
The Mozilla Manifesto - flippant
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
======
FlyingSnake
Sigh. Looks like Mozilla management hasn’t been able to sense the zeitgeist,
after their latest downsizing, so let me spell it out for them:

Dear Moz://a management: Everyone is already on board with your ideals of open
Internet. What you need to do is get your house in order and focus on your
core competency i.e. the web browser and related tooling. You won’t get a seat
at the table of Internet biggies if you’re a has been entity.

~~~
djaychela
> Everyone is already on board with your ideals of open Internet.

I don't think that's the case. Increasingly content is being placed in walled
gardens which you don't get full access to that content unless you have an
account. Google is still pushing AMP. Chrome is becoming the new IE, and sites
that 'work best' or only work with Chrome are not uncommon. Those (and many
other) factors don't indicate to me that everyone is on board with the ideal
of an open Internet.

~~~
aravindet
I think most people can (and do) agree with these ideals stated in the
abstract, but still do things that violate them in their jobs / real life
because of practical considerations such as pursuing a profit.

Not unlike how most people understand the dangers of climate change, but
continue to drive cars, fly, use air conditioning etc.

Or, stated another way, we are all hypocrites to some extent.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Or, stated yet another way, we all suck at coordinating. It's a problem with
our species. If something that requires self-sacrifice starts yielding value
only after _everyone_ (or majority) does it, it simply doesn't happen, not
spontaneously.

The history of human civilization - of governments, religions and movements,
of gangs and corporations and worker unions - can be seen as attempts to
surmount our inability to coordinate at scale. Laws, shared beliefs and
ideologies, shunning, taboos, money - they're all tools for creating and
maintaining coordination in large groups.

A classic essay on that topic:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/).

------
ekianjo
Does Mozilla even follow their own Manifesto?

> Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must
> not be treated as optional.

So having Google as the default search engine is the right approach for
privacy?

> Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a
> public resource.

We are still waiting for Pocket's server source code...

> Magnifying the public benefit aspects of the Internet is an important goal,
> worthy of time, attention and commitment.

What does that even mean? They stopped at 9 and had no idea how to make it to
10 and ended up with wrapping buzz words into one sentence?

~~~
nikitaga
> So having Google as the default search engine is the right approach for
> privacy?

That's not their entire approach to privacy.

How would you have them exist? There aren't enough people willing to pay for a
web browser in 2020. There aren't enough unpaid volunteers to work for free
and outcompete Chrome.

What would you have Mozilla do? They're trying to develop other services that
can actually make them money so they don't need Google's money to exist, and
people here are shitting on them left and right for this.

Could Mozilla be managed _better_? Yes of course. Is there some obvious grand
strategy that would save them if only they didn't miss it? No, I don't think
so. "Just focus on the browser", say people who haven't paid for a browser
since Opera, if ever. Ha.

Mozilla are not in a good strategic position. Public trust and technical
expertise are the only major assets they have, and those are not directly
monetizable to the tune of $100M. I do hope very much that they figure out how
to leverage these assets into more neutral, more grassroots profit streams
before the next renewal of google's deal. But let's not demonize them
unnecessarily, they have it hard enough as it is.

In web technologies they're the last ones on "our side", pretty much.

~~~
kgraves
> What would you have Mozilla do? They're trying to develop other services
> that can actually make them money so they don't need Google's money to
> exist, and people here are shitting on them left and right for this.

charge businesses for Firefox Enterprise Edition, that way businesses are
paying for support and funds development towards Firefox.

~~~
makapuf
Do entreprises get charged more for edge or chrome similar business options?
Competing with free is hard.

~~~
kgraves
Google Chrome Enterprise exists for this purpose [0].

[0] [https://chromeenterprise.google/](https://chromeenterprise.google/)

------
mvn9
>The Internet is an integral part of modern life—a key component in education,
communication, collaboration, business, entertainment and society as a whole.

What if Mozilla had used the internet and hadn't spent their billions on bay-
area engineers but on hiring young third-world talents and offered them a job
that educated them in web- and browser development?

There could be thousands of engineers working on Firefox and servo with the
benefit that they would develop content that would be guaranteed to work on
Firefox.

~~~
makapuf
Theres also literally a world between bay area and third world.

------
dang
A thread from 2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5770461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5770461)

------
MrDresden
I think it deserves mentioning that if any individual here believes that what
Mozilla does is valuable, either to them selves or to others, and would like
to "put money where their mouth is" as it were, then they can do so here:
[https://donate.mozilla.org](https://donate.mozilla.org)

I had not thought about donating until these recent layoffs, but have now set
a monthly 5$ donation up, as Mozilla's tools and work mean enough to my own
interests, as well as being important enough for the internet as a whole, for
me to donate.

Sadly the public donations will never be enough to cover their whole
operational expenses, but every little bit helps.

~~~
yelloworangefog
I really don’t think feeding more money to their flagrantly incompetent and
greedy management right now is at all the best course of action if you want to
see them do well. The absolute best thing you can hope for that the public
backlash to their recent decisions is strong enough to manifest a financial
incentive for those in charge at moz to reconsider their business strategy. By
encouraging others to donate, you’re essentially rewarding this behavior and
reaffirming that this strategy is financially lucrative for them.

