
Goodbye Mozilla - nachtigall
http://chrislord.net/index.php/2017/06/28/goodbye-mozilla/
======
tsunamifury
Mozilla was never able to leverage its success in the desktop browser market
into a successive platform story that evolved into mobile and beyond. They
realized this too late, and then their extreme over-correction was to build a
new mobile operating system. However an open-source OS already existed in the
market with AOSP so FirefoxOS needed to try to thread a convoluted set of
needles to justify its existence. It actually was a confusing set of Android
Browser web-apps mixed with an OS for new devices -- a contradictory strategy
that they could never resolve.

The worst part of the current tech-environment is that companies are dead
years before they even know it. The next platform is already tearing apart
your current one, while its in its infancy. And the entrenched players in the
next space will be incredibly hard to unseat.

By the time you recognize the threat, attempt to turn the ship to respond, you
are already deep down aware that there is very little chance of a happy
ending. This results in convoluted late-stage product strategies that have 3+
directions since management knows no single one of them are viable.

This is a deeply uncomfortable truth that keeps me up at night.

~~~
Touche
Thank you for stating this. What people forget is that the early Android
Browser was really, really bad. Chrome helped considerably, but it wasn't
released until several years into Android. Also remember that Chrome was not
preinstalled when it came out; you had to download it.

Firefox had an opportunity to become what Chrome for Android eventually
became; the better 3rd party browser. But they made 2 critical mistakes (as an
outside observer):

1\. They didn't take mobile (and specifically Android) very seriously at
first. Fennec felt like a side-project at best. 2\. XUL didn't work very well
on Android, and it took them a long time to make the switch to native.

I believe things could have turned out very differently had they done the
right thing from the beginning.

~~~
lucideer
I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more with this comment. I don't have stats
on Firefox or Chrome (or even the native browser) usage to hand, but I really
think these are largely irrelevant.

1) Most people experience most of the "web" on their phones via a non-browser.
This may be by clicking on a shared link within the FB/Twitter/WhatEver app
and seeing it inside an integrated WebView, or it may simply be viewing
content normally available via the web through the lens of an app presenting
the "same" content "natively". Either way, the point here is that browsers
have had less of a role.

2) For a comparatively new OS (Android is ~10 years old, modern Desktop OSes
being 30+) people browsing the web directly are going to stick to the default.
They're going to downloads apps for things their phone doesn't already do; for
webpages, it already has an app for that. Android Browser is the "Blue e"
here.

The above may not be the case for the typical HN crowd, but it's quite naïve
to think the majority want and act the same as we.

I am hopeful that this trend is changing - that slowly dedicated mobile web
browsers are becoming a more viable option - but certainly this was not the
case when Fennec was launched. The best we could hope for was for
Chrome/Safari to gain ground over "apps". Mozilla's offerings never stood any
real chance of being super successful in this early climate and tbh FirefoxOS,
ill fated as it was, was probably the least worst chance they had to do so.

~~~
ams6110
I know a few people in addition to myself who run Firefox on Android so they
can use uBlock.

~~~
616c
You can use uBlock on FF for Android!?

I really want uBlock and uMatrix like on the desktop. When I tried from within
FF on my phone neither were supported.

~~~
wooger
Were you using the iPhone version? That, like all alternative browsers on iOS,
is just a shell around Safari, not the real thing.

~~~
digi_owl
Similarly, the recently unveiled Firefox Focus is a wrapper around webview.

We seem to be heading towards a browser engine monoculture, and i am not sure
i like that even if said engine is open source.

------
mehrdada
To me, Mozilla jumped the shark when they did not take a principled stance
against web DRM. At that point, to me, their raison d'être of advocating the
open web was meaningless, since today, in contrast of when they started, the
most popular browser is an open-source product anyway and there is a
relatively healthy ecosystem of decentralized power across commercial
companies in place to check and balance each other. The place where it breaks
and a non-profit model would have been helpful was pushing back on DRM, but
Mozilla chose to play along sacrificing its principles for popularity as any
other commercial entity would.

This is why people like Richard Stallman who don't compromise on principles
are critically important.

~~~
kibwen
Mozilla did take a principled stand against DRM. It proposed an alternative to
EME that involved watermarking content rather than client-side DRM. But the
combination of Google, Microsoft, and Netflix was enough to win over the W3C,
and by the time that the developer community at large finally got up in arms
about it (late 2012, early 2013) it was already too late to change course; by
that point, Chrome was already shipping EME for use with Netflix. The tragedy
is that Mozilla did try, and nobody cared. And, frankly, even if they had
cared, I don't think any amount of dev outrage would actually counter such an
influential industry consortium (but maybe I'm just cynical).

~~~
gsnedders
> And, frankly, even if they had cared, I don't think any amount of dev
> outrage would actually counter such an influential industry consortium (but
> maybe I'm just cynical).

