[HN Gopher] Firefox is fine. The people running it are not
___________________________________________________________________
Firefox is fine. The people running it are not
Author : LorenDB
Score : 231 points
Date : 2025-07-08 11:35 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| incomingpain wrote:
| Great article, i missed the original that spawned this article:
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/17/opinion_column_firefo...
|
| I've been done with firefox for many years.
|
| Librewolf, firefox fork, is the way to go; available on flathub.
| Obviously Brave still being main browser.
|
| Mozilla went wrong long ago. They publicly went political and
| followed through with the firings. They have blogs from the ceo
| straight up calling for political censorship.
|
| Even more odd, it was mostly just US politics which stands out to
| non-americans. They are focused on everything except the browser
| and so it was inevitable to decline.
| Bender wrote:
| I tried librewolf and it made all the exact same calls out that
| Firefox did on shutdown. Now I just disable the network before
| killing Firefox and then run bleachbit. I also mount some
| directories as tmpfs. What are the benefits of librewolf over
| Firefox? I could not find any. AFAIK its still just Firefox
| under the hood.
| karambanoonoo wrote:
| What calls?
| Bender wrote:
| All the same non user initiated calls to Mozilla and other
| endpoints. Run tcpdump to see them. (both TCP and UDP now)
| I run a command before I close internet applications and
| all outbound connections are logged in dmesg via netfilter.
| Be sure to also log all DNS queries on your firewall.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > They have blogs from the ceo straight up calling for
| political censorship.
|
| got any links?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Not GP but their mention brings to memory these HN discussion
| I had read years ago and the comments probably already have
| more than this thread will discuss:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29884342
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25690941
|
| It looks like the blog post was taken down several months
| later, so I had to pull this copy to see what it was https://
| web.archive.org/web/20210108192114/https://blog.mozi...
| happymellon wrote:
| Doesn't look like censorship at all.
|
| > Transparency on advertisers
|
| Sounds good.
|
| > Transparency on "algorithms"
|
| Also sounds good.
|
| > Improve algorithms to highlight facts over fiction
|
| Considering he isn't calling for anyone to be censored,
| only promote facts, I don't see much issue.
| zamadatix wrote:
| She builds off of "requires more than just the temporary
| silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social
| media platforms" with "Turn on by default the tools to
| amplify factual voices over disinformation". Whether
| deplatforming or "amplifying factual voices over
| disinformation" are seen as a good thing, they are
| censorship. She also mixes some good ideas in that
| (particularly platform algorithm transparency) of course.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Is ad-blocking censorship? What about spam filters?
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Ad-blocking is turned off by default in most browsers.
|
| Also basically no one wants to see ads, it is
| functionally useless, you can just go search for the
| thing you want to buy.
|
| Censoring someone because you think they are harmful
| isn't similar to this. You can develop a trump-blocker
| extension but having this enabled on default in a browser
| like chrome would be obvious censorship
| zamadatix wrote:
| Inherently by nature of existing no, but they can be
| easily implemented as such.
|
| The censorship problems in the above are in the call to
| continue silencing/removals of political actors from
| discussion platforms and in pushing for centralized
| platforms to decide which political statements are
| factual. If you go an abstraction layer above that it
| gets too generic to universally claim as for censorship
| and if you go an abstraction layer below that it most
| often becomes an individual's choice.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > Whether deplatforming or "amplifying factual voices
| over disinformation" are seen as a good thing, they are
| censorship
|
| this seems like an interesting, strongly-principled,
| almost legalistically pedantic twisting of intent - not
| that i can really claim to know her intent. what you call
| censorship can be reasonably understood as a cry
| _against_ abuses of freedom of speech.
|
| there are very clearly bad actors who profit from the
| abuse of freedom of speech, who argue in bad faith and
| spread misinformation in order to benefit themselves at
| all of our expense. not all speech is valuable, and a lot
| of it is harmful.
|
| i'm not saying i have an answer, but a blind devotion to
| the principle of free speech (or any principle, really)
| necessarily comes with blind spots that people more
| cynical than you or me are capable of (and demonstrably
| _very_ willing to) exploit. this world sucks.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I'm not posting that it should be seen as good or bad,
| just that's the prime example of the CEO calling for
| political censorship in a blog post someone was asking
| for a link to. As I said, even if one sees such actions
| as a good thing they are still censorship.
|
| To me the main problem with the blog post was less the
| specific calls to action but the complete distraction
| from core technology, such as Firefox, Mozilla should
| have been focusing more on at the time. This is likely
| why the blog post ended up getting pulled - it served as
| a distracted from the mission more than it made any
| progress for it.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| Sorry, didn't mean to imply you felt one way or the
| other, just responding to the general idea. I guess
| freedom of speech and censorship are pretty inextricable.
| It's an interesting dichotomy to roll around in your
| head.
| happymellon wrote:
| In that case they already are "censoring" because they
| amplify certain voices over others.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I'm not OP, and I'm at work so I can't get the links for you,
| but the CEO/company was pretty vocal about the need for
| censorship, especially around and after the 2016 election.
| It's a legitimate concern, and it's why I don't use Mozilla
| products if possible. The company is run by ideology and
| could blow up at any moment
| saubeidl wrote:
| Deplatforming is not the same as censorship.
|
| Everything is run by ideology, since that's how ideology
| operates.
| RedComet wrote:
| If all major platforms do so in concert, it actually is
| the same.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Compared to the people running Chrome, the people running Firefox
| are merely annoying.
|
| My main issue with the people running Mozilla is that they have
| wasted vast sums of money on executive salaries and their half
| baked notions of new initiatives the company should take up (and
| later abandon) that don't involve building web browsers, email
| clients, or supporting development tools.
| 93po wrote:
| i wish firefox would have hoarded away their billions of
| dollars they've received and simply run as a lean mission-
| oriented company for the next 20 years from those funds. get
| rid of expensive execs and middle managers and sales and
| whatever else. have passionate, well-paid developers and open
| source advocates and nothing else. both make the best possible
| open source software, and also use your influence and resources
| to make the pressure from companies like google make the web
| less shitty
| dimal wrote:
| All that money wasted is the whole point of Mozilla. It's been
| captured by Google. The role of Mozilla is to provide a fig
| leaf of "competition" while using Google money to pay
| executives who fulfill that duty. Anything that is successful
| or innovative, like Rust, Servo, or FakeSpot need to be
| jettisoned because they are a distraction from Mozilla's true
| mission.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Weird mix of complaints, attacking Mozilla both from the ultra
| purity of non-profit web standards side via JWZ while
| simultaneously complaining they don't run it like a business.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It's almost as if cjpearson's unreasonable criticism atop this
| thread,
|
| "...the anti-Mozilla arguments are typically much more vague
| and directionless..."
|
| ... wasn't completely unreasonable.
| potato-peeler wrote:
| I have a far more different gripe than this.
|
| Firefox seems to needlessly introduce features I barely need.
| Check their new release, 140.0
|
| They introduced a toggle in the address bar to show the window
| title. Who tf is asking for this?
|
| This browser just needs to be as simple as it can, without all
| this feature bloat.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| IDK, a lot of people claim to need to be able to manage several
| hundred of open tabs.
| Melonai wrote:
| I can confirm this use case does exist. My boyfriend (despite
| my constant disapproval) uses his tabs as essentially a
| bookmark manager and has around 100+ tabs open at any single
| time. His tab bar is composed of only barely recognizable
| icons, but he still manages to find things (more or less). I
| can not convince him to use tab groups, bookmarks, or sidebar
| tabs... :)
| ksec wrote:
| Speaking as someone who used to have few hundreds if not a
| thousand tabs opened.
|
| Bookmarks are for long term storage. In some sense it is
| more like Stared History, something may be we need to
| return in the far future for reference. If browser have a
| function where it would record everything I read, bookmark
| would be stared piece of information where I think it is
| important.
|
| Tabs Opened are reading list or To-do list. 30 Tabs on
| Toothbrush because I haven't decided which one to buy.
| Another 30 Tab on "each" different items which I planned to
| buy. 50 Tabs on HN because I haven't had time to read it
| yet. Sometimes I opened them when I visit HN front page and
| read it later. I must admit about 200 tabs wouldn't be
| needed if I am at 200K+ salary I just buy the top range
| without thinking. But I am frugal. Shopping on Amazon
| Prime, another 50 tabs.
|
| SideBar Tabs doesn't work for me. Mostly because the
| Desktop web isn't designed for squashed layout. I would
| imagine it would work much better if I am on a 21:9 ultra
| wide monitor. But I haven't had the luxury to test it out.
|
| > His tab bar is composed of only barely recognizable icons
|
| I assume he is on Chrome? Because Firefox doesn't squeeze
| out the Tabs to Fav icons only.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _SideBar Tabs doesn 't work for me. Mostly because the
| Desktop web isn't designed for squashed layout. I would
| imagine it would work much better if I am on a 21:9 ultra
| wide monitor._
|
| ... Are you still on an old 4:3 screen? Standard 1080p is
| wide enough, if a bit short. I tend to do half-width and
| full-height on a 4k screen, with a tab sidebar.
