
The Mozilla Manifesto - sauravt
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
======
lukifer
I can't say enough good things about Mozilla and their values. After becoming
disillusioned with Apple over the last five years, Mozilla feels like one of
the last remaining forces attempting to stave off a computing world of digital
fiefdoms (in addition to Automattic and Canonical).

~~~
PommeDeTerre
Values listed on a web page are one thing. Actions are another.

I haven't been impressed with their actions over the past few years.

Just look at Firefox. Instead of striving to provide a lean, practical,
extensible browser, all they've managed to do is copy Chrome as of late. The
UI changes have not been for the better. The release schedule changes were
very painful, and the version number inflation is pointless. While its
performance and memory usage is marginally better these days, it has still
been years without any significant improvement. It's not surprising that users
are moving away from it to other browsers.

Then there's Thunderbird. Aside from Firefox, this was one of their only other
pieces of useful software. Yet they've dropped their support for it to a
minimal level.

What's worse, while neglecting their software that people actually use on a
daily basis, they've embarked on pointless efforts like FirefoxOS and Persona.
We don't need another mobile OS, especially one that's essentially crippled to
only supporting development using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS (which, of course,
are already available on Android and iOS, not to mention the other mobile OSes
that are already widely available). Persona is clearly not gaining any
traction.

The only encouraging thing out of them has been Rust. But even that seems to
be rather loosely associated with them, and appears to be regarded as quite
experimental.

I know, I know. I'm not paying for their software, so they don't have any
obligation to me, etc., etc.. I'm merely not convinced that their actions
really correspond to the principles in their manifesto very well.

~~~
IanChiles
Asm.js? Emscripten? WebRTC? Come on, Mozilla has really been pushing the
limits of the web lately, in new and interesting ways that no one else will
try.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
Those aren't exactly encouraging projects.

Asm.js is, at best, a truly atrocious hack. Emscripten is only marginally
better. They're both quite inferior when compared to NaCl and PNaCl, for
instance.

Trying to further entrench JavaScript is not a step forward, and I don't think
it's something that should be encouraged or considered positive. Actively
trying to move away from JavaScript toward a more general, and sensibly-
designed/implemented in-browser runtime would be beneficial. Even embedding
Lua, Python, or some other reasonable language would be helpful. But creating
horrid JavaScript subsets is not helpful.

Unless I'm mistaken, WebRTC mostly came out of Google, not Mozilla. So maybe
this is not a good example for you to use?

~~~
pekk
Well if WebRTC came out of Google, then by God it must not be the Open Web.

------
lifeisstillgood
Man alive, Mozilla just inspires me

I am stealing this and the Turing oath to go as part of my own company's
values background

I am especially glad they focused on the public good side of the Internet and
did not get mired in privacy debates

This is going in front of as many UK council leaders as will listen at the LGA
conference July

Thanks guys

~~~
ndesaulniers
Comments like this make me proud to work there. :'-)

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twelvechairs
They say 'internet' rather than 'web' but Mozilla's recent direction seems
very heavily web-only oriented to me (FirefoxOS, Persona and basically
concluding Thunderbird). Are they actively working on anything serious which
is not web-based?

(Not to put them down. I love Mozilla and what they have done for all of us.
Just curious as to their direction)

~~~
dbaupp
Rust?

~~~
jabbernotty
Rust seems more like a tool, a means to an end, rather than a product.

------
Derbasti
Mozilla is plain awesome.

Just donated some money to them.

~~~
callahad
As someone with the good fortune to work for Mozilla full-time, thank you.

~~~
zxcdw
I am honestly envious and happy for you who get to do it, Mozilla is great
indeed. :)

~~~
cpeterso
Mozilla is hiring! Mozilla has offices in 8 countries and hires many remote
workers.

<http://careers.mozilla.org/>

------
shmerl
Mozilla is one of the bright stars in the computing industry. There should be
some, we have enough dark empires like MS and Apple.

------
TannerF
The video ( <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2udd765yVMc> ) gives me
goosebumps every time I watch it... Mozilla is simply amazing.

------
thansharp
There is one issue people haven't glossed over. Mozilla derives over 85% of
their revenue from Google (by making google the default search engine). So a
lot of their development involves getting funding from google. The problem
with this is that you cannot fight for open standards (against google, it
looks like of late) when you derive most of your funding from your adversary.
You need an independent revenue stream, like Red Hat. Firefox can probably
offer non-tracking services to corporations that have doubts over google's
data policies. PS : I am a fan of Firefox, but it has been crashing way too
often of late. Only the fact of me being a power web user (I have more than 70
tabs open on average) has kept me a continued Firefox user.

~~~
wwweston
Anecdotal: I just got a Firefox OS / Keon developer preview phone this week,
and the default search engine inside the browser appears to be Bing.

Anybody else seeing this?

~~~
fzzzy
It's been set to bing since the earliest versions of the browser app. I find
it mildly amusing.

~~~
fabrice_d
This has changed when <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=811824>
landed...

~~~
tmzt
Is that a security bug? I haven't seen access restrictions on normal Mozilla
bugs before.

------
rimantas
> The Internet is an integral part of modern life—a key > component in
> education, communication, collaboration, > business, entertainment and
> society as a whole.

This is true. Alas, too many forget, that "internet" is not the same as "web"
and think that everything internet is should be made of HTML, CSS and
ECMAScript, instead of thinking of internet as the net of interconnected
devices.

------
ethanaustinite
Lets see how their values align with accepting bitcoin donations.

