Firefox

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jwz: Mozilla is an advertising company now (www.jwz.org)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Also from Jamie Zawinski yesterday: Mozilla's Original Sin

Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a company shipping products, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web.

Those are different things and are very much in conflict. They picked one. They picked the wrong one.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I try my best to keep calm and judge things fairly and rationally but, truth is, you get kinda tired of seeing so many iffy-maybe-alright news about Mozilla.

Inline edit: not even a week later, Teixeira v. Moz. Why, Mozilla? Liking you shouldn't be this complicated.

My fear is that by the time "something happens" to Firefox, it'll be something that was entirely avoidable if only we had acted sooner. I'm always wondering if I'm at the point I should be acting.

I'm still salty about their previous CEO, Mitchell Baker, I believe, getting bigger bonuses while Firefox market share fell (and layoffs happened, but we lack details to understand those properly).
I'm unconvinced that, in a world where the percentage of people using an adblocker is rising, they'll find a way to change people's minds and look at ads, even if they are perfectly, technomagically privacy preserving.
I'm unconvinced that owning Firefox, which puts uBlock as a front-and-center extension, and Anonym, an adtech company, will not create a conflict of interest—just like what happened to Google.

For the record, this is my first time commenting on this and I'm also deeply bothered by "reactionary nerds" (everyone switch to librewolf!!), but I understand the sentiment. Hope that added some perspective.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I definitely think it's not ideal and there's room for improvement and social pressure for Mozilla to change its priorities, but I also don't think it's any reason to abandon the project. The reality is that a modern web browser is too massive of a project for a non-commercial entity to reasonably develop and keep updated, and Mozilla is the only such entity that's even remotely got its heart in the right place.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, we're fully in agreement. I'm not arguing in favor of abandoning Firefox or Mozilla at all. I'm just saying frustration and anxiety are to be expected sometimes. Note that I'm not excusing rudeness or the like.

Re: the burden of developing a modern browser, I wonder what librewolf evangelists think would happen to the project, if Firefox development by Mozilla were to fall due to any reason. To my view, the forks only exist because Firefox still does. After all, if managing an entire browser was possible with their resources, they wouldn't need to fork one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

At best, another Pale Moon is what would happen. They've been maintaining their own hard fork of Gecko by themselves since 2016. They clearly have people capable of maintaining a browser engine, though perhaps not quite enough of them. If Firefox were to die, perhaps joining up with Goanna would be the smart move.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

if only we had acted sooner

Doing what, exactly? Create a fork? Done. Fill their feedback queue with endless screeching about how everything is dooooooom? Done, 10x over. Use another browser instead, say, Chrome? That's what virtually everyone did, yes.=

Plus shouldn't this on paper be positive news? Mozilla can, if they run Anonym well enough, be independent of other ad networks. Run their own. Which in turn means they can control the data and where it's stored, an important issue with third-party ad networks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Didn't think I had to say it explicitly. As far as influencing Mozilla's course, I don't believe those to be very helpful methods. A fork may be helpful, but it highly depends on the developer(s). I argue against the second one all the time. Third is laughably counterproductive.

Mozilla is capable of responding to (esp. proper) feedback. For example, regardless of what you think about the subject, the community sent a pretty clear message when they started accepting cryptocurrency donations, which I'm sure they're still keeping in mind to this day.

Point being, engaging with them is one thing that helps and I can do just fine. No need for "endless doom screeching."

Re: positive news. Yes, on paper it can. We'll see how it turns out in reality. I've explained why I'm not immediately into it, though your comment seems to ignore that part of mine. I do want it to work out though, if for no other reason than because what's done is done and ultimately, I just want Firefox to thrive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I think Mozilla needs some fresh faces. They lack a vision and are just flailing around.