| em-bee wrote:
| i am fully with ksec. the issue with sidebars is that
| they not only take up space, which feels wasted, but are
| also a distraction. i have the browser always on
| fullsceen, the tabbar at the top fades into the
| background letting me focus on the page i an currently
| reading. when i want to search for a tab then i use the
| dropdown which takes more space than the sidebar but also
| shows more of the title of each tab.
| Endosynth wrote:
| Another option is the Add-On "Vertical Tabs Reloaded"
| which I'm still using since before they added vertical
| tabs in the sidebar. Seems a bit more compact.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| Yeah but the solution to that has been Treestyle tab for
| ages...
|
| It's just annoying that firefox took away the original tree
| style tab's ability to hide the main tab bar...
| mook wrote:
| Luckily in the mentioned 140 you can now configure
| Firefox to show tabs in the sidebar, and then actually
| use the Tree Style Tabs sidebar instead, not showing the
| native tabs at all.
| masfuerte wrote:
| The built-in vertical tabs are awful. Hit F11 for full-
| screen and all of the chrome disappears except for the
| vertical tabs. Who would want that? I'll try Tree Style
| instead.
| Theodores wrote:
| Does your boyfriend ever put his tools away after finishing
| a mechanical project?
|
| Is his desk clean?
|
| Is he strong enough to lift a feather duster and whip the
| vacuum cleaner around?
|
| Having a mountain of tabs open is the equivalent of not
| putting your tools away, keeping your desk tidy or keeping
| your house clean.
|
| People that get stuff done tend to be those that keep
| things tidy. Millions of tabs open might give the
| impression of 'genius at work', but do the deliverables get
| delivered?
|
| This might not be a popular opinion, however, after having
| to tidy up my dad's estate (he never put tools away and his
| computer had billions of tabs open), I have formed my own
| conclusions on this.
| gausswho wrote:
| I hat tip your bravery for pointing out an indulgence
| likely common among readers. Guilty as charged right
| here. But.
|
| The comparison doesn't really hold. This is not like an
| untidy workbench. Modern browsers don't incur a
| significant penalty for having hundreds or even thousands
| of tabs. There are workflows that benefit from Never
| Closing, and I'm glad to see browsers now don't turn into
| a nipple bar to expose me.
|
| Indeed after years and dozens of times where someone
| looks over my shoulder to see many tabs and abandons our
| topic to engage in Shame Time, I am fully innoculated to
| their barbs and feel it says more about the person
| pointing than myself. I manage to engage in a world with
| noise. Some people can't. The worst of them reach for
| grand overarching conclusions, as you have done here.
|
| I also sometimes leave the evening dishes for the morning
| cleaning session.
| Theodores wrote:
| Too much tidying up is procrastination, so hat tip for
| you doing the dishes in the morning, that makes sense.
|
| I have recently learned a lot about highly effective
| people and tidiness is a common trait, even with browser
| tabs.
|
| For most of my life I have been working with far too many
| tabs open, however, I do have this habit of bookmarking
| all tabs monthly, to then go to about twenty tabs across
| (the forever tabs) to then 'close all tabs to the right'.
|
| You would be amazed at how few of those 'vital' tabs get
| reopened.
|
| Each of them is a promise to one's future self to do
| something or read something, and rarely does one's future
| self do that.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| > People that get stuff done tend to be those that keep
| things tidy.
|
| Not my experience at all.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| LOL this could have been written by my wife, I'm just as
| guilty of that. But only on Apple devices... even on a
| measly 8GB M2 MBA, Chrome can easily deal with 200+ tabs.
| But an 8GB Lenovo ThinkPad X1 with Windows? Performance
| goes down the drain at about 15-20 open tabs. It's utterly
| ridiculous.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I can't see why people don't just use their history, maybe
| some of it is that people have a psychological need not to
| know their history is there.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Open tabs are kinda halfway between history and bookmarks,
| for me. They generally represent a train of thought or
| investigation, but they have less clutter than history,
| since I do close irrelevant ones as I'm navigating (and
| AFAIK there's no way in most browsers to show the history
| as a tree of navigation paths like tree style tabs).
| Bookmarks I perhaps should use more but they are liable to
| quickly grow out of control as well, and they require a lot
| more active thought to organise, in comparison to a tree of
| tabs. I would absolutely love a browser to properly unify
| this, I think there's a few smaller ones but they don't
| seem to be good enough to switch away from firefox and tree
| style tabs.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Personally I find tabs destroy my productivity completely
| almost immediately and I have to be aggressive about
| closing them.
|
| The consistent failure of bookmark managers is notable,
| doesn't matter if they are pure web-based or implemented
| as browser extensions the story is always that they're a
| "roach motel", somebody put in 30,000 bookmarks and
| realizes a few years later they didn't look back at them
| once.
|
| A counter-example is my Fraxinus bookmark
| manager/personal webcrawler/image sorter that I've been
| running for about 15 months and probably accumulated
| about 1 million images (was 700k last I looked) I look at
| images from it every day. The backlog of image galleries
| in the primary classification queue is about 1000 and I
| dunno, I could probably put "bigtags" [1] on another 1500
| galleries but I don't feel like I have to, it's not like
| I don't have enough content already.
|
| I wish I had some consistent and simple way to export
| both bookmarks and history into all my devices so I could
| feed them into my AI, make them portable, etc.
|
| [1] tags engineered to work with automated
| classification, namely it is possible for tags to be
| positive/indeterminate/negative
| hollerith wrote:
| >Open tabs are kinda halfway between history and
| bookmarks, for me.
|
| How do you feel about the fact that the author (of the
| web page) gets to decide whether a link opens in a new
| tab?
|
| Point is that I ignore tabs unless I'm alternating
| between 2 tabs or a need a placeholder for a few minutes.
| If arbitrary web sites could add to my the list of
| bookmarks kept by my browser, I'd ignore that list, too.
| p_ing wrote:
| > I can't see why people
|
| You've discovered the source of many-o-wars throughout
| human history.
|
| Thankfully Firefox tabs likely won't bring that 'round.
| belorn wrote:
| Firefox history is one of the most annoying part of the
| browser. It is impossible to click on a historical page and
| keep the context of the other visited pages that date/time.
| As soon you click on it, it will put it on top of the
| history and _remove_ the old historical position. If you
| don 't use search and manually scroll down, and then click
| on one (even with middle button), it will then instantly
| whoosh you back to the top of the history list, forcing you
| to scroll down and find the other links and repeat the
| process for each one.
|
| Thunderbird filter function understand what I want when
| searching old emails. If you search on an email and selects
| the one you are interested, and then remove the search, it
| will automatic scroll the navigation to that date and keep
| the selected email on view.
| greatgib wrote:
| In my personal cases, a have multiple windows with each
| easily having thousand of tabs. I guess I might have around
| 2k to 10k of them at a single time in my computer.
|
| Depending of the computer and phone, it might be the same
| thing in Firefox or Chrome.
|
| Even on Android, despite that chrome updates in the last
| years made it more sluggish and buggy to have lots of tabs
| than it used to be like 5 years ago.
|
| I can't understand how Google/chrome team might be so
| incompetent, but often reopening the browser app in android,
| some times are overwritten or shifted in position. Very
| annoying.
| dherikb wrote:
| Vertical tabs is really great.
| SamDc73 wrote:
| But there were already extensions for that, which is a better
| approach than Firefox developing a feature only a small
| subset of people will use1.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| For years every Firefox discussion I saw would have some
| person saying "why are they wasting their time on X? I
| won't use it til they have vertical tabs" with scores of
| upvotes.
|
| This perfectly encapsulates the Mozilla position. Every
| possible move makes people complain.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Hard disagree. The extensions were terrible, at least for
| what I want, and probably can't integrate with the UI in
| the same way.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| And buying and killing pro-consumer and public utility apps.
| ars wrote:
| > They introduced a toggle in the address bar to show the
| window title. Who tf is asking for this?
|
| Actually a lot of people. For example on a Mac you can't see
| the window title except the first word or two in the tab.
|
| It's actually not that unusual for the browser to run in a
| system without window controls.
|
| (I know macs are hard to use, but work requires one, so can't
| be helped.)
| bigyabai wrote:
| > For example on a Mac
|
| The title already addresses individuals with serious personal
| dysfunction.
| em-bee wrote:
| gnome too, there is no titlebar. just the tabs. and when you
| have many tabs you can't see the title unless you move the
| mouse over the tab. i haven't seen the new feature yet. the
| fedora or librewolf builds don't seem to have it
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related from last month:
|
| _Firefox is dead to me - and I 'm not the only one who is fed
| up_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44298286
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Mozilla's leadership is directionless and flailing because it's
| never had to do, or be, anything else. It's never needed to know
| how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It's
| no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never
| needed them. _It 's role-playing being a business._
| saubeidl wrote:
| The "real" fix would be for Mozilla to become an actual proper
| non-profit entity.
