
Mozilla’s Uncertain Future - jonathankoren
https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future/
======
causality0
Personally and strictly my own ignorant and informal opinion, Firefox and by
extension Mozilla Corp. was doomed the moment it decided to compete with
Chrome by being more like Chrome. Firefox built its userbase by being
_different_ than the dominant browser, then decided the only way to not die
was to be exactly like the dominant browser except with less icky behind-the-
scenes privacy behavior.

That was a fundamental mistake. The who's-got-the-biggest-version-number dick-
measuring, the constant deprecation of power features and customizability,
everything that was intended to _beat_ Chrome in a contest Google couldn't
lose is the reason Firefox can't hold onto a decent market share. The 25% of
internet users who wanted what Firefox offered ten years ago still want the
same thing now, but Firefox decided it was worth losing that 25% trying to
chase the 75%, and they lost.

~~~
outadoc
> the constant deprecation of power features and customizability

They made ONE switch to a superior and standard extension model, and HN loses
its minds. Do you really think you're in the majority here? Making it a more
secure, faster and just better browser is just the only way forward. Without
that Firefox would just be slow as hell, wouldn't play YouTube or Netflix
videos, and not have any extensions left because no one wants to create an
extension from scratch just for Firefox.

They tried their best and I hope it's been enough, even though the future
looks bleak.

~~~
KingOfCoders
"Firefox would just be slow as hell"

Why is that?

The problem is they get into to web standards game which is driven by Google
to create pressure everyone else to spend millions on the newest standards.

I don't need the newest standards, 2000 web works perfectly fine for me
(except HTTPs).

Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM
(writing this from FF)

They broke exetensions several times without any benefit to users, but losing
extensions on the way. One of the core features for power users dropped for
nothing - well for their own fun rewriting the browser and rendering engine
several times, I guess it was fun at least doing "interesting things".

~~~
joepie91_
> Why is that?

Because Firefox's "powerful extension model" basically constituted direct
access to its internals, which prevented the Firefox developers from making
the architectural improvements that were so sorely needed to make it
performant.

> Firefox is slow with many tabs open on Win10, Ryzen X3900 with 32gb of RAM
> (writing this from FF)

Admittedly I'm on Linux, but I currently have approximately 7800 tabs open
(no, that is not a typo). Firefox is a little laggy in its UI, but Chrome has
never even managed to have more than a few hundred open without becoming
unusable, so I'd say that Firefox is doing fine here.

Interestingly, the slowdown actually seems to originate from rendering the tab
bar, not from the tabs themselves.

~~~
solstice
Not judging you, but why do you have so many tabs open?

~~~
orthoxerox
I also have no idea what they do with all these tabs. I routinely close my
tabs at the end of the day.

------
mrweasel
The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the
development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market?

Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN,
Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and
perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would
require a management skilled in seeking out these funding options and a brutal
focus on openess, but the latter IS something Mozilla knows how to do.

~~~
tannhaeuser
I think part of this deal must involve radically simplifying the web and
reflect on the EU's sponsorship of W3C via ERCIM. We've seen web tech becoming
more complicated all the time, with self-acclaimed "standardization bodies"
(WHATWG) acting as fig leaf for Google's take-over of the web. Now with
Firefox on the brink to drop out, like all other "browser vendors" (Opera, MS)
except Google before, and failing to create a new browser engine in about 10
years of development (!) with highly competent developers, it must be clear to
everyone there's something very wrong with trusting the web as the universal
digital medium for accessing nearly every piece of information. It's also
becoming extremely hard to find pages that used to be ubiquitous only 2 years
ago, so we're heading into an information crisis (on top of information
warfare). W3C may have acted in good faith, but in the end contributed to
irresponsible CSS complexity (which, in turn, is the result of having no
standing/statue and no representation but rather a "pay-as-you-go" sponsorship
model). WHATWG have consistently denied including HTML/CSS profiles for
simplified subsets (as eg suggested by MS). Time to stop playing this naive
web march of progress game only benefitting very few US companies, at the
expense of everybody else.

~~~
goto11
How would you "radically simplify" the web without causing breakage?

~~~
c-smile
Let's imagine a browser (UA) that supports basics of HTML (language portion of
HTML5) and CSS (e.g. v 2.1).

Yet it has WebVM instead of JS. WebVM is a virtual machine similar to JavaVM
but with DOM, CSSOM and layout APIs exposed in it as a runtime.

So if some site needs flexbox in its CSS then it can be included as:

    
    
        <link href=".../css-flexbox.bytecodes" rel="extension">
    

If JS then

    
    
        <link href=".../es6-compiler.bytecodes" rel="extension">
    

and so on.

This would allow a) keep browser small and maintainable and b) open room for
innovations in Web technology beyond browser vendors and comities.

