
"Much" of the Rust/Wasmtime team hit by layoffs at Mozilla - cs702
https://twitter.com/tschneidereit/status/1293868141953667074
======
steveklabnik
Hi everyone, the Rust core team has been talking about making a statement on
this, but I left this comment in a personal capacity yesterday:

\------------------------

Mozilla employs a small number of people to work on Rust fulltime, and many of
the Servo people contributed to Rust too, even if it wasn't their job. They
also pay for the hosting bill for crates.io. They also own a trademark on
Rust, Cargo, and the logos of both. Two people from the Rust team have posted
about their situation, one was laid off and one was not. Unsure about the
others. Many of the Servo folks (and possibly all, it's not 100% clear yet but
it doesn't look good) have been laid off.

The vast majority of contributors and team members are non-Mozilla, though the
Mozilla folk are very important. Rust will survive. This situation is very
painful, and it has the possibility of being more so, but (thanks to a lot of
work from people (not speaking of myself here) who used to be at Mozilla!)
Rust is bigger than Mozilla, and has been on a long road towards
diversification. Some other companies have stepped up to pay a bunch of the
bills that Mozilla used to pay, namely Amazon and Microsoft. Here's hoping
that we get even more involvement in the future.

~~~
mcqueenjordan
Totally agree, Rust will survive.

AWS is investing heavily in Rust. If anyone who is reading this was affected
by these layoffs and you want to continue to work in Rust, get in touch with
me. We have many Rust opportunities open across the company on a variety of
different teams.

~~~
capableweb
Any Rustaceans who have been working at Mozilla, have probably done so for the
mission that Mozilla work on (publicly), not too earn a ton of money.
Amazon/AWS, who's main goal is closed down infrastructure, is the opposite of
that mission. Worth keeping in mind when trying to recruit people from the
opposite spectrum of yourself.

~~~
mcqueenjordan
Thanks for the feedback. I disagree with your premise and your
characterizations, but that's what opinions are for!

I believe the success of Rust, as a technical goal, can transcend the business
goals of whatever organization uses it. Solidifying the future of Rust is a
noble goal, and it would be a huge win for our industry.

~~~
say_it_as_it_is
It could be a major win if layoffs result in a multiplier effect where
concentrated Rust talent now spreads across industries. However, this can
amount to a net loss if those with bleeding edge Rust skills and experience
cannot continue putting them to use. Further, unused expertise atrophies.

After the Great Depression, the New York City public schools became some of
the best in the country as those with amazing credentials and work experience
were displaced and needed jobs. The same can happen with Mozilla's layoffs,
where Rust can spread faster and have a great impact on software development,
but only if people can put their bleeding edge skills to best use.

------
dx87
> The internet is the platform now with ubiquitous web technologies built into
> it, but vast new areas are developing (like Wasmtime and the Bytecode
> Alliance vision of nanoprocesses). Our vision and abilities should play in
> those areas too.

Two days ago, the CEO said that focusing on technologies like Wasmtime was one
of their plans for the future[1]. Now we find out that they're actually
getting rid of the team. They really doubled down on the corporate speak for
this round of layoffs.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-
chan...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-
mozilla/)

~~~
Ygg2
Why call it corporate speak, when it's plain old lying?

~~~
chrisseaton
Being more charitable, it's possible they changed their minds, rather than
they were lying.

~~~
FireBeyond
It wasn't a change of mind. This was the layoff blog post. They just didn't
mention it.

Tuesday blog post: "Wasmtime is our future!" "We're going to be smaller across
the board".

Thursday it becomes apparent that the Wasmtime was laid off on that Tuesday.

"... specifically, a much smaller future ..."

------
rvz
This shows that open-source in general is expensive for Mozilla but cheap for
the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google who own their own Web browsers and
have other open-source programming languages maintained by some of their
employees full time.

The actual reality of this is that they are still kept alive by a direct
competitor for decades and haven't made anything to generate significant
sources of revenue. Maybe they should turn into a Rust consultancy of some
sort. I don't know.

If the mission statement is about 'privacy' then it doesn't make much sense to
continue to bite the hand that feeds them as its up to Google if they want to
re-new their contract with Mozilla; which unsuprisingly they had to.

~~~
thomascgalvin
For Apple, Microsoft, and Google, their open source activities are all loss
leaders for their profitable ventures.

Apple sells hardware, and most of their software offerings, like MacOS, their
office suite, and Safari, and given away to convince people to buy that
hardware. Also, it's not like they're spending a whole lot of time making
Sarafi the best browser around.

Microsoft's web browser was created (and bundled) specifically to prevent the
web from disrupting their monopoly on the desktop, and their new browser is
just a fork of Chromium.

Google's browser was a way for Google to drive web technologies in service of
their advertising platform.

