|
| snapcaster wrote:
| This makes me so angry to see. I feel like all the things I find
| important in technology are getting obliterated and the
| organizations I used to rely on turn out to be useless. If we
| ever lose Linus it's fucking over
| Gigachad wrote:
| It seems like almost every non corporate org has been
| misdirected in to harmful social justice work. Wikipedia
| spending 98% of their budget on non Wikipedia related expenses
| for example. Mozilla working on censorship and deplatforming
| efforts, even the Tor project feels compromised.
|
| Pretty much the only org that still has its original goals in
| tact seems to be the EFF. I'd be happy to donate to Wikipedia
| again if they actually spent the money on their tech. I don't
| care if they want to rewrite the whole site in Rust, it's
| better than spending it on non tech rubbish.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| We're watching the birth and growth of a new religion.
| Similar patterns happened during the start of Christianity in
| Rome and Islam in North Africa. Institutions repurposed,
| language was repurposed and edited, exponential growth of
| ideologically possessed population, and eventually massive
| social upheaval. There's not a word for it yet - "wokism"
| maybe - but we're in for a doozey.
| camdenlock wrote:
| "Responsible" according to whom? As if everyone agrees. Hint: we
| all have our own opinions.
|
| You're free to give away your money as you see fit, but man, such
| sanctimonious and collectivizing language is lame.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Invest in tech worker cooperatives instead of for-profit
| corporations; it seems like more of the same Silicon Valley VC
| money pumping otherwise. :|
| dbingham wrote:
| No. This is not how we build a better internet. You can try to
| say "These companies will be responsible, and about people." all
| you want. But if the fundamental structure is still a for-profit
| corporation with equity investors expecting a return then that
| will inevitably trump whatever public good these companies were
| supposed to have at heart.
|
| The only way we can actually achieve a better internet and a
| better tech sector is by changing the fundamental structure of
| the companies that build it. That doesn't have to mean they don't
| make money, but it does mean that making a profit for investors
| cannot be part of it.
|
| Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by
| loans. These might actually change the dynamics. But investor
| owned, for-profit companies funded by venture capital will not.
| No matter how much we might wish it otherwise.
| laurex wrote:
| There's perhaps a third way that looks more like Mozilla itself
| (setting aside the problematics with Google), or Ghost, or
| Signal. Funding a trust/nonprofit that owns the companies and
| itself has accountability to the greater good. That bakes in
| transparency and pays people fair market wages but isn't built
| in a way where investors or even founders are driven to 'get
| rich.' Where business goals are around sustainability rather
| than hypergrowth. The current VC model simply doesn't align
| with human-need driven software products, at least in the
| consumer sector.
| boole1854 wrote:
| > Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses
| funded by loans.
|
| Serious question: is there any evidence to suggest that non-
| profits and employee-owned businesses are on average better at
| serving the public good?
|
| There are power asymmetries inside non-profits and employee-
| owned businesses, and these can lead to the 'power brokers'
| inside these organizations steering or commandeering the
| organizations for their own benefit.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Yes, GEO Coop keeps a fact-sheet:
| https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet
|
| With most citations being from:
| https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives
|
| For example:
|
| > Since most cooperatives are owned and controlled by local
| residents, it is more likely to promote community growth than
| an investor-oriented firm. Since cooperative business
| objectives are needs oriented, cooperatives are more likely
| to stay in the community (Zeuli, Freshwater et al 2003).
| boole1854 wrote:
| Awesome, thanks
| dbingham wrote:
| Yeah, there's definitely quite a bit of evidence. But
| also, they're better - not perfect. The issue you pointed
| to is real and does happen. But it's not as ubiquitous as
| "investor funding companies putting aside all other
| concerns in pursuit of profit" and the harms that stem
| from it tend to be more contained.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| >> it is more likely to promote community growth
|
| What does that mean?
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think of things like: a cooperative is unlikely to ship
| all their jobs overseas, so they will invest locally in
| the business instead. They will probably also be less
| inclined to pollute because the decisions are not made by
| people who live in the fancy clean neighborhood, but live
| all over the area.
| pjmlp wrote:
| 3% and decreasing, already tier 2 in many companies browser
| compatibility matrixes.
|
| What about doing just the browser?
| Gigachad wrote:
| More money spent on useless woke crap. Please just sell services
| and make money providing real value instead of begging for
| donations to fund articles about how "deplatforming isn't far
| enough"
| solarkraft wrote:
| Just today I ranted about how much Firefox sucks nowadays. It
| would never actually load the page until it was restarted. And
| after doing so it took 2-4x as long as Chrome for the same page.