As an example: TypeScript can be compiled to WebVM bytecodes instead of JS.

~~~
tannhaeuser
Not bad an idea at all! Hadn't considered bytecodes for layout algorithms,
though I guess it would work with regular js as well, and I AFAICS Project
Houdini is about providing the necessary core rendering API.

~~~
c-smile
> would work with regular js as well

In principle JS may work but it is too slow for that. Function calls are too
pricey, no integer arithmetic, etc.

At least in my Sciter ([https://sciter.com](https://sciter.com)) element's
layout controller must have three methods:

    
    
        void calc_min_maxes() // calculates min-content and max-content
        int layout_width(int px_new_width);
        int layout_height(int px_new_height);
    

so it is quite easy to add new layout modes. This way I've added ()

    
    
        flow:grid(...); // a la display:grid
        flow:horizontal; // a la display:flexbox  
        flow:stack; // no alternatives in standard CSS
        etc.
    

Modern Java (and C# for that matter) are almost ideal for such things,
especially considering modern effective JITs and VMs.

------
Dunedan
Does somebody know what the remaining ~750 people are working on? How many of
them work on Firefox, Pocket, Lockwise, VPN, HR, marketing, ...? Is there
somewhere an overview about that?

Many here disapprove with the recent layoffs and especially the areas affected
by them, but I'd like to better understand how many people still work on
Firefox (desktop browser, mobile browsers, dev tools, servo, ...), compared to
topics like Pocket and VPN and supporting roles like HR or marketing, to get a
better picture of how how I feel about Mozilla's future.

------
mandreyel
A possible alternative source of income for Mozilla I think would be, and one
I haven’t seen mentioned before, providing consulting services in their areas
of expertise.

For example, demand for Rust engineers seems to be steadily increasing[1] and
I can’t think of a better company with a larger concentration of Rust
expertise than Mozilla. Perhaps the same could work for other areas (ex
frontend), but I’m biased toward Rust. Due to lack of experience in this
regard I’m not sure if this could actually work, but I could imagine
allocating part of their engineering time budget to consultation, whose income
would fund their core products.

[1] Besides all the articles popping up about starting to employ Rust by well
known companies, my anecdote as a full-time Rust SDE is that I’m getting more
and more requests on LinkedIn, and not just for the usual crypto roles.

~~~
momokoko
There are so many ways for Mozilla to leverage their core competencies.
Unfortunately failed management with no means to remove them means none of
that will happen.

Executive leadership at Mozilla is a disgrace that has now caused a tangible
negative result on the future of the internet. The fact that Mitchell Baker
still leads this organization is insane. An absolutely inept failure somehow
still leads Mozilla. It’s absolutely crazy

~~~
fzzzy
You do realize that Mitchell has only been ceo of mozilla corp since January,
right? And that almost all of the C suite has turned over in the last few
years?

------
ghevshoo
Yesterday I started donating $10/month to the Mozilla Foundation. TIL it’s not
the Mozilla Foundation that develops Firefox.

I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail
was the same as logging into the browser.

If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link
to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who
would. And I would bet that your average Firefox user is an order of magnitude
more likely to do this than your average chrome user.

So I wonder why they don’t do this? I’ve had similar frustrations for other
products I get for free that I wanted to pay for.

~~~
sp332
I had the same question. And what's even stranger is that the Mozilla.com
(not.org) website has no way to send them money, and doesn't even mention the
paid products like the VPN. At least Pocket gets a mention which I think you
_can_ pay for.

~~~
alcoholic_byte
Those who seek shall find. [https://donate.mozilla.org/en-
US/](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/) Got the link from the Thunderbird-site
where [https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/](https://give.thunderbird.net/en-
US/) redirects to [https://give.thunderbird.net/en-
US](https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US)

So yeah the link is out there but you really have to look for it. Which is
actually s.th. quite nice. Imagine they would go about nagging people. You
might say one of 2 things: a) So in their face, others are probably donating
what do they need me for b) So in my face, that is indescent, I do not donate.
Whatever the choice happy donating; I already did.;)

~~~
sp332
That's .org and the donation does not fund Firefox development or any other
activity of the Mozilla Corporation.

~~~
alcoholic_byte
When you go to
[https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/) and
you click on "Donate" you are directed to [https://donate.mozilla.org/en-
US/](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/) .

The sidebar on the donation-page clearly states:

"We are proudly non-profit, non-corporate and non-compromised. Thousands of
people like ...."