I don't think the industry consortium is really even that relevant here; it
was proposed to the W3C in Feb 2012 jointly by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix,
and already had a fairly well fleshed out proposal. It was shipped in Chrome,
with Netflix supporting it, little over a year later. I'm fairly certain those
three companies would've gone ahead with it _regardless_ of what the outcome
of the W3C proposal was.

------
Splendor
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://chrislord.net/index.php/2017/06/28/goodbye-
mozilla/)

~~~
greggyb
Also, this delightful add-on for Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/wayback-machi...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/?src=search)

~~~
bmn__
Why only one cache when you can have several?

[https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages-
isu...](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages-isup-edition)

------
i80and
The author's remarks about FirefoxOS actually mirror my own perspective as an
outsider. It was a _beautifully_ -made product that felt mismanaged and
somewhat unfocused. It was definitely prematurely killed just as it was coming
into its own.

I'm still sore about that.

~~~
wwayer
I'm sore about it too. I had one of the original phones and I loved it. It was
simple and elegant. The author mentioned something about spending too much
time copying Android. That was definitely misplaced effort. Why not spend the
time making something original? IMO, Mozilla spends too much time in general
copying others. Look at the Firefox browser. It seems more and more like
Chrome every release. I much preferred the original Firefox.

~~~
erikpukinskis
They should've just made the phone boot directly into the browser, and then
focus all energy on making the browser better. One app. No screens, widgets,
dialer, anything. Add all of that as open web APIs as users demand them. Don't
bother with UI beyond proof of concept, let the web optimize it.

You sacrifice the best things about a web OS if you wrap it in a traditional
OS UI.

~~~
eropple
The implication that "a web OS" is what people want raises some question
marks. I use the web a lot on my phone--for reading documents. I use
applications for interacting with services because, still (and this is years
after FirefoxOS), the experience of using a mobile web app, especially for
integrating with hardware, is awful. There may be something of a chicken-and-
the-egg problem here, but at the same time--if it's awful, it's awful, and so
going towards real applications is the only thing that makes sense unless you
want to make devices that are awful. Nobody wants to make devices that are
awful.

Letting "the web optimize" your _dialer_ , though, is perhaps the most
dangerous idea I've heard in a while. Core applications under no circumstances
should be _optimized by the web_ because that's how you get malware
masquerading as those core applications. No bueno.

~~~
taneq
> the experience of using a mobile web app, especially for integrating with
> hardware, is awful

I think the implication is that if FirefoxOS had focused on making it _not_
awful, they would have done really well.

It'd be awesome to have a phone for which app development is _all_ done in
HTML / CSS / JS while still remaining fast and efficient.

~~~
eropple
Lots of things would be awesome. You have to have something that is not awful
to get people invested in pulling something off.

------
Santosh83
Mozilla isn't Google or Microsoft. They can't afford to spread their focus,
and resources, so widely that effective focus on any particular area is
degraded.

~~~
DannyBee
Google and Microsoft can't afford to do this either :)

~~~
toxican
Clearly they can. Google especially likes throwing stuff at the wall and
seeing what sticks. Whether or not their brand can afford the failures, is
another question, but from a financial standpoint, they're much better
equipped to weather a failure than Mozilla is.

~~~
DannyBee
" Clearly they can. Google especially likes throwing stuff at the wall and
seeing what sticks."

Having worked there for 11 1/2 years, i can tell you this is not really
accurate (it was until ~2007).

It certainly may _appear_ that way to the outside, however :)

~~~
nostrademons
I'd put the start date of the "throw stuff against the wall and see what
sticks" era at 2004 and end date in late 2010 or early 2011, basically when
Larry became CEO again. I started in 2009 and we were still very much
encouraged to throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. It continued, for
me personally, until early 2013, but I suspect that company policy changed
around early 2011 and it just took 2 years for the memo to filter down my
management chain. (I worked in one of the oldest and most experimental
departments, Search, and a bunch of my management chain was pre-IPO and so had
a lot of latitude with what they did.)

------
mabynogy
Mozilla failed projects as an argument is not really valid as the others (like
Google or Microsoft) fail a lot too.

------
digi_owl
As an aside, I have found Firefox on Android to work fine as long as the
device is relatively pristine. But quickly deteriorates in performance and
responsiveness as internal storage fills up etc. This while webit/blink based
browsers seems to behave fine under the same conditions.

~~~
wooger
If you think Firefox on Android is fine, please go to
[http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/](http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/)
and let us know how it does.

Safari on my near 2 year old iPhone 6s scores 89.

Mobile devices are approaching desktop performance for web, but I have never
seen anything approaching this from Firefox on Android.