|
| Maybe the EU can buy it and maintain the browser as a critical
| piece of infrastructure, the same way roads etc are.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > the same way roads etc are
|
| Roads are also a model of corruption and inefficiency, fully
| captured by private actors (in Europe, Vinci etc). And I
| think there's no way around it past some size, but that might
| not be the direction we wish for Firefox.
| mminer237 wrote:
| In the US, road construction is actually pretty
| competitive. I'm sure there's some corruption, but I think
| it's done pretty well overall.
| timschmidt wrote:
| The following study lists the U.S. as having "moderate to
| high corruption" in road construction industries:
|
| https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=SR2521300132
| 1
| rtkwe wrote:
| The abstract out rights says it's just using a PPP
| adjusted price vs quality measurement not actually
| studying real measurable corruption just their arms
| length proxy measurement. All that really shows is the US
| gets crappier product for the 'same' money (PPP
| comparisons are really squishy).
| timschmidt wrote:
| And google is full of examples such as the following:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/construction-
| company...
| rtkwe wrote:
| Those are much better to point to, I wasn't saying there
| isn't any corruption more that the study is a bad measure
| of that issue.
| timschmidt wrote:
| The way I see it, one is quantifying bounds on the scale
| of the other. Both are relevant.
| a0123 wrote:
| Yes, we know. We are not saying "privatize the browser"
| because as you rightly pointed out, privatisation is a
| guaranteed route to the utmost corruption.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Been saying that for years but it's never been a popular
| opinion. For one thing people solidly blame the EU for those
| awful cookie banners -- and I think those cookie banners
| broke down any resistance to web sites popping up modals that
| cover up other modals all asking for your email..
| fsflover wrote:
| The EU didn't force the banners. They restricted opt-out
| data collection without consent, which is a good thing to
| do. The banners is malicious compliance.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Consent for privacy is a broken model. It needs to be
| "Respect DNT or go to directly to jail, do not pass Go"
| It's a predictable result and if the EU is not
| "consenting" with it they should change the law.
| orangecat wrote:
| _The banners is malicious compliance._
|
| That's true, but I'm still going to blame the EU. The nag
| screens were absolutely a predictable response, and if
| the regulators didn't spend half an hour thinking about
| unscrupulous data marketers would react to the
| regulations, then they are bad at their jobs. And even
| after that, they've had years to fix the regulations and
| haven't done so.
| eastbound wrote:
| > Maybe the EU can buy it
|
| Thank you but I don't think the EU is a good steward. Look
| how much it spent in funding startups across Europe, and what
| little we have for it. Look at the decision-making in the EU
| stack.
|
| Sweden or the Netherlands should buy it. The EU, no.
| xeonmc wrote:
| It's like that video of a fledgling Myna opening its beak
| towards a crawling catepillar and expecting it to jump in
| automatically.
| ww520 wrote:
| I don't know what's going on in Mozilla. Just today on my
| security camera NVR, Firefox pops up a dialog in the notification
| area at the lower right screen of Windows 11, showing an ad for
| its vertical tab feature, urging me to try it out. The thing is
| Firefox is rarely used on the NVR and the browser is not running.
| The only program running is the camera video app (the popup of
| course obscured the video window). It must be done by the
| background Firefox Update process. This is a brazen abuse of the
| notification area that even Microsoft hasn't tried yet.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > This is a brazen abuse of the notification area that even
| Microsoft hasn't tried yet.
|
| Microsoft has advertised OneDrive and other products with scare
| prompts in those toast notifications.
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| Heck, the other week I got an ad telling me "Doom: The Dark
| Ages" had been released and that it is "thrilling" in the
| toast area.
|
| This despite me never having used the Xbox or windows gaming
| apps and actually having uninstalled them only for an update
| to decide it should reinstalled
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Firefox performance is really bad in google sites like meet,
| calendar, docs, youtube. I wonder why they are not working on
| improving the situation. Everything else is already perfect, just
| iron out these few issues and be the undisputed leader.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Didn't youtube sabotage firefox performance deliberately?
| knowitnone wrote:
| Google sabotage firefox performance deliberately
| Izkata wrote:
| Originally no, and nowadays it seems like it's a result of
| that tech debt: Youtube did a frontend rewrite using an early
| spec of web components, that only Chrome ever fully
| implemented, and they used Polymer to polyfill other browsers
| with the idea that they'd implement the spec later and get a
| performance boost. But the spec changed, so they never did,
| and Youtube is still sending the Polymer-based version to
| other browsers - even though from other people's tests it
| looks like Youtube is capable of sending something that
| doesn't require the polyfill if it thinks Chrome is on the
| other end.
|
| (This was the state as of a couple years ago, I don't know if
| there's been further developments since)
| capitainenemo wrote:
| That could be accident or malice or a combination of the
| two.
| jajko wrote:
| Can't win if competition to whom the web belongs also tries to
| capture literally whole world in its ad-infested vision of
| future via its browser. There are tons of ways how to subtly
| degrade experience, or gain performance for oneself (like IE
| did back in the days of skipping ending connection as per
| protocols to gain some speed points).
|
| I used to cheer for Google and its approach to customers,
| employees, and the world we live in. That ship has sailed long
| time ago, now its another greedy global mega corporation with
| thin veneer of 'we are good guys' (apple is similar but in a
| different way).
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| As pointed out in the article, Firefox performance has been
| steadily improving for years. It's not exactly on Mozilla that
| specific sites are optimized specifically for their rival's
| product.
| franky47 wrote:
| I'm a diehard Firefox user since day one, but today I updated to
| the 140.2 iOS build, and it broke my cookie jar, logged me out of
| most websites, and managed to switch LinkedIn to Spanish..
| throw123xz wrote:
| > iOS build
|
| Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc, on iOS all use Webkit because of
| the platform rules. The EU forced them to open up in Europe,
| but you're not really using Firefox on your iPhone.
|
| Just pointing it out as it's not the same as using Firefox on
| the desktop or Android.
| ep103 wrote:
| I think the primary thing I've learned about open vs closed
| source products this last decade, is that the difference in
| marketing is huge.
|
| Both Firefox and Chrome are great browsers, end stop.
|
| But most articles on HN about Chrome start with glowing praise.
|
| And most articles on HN about Firefox start with "What's wrong
| with FF" and condescention.
|
| I'm past the point of thinking that this is actually reflective
| about the browsers and their organizations.
|
| Chrome is actively ending ad block support in its plugins. Its
| CEO is actively engaging in the political process. Firefox has
| always had a messy relationship with advertising, in which it
| generally tries to walk the line between reality and ideology.
| There are pros and cons to both products, depending on what you
| care about. The fact that articles on each browser so
| consistently fall into the same pattern does not seem reflective
| of the actual products themselves.
|
| I think the difference is down to marketing.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > open vs closed source products
|
| Chrome is for all intents and purposes, open source. Yes, there
| is 0.000001% that's not. It's hard to argue that tiny portion
| is the difference.
|
| > Chrome is actively ending ad block support in its plugins.
|
| Chrome has not ended ad blocking - I'm using ublock lite and
| ads are blocked.
| hooverd wrote:
| Just like Android is open source!
| bArray wrote:
| > Rust was developed at Mozilla. Mozilla axed it. In 2020, it
| laid off the whole team.
|
| > As I reported back in 2023, the Servo browser engine is doing
| well. Early this year, its own figures show strong continued
| upticks in interest since Igalia took over development. You
| guessed it - Mozilla also gave Servo the boot in 2020.
|
| You don't need to develop a new programming language to develop a
| decent browser engine. Maybe it would be nice, and maybe it could
| be better, but do you really have the resources to go off on such
| a tangent? Clearly the answer was no.
|
| > 2020 is the same year Cathay Capital invested $50 million into
| KaiOStech, saying it would help bring the next billion people
| online. As The Register reported in 2018, KaiOS is Boot2Gecko,
| Mozilla's FirefoxOS rebranded. Mozilla killed its own version in
| 2015.
|
| Calling it "FirefoxOS" was a mistake, but the idea wasn't all too
| bad. The rendering in HTML/CSS was a good idea, Java after all
| have Java Swing/JavaFX and that worked well, but I wouldn't have
| forced all of the apps to also be JS. I think it will be the
| future equivalent of an OS where all apps must be Adobe Flash.
| The rendering should have all been done in HTML/CSS, with the
| backend being any language of choice running in a tiny container.
|
| I think Mozilla need to make things that do one thing well, and
| they also need to get better at developing MVPs that test the
| waters before pouring in years and millions into it.