So I think donations are in good hands there.

~~~
sp332
That's the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla
Corporation, which is a for-profit entity wholly owned by the Foundation and
with separate funding. In fact millions of dollars are transferred from the
Corporation to the Foundation in royalties every year. Donating to the
Foundation does not fund Firefox development!

------
jeswin
Mozilla must put the advocacy bits aside and focus on the core product.
Perhaps the problem with a non-technical CEO is that the advocacy and new
shiny stuff is given as much importance as the invisible (and insanely
complex) work that makes a browser fast and safe.

A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other
revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves.
Instead they axe the future of Firefox.

~~~
bmcn2020
I'm not sure. I think advocacy is a core part of its USP -- Mozilla is
privacy-friendly, and that's an important point, especially as all internet
users, even average consumers, are being constantly hit over the head by how
data-hungry these huge corporations are.

It's an uphill battle, sure, and there are a lot of things to overcome, but
I'm not so sure I'd blame the leadership on this entirely.

I'd blame the market...for now.

~~~
zajio1am
Mozilla has so many privacy issues so that calling it privacy-friendly is
misleading:

[https://brmlab.cz/project/spyzilla](https://brmlab.cz/project/spyzilla)

~~~
pornel
Mozilla is doomed when it's held to such an impossible standard (such as being
"spyzilla" for supporting TLS PKI).

All this poo-pooing on Mozilla doing anything less than paranoid-extreme makes
people leave for other browsers, which aren't any better, and often are way
worse for privacy.

~~~
zajio1am
> Mozilla is doomed when it's held to such an impossible standard (such as
> being "spyzilla" for supporting TLS PKI).

While some of these points are a bit extreme, most of them are pretty basic
and could be avoided by simple maxim:

Don't call home and do not do communication with third parties unless opt-in
or explicitly requested by user.

> All this poo-pooing on Mozilla doing anything less than paranoid-extreme
> makes people leave for other browsers

Well, i still use Firefox as lesser of two evils, but i do not see why i
should say to everyone how wonderful it is.

------
djhworld
Does anyone know if the new stuff touted over the last few years (servo,
webrender etc) is going to make it into the mainline Firefox release?

I moved back to Firefox back when they released Quantum and was really excited
about the plans to make it even better - the blog posts from Lin Clark around
parallel layout engines, web render etc. made me really excited about the
trajectory of FF [1]

I know this stuff is complicated and they're working to get it right, but I
heard in the recent round of layoffs most of the Servo team has been
decimated. WebRender is only in the mainline releases for Windows and
experimental everywhere else [2]

[1] [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-
era-h...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-how-
firefox-got-fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/) [2]
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where)

~~~
tarkin2
Some of it already has made it into ff
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24164058)

------
moksly
This is completely anecdotal, and maybe I’m the only one, but native browsers
have become so good that I’ve gone from decades of using
Netscape/Firefox/opera/chrome/whatever to mainly using Edge and Safari. I
don’t really need to share a profile between my browsers as I use windows at
work and Mac/iOS for personal use.

We’ve gotten to a point in time where the browser is simply really good, and I
think that simply makes it hard to make a living if your primary product is a
browser.

Even Microsoft abandoned having their own because they no longer needed it to
be completely their own to sell their products.

~~~
pjmlp
They abandoned it because Edge team got tired to play catch-up, while still
fixing IE 11 bugs.

Slowly but steady we will start seeing ads for Chrome developers instead of
Web developer, ChromeOS has won.

~~~
wyclif
Just the other day I saw a job opening for a "Chrome developer." First time
I've seen that, and I thought to myself, "wow, we've really turned a
corner..."

~~~
rb666
Was it for a position at Google?

~~~
wyclif
No, it was at an SaaS company. I hope you get what I'm saying here...it wasn't
Google looking for an engineer to work on the Chrome browser. It was for an
engineer to develop exclusively on the Chrome platform.

------
xg15
> _In ten years it’s possible that the Mozilla Corporation may be just a
> memory, with the Mozilla Foundation surviving as a modestly-funded advocacy
> organization._

Maybe I'm pessimistic here, but what exactly could a "modestly-funded advocacy
organization" with nothing left but their brand archive against Apple, Google,
Facebook, Amazon, etc?

Without Firefox, I don't see what kind of leverage they would have to continue
their mission. Firefox also was what gave their brand relevance to the public.

The only thing I could see is them becoming a political lobbying organisation
or "think tank", trying to advance their mission by pushing for more internet
regulation. But even then, they will be pitted against vastly more powerful
lobbies.

