
An Update on MDN Web Docs - weinzierl
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/08/an-update-on-mdn-web-docs/
======
javajosh
Man, of all the things Mozilla produces I would argue _MDN is their most
valuable product_ \- as in, if the money _really_ ran out, this should be the
last thing to go. I get cutting the other developer outreach programs, they
seem like a luxury, but MDN is like wikipedia for browser devs. It's totally
indispensable.

~~~
bdcravens
It may be valuable as a public good, but what's the ROI for Mozilla?

Is it valuable enough that you'd consider paying for access?

~~~
kinlan
As the lead for Chrome Developer Relations, the way I classify why it's
important is: we want the web to succeed and for people to prefer and use the
web over other closed platforms. To do that we need people to prefer the
experiences on the web. For people to prefer those experiences, the sites and
apps need to exist and and to work well, for them to exist and work well
developers need the tools and references easily accessible in one place. That
place is MDN and that's why we help contribute to it (too little it seems,
still).

~~~
hvis
As the lead for some stuff at Chrome, what's your stance on Google [ab]using
its strong market position to promote Chrome basically through all possible
channels and muscling out Firefox down to sub-10% market share? "Upgrade to
Chrome" on Google's main page irrespective of what the user's current browser
is, etc.

Are you happy with the resulting browser landscape?

------
ChrisSD
Note that MDN is a collaborative site. The members of the MDN Product Advisory
Board[0] gives an idea of the organisations involved in maintaining it. It's
bigger than Mozilla. See also the 2017 announcement[1].

[0]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Adv...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/MDN/MDN_Product_Advisory_Board/Members)

[1]: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-
micr...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-microsoft-
google-w3c-samsung-together-create-cross-browser-documentation-mdn/)

~~~
themodelplumber
Interesting. So, should a new API standard emerge, it sounds like we can still
expect MDN to reflect that in its docs as it has in the past?

~~~
ChrisSD
Anyone can contribute. A big part of Mozilla's job is maintaining and
improving the tools and process to do so. That said, I wouldn't want to
downplay the contributions to the text made by Mozilla.

------
tehbeard
> The core engineering team will continue to run the MDN site

So is that basically saying we're adding more work to a probably demoralized
and overworked team?

My knowledge of Mozilla's internal hierarchy is admittedly quite sparse,
what's the ratio of "beancounter" to "bread maker" with the recent cuts?

~~~
ysavir
> So is that basically saying we're adding more work to a probably demoralized
> and overworked team?

I don't think this changes their workload. The core engineering team is likely
already responsible for technical improvements to and maintaining MDN.

~~~
kinlan
Its: as I understand it that's it's now just two engineers and one tech
writer.

------
dflock
There are two existing ways to pay for MDN, that are so well hidden that I
only just found out about them:

\- Sponsor for $ a month: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/payments/](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/payments/)

\- Buy Merch: [https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mdn-
store/](https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mdn-store/)

~~~
freshqueeze
I bet these pay for an exec's Tesla.

~~~
sebazzz
That is also true for any non-profit you donate for. The Cancer non-profit,
the Xyz decease non-profit.

That is not strange. Non-profits require good leadership - and that comes with
a salary.

------
Santosh83
Who will add updated content without the tech writers? It is probably too much
to expect the core engineering team to also double as the doc writing team in
the longer term.

Sounds like they're planning to basically hand MDN over to either an
independent foundation or consortium setup just for it, or let MS/Google take
stewardship (Apple prominently but perhaps unsurprisingly missing from the
Advisory board)...

Whatever happens I hope the docs are not left to languish outdated and
progressively less useful. MDN is literally the wikipedia for web developers.

I also don't see why efforts can't be made to monetise the site with
contextual ads. Hosting reasonable ads is better than simply dying off for
lack of self sufficiency. If the issue is because of ties to the non-profit
foundation then changes can be made...

~~~
kinlan
My team (Chrome DevRel) is a member of the PAB, I'm looking forward to this
week's notes being released in public. We're looking at many options to help
secure the future for MDN with Mozilla.

