Post AksoDdtbTI02UgRFDM by slamr@hub.uckermark.social
(DIR) More posts by slamr@hub.uckermark.social
(DIR) Post #AksKIdw9kT71Rd6Jns by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T01:21:04Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
In the late 1990s/ early 2000s the Mozilla project, and its not-for-profit foundation, was one of the most pioneering rallying points in the software freedom ecosystem;https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/But for years now, most of their projects have either been hived off into for-profit subsidiaries (eg Firefox, Thunderbird), failed utterly (eg FireFoxOS), involved proprietary code or DataFarming tie-ins (Pocket), or all of the above (Firefox Hello).Whatever happened to Mozilla?#Mozilla
(DIR) Post #AksKcKdbDElVNeoEtc by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T01:24:43Z
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Mozilla's compromises with its founding principles of software freedom are becoming increasingly egregious;* Goggle as default search in FireFox: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-and-google-sign-new-agreement-for-default-search-in-firefox/* Proprietary Adobe DRM module in FireFox: https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/05/15/mozilla-sells-out-adds-drm-to-firefox/* FireFox Hello using the proprietary OpenTok back-end: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/10/16/test-the-new-firefox-hello-webrtc-feature-in-firefox-beta/* Pocket remains proprietary 7 years after acquisition: https://github.com/open-pocket/open-pocket(2/?)
(DIR) Post #AksKnIi2iqMcaM7OEK by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2024-08-12T01:26:27.176584Z
3 likes, 1 repeats
Lunduke has a great article on Mozilla funding (where the money goes):https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5738970/mozilla-firefox-blocks-anti-censorship-and-pro-privacy-extensions-in-russiaMozilla has also run unhinged articles about the fediverse:https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/fellow-research-decentralized-web-hate/Deko had a rant about how he's no longer donating to Mozilla, and instead donating to fedi projects, although it's no longer publichttps://web.archive.org/web/20211029024937/https://friends.deko.cloud/display/d0446be5-145f-eb17-755c-7b6112876931
(DIR) Post #AksKqc0vPAH7KHWrce by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T01:27:16Z
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From from being at the leading edge of digital tech invention, Mozilla are now slavishly following industry trends, like a confused moth diving into the nearest available flame;https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/What would it take to get Mozilla - both the foundation and the subsidiary for-profits - to start acting according to its manifesto again? Is it worth the effort?Or would the software freedom movement be better to hard fork their few valuable Free Code projects and leave them to it?(3/3)
(DIR) Post #AksKvy1mz8Ed36UF3w by meowski@fluf.club
2024-08-12T01:28:23.055063Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@strypey DEI takeover and millions of dollars on fancy stronk wahmen CEO while firing devs happened
(DIR) Post #AksL0TDowqdUxDGI3E by toiletpaper@shitposter.world
2024-08-12T01:29:13.501995Z
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@djsumdog @strypey <violates forum rules> ... was that an intentional joke? lollun...duke
(DIR) Post #AksL38BNd1iwZQOAee by anemone@ebiverse.social
2024-08-12T01:29:42.353Z
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@djsumdog@djsumdog.com i dont trust this guy at all. He dislikes mozilla for political reasons and is the type of person totally willing to lie or distort the truth
(DIR) Post #AksL45aakvwoohdddw by sun@shitposter.world
2024-08-12T01:29:51.649879Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@toiletpaper @djsumdog @strypey i need to disable it i did it as a joke but its annoying
(DIR) Post #AksLGoSjkBTTSp20RM by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2024-08-12T01:31:48.101453Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
I had to jump over to see what you were talking about .. that's funny
(DIR) Post #AksLd4wDAZ1UvrR1yS by meowski@fluf.club
2024-08-12T01:36:10.704612Z
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@djsumdog @strypey i think this is the lunduke article you're referring to about re mozilla financing https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
(DIR) Post #AksLnTNn8fjpdtI9NA by toiletpaper@shitposter.world
2024-08-12T01:38:04.960972Z
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@djsumdog @strypey @sun I guess I'm not the only one with too much time on their hands lately. 🤡
(DIR) Post #AksPWh6nFkLF6db0DI by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2024-08-12T02:19:28.899603Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
ah yes, that's it. I copy/pasted the wrong one. 😅 Thanks.