------
staktrace
FWIW, as a Mozilla employee, I think this is one of the best summaries I've
read of the state of Mozilla.

~~~
webmaven
Any recommendations for second best summary?

------
jacknews
The google contract seems totally at odds with mozilla's privacy focus.

And there seem to have been too many off-target projects recently.

IMHO, they should keep a focus on privacy, and the core browser, adding VPN
and perhaps CDN services, all bundled as a subscription. Maybe also ad-free
search; perhaps duckduckgo should buy mozilla, or vice-versa? I think a lot of
people would be willing to pay for a 'safe, private portal' to the internet.

I think advocacy alone is almost worthless when it comes to defining standards
and ensuring they're open. You have to have code (and users) in the game.

------
leokennis
I have to say this is one of the instances where I’m glad Apple’s hunger for
profit and privacy engineering intersect. On Mac at least with Safari there is
a privacy oriented browser left.

Maybe Apple could revive Safari on Windows?

~~~
petepete
What about Chromium isn't privacy focussed? It was my understanding that all
of Google's grubby code isn't present.

~~~
sp332
Chromium still depends on Google for certain features.
[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium#feature-
overvi...](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium#feature-overview)

~~~
chromedev
Those are easily removed and can also be disabled using their policy engine.

------
cassepipe
I am really surprised they did not go for the VPN offer way sooner. It's a
massive market in which all that matters in how much you trust your VPN
provider. And the only insurance you've got is your VPN provider telling you
they don't collect data which is hard to believe considering how much money
user data is worth. The only thing Mozilla has plenty is people trusting that
they are fighting for greater privacy as they've always have. It seems so
obvious that I would like to know if there's a reason they did not go for that
sooner. Consider also that integrating a user-friendly Mozilla VPN manager in
the browser could bump Firefox downloads. So why?

------
jillesvangurp
I'm less worried about the product than the organization.

IMHO, Mozilla as a company has never really had a credible business model
beyond Google (mainly) choosing to compensate them for directing some search
traffic to them (and general ass coverage when it comes to allegations of
monopolist behavior). The layoffs are a consequence of their strategy for
finding alternate revenue streams being simply too weak to produce tangible
results. Certainly not anywhere near levels that would allow them to justify
having the ambitions of a big VC founded silicon valley based company with
offices in e.g. the middle of the real estate bubble called Mountain View (as
well as several other premium locations world wide).

What they do technically with their browser product is fine however and worth
protecting. I just don't see that costing in the order of hundreds of
millions/year. A couple of million goes a long way to keep a world wide
collective of developers going. Many OSS projects manage with far less. It
doesn't require maintaining offices in the downtown areas of SFO (in addition
to Mountain View), London, Paris, Portland, Berlin, Taipei, etc.

I use Firefox exclusively; like many other users. The wider community of
Firefox developers and users has plenty of ways to keep the project going long
term in one way or another.

Same with Rust. Rust will be fine without Mozilla. It's widely used and loved
by engineers useful to quite a lot of companies. IMHO the rust community is
actually much less dependent on central management by anyone (including
Mozilla) than the Firefox browser. Most long lived OSS projects need
independence like that and thrive because of their independence.

Luckily, Mozilla has a very decent licensing policy
([https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-
policy/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/)) that crucially
does not include any copyright transfer. That means their role is strictly as
a facilitator of development; not as an owner of the copyright to the code.
That means that in principle there is room for other companies to get involved
or for independent developers to get involved.

Which is why I'm not worried about the project surviving the drama of their
mother organization imploding or not. I hope it leads to some sensible changes
in the Mozilla Foundation.

------
rwmj
Revenue well north of $200 million every year since 2011. How hard would it
have been to do the obvious thing and build up an endowment?!

~~~
jefftk
I don't think that would have made sense: Mozilla stays relevant by producing
a browser that lots of people want to use. This requires substantial
investment in developer salaries, or else other browsers get better and you
don't.

If they had taken your approach, I think they wouldn't have been able to get
out Quantum, and then Firefox would be much smaller now, and be even less able
to influence the direction of the web.

~~~
rwmj
But they only spent a fraction of the cash on developing Firefox features like
Quantum that people want, and essentially wasted the rest of crazy projects
(FirefoxOS), buying things that their users hate (Pocket), and outlandish
C-level salaries. They could have paid the core developers _and_ had the
endowment.

If they wanted to do the non-core stuff, that's something that the foundation
that managed the endowment might have done with x% of its capital, simply by
investing in companies that align with Mozilla's mission.

------
dzink
Mozilla can take government grants or even subscription money to become a
Cloudflare for consumers. Enable uses to content rate any content including
youtube videos and protect each other at massive scale. As a parent I would
pay for a safer browser experience for my kids. The Disney of browsers if you
will. Provide a leader board of sorts for top contributors who have given time
to rate content, money to the foundation, code contributions, etc. They don’t
have to sink down the advertising hole either. This is just the tip of the
iceberg of ideas I saw in 5 minutes. A corporation paired down to focus on
consumer problems or government contracts related to internet security can be
nimble and beat the FAANG model precisely because they don’t have to bend to
the will of advertisers.

