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.
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.
> 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.
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.
The open, standards-compliant documentation wasn't just nice for devs, but it promoted web standards that are meant to foster an open, better-functioning internet that's better for users and Firefox's market share.
The Servo engine could have been a big step forward. It's exploratory, sure, but so is VC funding "ethical" for-profits.
> 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.
> 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%:
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.
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...
Yes, Mozilla is just good enough to not force the people who can make a web browser start because it has decades worth of inertia behind it. They remove functionality every release but there's always a work around that's ok enough to get you past it. I haven't been excited for an update from them in a decade.
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.
> 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.
> 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?
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.
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?
> 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.
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.