But even from Chrome's birth, Firefox was already using less memory with lots of tabs.
  - josteink 14y ago
    I've seen Chrome claim up to 512MB ram per tab on several occasions when you keep it running for a while. Chrome could be enough to use my (old) system's 8GB of RAM. Now I have a 32GB system so it's less of an issue, but Chrome is still seriously a memory hog.
  - nnethercote 14y ago
    It's a very common observation that Chrome can't handle more than a few 10s of tabs. In comparison, I know several people who regularly have more than 500 tabs open in Firefox -- 1200 is the highest number I've heard, though not all of these were loaded at once thanks to Firefox's "Don't load tabs until selected" option.
    - groby_b 14y ago
      500 open tabs? Good lord, I don't have that many bookmarks! I'm really curious, why would one do that?
      - shitlord 14y ago
        I've had a little over a hundred open at one point... I go browsing on HN and reddit a lot. I click on a bunch of different links to open in new tabs, and once the tabs start overflowing, I move them to different tab groups, and eventually and forget about them. Since I usually close my browser when I am done browsing and reopen it when I want to browse again, it does not make much of a difference in terms of snappiness.
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    It's a mixed bag. Firefox uses far less memory per tab, but still chugs down more memory with time. Chrome uses metric shit-tons of memory, but its multi-threading allows individually killing tabs (or just massacring them in bulk if necessary, which it is). When memory's tight, Firefox seems to bog down as a whole, while Chrome gets boggy on individual pages (and you can kill/reload these as needed). I find myself using both though I'll fairly routinely go through and kill off Chrome tabs, and periodically restart Firefox, to keep memory management reasonable. Firefox's tab and state management is far superior to Chrome. Chrome plays better with some advanced sites (notably Google's own webpages, surprise, surprise).
- nathan_long 14y ago
  I've heard several people say they keep lots of tabs open like you do and I'm curious why. Personally, I find I never need more than ~10 for the task at hand. Also, if I ever DO have more than that open, the titles get too small to read and I start forgetting what I have. I either go flipping through all of them to find one, or I just give up and open a duplicate tab, making the problem worse. Instead, if I want to look at something later, I usually tag it in Pinboard. Later, I can scroll down through a readable list of things I've recently bookmarked, or if I vaguely remember it, I can search by tags or text to find it. Given this, I can't see a reason to have so many tabs open. Can you explain why you like to work that way?
  - robotmay 14y ago
    It's honestly out of laziness. I mostly just keep opening tabs and can't be arsed to go back through them and decide which ones to keep. I've tried using all manner of sites like Pinboard, but none of them work as I like. I want a one-click bookmark button where I don't have to tag anything. Maybe I should finally get around to building the bookmarking app I really want.
    - takluyver 14y ago
      I'm trying Pocket for a similar reason. It adds a little icon by the bookmark icon. There's no tagging or anything required, the things I save go into a private queue 'in the cloud', and it even syncs to my phone.
      - robotmay 14y ago
        I can't remember why I stopped using Pocket. I really need to write down reasons why I stop using software/libraries etc; there always comes a time when I need to justify it and I can never remember the reason :D
    - Shorel 14y ago
      I do use Instapaper for that. With some one-click extension.
    - 14y ago
Svip 14y ago
I think that is a little petty. While I may be a vivid Mozilla supporter (and user of Firefox!), I did too get the strange feel of it being a bit of a 'whining'. At least the title gave that impression. But reading the entry, it is actually rather good reasoning for why Mozilla won't switch to WebKit. I am not sure WebKit-dev really needs more companies telling them what to do. Or fight over what to be done. While others may disagree, I consider XUL a compelling advantage over the alternatives, because I can modify my browser to my liking, without writing my own browser from scratch. I am not trying to be conservative, but I like the way Firefox does things. Yes, there are issues, it is hardly perfect (I use Chromium to watch Flash and use Java at home, because I fear Firefox's heavy memory footprint[1]). And Firefox's desktop share has remained rather stable the past year, along with Chrome's share.[2] [1] Although, in fairness, I do usually have over 100 tabs open. [2] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/internet-explorer-still-growing-as-windows-7-starts-its-decline/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/intern...