------
cinquemb
As someone who has been running my own personal fork off ff for the past half
decade because no way the things i want in (and left out) would get adopted
due to the conflict of interests at Mozilla, I see these times a great
opportunity for more performant adversive additions (and removals of cruft)
into browsers directly vs third party addons or custom hacks people may have
to do personally now (spoofing data browsers make available to servers/js,
noscript, null routing on the fly, etc).

~~~
smabie
What changes did you make? I've always wanted to nuke the keybindings and
change them to Emacs ones, but never mustered the will.

~~~
cinquemb
Spoofing browser data sampled from existing browsers and past versions that is
usually sent in http headers for every request in the nsHttpHandler, removing
the home page stuff, compiling out telemetry stuff, disableing stuff in
CanvasRenderingContext2D, removed some css url stuff in servo url.rs.

------
prepend
Seems like open expression is an important requirement of an open internet.

Not sure if that’s in one of the 10 or not there because it conflicts with
their ad revenue (ie, open expression doesn’t mesh with ads), or conflicts
with authoritarian regimes (eg, Great Firewall of China), or conflicts with
“language is violence” or conflicts with “nudity offends me” or something
else.

It seems like one of the big things at risk now is the ability of the internet
to allow direct connections between people without intermediaries. I feel like
standards bodies kind of help with this (ie, protocols over platforms).

------
Khaine
How does partnering with Pocket promote the open web? How does the iRobot
stunt align with the manifesto?

Mozilla use to live and breath the open web, now they are just empty
platitudes like Facebook and Google's commitment to privacy.

~~~
0xdeadb00f
> iRobot stunt

You mean _Mr_ Robot, right?

~~~
Khaine
I do, thanks for correcting me.

------
tsujp
I _want_ to use Firefox, and Mozilla's kit but every single time I've come
onboard after watching improvements etc I get shafted by updates which change
major things every few weeks, this is mostly around Firefox having constantly
had a different URL bar every update and them removing the ability to search
for preferences in my preference list. It feels like they are fighting my
ability to make Firefox exactly how I want it and that results in me going to
a better take-it-how-you-get-it browser: Chromium.

It's a shame but I don't see it being any better the next time I inevitably
try.

~~~
JBiserkov
>removing the ability to search for preferences in my preference list

They did what? _frantically clicks Hamburger - > Options_, which opened
about:preferences, "Find in Options" is top and center. Firefox 79, Windows
10.

~~~
tsujp
I meant `about:config` but regardless I stand corrected, it's back! Yes!

------
aravindet
If there are any Mozillians here, I'm curious about how the organization
balances its technology development and advocacy functions. Do you think it
has been shifting one way or another? Do you think that both roles are
represented equally in leadership?

------
sunseb
I don't get it. Is Mozilla a Neo-Marxist organization now?

Why don't you talk about software development instead? About building FireFox?
About disrupting tech?

It seems Mozilla is now run by people more interested into communism than
actually building a fucking software and bringing value to the world. RIP
Mozilla.

~~~
bawolff
Were you under the impression that mozilla wasn't ideologically driven
previously? Hell look at the imagery of some of their early logos.
[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/)

Not to mention that this document is pretty old.

I think the main difference is it feels a lot less authentic now. Less
grassroots and more a corporate-ish attempt to appeal to the masses.

------
kyleee
What is "Fræðast meira"?

~~~
ryanf
This is the Icelandic page. English version here: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/manifesto/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/)

------
emerged
I wonder if #8 is the issue here

------
plibither8
English language version: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/about/manifesto/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/)

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll change to that from
[https://www.mozilla.org/is/about/manifesto/](https://www.mozilla.org/is/about/manifesto/).
Thanks! Strange!

------
alwahi
is it time to jump ship from mozilla????????????

------
causality0
The Mozilla Manifesto is very weird when you consider the context. Mozilla as
we know it exists solely because Google needs a shield against antitrust
investigations, and having a "competitor" browser that only takes 5% of the
browser market is why Google pays Mozilla the majority of its revenue. Firefox
is literally sponsored by Chrome.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I don’t know if you heard the news but they just stopped. Also Mozilla existed
quite a while before Chrome.

~~~
distances
Renewed:
[https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...](https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search/)

~~~
freshsqueeze
Collect the $500M ad money and then turn around and claim Google is evil and
they are the only company fighting for internet freedom and world peace.

------
tarkin2
Has the op posted the Icelandic version to get it here as a new post and to
make a point?

Look, I’m saddened by the layoffs too. And I’m very sad the dev tools and
servo teams teams in particular have been hit. And I would like to know why.

Yet there are still 750 mozilla employees. The servo stuff was merged into ff
already. I’m not saying it’s good that they’ve scaled down their R&D but the
narrative that the C-suite have laid everyone off so they can drink more
champagne on one more yacht gets tiring and obscures reasoned discussion about
the lay offs.

~~~
hellofunk
> The servo stuff was merged into ff already.

Really? The project was done? That is at odds to what nearly every person I
follow involved with the project has had to say recently.

~~~
Ygg2
It's not. Just look at outstanding issues in Servo.

[https://github.com/servo/servo](https://github.com/servo/servo)

What Mozilla did was move few stable components to FireFox and shitcanned the
rest.