| binarymax wrote:
| You don't _need to_ but it certainly helped. And the Servo
| project also produced crates like HTML5ever which filled a huge
| gap in performant and safe document parsing for both browser
| and server. I'm very grateful that there are modular and easily
| usable projects like that, and rust is far easier to use than
| the complex c++ code and toolchains you'd need.
| johnea wrote:
| > You don't need to develop a new programming language to
| develop a decent browser engine.
|
| Thank You!
|
| Just one additional suggestion: Stop throwing plug-in
| developers under the bus!
|
| p.s. I'm writing this in seamonkey... and still pine for NPAPI
| 8-(
| catigula wrote:
| It's moreso that actively burning off your only successful
| endeavor in uncountable years is a sign of bad, bad management.
| sprremix wrote:
| > All the functionality attached to Firefox's "Browser tools"
| sub-menu should be unceremoniously ripped out, banished to the
| developer's edition.
|
| I hope this is some kind of sarcastic take I am not getting. What
| a weird thing to stand for.
| bauble wrote:
| It would be insanity. Even the most dedicated developers would
| switch to Chrome instantly.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Well, that saved me a click on the article. This take is insane
| or a troll.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Some of TFA is more grounded. That particular paragraph
| though...
|
| It exemplifies why beneficial change is _so hard_ sometimes.
| The loudest voice in the room can go "here are the
| problems", we can all nod along in agreement, and then "and
| here's what we should do" ... and it's just _out there._ I
| 've seen this happen numerous times -- borderline
| continuously -- in politics.
|
| Even ealier in the article, they (rightly, IMO) skewer
| Mozilla for laying off the Rust and Servo teams, but then TFA
| utterly undercuts its own thesis with,
|
| > _It shouldn 't be trying to capitalize on [projects such as
| Rust or Servo]._
|
| _What?_ What 's the point of Rust, or Servo, then, if not to
| develop a better Firefox?
| kgwxd wrote:
| As a developer who develops on Firefox, and only tests on other
| browsers just before deployment, I'd reconsider supporting it
| for end users if they're not going to be able to hit F12 to
| help me diagnose any issues that come up on their side.
| Svip wrote:
| Yes; it's obvious you include the full context:
|
| > Did you know there's already a special developer's edition?
| No web designer is building on Firefox first any more. We're
| lucky if they even test on it. All the functionality attached
| to Firefox's "Browser tools" sub-menu should be unceremoniously
| ripped out, banished to the developer's edition.
|
| Though, it would be more plain, if they wrote "could" instead
| of "should".
| Liquix wrote:
| multiple people working on projects with web UIs at my org
| daily drive firefox. the author's arguments come off as
| hotheaded and poorly researched.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Even with the whole contex this did not read very clear to
| me.
| throw123xz wrote:
| What's the benefit for Firefox and its users if dev tools are
| removed from stable Firefox and "banished" to the Developer
| Edition?
|
| Dev tools are part of all browsers. Even Safari, which tries
| to keep things very simple, ships dev tools on the stable
| version. I really don't see the point in removing them.
| lokar wrote:
| I have dealt with site outages where we have support talk
| customers through using the debug tools to help gather
| information.
|
| They are very good to have available to everyone.
| baobun wrote:
| "Safety".
|
| The thinking is that users are a danger to themselves and
| will be tricked by threat actors to add some CA cert to the
| trust store, paste commands into the js console, or
| download and sideload malicious extensions no matter what
| controls are in place so therefore these possibilities must
| be removed.
| webstrand wrote:
| What a strange take. I'm arguably a web designer, though its
| only one of many hats I wear. I design for Firefox first and
| then patch the places where chrome/safari break. If dev tools
| were only present on developer edition, which tracks the
| unreleased beta version, I wouldn't actually be able to test
| on Firefox that regular people are using.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| A couple years ago (~2018-9 or so) I realized that Firefox had a
| weird leak, I opened a lot of tabs often (heavy internet user
| plus dev) and I never really restart my pc unless absolutely
| necessary because I have too many things at once I'm working on
| and it's a pain to reopen everything including Windows Explorer
| instances (now tabs).
|
| I talked about this leak and they kept gaslighting me like it
| didn't exist, Firefox at one point was taking 24 gbs of ram on my
| pc. (It did)
|
| Another issue, Firefox Nighly, I 100% understand that it's an
| early bird preview and all that, but they would literally brick
| your browser whenever they wanted you to force to update it...
| what? I complain and they say "then don't use nighly", like
| brother, I understand that, I completely understand to use stable
| for stability, but there is no reason to FORCEFULLY brick a
| user's browser whenever you release an update, just have a popup
| and if they WANT TO they restart at the moment if not at the next
| restart period... and if you REALLY need for some critical issue
| you can have a flag with the update that forces a bricking but is
| only used in extremely important scenarios.
|
| The amount of mismanagement at Mozilla is incredible really, I
| was a die hard Firefox user, I remember opening my youtube
| channel trying to right click on a background and not being able
| to copy the url/view image with chrome back in the day, that was
| when I realized that Google would force "its" web standards so I
| decided to go all in on Firefox, yet now I'm back on a chromium
| browser because Mozilla has completely destroyed the browser I
| loved, even worse now with all the weird privacy invasive stuff
| they've added in.
|
| I truly hope ladybird browser is successful.
| RachelF wrote:
| It still leaks GPU memory on Windows.
|
| It's still a great browser, though. A bigger problem is that
| the web is now a mono-culture of Chrome/Chromium. Many sites
| don't work 100% on Firefox.
| Theodores wrote:
| Until Firefox introduce scoped CSS they are IE6 to me.
| cjpearson wrote:
| I don't think Mozilla has always made the right decisions, but
| they are in a difficult position, and the anti-Mozilla arguments
| are typically much more vague and directionless. Some common
| demands:
|
| - Mozilla should develop revenue independent of Google - Mozilla
| should not monetize Firefox - Mozilla should only focus on
| Firefox - Mozilla should develop cool research projects - Mozilla
| should be run like a competitive and professional business -
| Mozilla should have a salary cap and expect executives to treat
| it like a passion project
|
| Some of these goals are opposite ends of the same slider, so it's
| not possible to maximize both. Typically, Mozilla seems to pick a
| middle-ground. For example, my understanding is that while
| salaries are quite decent, they tend to be below what Apple and
| Google will offer for similar roles.
|
| Maybe it's seen as waffling whenever they shift these sliders,
| and maybe that's a fair criticism. But nobody else seems to be
| able to put together a clear and realistic alternative plan. Most
| of them pick and choose contradictory goals, other plans like
| Zawinski's are at least clear, but too radical for those who
| still want revenue to pay developers or to be able to watch
| Netflix in their browser.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Both Mozilla and the Wikipedia Foundation seem to have the same
| problem of doing everything but focusing on their core raison
| d'etre.
|
| Like, what is there even to say but constantly complain about
| that.
| detaro wrote:
| Or rather, people disagree with the Foundations on what their
| purpose should be.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Yes but for rethorical reasons I pretend to not know what
| you mean. That would validify their claims.
| kristjank wrote:
| If the turtle-saving foundation I donate to has a windfall,
| I would expect it to save more turtles, not to instead also
| focus on feeding hotdogs to hungry Somali children. This
| does not mean that feeding hotdogs to hungry Somali
| children is wrong, it is an even more important goal than
| saving the turtles, but somewhere in the process, there
| pillaged a decision maker that misinterpreted (acceptable)
| or ignored (unacceptable) the intentions of the
| benefactors.
| detaro wrote:
| Except the foundations mission statement isn't turtle-
| saving, that's just what you think is clearly the most
| important part of their work that they should solely
| focus on, in your opinion. And it's not wrong of you to
| want to be able to donate towards the parts that you care
| about, but it's an obvious disconnect from the reality of
| what their _stated goals_ are (and hence you blame
| decision makers for decisions that are actually fully in
| line with the mission statements).
|
| Mozilla Foundation never was the Firefox Development
| Foundation, as much as some of us want it to be.
| Wikimedia never was the Wikipedia Development and
| Operations Foundation. If you dislike that, donate to
| entities with narrower goals (I personally prefer
| directing money towards OSM and KDE for example)
| kristjank wrote:
| If a foundation spins off a project's community with
| certain goals, they take on to some degree the goals and
| the vision of the people that built it. Those are
| opinions, and they are important to the cited goals. If
| then a foreign element enters the system due to the sad
| state of the technology/corporate enterprises nowadays
| and changes the mission statement, you have not changed
| the spirit it was created with, you changed a business
| strategy in a way that is disconnected and hostile to the
| initial goal. A lot of the times the goals aren't really
| stated at all clearly, are protected by different acts
| like codes of conduct, and open to modification by
| impassionate people with ephemeral leadership positions
| who don't care what happens to the organization down the
| line.