Offler 14y ago
Then I suggest you read the article as he gives a very good explanation.
- tjansen 14y ago
  He gives a lot of political reasons for that, and I agree fully with them, but in the end the only thing that matters is the resulting product. Don't get me wrong, I am very thankful for what Mozilla did for the web at a time when IE was practically the only browser. And I also see that they continue innovate. Mozilla can only survive if a sizable percentage of end users perceive Firefox as the best browser for them, and this usually means that Firefox needs to provide the best user experience. Personally I think that other browsers currently provide a better user experience, and I see a lot of people around me switching from FF to Chrome. The reason for that is not Webkit , but Firefox's user interface.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Funny, this is the same argumentation I see on open vs commercial software. In the end only the product matters.
Proleps 14y ago
I use Firefox because it is free software. It feels more honest than Chrome, IE or Opera.
- Drakim 14y ago
  Is Firefox more free than Chromium?
  - Proleps 14y ago
    Some parts of Chromium lack a free license[1], but is is a lot more free than Chrome. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29#Licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_%28web_browser%29#Lice...
- mpyne 14y ago
  I keep Firefox up-to-date because it's the only web browser on Linux that appears to support the PKCS#11/Client-SSL/CoolKey/etc. needed to support using smartcards for SSL-enabled authentication on websites.
Ygg2 14y ago
I don't think fighting a monoculture is a bad thing. Monoculture is bad in the long run, there are several implications to it mostly security wise. So its not just monoculture. It's also Mozilla's wast ecosystem of customization and the good will it's projects generate. Look at it this way - Did Chrome made/sponsor PDF reader in JS? Did it sponsor a Flash VM in JS? Did Google Chrome team made tools other than would help all vendors equally? Dart and NaCl are valiant efforts but they help Chrome first and other browsers second.
- hollerith 14y ago
  >I don't think fighting a monoculture is a bad thing. he didn't imply it was bad, just that no one in this environment is going to switch to or stick with Firefox just to fight monoculture.
guelo 14y ago
I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that. The last time we had a corporate controlled monoculture there really was little practical reason to switch away from Microsoft to Mozilla except the idealism of fighting against corporate control, in fact, there were plenty of practical reasons not to switch since a big chunk of the web at the time worked only on IE browsers. But significant people did switch, enough to make a difference.
fpgeek 14y ago
I think you missed an important point. OP is not arguing people should be using Firefox or other Mozilla products to "fight monoculture". OP is arguing that in order to deliver browsers (and other products) with compelling advantages in a way that advances Mozilla's mission, Mozilla needs to maintain their own rendering engine(s).
- PommeDeTerre 14y ago
  What good is having an independent rendering engine if essentially every other aspect of Firefox as of late has been a copy of how Chrome or Safari handles things? I'm talking about stuff like getting rid of the traditional menu bar and status bar, hiding the protocol in the URL input field, support for SPDY, the new tab page, silent updates, the built-in PDF viewer of the upcoming Firefox 19, and forth. Meanwhile, we've also seen them spinning their wheels with failed me-too initiatives like Firefox for Mobile and Firefox OS, rather than producing any true innovation. Ever since Firefox 4, all that Mozilla has managed to deliver is the Chrome experience, but in a less-effective manner. It makes perfect sense why people are leaving Firefox for Chrome; they'll get a nearly identical UI in Chrome, but they'll get new features sooner, and with better performance.
  - alistair77 14y ago
    I use Firefox Nightly and the latest Chrome stable. You're just plain incorrect. The Firefox user experience is very different to Chrome. Sure there are similarities but it's ridiculous to claim it's just a copy. They've taken a completely different approach to their built-in PDF viewer and as a developer I can tell you there's a huge number of differences in the way that FF and Chrome handle networking and interface standards. And, yes, these are noticeable to my non-developer friends and family. The reason so many non-techies are using Chrome is that Google has a much stronger brand presence than Mozilla and has, at least in the UK, spent a fortune on advertising. I love both of these browsers for different reasons. Please don't claim they're the same just for the sake of making a point.
    - blibble 14y ago
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