------
moritzwarhier
I have to chime in... Mozilla seems to pull back on its investment in web
standards and browser engine development for revenue reasons. Instead focusing
on Pocket, VPN services and similar stuff, all the while keeping up a dubious
privacy-advocating public image. Pocket, Mozilla VPN etc might look like they
promise more short-term revenue. My view is that Mozilla wants to complete its
metamorphosis into a near-irrelevant Opera clone. Gecko/Servo, Firefox and MDN
are the valuable parts of Mozilla (to me). Introducing paid premium membership
to MDN would have been acceptable. Now I fear that I have to revert my
Chromium->Firefox switch. Also, people might not be as gullible as Mozilla
thinks regarding their pro-privacy stance. They recently did a billboard and
train ad campaign in my area (germany) about tracking and how they claim to
prevent it. I doubt that won over significant numbers of users.

Sure, they struggled to survive going down the developer-centric "poweruser"
road. I don't dispute that.

What they're missing is revenue-generating consumer products on a large enough
scale. Still, I fear that on the basis of their current portfolio and
corporate image they won't be able to become competitive in that area.
Introducing paid products focused on more niche markets (e.g. developers)
would have seemed more sustainable to me.

~~~
MaxBarraclough
> Sure, they struggled to survive going down the developer-centric "poweruser"
> road. I don't dispute that.

Did they really go down that road? The general perception is that they've just
been copying Chrome for years.

------
gigatexal
Revenue is secured. They have another deal with Google worth ~500M a year for
the next few years.

But for growing it and for the future of the browser that’s TBD imo

~~~
TimSchumann
Why would google fund a direct competitor unless they thought it was to their
advantage?

I don’t see how this helps Firefox Users.

~~~
MattGaiser
Google’s business is search engine and advertising, not browser market share.

Also helps with an anti-trust case.

~~~
TimSchumann
If you don’t think Crome is a substantive part of google’s core business, I
think we’re gonna talk past each other this whole time.

~~~
fastball
Chrome is a loss leader though.

------
no_wizard
I always felt that Mozilla should have seen nodejs as their future, and in
kind tried to build a gecko powered version (and therefore could have a real
successor to XulRunner - electron before its time) I think this may have been
a seriously missed opportunity to unset v8. However quantum may have been a
little late to the party.

I’m not as vehement against their other moves, though. Pocket could and maybe
can be a real business, if they focused on delivering a top tier experience. I
thought it could have been a better feedly and/or pinboard alternative, I just
haven’t seen enough compelling features there as of of yet. After all, Mozilla
Needs alternative revenue streams beyond their search deals.

I also think they could have been an internet identity broker, bringing a
unified web identity via their Firefox account service. Alas that may have
been too big to crack.

May need to reinvestigate Pocket, but aside from that and just using Firefox
as my main browser, I feel like they lost a lot of steam and some goodwill
with the developer community.

------
quicklime
> But as the number of Firefox users decreases (due to the growing market
> dominance of the Chrome browser), and those users click on fewer online ads
> (for example, because they’re spending less during the COVID-19 pandemic),
> the willingness of Google and other customers to pay the Mozilla Corporation
> for those users decreases accordingly.

> Thus when COVID-19 hit and the Mozilla Corporation hit a brick wall in terms
> of search engine revenue...

Did the pandemic really have an impact on search engine revenue? From what I
can tell, users are spending more time online, viewing (and maybe even
clicking) more ads and searching for more things online. Google's stock is
back to its pre-pandemic peak level, so they seem to be doing fine.

Did Google play hard-ball with Mozilla during their contract negotiations, and
manage to lower the cost of their default search engine deal? If so, I feel
like that should've generated a bigger outrage than some Chrome UX/Security
people tweaking the URL bar. Especially with all the antitrust stuff going on.

~~~
slightwinder
Companies are spending less money for ads, some even went bankrupt. People
also have less money to spend, or are just careful not wasting it in uncertain
times.

Though, yes, in most countries it normalizes, but the dent in income is
visable.

~~~
quicklime
And yet, Google’s revenue only decreased by 2%, and Facebook’s increased by
11%. I can see Google making an argument not to increase the amount of money
they pay to Mozilla this time, but not to decrease it.