|
| Can Mozilla ever not?
| aliqot wrote:
| Do the moves that got you to the dance please.
| dbcooper wrote:
| There desperately needs to be a fork of Firefox that sheds the
| terrible organisation that is Mozilla. They have destroyed a
| great product and paid themselves handsomely to do so.
| Technically incompetent, but full of cunning.
| metadat wrote:
| It is disappointing every time the next swing in Mozilla's focus
| further reduces the amount of resources and mindshare allocated
| to providing safe, trustworthy and quality web browsers and
| related web tools.
|
| Mozilla has been hijacked for years now. Is there a way to
| recover the original spirit in which it was first founded?
| wolpoli wrote:
| The Mozilla Foundation has no members. The directors elect the
| next set of directors, so the current group sets the future
| direction of the foundation. There isn't really a way to
| recover the original spirit of the foundation unless they have
| a change of mind.
|
| https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| It was over after the Brendan Eich debacle
| Gigachad wrote:
| I was supportive of getting rid of him at the time, but after
| seeing what that path lead to, I now think we need to just
| stick to business and keep people private lives out. I really
| don't agree with what he was doing but that shouldn't matter
| for the purposes of running a successful company and product.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| So is this the latest scheme to embezzle the money? I am ashamed
| I used to donate to you useless people. I am ashamed I ever
| promoted firefox.
|
| > To fuel an ecosystem of products and technology that respect
| users
|
| Bring back the XUL extensions!
| [deleted]
| notriddle wrote:
| Bringing back XUL extensions won't rescue Firefox, because
| removing XUL extensions is not what caused Firefox to lose
| marketshare in the first place.
|
| https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/108/556/56...
|
| Source for the "XUL Deprecated in August 2015" date:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...
|
| Source for the browser stats over time:
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BrowserUsageShare.pn...
| prepend wrote:
| Something similar. I was a pretty regular doner to Mozilla for
| many years. I stopped because Mozilla spends money on lots of
| stuff I don't care about and not on the browser.
|
| I hope this works out for them. But I'm not sure the elevator
| pitch for Mozilla as a charity. Why do people donate to them?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| To play devil's advocate: If Mozilla were purely focused on
| doing good for the internet, and had a funding problem that
| threatened their ability to do that, it's possible that
| carefully investing money in places that do some good and
| gives them returns is a good way to try and solve both
| problems at once.
|
| Not that I have any faith in them. But this _could_ be a good
| thing.
| prepend wrote:
| It definitely could be a good thing.
|
| But it's like if Doctors Without Borders/MSF started a soup
| kitchen in DC. Soup kitchens are good things, but if I
| donate to MSF I want my money to go towards a specific
| cause, not domestic soup kitchens.
|
| There are already charity index funds for people who want
| to donate.
| leeroyjenkins11 wrote:
| They gave grants to change master/slave terminology in
| documentation. After that, I can't donate and assume the
| won't wizz away my money on some stupid endeavor.
| UberFly wrote:
| Besides all the publicly stated reasons for doing this, is this
| just an excess money dump in order to retain non-profit status?
| Like the Gates and Zuckerberg Foundations, etc do for tax
| reasons?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm willing to be neutral about this as long as zero (0)
| executives from Mozilla take jobs at these "responsible tech
| companies." Otherwise, imo it's just people setting up their next
| gig with google's money laundered through Mozilla.
| shaburn wrote:
| So the primary opensource path to the internet now has a moral
| and politic agenda?
| godelski wrote:
| I always find the backlash against Mozilla odd here. Not to say
| that they don't have lots of problems, but the top comment here
| is about cronyism. But as an alternative browser are we better to
| support Chrome? A singular company that wants to control the way
| the internet works (which means chromium is playing with fire
| too). These threads just fill with Mozilla hate which in turn
| promotes people's usage of Chrome. It's okay to not like Mozilla,
| but we do need to recognize that innovation and what's best for
| us and the internet relies on there being adequate competition.
| So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when
| criticizing in an extreme manner.
|
| A similar pattern seems to happen with other technologies. Signal
| is a great example. If we place apps/corporations as binary good
| or evil, the truth is that they are ALL evil. But that does not
| allow us to put pressure to push them to do good. It prevents us
| from promoting competition. And remember that a lot of people,
| even here on HN, don't understand the complexities and nuances
| that you're expressing your viewpoint from. So don't grab your
| pitch-fork, grab your pen. Do be critical, but not sensational.
| There is a difference between complaining and critiquing and
| social media tends to promote the former because people fighting
| encourages more engagement (not a metric HN heavily relies upon).