rurounijones 14y ago

Well that seemed like a very well-reasoned and well-written article without. I found myself nodding along with a lot of it. The part about there not really being "One Webkit" is the bit that stuck out for me since it seems (warning: generalization ahead) most outsiders (even web-developers based on articles and comments I have observed on HN) do believe that Webkit is mostly one engine worked on by one basically happy family of corporate sponsors.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

joycer 14y ago

I use Firefox for the reasons stated in the article. What I want to know is why do I still see errors on specific websites that say I need Chrome to view this page. I think Mozilla matters, but are they interested in keeping pace on what matters to their users: the best usability; or are they more interested in this blog's bullet points? If only the latter, then I say I support your efforts and hope you continue the good work, but I should start looking for a web browser that is trying to be that.

OGinparadise 14y ago

IE does MS bidding. Chrome does Google's bidding. So, I hope Firefox stays and I hope that the $1 billion Google gave them doesn't change their priorities.

fpgeek 14y ago
Just because Google gave them $1 billion doesn't mean it impacts their priorities (see: Apple and the rumored billions Google gives them for being the iOS search engine placement). It also matters what other offers are on the table. I bet Microsoft would be willing to pay plenty for Bing placement in Firefox. Both Mozilla and Microsoft clearly considered the possibility seriously (remember Firefox with Bing?). Also remember that, initially, Firefox's Google contract expired without being renewed. Instead, the renewal came a few weeks later. At the time there was plenty of speculation that Google was letting Mozilla twist in the wind. Considering how much Google came back with, it certainly looks like any twisting went in the other direction.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  That's why I said I hope, money does have a way to corrupt things. Sometime it starts as a noble thing: "let's do this one thing because it's a necessary evil..." (see: Apple and the rumored billions Google gives them for being the iOS search engine placement) Yeah but Google is trying, hoping and praying to destroy Apple's 50-Billion-in-profit business.
  - graue 14y ago
    I disagree with your last statement. The most convincing explanation I've seen of Google's motivations with Android is that Android is a hedge in case Google is locked out of other platforms. They make money from people using Google services, regardless of whether the services are used from an iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Google and Apple certainly compete in many areas, but Google isn't trying to "destroy" Apple's business, nor is that even realistic.
drhowarddrfine 14y ago

blumentopf 14y ago

I have a hard time believing Brendan's pledge to diversity given Mozilla's non-support for Gecko embedding. There's a number of Gecko-based browsers, e.g. Camino, and they've left their users in the lurch by ending support for Gecko embedding: http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding http://caminobrowser.org/blog/2011/#mozembedding Mike Pinkerton has for years been voicing rightful criticism that Mozilla is focussing on Firefox and nothing else, see e.g. this interview of 2006: http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 http://mozillamemory.org/detailview.php?id=7277 If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? Instead they've done the exact opposite.

fpgeek 14y ago
> If Mozilla really wants diversity, why haven't they made an effort to make Gecko attractive for embedding, thus providing an alternative to WebKit? I think Mozilla's announcement makes their reasoning fairly clear: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embedding/c_NMcO-N8wo/discussion https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.embeddin... My summary is: - The old embedding infrastructure was difficult to use and expensive to maintain - It was also a technical dead end - Better embedding infrastructure depended on complex architectural changes to Firefox - Firefox is Mozilla's bread-and-butter, in terms of visibility, influence and revenue - Mozilla has ambitious goals and does not have infinite resources Forget for a moment that we're talking about Mozilla, Firefox and Gecko embedding. In a different context, what would you do?
- batgaijin 14y ago
  Yeah I think it's worth it once we have the rust-based one. I mean come on, Firefox isn't even distributed in 64-bit as an official option. It's really on it's last legs waiting for the next gust to carry it.
  - pcwalton 14y ago
    There are 64 bit versions of Firefox available for Mac and Linux.

