
Mozilla's Gary Kovacs to step down as CEO - arturadib
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/04/10/gearing-up-for-the-next-chapter/
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napoleoncomplex
Whoever takes charge, I hope he/she keeps Mozilla going in the same direction
it has been in the recent past, because the work coming out of that company
has been nothing short of amazing in my opinion.

Basically, Mozilla, don't change, you're awesome.

~~~
btipling
Mozilla's "phoenix" legacy is alive and well. I have been very skeptical of
Mozilla even very recently as Firefox's many performance problems seemed
insurmountable. But here I am after many years of using Chrome typing in this
box using Firefox. I also hope they don't change direction. They're on fire
and rising once again.

~~~
bmj
Agreed. I've noticed some rather nice performance improvements over the last
six months, and, like you, I've switched back to FF from Chrome.

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hollerith
I'm guessing the computer you're running FF on has a solid-state drive;
amiright ?

added: my reason for asking is that I run FF (release update channel) and I
genuinely wonder whether it would be more responsive if it weren't for my slow
hard drive. (in particular, I am hypothesizing that every time I visit a new
page, its URL gets committed to disk.) was not trying to slam FF; please don't
downvote me!

~~~
btipling
It's more than performance, they've also picked up must have features like
opening up just closed tabs (cmd+shift+t), and cmd+9 to go to last tab,
private windows (used to be all of firefox went private), quick updates.

~~~
mirzmaster
Reopening a closed tab via Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+T has been a longtime feature of
Firefox, since at least early 2007.

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btipling
Oh, whoops. Thanks for correcting me!

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lifeisstillgood
I gotta agree with napoleoncomplex - Mozilla has truly hit its stride in
recent years and for my money is an example of the corporation of tomorrow -
code literate and transparent, yet still kicking arse and taking names

Edit: even corporations of tomorrow will not be immune to politics it seems -
rereading the post and blog makes it sound much more like a Eich/Baker coup
than a well planned transition. It will be very odd to have him stay on the
board - two ex-CEOs on your board makes for a lot of looking up not down for
the next one

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stephen
Perhaps I'm overly skeptical, but I have a hard time envisioning them as a
"corporation of tomorrow" when, AFAIK/naively assume, they exist (as a
corporation that can pay salaries) merely because Google dumps $x00 millions
into their lap every year.

To me, this is less "how companies of tomorrow can run", and more like a bunch
of techies who hit the jackpot and so can have fun building whatever
technology they want.

(Which is awesome, I'm just saying I think Mozilla has a pretty unique
situation.)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Unique now, commonplace one day.

I really think we are seeing a shift in organisations - one comparable to that
experienced after the in enticing of printing press in 1451. Europe went from
a literacy rate of 2% to one of 20+ in a hundred years, and suddenly the
trading companies and churches and governments were staffed with people who
could read and write - and that changed everything. Literate companies out
competed the hell of their illiterate counterparts. And the renanissance saw
new forms of company, new trading horizons, enabled in part thanks to, well,
letters.

Mozilla is an example of this new company - it is staffed by the code-literate
and it is out-competing Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft and holding its own against
google/chrome/android who are themselves arguably built of the same DNA

Code literacy throughout the company is important but it then demands other
things - remote working is probably the biggest thing - it does enable hiring
the best in the world, yes, but it makes transparency of decision making so
much more natural that it will most likely become a default.

I think we shall see companies be I ing more open in their working practises,
in their internal processes and probably in their balance sheets.

For the best part of a generation _at least_ code literate people are going to
be in massive demand as companies like Mozilla show that coding is a massive
force multiplier for any company in any industry. And that is not merely going
to be higher wages - when the force multiplier is big enough it will simply
reshape the corporation around itself.

Mozilla does amusingly also show that the politics of human relations will
never go away, but there is a elephant in the room now, and it's not going
away till long after we retire - and coping with the impact of that elephant
will be the defining characteristic of the next twenty years of organisational
and intentstional change.

Software is not eating the world like tigers do - it is eating the world like
oceans erode cliffs - re shaping the shoreline and the tides.

~~~
starmole
I really like your Utopia but it is missing many things in my opinion. Mozilla
is a luxury afforded by Google finance wise. There are much darker futures
ahead as well. The entire rise of the Company over the State is rather scary.

Arguably the most successful software company (Apple) is a poster child of
using open software to its closed advantage.

Software literacy is also highly divisive. It highly rewards the literates but
punishes the rest. Because of that it is very important that people use it for
ideas that are not just profit.

We really need more models like Mozilla, GNU, or Craigslist.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I think the "Google finances Mozilla out of kindness of their hearts" meme is
dealt with here - they have millions and soon to be billions of eyeballs on
that google default page. Whatever Google pays is a market rate.

As for the rest, yes illiteracy does count against the illiterate - I think
that is a public policy issue. The company vs the state? Historically speaking
the one with the army tends to win. Yes regulation is important to ensure
companies deliver social value - we have seen that in finance, but that is not
a programming issue - back to public policy

As for being open and doing good - yes laudable aims, and I suspect that like
now, companies that are more open, more socially beneficial will have the edge
of goodwill - but right now the force multiplier of code literacy trumps all.

Edit: I guess I am saying, the force multiplier is so big, that relying on
normal market operations to deliver an optimal social good (ie utopia) is a
little foolish - we need enlightened governments with perfect regulatory touch
to be in tune globally with all the challenges facing the human race.

We're boned.

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georgemcbay
I heard that he resigned because Rust won't support tail call optimizations.