|
| Sure, I can become the chairman of Turtle saving
| international and change our charter to prioritize
| feeding hotdogs to hungry Somalis, but I am still doing
| an ideological disservice to the grassroots initiative
| that built the foundation and created the position for me
| to be sitting on, no?
|
| Also, this seems to me extremely fragile when situations
| are reversed, say that an outright awful organization
| like an international petrol company gets a new mission
| statement. Should all they did before and after that be
| forgiven because their stated goals say otherwise?
|
| I personally see this as little less than a ground truth,
| but perhaps there is some way that stated goals stand
| above all regardless.
|
| EDIT: I do see how you make a very good point when you're
| looking mostly from the present towards the future,
| though.
| detaro wrote:
| In both cases, their "wide" mission statements have been
| around for a long time, it's not a recent thing. E.g. you
| maybe can say that Mozilla Foundation in 2003 was
| presented as something else than what it decided to adopt
| in 2007 with the Mozilla Manifesto, but well, that's a 4
| year period that ended 18 years ago and happened under
| the original leadership, it's not later executives
| somehow distorting it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Both Mozilla and the Wikipedia Foundation seem to have the
| same problem of doing everything but focusing on their core
| raison d'etre.
|
| At least for Wikimedia... running Wikipedia itself isn't
| expensive, they're not running it as a resume-driven-
| development project in some hyperscaler that brings
| associated costs, they run bare metal servers to this day
| (and so, notably, does StackOverflow who run a ridiculously
| lean setup).
|
| Wikimedia's mission _from the start_ was to be more than just
| "run Wikipedia and make sure it isn't bought off by some
| corporate interest", it always had outreach and social
| responsibility at its core. The problem is, for some people
| being a responsible citizen of society is already political
| in itself and, thus, bad.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| > _and so, notably, does StackOverflow who run a
| ridiculously lean setup_
|
| Bad news.
|
| https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/404231/we-re-
| finall...
| umbra07 wrote:
| > Wikimedia's mission from the start was to be more than
| just "run Wikipedia and make sure it isn't bought off by
| some corporate interest", it always had outreach and social
| responsibility at its core. The problem is, for some people
| being a responsible citizen of society is already political
| in itself and, thus, bad.
|
| but then why do they constantly run banners implying that
| Wikipedia will shut down if I don't donate _right now_?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Capitalism, plain and simple. I don't like it either, but
| that's the way _all_ fundraising has devolved down to.
| And hell, it 's been that way even decades ago with
| images of starving little African kids being used for
| emotional manipulation.
|
| In any decent world, governments would use tax money to
| _both_ fund projects like Wikimedia and help get poor
| countries off on a self-sustaining economy, but that ship
| has sailed I am afraid.
| umbra07 wrote:
| hmm, perhaps I was unclear.
|
| You said that the Wikimedia Foundation's core mission is
| to basically do good things. Their core goal is not to
| keep Wikipedia running (as most people believe).
|
| Wikimedia runs very prominent banner ads all the time on
| Wikipedia, saying that they need money to keep Wikipedia
| running, and that they're a small team that depends on
| community funding to keep Wikipedia running, and they
| can't do it without you, and please please please donate
| by this date. I think it is very reasonable for your
| average Wikipedia user to believe the following, thanks
| to how Wikimedia advertises:
|
| * Wikimedia is the non-profit organization that runs
| Wikipedia. They're basically the same thing, since
| Wikimedia's goal is running Wikipedia.
|
| * Wikipedia is run by a small team
|
| * Wikipedia is heavily reliant on donations from normal
| people
|
| * Wikipedia needs money all the time. I know this because
| they're constantly running big highlighted banner ads
| urgently asking for money before $DATE
|
| If what you said is true, and Wikimedia's core mission is
| not in fact, to preserve Wikipedia, then they're engaging
| in deceptive advertising. They're giving the impression
| that they need money right now to keep Wikipedia's
| funding source secure, but in reality, their goal is much
| broader than just Wikipedia. I think it's reasonable to
| assume that Wikipedia's funding could be much more secure
| if the Wikimedia Foundation solely focused on running
| Wikipedia. In other words, if they stopped spending on
| $NOT_WIKIPEDIA_REL_COST they would be fine.
|
| What does this have to do with capitalism or $ENTITY
| using pictures of starving African children?
|
| > In any decent world, governments would use tax money to
| both fund projects like Wikimedia and help get poor
| countries off on a self-sustaining economy, but that ship
| has sailed I am afraid.
|
| I want to make sure I'm not misinterpreting your words.
| Are you saying that it's okay for Wikimedia to engage in
| knowingly deceptive advertising because otherwise poor
| countries won't be able to get their economy running?
|
| Are we agreeing that they're knowingly being deceptive,
| and that they wouldn't need to be deceptive if they just
| focused on Wikipedia? And we're disagreeing on whether
| that deception is moral or immoral?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> anti-Mozilla arguments are typically much more vague and
| directionless._
|
| No they aren't. People just want a good product that's free
| from bloat and doesn't change the UI every week, interrupting
| you when you open it to advertise some sponsored affiliate
| websites on the home page (Otto and Adidas in my case) or new
| features I never asked for and will never use like Pocket or
| the VPN.
|
| The org and leadership should also focus their funds on the
| technical development of the product itself, instead on social
| and political activism and virtue signaling since I don't want
| lectures form my products.
|
| Basically, Mozilla just needs to _" PUT THE FRIES IN THE BAG"_
| and everyone would be happy, and even throw in a few bucks
| every now and then as a gesture of appreciation and good will.
|
| But Mozilla lost users by doing the exact opposite of that,
| being drunk on the Google funded gravy train and knowledge that
| they're untouchable, being only thing preventing Chrome being
| considered a monopoly by regulators.
|
| So good riddance from me, you reap what you sow, RIP BOZO, I
| can't support a bad product run by incompetent people just on
| idealism alone, it actually needs to be technically superior
| first and foremost.
| hooverd wrote:
| I also see people complain that Firefox doesn't the feature
| you don't like, or they're focusing on the wrong different
| features. They can't win.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Then how come Chrome does everything I need? -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| What's this business strategy called?
|
| I call it "not shooting yourself in the foot". Mozilla
| management should try it.
|
| Like I said, Mozilla can win by "putting the fries in the
| bag". Nobody switched from Chrome to Firefox because they
| had Pocket or some VPN or they had affiliate websites on
| the home page. On the contrary.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| Chrome does everything you need because Chrome is your
| baseline that you are used to and because of that your
| requirement is "it does what Chrome does".
|
| Firefox has features that people "need" but they only
| know they want it because they already use it and they
| won't switch away from Firefox unless whatever they'd
| switch to has the same feature.
|
| Ex: I will never switch away to another browser unless it
| has extensions that allow you to group tabs and "store
| them in the background" like you can with Firefox's
| Simple Tab Groups. Likewise I know people who won't
| switch to a manifest v3 browser because they don't want
| their adblock crippled.
|
| TLDR: Your requirements are "whatever I currently use but
| better". You will never win users by trying to beat a
| better funded and better staffed project at that. Instead
| you have to try to do new things and discover what can
| make your project stand out.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I used Opera before FF due to its unique and innovative
| features, then FF when Opera became Chinese, then Chrome
| when FF went to shit by changing its UI for the worst
| every week.
|
| None of the new features FF introduced did I ever need,
| and judging by its market share I am not alone. FF just
| focuses on useless features that nobody asked for. If you
| asked for those feature, congrats, you're part of the
| 0,001% userbase, too bad that's irrelevant. Bad
| leadership. You can defend FF all you want but the market
| share speaks for itself.
|
| They had unlimited money from Google and they squandered
| it. That's like playing a game with cheat codes and
| coming in last every time. Mozilla leadership should
| resign and go flip burghers at McDs instead as they're
| shit at their tech jobs.
|
| Mozilla had to just not fuck with the UI, features and
| put ads, and it would have been as easy win.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Then how come Chrome does everything I need?