~~~
slightwinder
Not really? Revenue in Q1 and q2 for Alphabet were sinking. What went up were
other areas than advertisment, as also they were doing some budget-savings, to
reduce the actual fall of revenue, saving some costs at the end.

~~~
quicklime
Hmm, yeah I was talking about total revenue, but "Google Search & other"
revenue went down by about 13% between Q1 and Q2. Which is not great, but the
market seems to think this will be a temporary thing (their stock is trading
at February prices).

------
pbronez
> I doubt that Mozilla management or employees are interested in the Mozilla
> Corporation becoming a DoD contractor, and it’s unclear to me how much
> government or foundation funding Mozilla could attract as an R&D lab focused
> purely on civilian applications in the Internet and web space.

I think there might actually be some interesting opportunities here. Consider:

\- Digital Propaganda and Misinformation are increasingly seen as key national
defense issues

\- COVID-19 has accelerated digital transformation and exacerbated the digital
divide

\- FAANG is under increased anti-trust scrutiny

\- USG has strong mandates for web accessibility that current web tech makes
very difficult to fulfill

\- Privacy implications of AI/ML is getting more attention

Mozilla is well positioned to contribute to positive solutions in all of these
areas.

------
ekianjo
How are the expenses of Mozilla increasing at such a pace without having a
sustainable business model? Seems like poor management.

------
twblalock
I like the comparison to Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Like those organizations,
Mozilla was being kept alive by corporate money (primarily Google's) and never
developed the ability to be a sustainable business on its own.

------
cxr
Five years ago it was clear that possibly the best thing that could happened
to the future of Firefox, Mozilla, and the Web would have been for Mozilla
Corporation to have gone belly up. But we're past the point where that might
do any good with respect to salvaging Firefox or Mozilla's name.

Mozilla Corporation's role today is to siphon away any attention or enthusiasm
that might otherwise be directed towards the ideals that Mozilla was
originally created to facilitate. The Mozilla Corporation was supposed to have
been set up to further the ideals of the then already extant movement that had
been operating on a shoestring budget. The imprimatur should have been to
direct its paid staff towards doing the boring work that unpaid (but highly
effective) volunteers weren't interested in—not to wrench control away and
consolidate power within a (now-proven ineffectual) company making ill-
conceived commercial plays while trying to fit in with the culture of the
Valley and squandering billions.

In the early 2010s, I attended a conference—one sponsored by Mozilla—and
brought in on their dime, having been a fairly involved contributor for a few
years, but not someone on the corporate payroll. Another guest and I mentioned
how poor a job the travel agency had done, essentially fleecing Mozilla and
doing much worse than if we'd arranged for travel and accommodation ourselves
and then forwarded the bill. "Mozilla has _a lot_ of money" was the response.
After the better part of a decade, Mozilla's revenue has only grown, and so
has their propensity to squander money.

The best option we have now is for folks to wake the heck up, to realize that
the Mozilla that exists is not the one portrayed in either its messaging or
fixed in the minds of casual slacktivists, to start a grassroots effort (a la
early Firefox) to work on an independent browser—where, unfortunately, the
best bet at this point is probably in leveraging WebKit against Chrome and
Blink, given what an untameable mess the modern Web has become (not helped by
the FirefoxOS efforts; nor the mess that Gecko codebase has become)—and most
importantly _never allow that effort to be subverted in the way that the
Corporation managed to cannibalize and take over Mozilla_.

But that's not going to happen, because Mozilla continues to position itself
as the organization where folks with a casual interest in the health of the
Web are supposed to direct their good vibes, while thoroughly proving itself
to be unworthy and incompetent at upholding the principles it's supposed to be
fighting for, and while time and time again, the public have proven themselves
to have short attention spans on the order of months—so, by the end of the
year Firefox and Mozilla will be back to being perceived as your old chum
that's fighting the good fight, instead of being steered by a bunch of
clueless, well-salaried Bay Area devs LARPing as some motley crew with your
best interests at heart, all while the term "non-profit" gets bandied about in
public discussions, much to their delight.

~~~
walterbell
_> unfortunately, the best bet at this point is probably in leveraging WebKit
against Chrome and Blink, given what an untameable mess the modern Web has
become_

Is there a maintained OSS browser based on Webkit? Do you think it's viable
for a new Webkit-based OSS browser to become sustainable by user donations,
assuming initial sponsorship by other non-profits or EU?

~~~
Macha
Konqueror[1] can toggle between KHTML and Webkit at runtime.

GNOME Web (formerly Epiphany)[2] is Webkit based.

Surf[3] (By the suckless st/dwm people) is WebKit based.

That said, Surf would be unlikely to move to chromium from my perception of
the views of the suckless group, and their opinions of how software would work
are really opposed to mainstream appeal, Konqueror undoubtedly will eventually
replace QtWebkit with QtWebEngine for at least the Webkit support (if not
dropping KHTML entirely - KHTML's own readme suggests not using it), so that
leaves Gnome Web as the one open source browser aimed at a wider audience
using Webkit.

[1]:
[https://kde.org/applications/internet/org.kde.konqueror](https://kde.org/applications/internet/org.kde.konqueror)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Web](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Web)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_\(web_browser\))

------
GNOMES
I have been forcing myself to use Firefox the last two months. Ignoring some
performance issues on Google branded sites, I have yet to experience any
incompatibilities.

The reason I am going back to Chrome is bookmark usability and Chromecast
support.

Posts on the r/Firefox subreddit and official Firefox support pages mention
that Chromecast uses proprietary API's, and can/will not be reverse engineered
or implemented. I never noticed how often I use the ones at home or work until
the ability to cast wasn't available.

As per bookmarks, I love not having my bookmarks visible in my main while
browsing, and having them on the new tab page in Chrome is wonderful. I tried
to pin my bookmarks to my Firefox top sites, but felt clunky using a hotkey or
the menus to view all bookmarks.

------
mwcampbell
It's easy to criticize from the outside. The question we should ask ourselves
is what _we_ should have done, and can still do, to help Mozilla's mission. I
just set up a monthly donation, as I should have done a long time ago.