~~~
DannyBee
Well, how could he face the board after that?

~~~
mixedbit
He would need to unwind the stack

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mlinksva
Kovacs didn't really have any public visibility during his tenure. But Mozilla
has been doing great, so I assume at a minimum he "just" ran things, and
didn't ruin them, which by my calculus is high praise for any imported CEO,
let alone one coming into an unusual organization from a very different
background. Well done!

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arturadib
It's a bummer, not sure why this happened. I liked Gary, and saw him as the
right man to shepherd Firefox OS from conception to production.

Searching for a new CEO is a huge distraction, particularly at this crucial
time when they're trying to prove a major pivot and work out commercial deals
with device makers.

I'm sending positive vibes to my former colleagues!

~~~
keithpeter
OK, can someone explain this 'pivot'?

I'm typing this into a laptop running Kubuntu (in my kitchen) which is based
on a mainframe operating system (I used to talk to a PDP11 via teletype half a
lifetime ago).

Won't mobile phones be running Unix soon as well?

~~~
jfb
Aren't they already? What's iOS? Android?

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keithpeter
Exactly my point. Is this 'pivot' basically the provision of a fat finger
friendly interface to existing technology?

PS: I'm not _against_ this, I'd really love to be able to dock a phone and use
it for desktop tasks with a 1080p monitor and proper keyboard. Sort of the Rob
Pike approach.

<http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/>

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rikacomet
I'm curious as to why google continues to be a important revenue stream for
mozilla, despite having 'chrome' itself. Why can't google stop being lovvy
dovey with mozilla?

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vitno
because microsoft would love for that google box in the upper right to turn
into a bing box.

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rikacomet
Ahh, I see! Clever answer. Now I know, why they share revenue.

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programminggeek
It took til 2010 for them to realize that the future is mobile?! Why would we
be looking to Mozilla for leadership on anything?

iPhone came out in 2007, one could argue that mobile was growing fast even
before the iPhone. By 2010 Android was a huge thing too. So, what took Mozilla
3 years to figure out about mobile exactly? Even Opera seemed to see mobile as
a huge deal long before 2010.

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BrendanEich
Open source needs near-commodity hardware with open specs and kernel source
(mostly). Otherwise the hardware vendor uses its secrets to build a
proprietary software stack.

We had Minimo, MicroB, etc. before 2010, for all the good it did. Were you
paying attention? Did you see any open source smartphone winners back then? I
did not.

Android did help flatten and uplift the smartphone space, and make it open.
Qualcomm helped too. Kudos to those two!

/be

~~~
backspaces
The Facebook "phone" approach is interesting: take over the phone to such a
degree that it delivers a FB "experience". No dependencies of the Evil
Triangle of the cell world: Handset mfgr, OS provider, Carrier.

Yet Moz apparently is looking to become another OS provider? I'm wondering if
they might take the FB approach instead.

FB will succeed now with Android, there appears to be no App Store issues. But
my bet they'll also force Apple to cry Uncle! relatively soon. Now THAT would
be progress

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BrendanEich
We have a launcher-based approach in the works too. IMHO it's not going to
sweep the world, and neither is FB Home.

Strategically, the big problem all such approaches face remains, and it may
even get worse as Android matures. Google owns that OS and controls its APIs
and rules for extensions.

Anyway, Android 4 doesn't even fit on 256M phones single-core phones, where
Firefox OS is entering the market. It is priced out of the launch countries.

So taking a high-end-focused Android-only approach of "[do an FB-Home-like
launcher] instead" does not make sense tactically or strategically.

"Also" rather than "instead" can help, we're exploring in the context of
Firefox for Android and the Web Runtime based on it -- but it's not
exclusively & clearly winning such that we would bet Mozilla on it.

/be

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trotsky
never tinker with your lineup when you're leading your division

~~~
jfb
Which division is Mozilla leading, exactly?

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gcb0
Did GMoney withdraw affected employee/execs pays/bonuses?

or is he moving to some other company? opera?