(DIR) Post #AksSPBQwv9gihg8Lya by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T02:51:51Z
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"Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018, a sum I personally think of as instant inter-generational wealth. Payments to Baker have more than doubled in the last five years."#CalPaterson, 2020https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.htmlFor comparison, I'm looking for funding to pay 3 people to work on a fediverse hosting co-op. If all 3 of us were paid $100 an hour, for 40 hours each a week, that's $624,000 a year. Baker's 2018 salary could cover this for more than 4 years.WTF?!
(DIR) Post #AksT6Q64HMzKdHz292 by energisch_@troet.cafe
2024-08-12T02:59:46Z
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@strypey tech giants have ruined saleries also in many community setups
(DIR) Post #AksTUjVLlze1m6P0HA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T03:04:12Z
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I want to be clear that my criticisms of Mozilla are *not* aimed at the Mozilla *community*; the developers whose salaries or grants they pay, nor the many other wonderful people who continue to volunteer. It's thanks to these people's furious bailing that the whole ship didn't sink below the waves years ago.But it seems pretty clear to me that at some point the Mozilla community lost control of their *institutions* (as did Ubuntu). This has become a serious problem that must be addressed.
(DIR) Post #AksTvMNzprl1tOewWu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T03:09:01Z
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"Another worry is that many of these privacy focused VPN services have a nasty habit of turning out to keep copious logs on user behaviour. A few months ago several "no log" VPN services inadvertently released terabytes of private user data that they had promised not to collect in a massive breach. VPN services are in a great position to eavesdrop - and even if they promise not to, your only option is to take them at their word."#CalPaterson, 2020https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html#VPN
(DIR) Post #AksU8iQnBRye1qKrqK by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T03:11:26Z
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The only time I've ever paid for VPN-as-a-service was when I was in China, where it was the only (mostly) reliable way to dig under the Great Firewall. Anyone promoting commercial VPN services as a privacy measure (eg a lot of the post-Snowden privacy guides) has no idea what they're talking about.
(DIR) Post #AksUMcH0sIL8z8OEHA by thomasbeagle@mastodon.nz
2024-08-12T03:13:55Z
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@strypey I always think of VPNs as a way to move your risk from one location to another. But you don't actually reduce the threat.
(DIR) Post #AksXoeIbEkPXEpBs5Q by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T03:52:28Z
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"Interesting to note that the Mozilla CEO earned nearly as much ($5.6 M) as Mozilla received in donations ($7 M)."#BryanLunduke, 2023https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozillaSince I'm referencing Lunduke, the obligatory disclaimer;I don't know Bryan, except by his writing on Open Source. I have strongly disagreements with him about politics, eg his concern trolling about RiseUp.net getting funding for Free Code software projects. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day.#Mozilla #ExecPay
(DIR) Post #AksY6jnBYFxHUJ7ctU by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T03:55:51Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
The more I think about this, the angrier I get. Mitchell Baker has been in charge of Mozilla's Foundation and for-profit subsidiaries for years. Every year, she puts a significant chunk of the money people donate towards the Mozilla mission into her own back pocket. Meanwhile, every year, Mozilla gets less and less effective and holding its own actions to the standard set in its own manifesto.It's incredible this has gone on for so long.
(DIR) Post #AksZPLchjfINz8epSC by duxsco@digitalcourage.social
2024-08-12T04:10:11Z
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@strypey fyi https://kumu.io/Windscribe/vpn-relationshipsdisclaimer: Windscribe is a VPN provider
(DIR) Post #AksaqtcJYVsvBhAuem by Ophitoxaemia@mastodon.social
2024-08-12T04:26:06Z
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@strypey hopefully no one is confused about how wealth works.