Nitramp 14y ago

> [...] Don’t get me wrong. I am not here to criticize WebKit. [...] Well, no. The whole "Thoughts on WebKit" section of the article spells out problems with WebKit that do not exist in Mozilla-land; most people would call that criticizing. Which is perfectly fine (how would you write this article without critically comparing the different projects), but please be honest about it and spell it out.

sixbrx 14y ago
I might not be at the party to drink the spiked punch, but that doesn't mean I won't partake a bit...

NinjaWarrior 14y ago

If you don't like monocultures, you shouldn't have hated plug-ins. And Firefox OS should allow users to install browsers other than Firefox. I'm very sad that not only Flash 11 but also Silverlight and Unity Web Player are all doomed by the enthusiasm of the "open" standards. Therefore, I feel that current Mozilla is full of hypocrisy. And Mozilla, you must implement the Web Audio API ASAP. Without this, all interactive "HTML5" demos with audio will be developed only for WebKit browsers. "We innovate early, often"? I don't think so.

air 14y ago
Monoculture means here that everyone is running the same implementation. Flash 11, Silverlight and Unity Web Player are all examples of that. Allowing opaque plugins encourages weakly specified technologies with just one defacto implementation and leads to monocultures.
loudmax 14y ago
If Flash, Silverlight, and Unity Web Player were based on open standards and they each had as many competing implementations as there are web browsers, then they might be a real way forward. They're each useful in their own way, but their application is limited because they're each locked to a proprietary implementation. Granted, Silverlight was "open" in the sense that it had defined specs, but the specs were clearly written by a single company, and competing implementations would be at a significant disadvantage.
- camus 14y ago
  Adobe/Macromedia tried to take a step into standardisation for Flash ( ES4 ) it failed ,because some were pushing crappy alternatives ( Microsoft and Silverlight ) and Mozilla had cold feet ( tamarin ... ). Funny how some now try to shove you typescript when we could have had a better language back then. It doesnt mean that we will still be writing some javascript in 10 years ,hopefully we wont.
padenot 14y ago
The Web Audio spec is more a user manual than a spec, to be fair. We are implementing the API at the moment, but the spec is so unclear that it is impossible to implement it properly. We have a couple things done and working, though. And about "We innovate early, often", keep in mind that we had a counter-proposal to the Web Audio API, that we implemented. The W3C has chosen Google's instead of ours, and I believe that the fact we are late to implement this particular spec is quite normal.

skatepark 14y ago

Mozilla -- and Brendan Eich specifically -- have held back the web as a platform for years. Brendan Eich is myopically focused on the DOM and JavaScript monoculture -- rather than the underlying potential of the web: a standardized and completely open application platform. I assume this is due to his own vested interests and personal investment as the author of JavaScript, but it has been incredibly damaging to the web as a whole. For Google to push anything forward (NaCL, PNaCL, dart), they need at least one other major browser vendor to join them. Apple and Microsoft have vertically integrated native application markets, and have no reason to further the development of the web. That leaves Mozilla. If Mozilla genuinely cares about providing an open application platform (ala Firefox OS), they'll put Brendan Eich out to pasture and focus on moving past his stranglehold on JavaScript+HTML.

bzbarsky 14y ago
NaCL is tied to particular hardware. PNaCL doesn't exist yet, so there is nothing to push. Dart is a much more interesting question. That said, is there really value in having two and only two languages available (and leaks when you try to use both together in nontrivial ways) compared to using JavaScript as a compilation target? I guess it depends on how good a fit Dart is for your use cases...
- skatepark 14y ago
  JavaScript as a compilation target is ineffecient for both runtime and development; it's a hack. PNaCL -- and any other alternatives -- are in no small part incomplete because Eich has stated repeatedly in no uncertain terms that its JavaScript or nothing. If you want to produce an alternative, there's no chance of it being accepted. Imagine this sort of total language myopia in any other general purpose platform.
  - BrendanEich 14y ago
    Yup, I did it all -- mwah-hah-hah! I made Apple and Microsoft, iOS WebKit minions at Apple especially, even SJ, do my bidding in resisting poor pretty PNaCl. Get your tums out, pal. We're taking PNaCl down for good this year with http://asmjs.org/ http://asmjs.org/. Cross-browser. /be