| It's up to us to break this cycle and choose how we speak and act
| online. It's clear at this point that those with the platforms
| aren't going to encourage this behavior, so we have to take the
| hard route.
|
| We can be critical without being sensational.
| jjcon wrote:
| > So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when
| criticizing in an extreme manner.
|
| I don't think hiding our criticism for "the greater good" is an
| appropriate path forward at all. Mozilla and Firefox have real
| problems and plugging our ears while they go up in flames isn't
| going to help. At least if we are vocal in our desires they
| have a chance to listen and right the ship (if there is any
| hope of that at this point).
|
| Personally I'm all for the standardization around the blink
| engine (which has been contributed to by Facebook, Google,
| Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and tons others) at this point. I see
| it as similar to the internet backend standardizing around
| linux. It makes it way easier for developers to reliably test
| against an ever evolving and complex web.
| switchbak wrote:
| They said "Do be critical, but not sensational", they're not
| asking you to hide criticism, just to do it in a productive
| fashion.
| Khaine wrote:
| Its time for Firefox to become phoenix again, and relaunch from
| the ashes of Mozilla
| preinheimer wrote:
| Mozilla: Please please please just concentrate on making an
| awesome browser people want to use. Then market it.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| So, where in your plan do they make money?
| prepend wrote:
| Apache had $3M in revenue and $1.5M in expenses in 2021 [0]
| with about $1M in donations.
|
| Mozilla spent $262M in 2020 [1]. They manage money poorly.
|
| [0] https://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2021AnnualReport
| .pd...
|
| [1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| abeppu wrote:
| I think those are comparing very different organizations
| with different aims. There's a big difference between
| employing a bunch of people to actually build a complex
| product that you expect normal people to actually use, vs
| supporting the governance of OSS projects that are built by
| other people, largely employed by companies using or
| offering services around those projects.
| prepend wrote:
| They are very different. But my point is that Apache is
| very successful and produces lots of great software.
|
| You don't have to pay $100M in developer salaries to
| produce great software. Mozilla is not that great despite
| having lots and lots of employees.
|
| Perhaps rethinking their approach would be useful. But if
| their revenue goes away, it doesn't mean Mozilla the
| browser goes away.
|
| Maybe Mozilla should just be a governance process rather
| than a software developer. The browser would probably
| have similar quality.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| The Apache Foundation doesn't produce the software,
| people paid by various companies do. This is quite
| similar to the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation
| relationship.
|
| Who would employ people to work on Firefox if the corp
| side shuts down eg. because they lose their revenue?
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Same way anyone with a platform product makes money: premium
| tiers or paid extensions.
| nmilo wrote:
| They're a non-profit.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| They still have bills to pay. Being a non-profit doesn't
| mean they don't need revenue.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| For starters they can fire the CEO that's seen their
| market share decrease by an order of magnitude while
| seeing her pay increase by an order of magnitude.
|
| After that go down the org chart and fire everyone not
| coding for the browser.
|
| Then you can live off donations until the end of time.
| cbtacy wrote:
| Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund')
| != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| So what? Corp is owned by Foundation and pays Foundation
| millions every year. They even pay for the Foundation's legal
| services. Mozilla Foundation is Mozilla Corporation's
| albatross.
| jitix wrote:
| I had been a Firefox user since 2009 but over the last few
| years general sites like news and blogs slowly started breaking
| layouts and events, with JavaScript heavy sites sometimes
| crashing, esp on m1 air. I found toggling JavaScript and
| installing extensions is too tedious, esp on iOS devices so I
| had to move to safari as my primary with brave as a backup.
|
| I still have Firefox on all my devices and seriously hope they
| focus on engineering instead of playing ideology when their
| revenue stream is shaky at best. I'd honestly pay for tab
| continuity and other UX improvements as a feature if they
| improve their css and js engines. I know that chromium has now
| become what IE was at one point but if Firefox can't render
| properly and provide consistent js performance I find it harder
| and harder to recommend to non technical users.
|
| This is from someone who evangelized FF in the 2010s and got
| many friends on board.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Javascript off by default makes websites better more often
| than it breaks websites. I find that whitelisting sites that
| need first party javascript doesn't take much time and covers
| 99% of cases; very rarely does a website actually require 3rd
| party javascript to be whitelisted.
| umeshunni wrote:
| They have failed at that, so now they're just figuring out ways
| to spend the free money they have.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| They didn't fail they were sabatoged by an incompetent CEO.