(DIR) Post #AkscGdz6OoSwBhfvRA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T04:42:27Z
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Let's talk about where the NGO-industrial complex fits into the Mozilla picture. Adam Conover did a great video on why the billionaire owner of Patagonia set up a cluster of charitable entities and gave them ownership of the company;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6ISpoilers: it wasn't nearly as charitable as it looked. For one thing, it was a huge tax dodge. It was also carefully structured so they could still use revenue from Patagonia for political influence campaigns.(1/?)#Mozilla
(DIR) Post #AksdkQlkCMGzqIC7E0 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T04:59:04Z
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As Adam Conover says in that video on Patagonia, they're not alone. Lots of wealthy people use similar webs of charitable entities with for-profit subsidiaries for similarly self-interested purposes. He gives more examples, including Barre Seid, ZuckerBorg Warren Buffet. For a particularly pernicious example of the "charitable" works of Bill Gates, see; https://www.tni.org/en/podcast/breaking-big-pharma-and-big-tech-global-debt-and-race-politics-and-the-end-of-borders )Conover connects all this back to its origins in the Gilded Age, which led directly to the Great Depression.(2/?)
(DIR) Post #AksecMdXmIeyfE4mhs by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T05:08:51Z
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When I saw this video a couple of years ago, a light bulb came on in my head. Suddenly I had a whole new way of looking at the huge amounts of money corporations have been sinking into Open Source organisations like the Linux Foundation, Apache Foundation, and yes, Mozilla Foundation. Like moving Patagonia into charitable ownership, moving most of their R&D into charitable entities allows these corporations to dodge taxes they'd otherwise pay on their R&D spending. (3/?)
(DIR) Post #AksfBEVTzspnaIvsIq by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T05:15:09Z
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Like moving Patagonia into charitable ownership, moving most of their R&D into charitable Open Source entities allows tech corporations to dodge taxes they'd otherwise pay on their R&D spending.It does also means they publish source code on the software produced, under licenses allowing free re-use. Which is good. But it also allows them to make sure all this Free Code, and its development process, is structured in ways that maximise benefit to their interests. Not the public interest.(4/?)
(DIR) Post #AksghbMaeVHbh4ltGS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T05:32:11Z
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Which brings us back to Mozilla and their system of charitable entity with for-profit subsidiaries.When Goggle bought Android in 2005 and started development of Chrome, Mozilla had just released Firefox 1.0. The stand-alone web browser that was rapidly displacing the moribund Internet Exploiter.BorgSoft had pointed to Mozilla as evidence that their effective monopoly control over the web wasn't really a monopoly. As Chrome and its variants ate Mozilla's lunch, Goggle did the same.(5/?)
(DIR) Post #AkshN51FIWRlXgZA4u by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T05:39:43Z
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But Mozilla was only useful as a smokescreen for Goggle's effective monopoly over the web if they continued to produce a web browser. Even after Firefox had been replaced with Chromium-based browsers (including Edge) on most desktops, and on mobile OS, where Mozilla didn't even have a browser at first. All of which massively reduced Mozilla's ability to pull in donations, of both code and money.(6/?)
(DIR) Post #Aksi3OjwMljsrseOPI by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T05:47:02Z
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So the majority of Mozilla's activities, for almost 20 years now, has been funded by payments from Goggle for making their search engine the default in Firefox. If the for-profit that makes Firefox was formally a subsidiary of Goggle, antitrust regulators would have had a cut and dried case against them. But like BorgSoft before them, they use Mozilla's legal status as an independent entity to call them a competitor, evidence they don't have the effective monopoly we know they do.(7/?)
(DIR) Post #AksjLrfrczr3ly75CS by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T06:01:40Z
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Now, some people look at this and dismiss Mozilla - and everything that's ever come out of it - as a creature of the NGO-industrial complex. But that's because they don't know its history. The Mozilla community began as - and continues to be - a steward for a number of significant Free Code projects, used by most of the software freedom movement (including soft forks like Abrowser and Icedove). Although its institutions have been captured, people still do good work in its name.(8/?)