byefruit 14y ago

Clearly Mozilla matters to Brendan Eich because without it he would struggle to find somewhere to meet his atleast $500k/year[1] pay package? Mozilla's board are accountable only to themselves. It's a personal playground and cash machine for Baker and Eich. [1] http://thetruthaboutmozilla.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/analyzing-mozilla%E2%80%99s-2006-financials/ http://thetruthaboutmozilla.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/analyzi...

BrendanEich 14y ago
I know, don't feed the troll, _ad hominem_ arguments are fallacies on their face, and all that. But so that there is no confusion on the part of readers who haven't been around the block, or around the valley, and therefore might be taken in by your libels, here's a personal testament: You (byefruit) may be young, and/or not in my Silicon Valley job market. Look at my peers of around the same age as me. Many are independently wealthy. Those at executive or C-level (Chief of...) positions make similar salaries, not counting stock options from public companies which generally remunerate them to a much greater degree. I'm not looking for a new job, but I get head-hunter contacts often enough. From the non-startups, the promised packages are as good or better in terms of salary. Doing a startup would mean a reduction in exchange for more founders' equity. I have had invitations and targeted recruiting pitches from Google starting in 2002 and running up to this year. Had I gone in 2002, I would be set for life. I'm not independently wealthy, in spite of a decent salary for someone at my age and level. Getting Firefox out, restarting JS standardization, helping build Mozilla, competing with Chrome, starting Mozilla Research (http://www.mozilla.org/research/ http://www.mozilla.org/research/), launching Firefox OS -- these add up to hard work, as hard as I've ever done save for the crazy Netscape days in 1995-6. This is especially true lately with lots of travel, which is not easy on my wife and small children. Meanwhile, open source means living in a fishbowl, and Mozilla with its mission and people-first social movement roots means finding a business structure that doesn't loot our brand or screw volunteers by trying to cash out via an IPO or acquisition. The structure that we chose was a U.S. 501(c)(3) Foundation, with IRS approval up front, but then with IRS reneging after a couple of years, followed by a fight to deny us our status and tax our early revenue that had been declared tax-free at the time by that same agency. In the course of this "package audit", I had the joy of a personal IRS audit, which I passed cleanly (I defended myself). And Mozilla prevailed on the question of its public benefit status. I don't live in Atherton or Palo Alto. I don't drive a fancy car. I'm in a house built in 1960 that was enlarged in the '70s but is modest by any standard (and very messy right now!). So, do you really think I am just in this for the money? This is not a boast, it doesn't make me great or even good. Like most who have some years of sustained work and credit/blame on their backs, I am little by myself. I'm much less than some truly great people who work for a good cause for no more, and often a lot less, than I make. I am 100% sure that I could not persuade most of Mozilla's top talent of anything if I were merely an empty suit adding no value and sucking a big salary. So it is just galling to hear your spin on thetruthaboutmozilla, which by the way seemed in that 2007 piece to say that I was worth every penny (not that I'm giving it any credence :-|). If I'm right that Mozilla matters, then it matters no matter what I make or where I go. If I'm valuable to Mozilla, then my staying will help. I have to consider that too, in negotiating compensation. "Know thyself" is as important now as it was at Delphi in ancient Greece. I'm not at Mozilla to make money. I'm here to make the web better for everyone, users, developers, your parents -- without having to face business-agenda or personal-financial conflicts of interest. Aristotle and Jesus agreed on this point regarding money (Mammon) vs. "the good" (God): you can't serve two masters. So, enough about me. Whom or what do you serve, and why? /be