~~~
eafer
That won't help: donations to Mozilla don't go to the development of Firefox.

~~~
mwcampbell
They could though. If enough of us start donating, maybe the leadership will
make the necessary organizational changes to make donations go toward Firefox
development. It definitely won't happen if we don't do our part.

~~~
hu3
Why are we to blame?

We can't just start donating massive amounts of money and hope that management
funnels it to Firefox.

The same management that receives almost half a billion dollars per year from
Google is the management that just fired Servo, MDN and Dev Tools staff.

~~~
mwcampbell
The question for me is not who's to blame, but what I can do, since I can only
control my own actions.

~~~
hu3
I don't think lack of funding is the problem but rather a lack of management.

More money is just going to incentivize their current malpractices.

I think what we could do is support a Firefox Foundation if/when it eventually
exists.

------
jasonv
This thread, paired with the Google/deprecation thread, feel ironically
aligned.

Mozilla seems to be deprecating parts of their organization, and Google
deprecates products constantly... except for Chrome. Chrome has had a fairly
reliable and well maintained product path.

I used to use Firefox constantly, but between Safari being excellent on my
Mac, and Chrome being preferable for work related things -- and their decent
profile synchronization, I find myself a little mystified every time I go back
to Firefox for a spell. Just little things, but they definitely feel like the
3rd wheel now.

------
brianzelip
Hey author of the posted blog, as a Baltimore resident (and librarian!), I
love the shout out to the Howard County library's "choose civility"
campaign![0] Nice site.

[0] [https://civilityandtruth.com/about/#about-the-
name](https://civilityandtruth.com/about/#about-the-name)

------
LockAndLol
I'm starting to sincerely hope there'll be a fork of Firefox or at least a
separation from Mozilla, and for Quantum/Servo to be separated and made an
easily embeddable. The inability to donate directly to projects has imo has
had a direct result of requiring Google money.

Firefox and Quantum don't need 100M to survive. That's that just absurd. Even
if you had 250 people working on it for 100k each, you still wouldn't get to
anything as crazy as 100M. 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good
salary.

There's no need to branch out and make all kinds of other side projects that
have to fit under the Mozilla umbrella. Splitting focus like that just makes
it become a juggling game of who needs the money more, shifting focus between
projects and making it difficult for donators to comprehend where the money is
going to.

When I donate to KDE, it's doesn't come as a surprise that I can't request my
donation to be earmarked for something. The project is for a desktop
environment after all. It's in the name and it's the flagship product. But
when your flagship product is a browser and you don't provide people the
possibility to donate to that product... well, what's the point in donating?

Even the argument of "I know better what to do with your money than you do"
sounds incredibly pretentious. We hear that all the time from politicians and
we clearly see where that money goes to: their pockets, their friends pockets,
some other project we never heard of and THEN it goes to the project we
thought it would go to. If I wanted to give my money to an institution I
didn't believe in, I'd pay more taxes.

~~~
jefftk
_> 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good salary._

The kind of people you're trying to hire have the option to earn 3-4x as much
working for a FAANG. Being excited about working on something you believe in
can get you a long way, but that's still a lot to ask.

(See discussion above:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24157803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24157803))

~~~
LockAndLol
If money were everything, nobody would be working on opensource.