(DIR) Post #AkskI9VXTuyHsV4rr6 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T06:12:26Z
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There's a parallel here with what David Graeber describes in his piece about the managerialism co-opting universities. Converting them from democratic communities of scholars, to pseudo-corporations selling Education-as-a-Service and Research-as-a-Service;https://davidgraeber.org/papers/anthropology-and-the-rise-of-the-professional-managerial-class/The question is, can Mozilla's institutions be liberated from corporate clutches and brought back under control of its community? Or is it time to cut our losses and start evacuating the good people left?(9/9)
(DIR) Post #Aksl74MUNEZAge7iYC by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T06:21:34Z
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"This map is our best approximation of charting the relationships between VPN companies, media companies, and affiliate programs."https://kumu.io/Windscribe/vpn-relationshipsThanks @duxsco, this is useful. It demonstrates exactly what always seemed obvious to me. Those DataFarmers and spooks we want to avoid by using VPN-as-a-Service? They have the strongest motivations to run, own, or partner with, companies that offer VPN-as-a-Service. The only VPN you can trust is one you run yourself. @thomasbeagle
(DIR) Post #AkslFmh3QvsKUntlZo by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-12T06:23:12Z
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Me:> The only VPN you can trust is one you run yourselfEven then, as @thomasbeagle quite rightly points out, you're still only moving risk from one place to another (in this case, the strength of your server security skills). @duxsco
(DIR) Post #Aksn3KRwoh9pKi1MDA by jhulten@fosstodon.org
2024-08-12T06:43:22Z
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@strypey Mozilla and Ubuntu were never community institutions. They were institutions that built communities, but the governance was always top down.
(DIR) Post #AksoDdtbTI02UgRFDM by slamr@hub.uckermark.social
2024-08-12T06:56:24Z
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@strypey Thanks for posting that video it's eye opening and my bubble is burst. I knew there was a hidden agenda in the Patagonia setup but I never saw it explained so clearly
(DIR) Post #AkssM2m9Fiktn4DG9Q by duxsco@digitalcourage.social
2024-08-12T07:42:28Z
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@strypey @thomasbeagle Well, you still need to host the VPN server somewhere.If you have it at home, you might run into Utiq if you live in Europe:https://digitalcourage.social/@duxsco/112909625234043212If you host somewhere else, you might run into (German language, sry):https://soc.hardwarepunk.de/display/da93ad12-1966-b48d-efeb-0f1130801304
(DIR) Post #AktLfL7s9DrasMvYo4 by billseitz@toolsforthought.social
2024-08-12T13:10:28Z
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@strypey she's Out now, right?
(DIR) Post #AkwTF5TX618rulvoeW by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-14T01:19:08Z
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A coda to my recent thread on the state of Mozilla...My Linux Mint install just updated to a new version of Firefox, which promptly lost all my saved tabs, history, logins etc. Bad words. Bad, *bad* words.I'm guessing this new perversion of Firefox is meant to motivate me to use their sync service? Classic enshittification.I'm done with vanilla Firefox. Switching to LibreWolf on this laptop, and mostly I use Abrowser, the default browser on Trisquel GNU/Linux installs.#Mozilla #FireFox
(DIR) Post #AkwTf9izv3iAchaz7A by futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-14T01:24:51Z
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@strypey What does it look like in ~/.firefox ? Do you have multiple profiles?
(DIR) Post #AkwTjrbei7L7sUPFD6 by brashley46@mstdn.io
2024-08-14T01:25:42Z
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@strypey Which version of Firefox was the update for? I have not seen it yet in my Mint software feed. I am on the latest version of Mint.
(DIR) Post #AkwTyZw4gxZFPuyQee by brashley46@mstdn.io
2024-08-14T01:28:26Z
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@strypey I have 129.0 Firefox, by the way, from the mint repo, not the Flatpack.
(DIR) Post #Akwhvq6DXRCA2MJ1Oa by badrihippo@fosstodon.org
2024-08-14T04:04:37Z
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@strypey incidentally, I just switched to LibreWolf too! For a different reason though: I'd been constructing a setup of container tabs, private tabs, and segregated logins. Then I realised it's more or less what LibreWolf does by default (along with added features)!I've been vaguely paying attention to issues with Mozilla, and while I was using them as there wasn't much alternative, it's a breath of fresh air to have a browser that's actually looking out for me :librewolf:
(DIR) Post #AkyM8H8Z1q10h1qe3M by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-14T23:09:51Z
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@billseitz> she's Out now, right?No. She's replaced herself as CEO of Firefox Corp, but she's still Chair of the parent Mozilla Foundation. Not sure what her salary is now but I'm guessing personal remuneration to executives still soaks up most or all of the personal donations to the Foundation.This is what techno-feudalism looks like.