In terms of who will add content, we still have our tech writers contributing.
But the current volume of content across the site will be lower.

My personal opinion is that whilst MDN has an amazing community of people who
write for it, it needs a permanent staff to ensure the reference materials are
suitable for developers. I want our team to work out how we can get back to
having a permanent staff to support MDN and have that staff be agnostic to
browser vendors.

------
charlieflowers
Maybe MDN should launch a KickStarter every year: "OK, we're up for annual
renewal. If we meet our goal of $xx,xxx, MDN will stay around for another
year. If not, we'll shut down our offices, lay off our staff, and just publish
a static mirror of the current content."

------
gilrain
An interesting solution could be to make MDN a paid site, as many suggest, but
also offer it to libraries and universities for a token fee. The process is
already in place and successful for scientific journals and encyclopedias, so
the friction should be low.

Then, the paid version would be the most convenient and attractive to anyone
with $5 a month to spare, but everyone else could get access through the
nearest library or university, a one-time hassle with equivalent access after.

As a bonus it raises awareness and usage of libraries, which is good for
everyone.

------
jacekm
I think it would be ok if they were charging for _some_ of the content. Docs
could stay free and they could charge for development courses. They could even
make introductory courses free and charge only for advanced topics.

Another example - browser compatibility matrices. They could be free just for
the current versions of browsers and you'd have to pay for historical and
future (i.e. development versions) data.

I think it's possible to find a balance between making the essential knowledge
free so newcomers can join the industry and charging those who already have a
source of income. I know that 5$/month can still be too much in some parts of
the world, but this could be addressed with regional pricing.

~~~
everybodyknows
Yes, "freemium" \-- that is the way. Another piece of content that could be
premium at are the examples. Professional editors are necessary, to impose
structure and standards, but as Stack overflow shows, technical knowledge
contributions can be gotten for free with a bit of gamification.

------
aikah
Google and Microsoft? You want to look good after all the stuff you pulled
lately? Hire MDN maintainers and host MDN. Easy karma.

~~~
dmitriid
Google is slowly trying to supplant that with
[https://web.dev/](https://web.dev/) They couldn't care less if MDN lived, and
would be quite happy if MDN (and Mozilla) died, no one would challenge them on
standards and technologies etc.

~~~
kinlan
As the owner of web.dev we're absolutely not doing that. We're working with
Mozilla and the PAB right now on what's need to support the future of MDN.

~~~
kinlan
To add, we already contribute a lot to MDN.

------
picodguyo
Sounds like they are leaving the site up but not writing new content? That
could actually be worse than just taking the site down as it will quickly grow
outdated.

~~~
unilynx
Taking it down would leave us with w3schools, arguably a lot worse situation
than letting the current MDN grow stale..

~~~
rezonant
Incidentally, I bet a lot of us would pay to have w3schools taken down

~~~
gvjddbnvdrbv
Why? In recent years w3schools has been a valuable resource...

------
ary
> The other areas we have had to scale back on staffing and programs include:
> Mozilla developer programs, developer events and advocacy, and our MDN tech
> writing.

> We recognize that our tech writing staff drive a great deal of value to MDN
> users, as do partner contributions to the content. So we are working on a
> plan to keep the content up to date.

The stated rationale for the "re-org" (read, layoffs) was to shore up the
financials and explore new revenue opportunities. Here is a novel idea that I
will provide at no cost:

 _Charge for access to MDN_ , structure the legal particulars so that revenue
goes to pay the tech writing staff, covers operating costs, and provides the
excess to the Mozilla Foundation. Use the resulting goodwill and attention as
a lead generation mechanism for whatever other projects Mozilla tries to
create and charge for.

Market validation you say? People won't pay for documentation you say? The
sole developer of the macOS app Dash[1] makes a fairly decent living selling
an app that merely allows you to _search freely available documentation
offline_. MDN has real value that people, myself included, will pay for. Just
this week I have referred to MDN documentation at least a couple of hundred
times.

Charge. Money. For. MDN.

And pay the tech writers.

[1] [https://kapeli.com/dash](https://kapeli.com/dash)

Edit: wording correction.