| godelski wrote:
| > concentrate on making an awesome browser
|
| Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do
| more than it already does. I'll be honest, it is difficult to
| distinguish between browsers these days. But we have holy wars
| like vim vs emacs, when really the differences are quite small
| and rather dumb.
|
| The reason I use Firefox is literally three things: 1) I don't
| want Chrome to have a monopoly, 2) I get ad blocking on my
| phone, 3) if I'm going to install an ad blocker on my browser,
| I also want my browser to not be tracking me. I'll be honest,
| these are the only truly unique features (that I use).
| Otherwise it is near indistinguishable from Chrome.
|
| I'm happy with FF and while that's still true I don't mind
| Mozilla branching out. If I wasn't happy, then yeah, there's a
| priority issue. But honestly, what's so important that's
| missing? I don't get this holy war. It just seems like war for
| the sake of war, and no one benefits from that except those on
| top.
| jjcon wrote:
| > Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it
| to do more than it already does.
|
| Give me 4x less battery draw and I'll try Firefox again, I
| want to use and like Firefox but every time I give it a go
| power usage remains a massive issue. I get at least 4x less
| power draw in the same activities on chromium based browsers
| and safari.
| boole1854 wrote:
| For perspective, Mozilla is sitting on $800+ million in net
| assets, most of which is cash and investments.
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| For the love of God can you please just focus on the browser.
| Right now Firefox is the one thing standing between all web
| protocols being decided by Google and an open net.
|
| You'll do a hell of a lot more good by ensuring Alphabet doesn't
| get to arbitrarily redefine protocols embed tracking in all the
| web and make the entire internet cater to the whims of the tech
| giants than any other bullshit social justice, environmental
| responsibility, or other virtue signaling or political bull
| hockey you people are currently engaged in.
| warner25 wrote:
| Is it possible that making money as a VC firm on the side is
| the solution to Mozilla's funding problem - being dependent on
| a deal with their main competitor - so that they _can_ keep
| working on the browser?
| [deleted]
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _Firefox is the one thing standing between all web protocols
| being decided by Google and an open net._
|
| They're not. Mozilla management is ok to take money from Google
| for acting as a fig leaf and greenwash Google's "standards" and
| out-of-control complexity. There's no way around the fact that
| they're fully complicit in having turned the web into a
| monopolistic PoS that inspires no-one and doesn't provide
| economic incentives for anyone except Google. They give a shit
| to users, and now upper management wants to become even more
| like Wikimedia foundation and engage in mindless fundraising
| business only benefitting management.
| skyfaller wrote:
| Although I understand your sentiment, there was a big uproar
| (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot of stuff that wasn't
| directly related to Firefox, such as MDN web docs or the
| experimental Servo browser engine. Building a healthy and
| innovative ecosystem requires not developing tunnel vision.
| Having a future requires investing in the future as well as the
| present.
|
| Some would no doubt consider incubating their own programming
| language, Rust, to be a distraction, but it's a clear benefit
| to programming / computer safety that they did, and presumably
| makes Firefox more fun to work on since programmers famously
| enjoy Rust.
|
| Focus is good, but like most good things it's best in
| moderation, otherwise you reach diminishing returns while
| sacrificing everything else that matters.
| protomyth wrote:
| _the experimental Servo browser engine_
|
| How is building a new browser engine not supporting Firefox?
| lucideer wrote:
| > _there was a big uproar (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot
| of stuff that wasn 't directly related to Firefox, such as
| MDN web docs or the experimental Servo browser engine._
|
| MDN is a documentation site for the technologies supported by
| Firefox. Servo is a browser engine that's been used as a
| development target for efforts to rewrite major components of
| Firefox. These are both directly related to Firefox, as were
| other things that were cut.
|
| From my vantage I don't recall the outrage whether things
| being cut were / weren't related to Firefox, but rather that
| major cuts were being made at the bottom (to features /
| programmes / staff) while Mozilla management were
| exorbitantly remunerated and receiving large bonuses/raises
| at the same time. Despite the severe decline in Firefox seen
| under their tenure.
| skyfaller wrote:
| I guess "directly related" is more controversial than I
| thought. I would call these indirectly supporting Firefox,
| and in line with Mozilla's mission.
|
| Building public documentation for free doesn't directly
| help Firefox's market share, improve the browser, fix bugs,
| or financially get them out from under Google's thumb. Nor
| does building an experimental browser engine that they do
| not intend to use. They may help with these things, but it
| requires a few steps to explain how.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _or financially get them out from under Google 's
| thumb_
|
| Ultimately, the seeming disinterest in this as one of
| their goals is the primary issue I have. My feelings on
| whether they should be investing more or less money into
| other initiatives are secondary.