(DIR) Post #AkyguDq8aZWzRyMyCu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:40Z
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(1/?)@jhulten> Mozilla and Ubuntu were never community institutions. They were institutions that built communities, but the governance was always top downTrue of Ubuntu, yes. Although the community did have more control in the first few years (I was loosely involved, but decamped to Trisquel after the Amazon Lens debacle).
(DIR) Post #AkyguFd5w2Hp06Ha9g by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:41Z
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(2/?)Mozilla is a different story. A community emerged around the liberated Netscape code in 1998, creating the Mozilla Organisation. After acquiring Netscape in 1999, AOL started to scale back the institutional support Netscape had been giving Mozilla for the transition. In 2003, the community responded by setting up the Mozilla Foundation, to serve as an institutional umbrella.
(DIR) Post #Akyh21XQD891c5KrEO by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:41Z
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(3/?)Remember Git didn't exist until 2005. Institutional version control, with solid governance, was essential to the coherence of a Free Code project. Shared code forges like SourceForge were a new and untested idea.In the early-mid 2000s - in the aftermath of the DotCom crash - every Free Code project wanted a not-for-profit umbrella, under its own control. Some had already set up their own Foundations; GNU in 1985 (FSF), and in 1997, KDE and Debian (SPI). A Cambrian explosion followed.
(DIR) Post #Akyh22R4sCfEOhNIyu by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:42Z
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(4/?)1999: Apache2000: Linux, GNOME, Perl2001: Jabber (now XSF), Python, Rust, FreeBSD2002: Blender, FireBird, Ruby2003: Mozilla, WikiMedia, Xiph, R (RFSC)2004: X.org, Eclipse, Plone, SIP (SIPfoundry), TYPO32005: Ubuntu, OLPC, Kuali, Dojo (now part of JSF), Mambo2006: OSM, Zope, Miro (Participatory Culture)2007: ObjectWeb (OW2), OpenBSD, Android (OHA), LiMo (now Tizen)2008: Django, Symbian, Parrot2009: VideoLAN, Drupal, Sahana, SOLAS (Rosetta)
(DIR) Post #Akyh2DahOltczixe0O by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:42Z
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(5/?)After Git was released in 2005, making forking and merging of code much easier, institutional version control was no longer as necessary. By the late noughties, the downsides of maintaining an independent legal entity had started to become painfully obvious. So most of the Foundations either folded or merged. Or, following the examples of GNU/ FSF and SPI, they restructured to became multi-project institutional hosts, including advocacy and lobbying arms. Mozilla was one of them.
(DIR) Post #Akyh2Rk4mhiQsrSKZ6 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:43Z
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(6/?)By 2010, the flood of new project-specific Foundations had slowed to a trickle; 2012: OpenStack, LibreOffice (Document), MariaDB, jQuery2013: Krita, F#, OpenPOWER2014: .NET, LLVM, lowRISC2018: Signal2020: Kotlin2022: RailsMost of them attempts to abstract control of a codebase away from a single corporate owner. Some, following examples like Mozilla, led by developers of a project acquired by a corporation that disrespected the wider dev community (eg MariaDB, LibreOffice).
(DIR) Post #Akyh2i7LtvqDfgT94C by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-15T03:02:43Z
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(7/7)Had AOL pulled support within a year of buying Netscape, work on Mozilla might have continued within the GNU Project or Debian. Had the acquisition happened a few years later, it might have become a group of projects hosted at SFC or Apache SF.It's an accident of history that the Mozilla community ended up operating within a set of legal entities modelled on the LF/ ASF.
(DIR) Post #Al6uc8qpLs97O6e0RM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-19T02:14:03Z
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@futuresprog> What does it look like in ~/.firefox ? Do you have multiple profiles?I may have blamed Firefox prematurely. The whole OS is now dirtying its nappies, after having weird boot errors for a while. So I'm going to copy /home onto a USB hard drive and completely repartition.
(DIR) Post #Al6uv5FCzBDdhh53R2 by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2024-08-19T02:17:29Z
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I may have blamed Firefox prematurely. The laptop has been having weird boot errors for a while, and after the latest round of updates on LMDE 6, it's now refusing to log me in. So I'm going to copy /home onto a USB hard drive and completely repartition.@brashley46 @futuresprog