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| They let you block ads and respect your privacy? Or are
| you insisting on behalf of Mozilla's user base that those
| are not things being requested?
|
| I would go so far as to say that respecting privacy has
| been one of the _biggest_ requests from critics of
| Mozilla, one of the biggest senses of violation, and that
| replicating Chrome 's abandonment of privacy is,
| therefore, one of the bigger examples of a contradictory
| request.
|
| Google also doesn't make money from Chrome directly, yet
| that's what is asked of Mozilla. So how do they do what
| Chrome does while simultaneously fulfill the user request
| to leverage their browser to make money?
|
| >Nobody switched from Chrome to Firefox because they had
| Pocket or some VPN or they had affiliate websites on the
| home page
|
| Look up the history of Firefox market share and tell me
| if you can find a cause and effect relationship between
| market share change and any particular side bet. Because
| I can't find any, with one exception I'll get to in a
| second. Most of the side bets people complain about came
| in _after_ Chrome already rose to dominance and had
| nothing to do with the change in market share. If words
| mean things, that should matter when people make this
| argument, but I feel like people forgot they 're supposed
| to actually make real arguments to back these claims up.
|
| The only exception I can find is Firefox OS, which,
| again, highlights the contradiction between wanting
| Mozilla to diversify its offerings but criticizing them
| when they do. It was actually one of their better big
| picture vision ideas in my estimation and was given
| favorable gloss in the article we're all talking about.
| But you can argue it siphoned away resources, and many
| people do.
|
| So I think the criticisms are pretty all over the map,
| and the article linked here is actually one the best
| pieces I've seen that strikes the right balance.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > interrupting you when you open it to advertise some
| affiliate websites on the home page or new features I never
| asked for and will never use.
|
| I may be in the minority here but I'd be fine with them
| trying to push SaaS add-ons like a VPN if they would stop
| moving UI elements around.
| handsclean wrote:
| You're twisting what people ask for. The real versions are not
| contradictory.
|
| - Mozilla should develop revenue independent of Google.
|
| - Mozilla should respect Firefox's users.
|
| - Mozilla should focus mainly on Firefox.
|
| - Mozilla should not kill wildly successful side projects,
| especially when they complement Firefox.
|
| - Mozilla should be well run.
|
| - Mozilla should not let a few extremely rich executives loot
| the business.
|
| This is a company that has repeatedly refused actual begging to
| accept payment for things, then killed those things for lack of
| funding. They defined themselves as the advocate for users on
| the web, then started selling user data and lied about it. Sure
| there's a grey area, but Mozilla is far from it.
| ang_cire wrote:
| > repeatedly refused actual begging to accept payment for
| things
|
| I don't claim to know Mozilla's internal workings, but my
| wife works for an education-space 501c3, and there are very
| strict rules about how they can fundraise, how they can spend
| money that's been donated, etc. I'm sure Mozilla Foundation
| is large enough to manage this stuff, but things like per-
| project bank accounts and tax records are still overhead they
| would have to deal with. I know one of their (my wife's
| org's) thorniest areas is around what money can be spent on
| non-"core mission" expenses.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > - Mozilla should not let a few extremely rich executives
| loot the business.
|
| The problem is, when searching for high-level executives,
| you're not competing against other NGOs, you're competing
| with the wide free market - and salaries there are, frankly,
| out of control and have been so for _decades_ [1]. Either
| Mozilla Foundation plays the dirty game just like everyone
| else does, or they go out of business.
|
| It's the system that's broken at a fundamental level, not
| individual actors.
|
| [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2023/
| tetromino_ wrote:
| One might ask why Mozilla needs to search for a high-level
| executive in the first place. Most open source projects,
| even very large ones, function reasonably well without a
| hired executive - so what makes Mozilla different such that
| it requires this luxury good?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Most open source projects, even very large ones,
| function reasonably well without a hired executive - so
| what makes Mozilla different such that it requires this
| luxury good?
|
| For a certain definition of "reasonably well", that is.
|
| And often enough, big money is at play, it's just hidden
| from the public eye - just look how much money IBM,
| RedHat, Google, Meta and other very large players spend
| on salaries for kernel and other OSS developers - and
| _their_ managers in turn are paid the usual ridiculous
| executive salaries. That just doesn 't show up on any
| public finance report.
| danaris wrote:
| > or they go out of business.
|
| How does "failing to attract an executive whose primary
| differentiating characteristic is demanding exorbitant
| amounts of money" lead to them going out of business?
| lovich wrote:
| The name for the effect you are describing is Baumol's cost
| disease
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
| Tostino wrote:
| Widen the hiring pool then. I'm sure there are plenty of
| competent people who do care deeply to keep an alternative
| browser in the market.
| throw123xz wrote:
| > Mozilla should develop revenue independent of Google
|
| And then you get articles like these complaining about
| Mozilla re-selling a VPN service.
|
| (I agree with your points.)
| LexiMax wrote:
| > And then you get articles like these complaining about
| Mozilla re-selling a VPN service.
|
| Not only that, but their competitors are also selling - or
| at the very least promoting - VPN services.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Points 3 and 4 are contradictory, or at least, very difficult
| to reconcile. The use of "mainly" means you can technically
| say it's possible to achieve both but I doubt any of
| Mozilla's critics will ever be happy with their attempts to
| do so.
|
| Points 1 to 3 also seem very difficult to reconcile. If they
| need to develop revenue independent of Google, and they need
| to focus mainly on Firefox, then at some stage they need to
| monetise other aspects of the browser. How do they do that in
| a way that is respectful to its users? What is the way for
| Mozilla to develop a new revenue stream, via Firefox (their
| main focus), that everyone is happy with?
|
| Points 5 and 6 are too vague, I don't see how they could ever
| objectively be measured against those principles (other than
| by looking at the other principles).
|
| All of this is to say that they can't win. They launch new
| products to try and make money, they are selling out and
| abandoning their core mission. They try instead to make money
| from their main product, they are selling out and betraying
| their users. They try to increase Firefox's mass appeal, they
| are dumbing it down and letting down their power users. They
| don't try to increase Firefox's mass appeal, they are failing
| to stay relevant.
|
| Remember when Mitchell Baker was the problem?
| glenstein wrote:
| >You're twisting what people ask for.
|
| I've seen the comments they are talking about, so I don't
| agree they are twisting anything. Your aspirationally
| consistent restatement of the case is vague, and the
| contradictions are specific. Does the existence of the
| investment fund count as failing to focus on Firefox or
| succeeding at developing revenue independent of Google? How
| about the VPN, another potential revenue source?
|
| Is advocating for open web standards (as mentioned in the
| article as an example of a good thing) a distraction from
| Firefox (as I've seen commenters here suggest), or respecting
| users by giving a voice to their users in standards
| deliberation where their voice would otherwise be excluded?
|
| And how confident are you that your answers are the unique
| and consistent representation of what users _really_ want,
| and that I won 't be able to quote half a dozen commenters
| coming to completely different diagnoses of the same
| questions?
| LexiMax wrote:
| I've noticed this as well. It's in especially stark contrast
| when you compare to other browsers, such as Brave, whose gaffes
| and controversies tend to be overlooked, excused, or forgotten
| about.
|
| EDIT: For me, my choice of browser is simplified by the fact
| that I don't trust any chromium browser to keep long-term
| compatibility with extensions I rely upon, especially uBlock
| Origin.
| pixxel wrote:
| Brave is dragged at any available half-chance opportunity...
| glenstein wrote:
| Exactly, and to your point, a lot of the charges against
| Mozilla are mutually exclusive, contradictory, or barely even
| half-made attempts at arguments. You've outlined the make
| money/don't make money contradiction. But to add a few more of
| the crazy criticisms, sincerely made:
|
| - Implying without evidence that the VPN is run at
| prohibitively massive cost and at the expense of other programs
|
| - Claiming that Mozilla has "run out of money" (they have over
| $1 billion in assets)
|
| - Overstating costs of Mozilla's dabbling in blockchain (they
| wrote a paper or two)
|
| - Claiming the CEO pay has crippled Mozilla's ability to work
| on core browser (it's slightly more than 1% of their revenue)
|
| - Claiming without any mechanism or argument that there's a
| missing feature Mozilla _could have_ developed that would have
| restored all their market share
|
| - Related to the above, completely ignoring that Chrome drove
| market share in its own proactive ways, leveraging its search
| and Android dominance, rolling out affordable Chromebooks and
| that _these_ drove the market share more than anything specific
| to Mozilla
|
| - Firefox has become bloated and slow (Outdated talking point,
| it was true for a time, but then they _did the dang thing_ and
| delivered Quantum, which delivered the major advances in speed
| in stability that everyone asked for)
|
| That's not to say there's no valid criticisms, there are
| plenty. There seems to be _real_ cause and effect, for
| instance, on Firefox 's investments in FirefoxOS and the
| ability to invest resources in the browser, and that _did_
| happen over a time where market share was lost. And the
| dabbling in ads risks compromising the soul of their mission in
| critical ways.
|
| But meanwhile these (above) have all generally been basically
| misunderstandings or bad arguments with no internal logic, but
| claimed over and over again in the backwaters of internet
| comment sections with complete impunity. The case study in
| comment section hallucinations is as interesting to me as what
| is presently unfolding at Mozilla itself.
| LexiMax wrote:
| > The case study in comment section hallucinations is as
| interesting to me as what is presently unfolding at Mozilla
| itself.
|
| I have long suspected that a good chunk of the controversy
| surrounding Mozilla that I've seen is...let's just call it
| motivated reasoning.
| jfengel wrote:
| _(it 's slightly more than 1% of their revenue)_
|
| In a lot of industries, 1% revenue is rather a lot. Many
| domains have profit margins of 5% or even less; that would be
| fully 20% of your earnings.
|
| Software development is not "many industries", and Mozilla
| isn't most software development companies. So it's hard for
| me to say whether that specific CEO salary is appropriate.