------
pm90
I can empathize with the author on wanting to leave when not feeling like an
essential part of a team. Personally, I like coding and designing, and
definitely I like being part of a team and working towards a goal. But for all
the dev managers out there: try to inoculate some form of ownership, so that
your devs feel a sense of belonging.

Its not so much that I actively seek to leave when that happens as much as I
become more receptive to other opportunities. And recruiters and other
companies are very good at luring candidates, so it all adds up.

------
jancsika
Any info on Mozilla's speech recognition efforts?

Is the aim to do the actual work on the client?

Slightly related if anyone knows: is speech recognition a priority for the
folks at Gnu/FSF?

~~~
fabrice_d
The speech recognition effort span a few projects:

\- [https://voice.mozilla.org/](https://voice.mozilla.org/) to collect
training data.

\- an implementation of the DeepSpeech algorithm, with a goal of running
inference client side.
([https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech](https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech))

------
gcb0
wow, the are way too many toxic teams at Mozilla :(

I'd expect the company to be pretty democratic. but every month you hear a
story like that.

specially shocking: "What business a not-for-profit company, based primarily
on doing open-source, web-based engineering has making physical, commercial
products is questionable, but it failed long before that could be considered."
...and that was right after their failed mobile phone line failure!

~~~
owebmaster
I guess one of the problems of Mozilla (as a not-for-profit company and with
current trend on social media behavior) is that every single person working
there feels entitled to criticize the strategy, just like what happens today
in polítics.

~~~
daenney
Why shouldn't they criticize strategy? Do you expect people to just blindly
follow and abide by what the company's leadership sets out to do?

~~~
rockdoe
Mozilla people for some reason feel they can criticize their own company
_publicly_.

That just isn't done elsewhere. You criticize internally and form a front to
the outside. Meanwhile, Mozilla employees cry for their own CEO to be fired.
That's just insane and wouldn't fly elsewhere.

~~~
geoelectric
Mozilla has never run under the model of a traditional closed-walls
corporation, at least with respect to personnel.

It's first and foremost an open-source community, and some people are paid by
Mozilla Corp. or Mozilla Foundation to dedicate their entire working time to
that community. Allowing open dissent has always been one of the community
values, so long as it's otherwise respectful.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/governance/policies/part...](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/governance/policies/participation/)

At least as of a couple of years ago when I left, there were no internal
guidelines above and beyond these.

Socially, of course, you could shoot yourself in the foot just like anywhere
else, but we did enjoy a great deal of intellectual freedom and were expected
to be vocal if we thought something should be different. I can't possibly view
that as a bad thing.

The Eich situation was and still is touchy, and I won't go much deeper into
that other than to echo Fabrice's comment that it was originally driven by a
handful of Foundation employees that weren't part of his company (Mozilla
Corporation is a different corporate entity than Mozilla Foundation) and to
add that within Corp there was a diverse range of opinions, both privately and
publicly expressed.

As for "wouldn't fly elsewhere," there's never been any particular ethical
reason why an employee shouldn't publicly speak their mind short of spilling
trade secrets. The reason has always been fear of being fired. Influence via
fear has some pretty sharp downsides, and I'm happy to see the current trend
of people submitting to it less.

~~~
irrational
>I'm happy to see the current trend of people submitting to it less.

How so? I think most people have gotten the memo that if you want to keep your
job you will toe the line and only say things that couldn't possibly offend
anyone. Not only did influence via fear win, it has become so entrenched that
it isn't even visible anymore.

~~~
rockdoe
Blurring the line between internal and external discussion in this is silly.
You should be free to speak up internally and having fear there is
detrimental.

But hanging internal disagreements out for the competition? Stupid. There's no
upsides.

 _there 's never been any particular ethical reason why an employee shouldn't
publicly speak their mind short of spilling trade secrets_

It's not about ethics. The public perception of a company matters. Hanging
internal disagreements out there does _not_ help so you're just hurting
yourself.

~~~
BrendanEich
Hi, I was harsh on your other reply -- too harsh. Sorry.

Here, I totally agree. Mozilla grew a dysfunctional pattern of participants
(more likely to be employees than not in my experience, but Mozilla hired most
of the active contributors) stabbing projects, individuals, and other sub-
groups in the back, under cover of "being open". This was inevitable given the
framing in the "open vs. transparent" document:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Working_open#Open_vs._Transparent](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Working_open#Open_vs._Transparent)

Even now, Mozilla punches itself in the face too often, with punchers (and
sometimes punchees!) claiming it's all for the best.

Taking care to give colleagues a chance to interact over a nascent or less-
than-clear technical controversy, before blogging or tweeting, is not being
"closed". It is standard peer review with scalability via layers-of-the-onion
socializing combined with the "hermeneutic spiral".

Shooting first, fast, and in public in a large community with competitors and
press listening is "open" in a vacuous sense, but it has the downside risks
you note.