I'd jump at that opportunity. Earning a third or a even a quarter of what I
earn now would pay for every single one of my living expenses and even allow a
comfortable life. There's no way that salary would be OK for a corporation,
but for doing something I truly believe in? It's friggin' great.

~~~
jefftk
_> If money were everything, nobody would be working on opensource._

A large majority of hours spent on open source are paid, though. Developers
working full-time on open source projects at various large corporations. I was
in that category from 2012 to early 2017 working on mod_pagespeed, for
example.

There are many small labor-of-love open source projects, but large ones are
uncommon.

 _> I'd jump at that opportunity._

There are definitely people who would be happy to make that trade; I'm not
claiming that you're the only one or something like that. Instead, what I'm
saying is that there are a lot of people who are willing to take a modest pay
cut to work on a public-benefit project like Firefox but aren't willing to
take a ~60-75% one. And, further, Mozilla isn't going to be able to make a
top-notch browser without hiring many of these people.

------
networkimprov
The unstated thesis of the article seems to be that Mozilla lacks a _killer
app_.

So what are possible killer apps, given their history building user-facing
internet infrastructure?

(I love FF and never touch Chrome except for testing, but <10% market share is
not killer.)

------
whoisthemachine
It's really interesting that Mozilla doesn't funnel donations to software
development interests. There are successful open source projects that do so,
such as Linux Mint [0]. Maybe what's really broken is the idea that a browser
needs a backing corporation to fund it?

Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the
development of meaningful software that serves that purpose.

[0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no
exception."
[https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953](https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953)

~~~
dralley
The problem is that Mozilla Corporation needs to exist for various legal
reasons, and that it's impossible for Mozilla Foundation to channel funds to
Mozilla Corporation for other legal reasons.

Whereas Linux Mint literally just operates a Patreon / Paypal / Bitcoin
account and distributes the funds between a couple of people.

~~~
detaro
> _that it 's impossible for Mozilla Foundation to channel funds to Mozilla
> Corporation for other legal reasons_

Do you know details about that? I can imagine that there'd be tax
complications, but would have expected a foundation could buy things/services
from an entity it owns.

~~~
dralley
I'm not a lawyer but I can only imagine it's quite tricky when the Foundation
is a tax-exempt charity and the funds in question are being used to the
primary benefit of a for-profit entity which it owns. It would be a bit like
having your cake and eating it too, in terms of the legal provisions of the
tax code.

------
TLightful
Very happy Firefox user here.

Google can take a jump. Chrome was relevant (in terms of quality 10 years
ago). Irrelevant now.

------
imagetic
Q: What do most regular people consume on the internet?

A: Video.

Q: What does Firefox suck the most at?

A: Video.

------
t0mmyb0y
When you tie your horse to google you will go out of business.

------
The_rationalist
How is it legal that the financial report of 2019 is unavailable? It's at
least a big red flag, I doubt they did such a practice the other years.

~~~
sciurus
I think about a year of lag is normal, e.g.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/11/21/state-of-
mozilla-20...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/11/21/state-of-
mozilla-2018-annual-report/)

[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/11/27/state-of-
mozilla-20...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/11/27/state-of-
mozilla-2017-annual-report/)

~~~
The_rationalist
You're right.

------
kalekold
Rust is dead!

------
mothsonasloth
On the graph at 2014 on the x-axis, is this the "real" reason why Brendan Eich
had to resign as CEO of Mozilla Corp?

~~~
chromedev
No, it was due to him donating to Prop 8

------
rch
Why is it uncertain? They'll get acquired or wind things down. They've had a
good run.

------
brador
I still don’t understand how they spend 500M a year with so little to show for
it.

What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Nothing.

I still can’t copy urls From multiple selected tabs without an extension.

What we need is a group to step up, create a new browser, capture the
500M/year payday and put the money to work.

~~~
esperent
> What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world?

Rust, Wasm (although a joint project, inspired by asm.js which was purely
Mozilla) come to mind.

Also, I consider keeping the focus on privacy in an age when huge behemoths of
companies are determined to steal every aspect of our lives for profit to be
truly important work, much more important than any tech innovation.

~~~
hu3
Mozilla employs (or employed) 2 "Rust devs". If that.

steve could chime in to be more precise. But I'd say Rust is a merit of the
people involved much more than Mozilla.

If anything Mozilla just fired servo folks who contributed to Rust so it's not
like they even pretend to support it.

I hope Rust gets a foundation and I hope that Mozilla transfers the "Rust"
trademark to them.

------
burtonator
If Mozilla wants to have a future it needs to:

\- Realize it lost the browser wars, abandon FF and base it on chromium. It
might upset the average FF geek on HN but you're not paying for FF development
- Google is. As FF user base keeps dropping Google is not going to be
interested in funding their development. No one cares about FF enough to
actually fund it. Google just is because they want to push you ads.

\- They need another revenue model. Probably focusing on B2C products. They
should start acquiring more companies to buy growth.

They've really squandered a huge opportunity.

------
jhoechtl
Inventing an entirely knew programming language with new concepts that is
aiming at smart people and basing critical components of the web browser on
it.

It is this kind of decision which freaks out the ordinary HN reader but is
otherwise an alarm bell to any sane business responsible.

That was the nail into the coffin.