| But I'd rather see his salary described by earnings, rather
| than revenue, since revenue by itself could just be churn.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Looking at your list of contradictory demands, I will point out
| that Mozilla themselves seemed to act the way you criticize
| their critics for acting. They tried to pull themselves in
| every direction all at once and it turns out Mozilla can't
| really do that.
|
| I mean, everyone shits on Wikimedia for ballooning expenses,
| but at least they figured out crowdfunding.
|
| That's not to say Mozilla can't make _any_ strategic bets. It
| 's just that they have to be both:
|
| 1. Complimentary or integral to their flagship browser product,
| Firefox, and,
|
| 2. Have a reasonable path to success
|
| Let's look at Boot2Gecko, or "Firefox OS", through this lens.
| Firefox needs to be on as many operating systems as possible,
| including mobile OSes. And it was true that one particular
| mobile OS vendor was loud and proud in banning Gecko. The
| obvious choice would have been to put all your effort into
| making a good mobile browser on other mobile OSes[0], but
| instead Mozilla decided to make a whole OS. This doesn't get
| Firefox in the hands of more people, but it sure as hell ties
| up expensive engineer time on building an entirely new
| platform.
|
| Now, let's look at Rust and Servo. Those are critical developer
| tools. Firefox is built with them. But Mozilla jettisoned them,
| unceremoniously, even though they were delivering tangible
| improvements to the browser.
|
| Zawinski's plan seems too radical _now_ because Mozilla larded
| themselves up on side projects like Boot2Gecko and acquisitions
| like Pocket and Anonym, while tossing things like Rust and
| Servo out the window. To be clear, if Mozilla had used Pocket
| to make themselves Google-independent, I wouldn 't be
| complaining about it, but instead they shut it down.
|
| The reason why I focus on Firefox is because it's the only
| power Mozilla has to negotiate with. When Hollywood wanted to
| be able to use DRM in browser, Mozilla surrendered, almost
| unconditionally. And they had to, because the answer to
| "Firefox remains principled and doesn't put DRM in the browser"
| is "every streaming service tells people to uninstall Firefox".
|
| Compare that to Apple, who was able to singlehandedly block any
| requirement for baseline video codec support in HTML5 because
| they didn't want to implement Ogg Theora. That's what being a
| big player in the browser market gets you.
|
| Furthermore, Zawinski's plan is the only option. Mozilla is out
| of time, the DOJ is actively attempting to shut off Google's
| antitrust insurance and that basically spells doom for Mozilla.
| Hell, Mozilla themselves put out an _extremely_ morally
| compromised position statement, because selling the search
| default is the only thing Mozilla managed to make stick. If
| Mozilla _doesn 't_ implement Zawinski's plan, they'll collapse
| and cease operating.
|
| [0] In practice, just Android. I don't remember if Windows
| Phone had the same limitations as iOS did, but it's market
| share was so limited it did not matter.
| kristjank wrote:
| I am sorry that my response is so long, but you raised so many
| often repeated points that I wanted to reply somewhere near
| them.
|
| To me, the motives of the users were always pretty clear and
| aligned with freedom, privacy and empowering end-users with
| free software. Then the suits came and reinterpreted it enough
| that if you look at it from the right angle, which is
| coincidentally always somewhere up Google's ass, it may align
| with what they're doing now.
|
| - Mozilla should develop revenue independent of Google: true,
| but it could be in a different form than a search engine deal
| that effectively pipes all of user's queries to the most
| agressive advertising spyware syndicate of the world.
|
| - Mozilla should not monetize Firefox: this is true. They can
| monetize adjacent support services like they did with the VPN
| and Relay (which I gladly paid for), but not the main product
| if they want it to be omnipresent.
|
| - Mozilla should only focus on Firefox: strongly disagree.
| Mozilla should work on TECHNOLOGIES. TFA describes very well
| how Mozilla produced Rust and Servo, which are clearly more
| widely used software than Firefox. The difference between those
| two and Firefox is that they aren't a product to be marketed,
| they are technologies used in other projects! This makes it
| pretty easy to gain market share and get a higher user share to
| sit with the big players. Technologies, unlike products, are
| however very unappealing to the managerial caste since they
| need to mature a great deal more. This is a sociological
| problem. If a well-designed commercial product can be
| cathedral, a lot of technology projects I've seen people build
| resemble zen gardens. A midwit paid six figures to do nothing
| always tends to despise those who, for the same amount of
| money, tend to a zen-garden-like project with passion and
| intent. This also aligns somewhat with "Mozilla should develop
| cool research projects."
|
| - Mozilla should be run like a competitive and professional
| business: nah. adjacent services could, but not really. Most
| successful software companies work off of cloud services and
| support nowadays. The shipped product is maybe 5% of the
| extracted value. A non-enshittified browser won't do much
| better, so I think it better to discard the thought altogether
| and focus on the free browser, then sell subscriptions to
| Relay, Pocket, or something else that works well with the free
| browser.
|
| I guess my main gripe is that I see huge projects like Apache,
| OpenBSD, FreeBSD, PFSense, Proxmox, etc. Which are huge
| software projects that thrive by developing technologies. Some
| like PFSense and Proxmox then provide a product on top of it,
| but the focus is on the technology. Mozilla turned from a
| company developing software and technology to a company that's
| selling a free product and trying to profit from it. And hiring
| more executives won't bring better tech in.
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can't cash in a good
| product for more than a few months, but you can capitalize on a
| good technology practically forever. And Mozilla can't seem to
| understand that software can be either, both, or none of the
| above, so it's starting to do what their clueless executives
| are good at: extract value.
| giingyui wrote:
| > Mozilla should develop cool research projects
|
| Literally zero people have asked for Mozilla to do this to the
| detriment of Firefox. But this is what we're getting.
| throw939394 wrote:
| Firefox code is not fine. It is 25 years old code, with many
| stuff bolted on top (multithreading). It does not even have a
| proper security sandboxing for renderer!
|
| This codebase was underfunded for a very long time! And all
| rewrites and major refactorings were cancelled!
|
| Nobody embeds Gecko engine anymore. There are good reasons for
| that!
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| Fact! Firefox Security is atrociously behind modern standards
| and Firefox can only safely be used as a throwaway browser with
| additional external sand boxing.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| However, with some quick googling it looks like (in the last
| couple years anyways) Firefox is just as unsafe to use as
| Chrome.
|
| Looks like Chrome actually had the most recent RCE only
| requiring someone to click a link.
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| Both are giant C++ codebases executing random code of the
| internet. Of course they are both security nightmares. But
| Chrome has significant hardening that Firefox lacks [0].
|
| Also, most recent CVE is a terrible metric.
|
| [0] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-
| chromium.ht...
| Animats wrote:
| Can they get Brendan Eich back?
| funnyflywheel wrote:
| I find that having Brendan Eich back in charge of Mozilla would
| be very unlikely for two reasons:
|
| - He's already built a modestly successful competitor in Brave,
| so there might not be much incentive for him to jump ship. -
| It's possible that bringing him back may risk the ire of the
| LGBTQ+ community. (His comments against same-sex marriage led
| to his resignation as CEO of Mozilla back in 2014.)
|
| However, this is just my speculation.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > In mid-2024, he pointed out its "Original Sin" of adopting
| digital rights management.
|
| I disagree on that one. Maybe it could have been an option 15-20
| years ago, when Firefox was a significant force. But now, if it
| didn't have DRM, platforms that use DRM would just tell people to
| use another browser, or a specialized app. And people who are not
| activists would just switch to "the browser that runs $service",
| and then you give free reign to whoever controls these browsers,
| including making the DRM more restrictive and more invading.
|
| DRM is an addon, it lets you do thing that you can't do without
| (i.e. watching protected content), but it won't affect non-DRM
| content. You can turn it off if you want, you just won't be able
| to watch Netflix (or whatever), making it a worse user
| experience.
|
| If you refuse to support DRM (and therefore denying your users of
| some content), hoping that it will discourage adoption of DRM by
| platforms, you have to keep your users captive so that they won't
| just switch. And considering that Firefox doesn't rely on lock-
| in: they don't have the means to do so, and it is against the
| spirit in the first place, they have to offset that by offering
| something else. And unfortunately, they don't have much to offer
| besides ideology.
|
| The original sin, if we can call it that, is that Firefox
| technically lagged behind Chrome: slower, more bugs, less
| secure,... Having to accept DRM, as well as anything Google
| decided was standard is a consequence of that.
|
| That's why I had high hopes with Servo. It had the potential to
| make Firefox a "better browser", giving them some weight when
| deciding not to support some anti-feature, but they lost it.
|
| They also lost an opportunity on mobile by not supporting
| extensions for too long, and generally, for not being taken
| seriously. Why did it take them so long to support DNS-over-HTTPS
| for instance?