~~~
kissgyorgy
This is the exact comment I wanted to make. I rarely use MDN, but would pay
for it anyway, because when I need it, I really need it and there is no high
quality alternative.

~~~
dflock
I just found out that you _can_ directly pay for MDN:

\- Sponsor for $ a month: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/payments/](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/payments/)

\- Buy Merch: [https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mdn-
store/](https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mdn-store/)

~~~
ary
Unfortunately it doesn't look like the sponsorship program is active anymore.
All links 404.

------
Rastonbury
Is basically a wiki right? Anyone can contribute? What proportion is written
by paid staff and what proportion is written by public contributors?

It seems like it suffers from a free rider problem which isn't at all helped
by the lack of focus (and funds) in Mozilla's initiatives. I understand that
people are sick of corporate greed, out-of-touch execs, etc but I don't blame
Mozilla for deprioritizing it when they literally are running out of money to
pay staff (this is a whole other issue in and of itself).

It should be spun out with formalised its goals then go full wikipedia with
annual fundraising or donation drives. If this fails they should look to be
subsumed under similar non-profit foundations who can afford to maintain it.
The free rider problem is not easily solved and if it isn't I expect MDN to
decay, there isn't away around this.

------
cft
This corporate "moving forward" newspeak sounds ominous.

~~~
freshsqueeze
Their layoff post began with "fighting systemic racism" and the coronavirus
and the future of the Internet or something completely irrelevant.

------
aerovistae
This is a sad post. The MDN web docs are the internet handbook for javascript,
html, and css, besides other browser technologies. this needs to be enshrined
and freed of financial constraint. we are kind of failing.

------
spurgu
What a fucking croc of inter-corporate motherfucking bullshit.

------
gregors
Having to pay for documentation to build on your platform would seem like yet
one more road block to having people use your platform.

------
coldtea
> _Our Co-Founder and CEO Mitchell Baker outlines the reasons why here._

Why is that lawyer still there after 20 years of terrible decisions?

------
andrew_
Mozilla putting a hold on DevRel investment is an industry bellwether. I'd be
concerned if I held that position in tech.

~~~
kinlan
Biased opinion. It depends if you've articulated the value of the function
well. I do fear that if it's seen as a marketing function then it's an easy
place to start tightening belts. If it's integrated into the product team then
it's harder, imo.

------
anotherevan
[https://patchfriday.com/92/](https://patchfriday.com/92/)

------
rammy1234
They need to make MDN a paid site for developers. Can work with organizations
to get access to MDN content. They can accept donations or a small yearly
fees. If organizations can sponser can also contribute will be a nice addition
so it can keep fees minimal to individual developers

~~~
Avtomatk
I totally disagree with making MDN a paid site ... Are developers supposed to
pay to develop? ridiculous .... MDN should be kept open to contributions and
donations but putting up a paywall only makes things worse for all of science
in general.

~~~
Permit
> Are developers supposed to pay to develop? ridiculous

No. Developers are supposed to pay to access the hard work of the technical
writers and developers who maintain MDN. I don't understand why you think it's
self-evident that this work should be free.

Here is a longer explanation by the person who created the precursor to MDN:
[https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2020/08/i_love_mdn_...](https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2020/08/i_love_mdn_or_t.html)

Here is the HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159244)

~~~
kinlan
The W3C has many wealthy companies as participants, they should support it
more too given that each and everyone benefits from MDN being the central
place for all browser API reference.

I lead of Chrome DevRel team and we contribute with tech writer support and
work on the PAB, it appears too little still but there are many web standards
aligned companies that could provide more support because they directly
benefit from MDNs existence.