noahl 14y ago

I might be behind the times, but the thing that was by far the most interesting to me was Servo [0]. He's absolutely right - all of the current rendering/JavaScript engines are going to need significant work to take advantage of massively-parallel hardware in the next few years. (I say this after seeing the work required to port ordinary CPU code to CUDA. OpenCL should be similar.) The idea of Mozilla not just switching to WebKit but actually trying to leapfrog it to a new, even better rendering engine is awesome. [0] https://github.com/mozilla/servo https://github.com/mozilla/servo

steveklabnik 14y ago
And of course, with servo being written in Rust, that makes it doubly interesting. "To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan

acdha 14y ago

For me the question for the larger web community boils down to this: we benefit as a whole when there are multiple high-quality browser engines but the implementors do not directly receive a significant share of those benefits (i.e. Opera implemented some things, helped the standards improve, and 99% of the web didn't benefit until the corresponding WebKit or Gecko implementation). If we want that to change – particularly for ambitious projects like major security or parallelism improvements – it seems like there has to be some way to bring the scale back to the level where a small group can effectively enter the field.

mindcrime 14y ago

Mozilla had their shot at being the leading edge browser, and, heck, maybe they even were for a while. But at some point in the history of Mozilla / Seamonkey / Firefox they started to care way too much about "market share" and started treating IE as though it was the target. Discussions about implementing new standards or new features ended with "but IE doesn't do that", etc. And then Mozilla became very inimical towards the idea of implementing forward looking things, and giving ideas a chance to win or lose in the "marketplace" (not a perfect metaphor, but whatever). Remember the debacle over mng support? The argument basically reduced to "nobody's using it" at a time when no browsers supported it. And nobody was going to use it, until some browser(s) did support it. But IE didn't, and IE was the target. Oh yeah, there was some argument about the size of the code, etc., yada yada, but even when the developers reduced the size of the mng code dramatically, it was still rejected. Mozilla leadership never seemed willing to try and lead and expect IE to begin to see Firefox as the target. XForms? Mozilla absolutely should have implemented XForms properly. The one place they did actually get "ahead of the curve" a bit was SVG, and - while still hardly dominant - SVG has finally made into IE. Honestly, while Firefox is a great product in many ways (I'm using it to compose this post) I think it has fallen short of what it could be, and one reason for that - IMO - is an overly dogmatic, top-heavy leadership model and lack of willingness to incorporate feedback from the larger OSS community.

tedmielczarek 14y ago
You're trying to make a technical argument and referencing MNG and XForms. I'm really not sure where you're going with that.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  The point is that it doesn't f%!@#ng matter... Mozilla, at one time, tried to foster this idea that they were the "browser for developers" and had this notion of implementing new technologies and letting them fight it out in the marketplace, yada yada. But they didn't actually do that. They made heavy-handed decisions about what technologies would or wouldn't "win", mostly based in trying to replicate IE. And now they're still talking about "innovating faster" blah, blah, and I'm still not buying it. Mozilla has shown little interest in leading in terms of browser innovation, from what I've seen. Of course, the argument now has probably changed from "IE doesn't do that" to "Chrome doesn't do that", but whatever... Edit: Also, just to be clear... I'm not saying Mozilla never do anything innovative. They were, for example, one of the first, if not the first, browsers to support MathML. They were also early to the SVG party. I just think they fell short of what they could have been, if they'd been more aggressive towards incorporating new things. shrug

mtgx 14y ago

I wonder if Mozilla plans on rewriting Firefox with Rust. Would that be too big of a task for Mozilla? They should also make the decision if they stick with Gecko or not at that point.

tedmielczarek 14y ago
Uh, have you heard of Servo? https://github.com/mozilla/servo https://github.com/mozilla/servo It's that, as a research project.
zobzu 14y ago
They are developing them in parallel. Since rust is still an experimental project (the language isn't even finalized) it wouldn't make sense to replace firefox with it _now_. So there is no "at that point" decision. Firefox+Gecko codebase is here to stay for a few years.

anotherevan 14y ago

As soon as I saw the headline that Opera was switching to WebKit, I thought, "I bet I know what announcement Mozilla will be making on April first..."