|
| Now, they have an opportunity regarding ad-blocking, I don't know
| how they are going to waste that one, but knowing them, they are
| probably going to manage it.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| The original sin, if we can call it that, is that Firefox
| technically lagged behind Chrome: slower, more bugs, less
| secure
|
| I only want to comment on the more bugs component because for a
| time it seemed like all of the sites least likely to work in
| Firefox were Google run. Google was choosing to exclusively
| code to Chrome's latest standard. When people cannot run
| YouTube, Gmail, whatever, but Chrome can, not surprising when
| users flee.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I am not talking about website compatibility, in fact, for as
| far as I can tell, I had no problem with Google services
| using Firefox. Some degradation maybe, but not enough for me
| to notice.
|
| To give your an example, here is the bug that made me switch
| to Chrome:
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=791429
|
| May seem trivial, but that's with bugs like these that you
| lose users. I wanted my mouse to zoom, my mouse didn't zoom
| on Firefox (and only on Firefox), I tried Chrome, it worked,
| found no (technical) downside, it was faster, so I stayed
| with Chrome. I continued using Firefox on another PC, and I
| saw a lot more crashes, slowdowns, etc... on Firefox, also, a
| single tab could crash the entire browser (it was before
| Electrolysis and Quantum). Website incompatibility wasn't
| actually that much of a problem, it mostly affected corporate
| intranets, which were equal part Chrome-only and IE-only
| during that time.
|
| Things have improved on the Firefox side (Quantum!), and I
| don't use that mouse anymore, so I am back on Firefox for
| most part, the ad-blocking thing pushed me back, hoping that
| they don't to anything crazy to push me away like they did
| before.
| em-bee wrote:
| i have yet to find a site where i needed to activate DRM. even
| on sites where firefox did tell me to activate DRM, i just
| ignored it and the site worked fine. that said, having the
| feature built in doesn't bother me as long as i have the option
| to ignore it or keep it turned off
| ygjb wrote:
| Many streaming services will offer lower fidelity options if
| DRM is not enabled due to licensing agreements with third
| party content owners.
| kasabali wrote:
| Those sites offer lower fidelity resolutions either way,
| DRM plugin is worthless. Heck, Netflix doesn't offer 4K
| streams _even_ on a fully locked devices with L1
| certificate, they have a separate licensing program that
| device vendors must participate in to get their products to
| be able to run Netflix.
| kevinherron wrote:
| Try Spotify's web player.
| LtWorf wrote:
| The crappy compliance videos at my job have DRM :D As if
| anyone would like to watch them when not forced to.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Hey, I am sure people are payed very good money for these!
|
| I wonder what the people making these videos are thinking.
| They know what people think of them, if they actually watch
| them before taking the usually obvious questionnaire that
| follows (hint: the answer is always "talk to your
| manager").
|
| It reminds me of the time we took an electrical
| certification that we honestly didn't need but legally, we
| had to. It was in person, and the guy was actually great,
| and I think it is in a good part because he knew his place.
| He quickly got passed the regulatory aspects, then spent
| the rest of the time explaining stuff about house wiring,
| how breakers work, told us some entertaining (if sometimes
| a little morbid) stories and shown videos about electrical
| accidents. So it was maybe 10% what we were supposed to be
| for and 90% general information we could make use of in our
| daily life, all while keeping things entertaining.
| ghusto wrote:
| Netflix is a pretty big deal.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Seemingly making netflix play at a good resolution is kinda
| impossible anyway.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| The EU should fork firefox and develop it as a public benefit
| MrDresden wrote:
| I thoroughly disagree. The EU and it's many organizations, does
| not know how to operate a long running software development
| project.
|
| What the union should do instead is to create a funding
| structure that had as it's mission to identify and financially
| support groups that develop open source software which is
| critical to both the people and companies that are based in the
| EU. Make it a requirement that the software be accessible, free
| and open source.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > The EU should fork firefox and develop it as a public benefit
|
| All these mega-rich US tech entrepreneurs can finance Firefox
| development. They have all the capital. The EU isn't a charity.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| The EU has different strategic interests from the mega-rich
| US tech companies
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > The EU has different strategic interests from the mega-
| rich US tech companies
|
| Exactly, and since Mozilla is an american tech company at
| first place, it's up to other Americans to pick up the tab,
| not the EU, which isn't a charity that should pick up
| failed US products.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I'm a bit of a tinkerer with software and will occasionally
| "wander" over the fence to see if it really is greener on the
| other side; I always come back to Firefox. I've tried:
|
| Brave: love the mission/execution, don't care for Chrome
|
| Arc: interesting idea, but ultimately removed too much of the
| things I need in exchange for things I might use, but don't need
|
| Orion: Firefox extensions (even on iOS!) + native performance?
| Love it, but it crashes all the time and the extensions'
| compatibility comes and goes
|
| Safari: I don't mind paying for software, but paying for
| extensions that will probably disappear in 6 months is a pass
|
| I've recently settled on the Zen Firefox flavor: It brings a lot
| of what Arc, custom Firefox themes aim for in a stable package,
| while maintaining full compatibility with all the Firefox
| extensions I use. The only issue I still experience is the
| occasional "this site only works on Chrome".
| fsflover wrote:
| > The only issue I still experience is the occasional "this
| site only works on Chrome".
|
| Perhaps you should name and shame.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Riverside.fm only works on Edge/Chrome (or at least as of
| June 2025) which is really annoying
| IlikeKitties wrote:
| People here should be much more angry at the collection of
| parasites running Mozilla, draining the foundation of money until
| Firefox finally dies with Mozilla going down right after them.
|
| They are extracting millions while consistently fucking up any
| hopes of a future for Firefox. Fuck Mozilla, Fuck those Parasites
| and fuck all the Bootlickers here making excuses for them.
| glenstein wrote:
| I do want to applaud the author for something that, on the
| internet, is one of the most difficult things, namely being able
| to think two things at the same time:
|
| >Firefox is in a bit of a mess - but, seriously, not such a bad
| mess. You're still better off with it - or one of its forks,
| because this is FOSS - than pretty much any of the alternatives.
|
| Some of the punches landed here, e.g. axing Servo, are pretty
| devastating. Others, "why not buy an adblocker" (huh? they allow
| it via extensions which has been a longstanding tradition in the
| browser space), seem like non sequiturs. But the point remains:
|
| >Like we said, don't blame the app. You're still better off with
| Firefox or a fork such as Waterfox. Chrome even snoops on you
| when in incognito mode, and as we warned you, Google removed the
| APIs ad-blocker extensions used. You still get better ad-blocking
| in Firefox.
|
| Yes, exactly! It's a Two Things Can Be True situation.
| 93po wrote:
| been a firefox diehard for over a decade. moved to librewolf
| recently because the amount of ad-infested settings and "oopsie"
| default reversions to my settings that expose me yet again to ads
| and i yet again have to turn it off is just gross to me. i
| shouldnt have to fight against software and triple check my
| settings to not see mind polluting ads or have my information
| sold/shared
| Henchman21 wrote:
| All my hopes are with Ladybird now.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| That reads dangerously close to an obituary.
| Macha wrote:
| > We can point at what we'd like to see, sure. Did you know
| there's already a special developer's edition? No web designer is
| building on Firefox first any more. We're lucky if they even test
| on it. All the functionality attached to Firefox's "Browser
| tools" sub-menu should be unceremoniously ripped out, banished to
| the developer's edition.
|
| If they're still developing the dev tools (which I'd argue they
| need to if they want any companies to support the browser), then
| what's there to gain by removing it from the regular build? I
| don't get it.
| blibble wrote:
| like most successful, supposedly focused non-profits, eventually
| the parasitical professional management class infiltrate it
|
| they do whatever is needed to increase their own compensation,
| eventually killing the host, at which point they move on
|
| the nominet drama a few years back ([1]) is one of the few cases
| where they were forcibly removed (due to its unique structure)
|
| [1]: https://openuk.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-
| Stack_Openi...
| coffeecoders wrote:
| After each Firefox install, I do:
|
| - Right click context menu cleanup - I don't need Inspect
| Accessibility Properties, Email image, Set image as desktop
| background etc. - Disable telemetry - Minimal theme - Clean up
| search engines - Disable pocket, top sites, ads, what's new,
| search suggest - Disable tab groups, container, hover preview -
| Disable recommended extensions
|
| These can all be done through config or userChrome.css.
|
| After that, I install three extensions - uBlock, skip redirect, I
| don't care about cookies.
|
| I have never cared about signing into browser or syncing
| bookmarks. All I want is a minimal browser that doesn't bother me
| on each run.
| tiberious726 wrote:
| Firefox is not fine. If you think it is, please tell me how to
| disable BASIC http auth in it. (This is a serious problem, as it
| will send passwords unencrypted over a non SSL connection, and my
| users have been trained to type their sso password into every box
| they see (I know.... Not my doing)).
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