~~~
Avtomatk
Exactly... I think that each browser should be responsible for offering its
own documentation on its web APIs (after all, documentation is what allows
developers to develop on your platform)... This is not the case, And although
some browsers offer technical help (like your team), I think that all browsers
should offer both technical and monetary help to MDN, or else, each browser
finances its own documentation repository.

------
zelly
Does anyone know why the favicon for this site is the emblem of the PLA and
the Red Army?

~~~
cxr
[https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-
hi...](https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/10/they-live-and-the-secret-history-of-
the-mozilla-logo/)

~~~
bob1029
Please note that this link's content was apparently replaced with offensive
imagery.

~~~
Karunamon
That happens any time jwz is linked from HN. You have to strip the referrer or
else you get that image.

------
breezest
Isn't it better for Mozilla to "sell" some projects to other tech or
foundations rather than keeping them internally and let them wither away?

------
codezero
I wish a wealthy SV person would just buy up Mozilla and get rid of its
leadership, how many times have we heard how bad it is?

~~~
ryanianian
And ruin any semblance of autonomy and not being beholden to the whims of the
same kinds of people who add undeletable apps and spyware to new phones and
laptops?

~~~
rndgermandude
The following is my personal impression of the situation, which I base on
following everything Mozilla closely for almost as long as it existed,
particularly closely in the most recent years. I also have seen both Baker and
Surman speak - as well as Eich and Beard many others of note - both in public
talks but also in smaller, more private conversations. And I saw a lot of
internal mozilla discussion over the years and talked to quite a few people.
While I was active in the mozilla project for some time, I have never been on
their payroll, neither as an employee or contractor.

Right now mozilla is very much beholden to the whims of the their CEO and has
been for a while (when interim-CEO and before that when Mozilla Foundation
chairwoman). Baker - additionally to being the current CEO of the Corporation
- chairs the board of directors of both, the Foundation and the Corporation.
The current Mozilla Foundation president, Surman, is her long-time yes-man, as
well. Chris Beard, former CEO taking reign after Eich's departure - was a
Baker yes-man as well.

She managed to surround herself with an army of yes-people. She effectively is
a "(benevolent) dictator" like a SV billionaire would be, except the
billionaire probably wouldn't spend so much mozilla money on themself and
their cronies.

To be fair, Baker played an instrumental role in getting Netscape to release
the initial code and setting up the Foundation, and was a good steward of the
Foundation for a long time.

She played a bit of a role in what started the downfall of mozilla (peaking at
burning stacks on money on FirefoxOS; tho some good work came out of it that,
it's still a huge net negative), but it was mostly other people who were a
little bit... too enthusiastic about what mozilla can achieve, spreading
resources thin.

After the failure of FirefoxOS, mozilla leadership got scared and clueless
what to do next, and looked for Baker to provide leadership.

But Baker lacks the "product" vision (Firefox had to come from other people as
a hobby project, even FirefoxOS started out that way), is more interested in
pet projects and dominating them. E.g. the way the CoC was handled; I am not
saying a CoC in itself is bad, but the way it was handled and communicated
caused major rifts between the leadership and the volunteers, leading to a lot
of especially the most experienced "valuable" volunteers shrugging and
resigning and changing focus to other projects.

The Eich (and gerv) situation - which wasn't helped by Baker, to say it
politely - furthermore created a talent vacuum at the top of the Corporation,
and eventually was "resolved" by filing it with unsuited candidates -
specifically Baker's yes-man Chris Beard, who was too much of a marketing guy
and figurehead to be an effective leader in the CEO role. (I am not commenting
on, analyzing or defending Eich's reasons for donating to Prop 8, which made
same-sex marriages illegal in California until it was reversed by a court
later)

Since the ousting of Eich, and even a little before that, it appears to me,
the culture turned from a more or less productive "togetherness" (with it's
share of clashes, of course) to an outright cold war between the Baker camp
and many of the actual tech staff (and few remaining tech-centered managers).
A lot of very good, very idealistic "true believer" people lost their faith
and took the golden parachute to the FAANGS, something I would have never
expected from a lot of them a few years earlier. Of course, priorities and
opinions shift over the course of a life, and not everybody who left did so
because of the situation at mozilla - some surely did to seek new challenges
or advance their career - but it's still staggering to see the exodus of long-
time believers, employees and volunteers alike, over the least 5 or so years.

I remember sitting in the audience of the 2013 mozilla summit (Eich hadn't
left mozilla yet, of course) and seeing the constant stream of the leadership
talk about "changing the world", "1 million mozillians", proclaiming how
"FirefoxOS and BrowserID" will empower users, and all that moonshooting
marketing stuff. I distinctly remember the negative impression Baker and Pete
Scanlon left me with. And I remember the extreme overuse of the word
"Awesome". I remember looking left and right to my fellow (mostly volunteer)
pals, looking as confused as me, and that one Baker-friend (forgot her name)
sitting rather close to us in the audience, constantly whooing and howling in
approval. I remember talking to a lot of (new to me) people from all things
mozilla during the summit, and most everybody was as confused as me, and far
from being as excited and optimistic as the leadership had been, and very
skeptical about the use of resources and leadership priorities. It was not my
first big mozilla event, but it was the first one which had a Kafkaesque
"corporate" "management decided" feel to it, instead of a community networking
event of a diverse community working towards a common goal.

------
freshsqueeze
Google and Microsoft can just take over.

[https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals)
from Google, at least they have a lot of experience building valuable user-
facing at-scale sites.

Microsoft has done more relevant open source and developer stuff in the last
half decade.