|
| I'm opinionated here so perhaps viewing things through
| that biased lens but that sentiment seemed echoed in the
| uproar around the cuts.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| > Although I understand your sentiment, there was a big
| uproar (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot of stuff that
| wasn't directly related to Firefox, such as MDN web docs or
| the experimental Servo browser engine. Building a healthy and
| innovative ecosystem requires not developing tunnel vision.
| Having a future requires investing in the future as well as
| the present.
|
| Funny how under that goal Firefox has gone from 30% of the
| market to 3%:
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
|
| Mozilla today is a net negative for the web. We would be
| better with them dying in a fire so something new can take
| their place and actually be something that people want to
| use.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > We would be better with them dying in a fire so something
| new can take their place and actually be something that
| people want to use.
|
| Or at least we might get an antitrust suit that forces
| google to unload Chrome.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Executive pay at Mozilla seems inversely proportional to
| the browser's market share... That's how performance is
| rewarded at the corporation, the less Firefox is used, the
| bigger her salary is...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Or just spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy
| focused) group that does not have any connection to management
| and staff who get paid from deals with "tech" companies.
|
| Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers for
| people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox with
| "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low resource
| computer. Browsers not designed for advertising. Browsers
| designed for commerce. For banking. Browsers designed for fast
| information retrieval. "Secure" browsers with tiny attack
| surfaces. And so on. Specialised browsers. All that Mozilla
| code should be useful to more than just "tech" companies. For
| the avoidance of doubt, the idea of the web browser should not
| be solely a neverending popularity contest to crown one program
| that will obviate all others. There should also be (more)
| unpopular, boring browsers for doing routine, boring web-based
| things.
|
| The whole "web advocacy" schtick comes across as hollow when
| the company treats a web browser like some "holy" program that
| no one else can tinker with. That is exactly why we have the
| situation with Google. "Web protocols" are decided by whomever
| writes the browser, and according to Mozilla's view of the web,
| only a handful of people can write browsers. As it happens they
| work for advertising companies, companies that are becoming
| advertising companies or a company paid by advertising
| companies (Mozilla). The web is more than a f'ing advertising
| medium. It is a public resource. Mozilla just cannot get over
| itself and see how dysfunctional this has become. Mozilla
| thinks the web is dead without advertising. It is the other way
| around. The web is getting suffocated by the influence of
| browser-enabled advertising spend.
|
| And then we have the obvious conflict of interest. Mozilla
| execs get paid from deals with "tech" companies. We are then
| asked to believe Mozilla is going to make these companies more
| "responsible". Difficult to see how that is going to work when
| those companies are the ones paying Mozilla. Maybe if Mozilla
| threatened to "democratise" the web browser so it was not the
| exclusive domain of "tech" companies. A web with many clients.
| Those companies have come to rely on the power over web users
| they have through controlling "the" browser.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy
| focused) group_
|
| Browser development is the main project of the technically-
| focused Mozilla Corporation, while it looks to me like the
| project here is under the policy-focused Mozilla Foundation.
| cbtacy wrote:
| Thank you!! People constantly conflate the Mozilla
| Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Strange that people would confuse thing with wholly owned
| subsidiary of thing, yes.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| > Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers
| for people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox
| with "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low
| resource computer.
|
| The number of people who will actually compile a browser
| themselves is a rounding error to a footnote on the graph of
| browser stats. I can't imagine how that can make a dent in
| anything.
|
| Do you just have faith that by doing this, Mozilla would
| empower some developer in his basement to come up with a
| killer feature that will allow them to burst back into the
| forefront of browsers?
| [deleted]
| cbtacy wrote:
| Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund')
| != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Mozilla Corporation is owned by Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla
| Foundation also owns the Firefox trademark, and has the
| Corporation pay the Foundation for the right to use that
| trademark. $16.3 million in 2020 alone.
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| snapcaster wrote:
| Came here to say this, I feel like Mozilla is so out of touch
| with their (rapidly shrinking) remaining users
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Apparently, Firefox is not sexy enough anymore. So now the CEO
| needs another shiny new thing for his/her CV.
| getcrunk wrote:
| I was going to say that I think this is a good idea. Yay!
| Potential new things that I'd like to use and help privacy and
| are decentralized should get funded!
|
| Then I looked at their three initial investments and realized
| that's not exactly what they are going for, at least not right
| now. But for the future of the web and firefox, Mozilla needs to
| be more than self sufficient and this is a good way to work
| towards that.
|
| I'm mixed as to the recent moves by them, but at least they
| aren't doing nothing.
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