~~~
kinlan
Chrome DevRel lead here. We don't want that. We want to support MDN and for it
to remain browser agnostic.

------
spurgu
> We recognize that our tech writing staff drive a great deal of value to MDN
> users, as do partner contributions to the content. So we are working on a
> plan to keep the content up to date.

So fucking work out that plan before this announcement. Corporate culture
makes me wanna vomit.

~~~
IshKebab
That's not really feasible. For very obvious reasons you can't tell every
employee in a company "we're going to have to fire loads of you in a couple of
months; please work out a plan to deal with that".

------
zaphirplane
One thing that surprised me was naming the CEO as co-founder.

------
ggoo
This is sad to see.

------
computerex
Mozilla is digging its own grave.

------
Arubis
A pretty familiar HN trope is calling in the Tech Billionaire Ex Machina to
solve the world's problems. Most of the time this feels like myopic hero-
worship ("why doesn't Zuck just fix free speech?"). In this case, though, that
would actually be _relevant_. Individuals or businesses with excess wealth
that build value using the web would be well justified in working with MDN to
ensure these docs stay alive and fresh.

~~~
oscargrouch
> A pretty familiar HN trope is calling in the Tech Billionaire Ex Machina to
> solve the world's problems

Love how you creatively defined this concept. This is a recurring pattern i´ve
seen particularly in tech, and its not just over billionaires..

In psychoanalysis theres this great lacanian concept of "Big Other".

Once i understood this concept better, its much easier to spot my own flaws on
counting on the Big Other (that is actually some illusory tendency of our
minds to give us some comfort and help us to cope with the brutal reality).

You can see a great fictional tale about this concept embodied in "The Wizard
of Oz".

Once we understand that the big other we were always counting on is in fact
pretty much "smoke and mirrors", and that the big other (unlike in the wizard
tale) doesnt really care, its a sour wake up call, but one that makes you grow
up a little.

And if you not only believe in Big Others, but also assume they have a good
willing nature, especially the ones that followed a road paved with gold, i
have a bridge to sell to you..

------
alwahi
f

------
bosswipe
The still unknown mystery is why the layoffs were necessary when Google signed
the same contract that they have signed before.

Mozilla corp-speak is so undecipherable that they leave a wake of panicked
confusion with every one of these posts.

------
itwy
They mention "MDN tech writing" as the last item how ridiculous.

I just dropped Firefox. My way of punishing Mozilla for this stupid decision.