Mozilla's open source efforts are/were a loss leader for ... nothing. Their
work was motivated by altruism, not profit, and that turned out to be, well,
not profitable. That's why they're pivoting; altruism alone wasn't enough to
pay the bills.

~~~
lostapathy
Is open source a loss leader for Apple, really? Or is it something they mostly
get for free, but have to contribute a little back to shape it how they want?

The point I read from GP, at least, was that open source is cheap for these
big corps because they get a ton of benefit for it, but non-profit (either
orgs or individuals) are bearing the brunt of the cost.

~~~
GeekyBear
> contribute a little back

Clang was certainly an in-house Apple project from the start, and it would be
hard to claim that it hasn't been a project that has seen huge uptake outside
of Apple.

~~~
cataphract
This is not entirely accurate. LLVM was started by Chris Lattner before he was
hired by Apple, which were probably spooked by gcc going GPLv3 by then.

~~~
sirn
Yes for LLVM, but Clang was made entirely while Chris Lattner was employed by
Apple[1]. Before Clang you have to use LLVM GCC frontend (llvm-gcc) to compile
C code under LLVM, which was the default in Xcode until 5.x (although Clang
was added in Xcode 4.x, I remembered it being quite unstable at the time).

[1]: [https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-
dev/2007-July/000000.ht...](https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-
dev/2007-July/000000.html) (announcement)

------
shawxe
From many of the comments in this thread, one might think that FAANG companies
invented the concept of open source software or that software doesn't exist
outside the context of a "profit model." Whatever is going on at Mozilla right
now, the notion that a piece of open source software even needs to be
profitable (let alone supported by a single large company) in order to
continue existing is ridiculous.

I'll concede that there are unique challenges associated with developing a web
browser (it's certainly a moving target) and that there need to be several
people working on it full time, but is that really something that can only
happen when one big company/organization is funding the project? As for Rust,
maybe someone could point me in the direction of the one benevolent large
company that's backing GCC/G++ or CPython or Ruby?

I'm not saying what's going on with Mozilla isn't absolutely terrible, but the
notion that Firefox or Rust are going to somehow just go away (and that this
is what was destined to happen all along because Mozilla is not profitable)
just doesn't really make any sense.

~~~
maccard
> but is that really something that can only happen when one big
> company/organization is funding the project?

Have you any examples of any large OSS projects that don't have this problem?

> As for Rust, maybe someone could point me in the direction of the one
> benevolent large company that's backing GCC/G++ or CPython or Ruby?

gcc [0] has a list of maintainers, which features a lot of redhat email
addresses. The ruby maintainer is employed by Heroku. CPython is maintained by
a RH employee. The linux kernel is mostly comprised of people paid to develop
by their employers.

[0] [https://github.com/gcc-
mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS](https://github.com/gcc-
mirror/gcc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS)

~~~
jpgvm
PostgreSQL is probably the best example. It's maintained by many people from
many different companies.

~~~
maccard
That's a really good example of the opposite, thanks! I wasn't aware of it!

------
Barrin92
I always wondered how Rust at Mozilla was sustainable. Maintaining an
ecosystem like that and bringing it into an already complex project like a
browser is a huge undertaking that probably has eaten up significant amount of
manhours.

At a Microsoft sized company I'd get it because they can basically blow
billions on that sort of thing but I always wondered if it actually took time
away from improving Firefox or other products.

I can't imagine that from a standpoint of time investment and technical
improvement Rust ever made sense for Firefox to be honest.

~~~
rumanator
> At a Microsoft sized company I'd get it because they can basically blow
> billions on that sort of thing

It also helps that Microsoft is in the business of selling IDEs.

~~~
regularfry
Interesting question: why isn't Mozilla in this business too? They've got a
cross-platform desktop app toolkit sat _right there_ , and big enough
developer mindshare to be interesting. There's room for a Firefox-flavour web
dev IDE in the market, surely? Firefox dev tools, only with edit-in-place and
live debugging for server-side assets. Seems odd to me that they've never gone
that way, given everything else they've tried.

~~~
nitrogen
A web editor was actually an integral part of the original suite from which
Firefox was derived.

------
protomyth
Firefox doesn't have the developer tools that Chrome does so developers use
Chrome to develop with meaning their websites work better in Chrome so Firefox
is playing catch-up or just plain looks worse keeping adoption of Firefox
lower.

Mozilla solves the problem by killing development of developer tools insuring
Firefox is an afterthought.

Is there anyone in Mozilla management that has a technical bone in their body?

~~~
lucasmullens
I'm sure management understands those teams are important. Who should they
have cut instead?

These are hard decisions. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that management
doesn't understand tech, they obviously do, it's Mozilla.

~~~
protomyth
_I wouldn 't jump to the conclusion that management doesn't understand tech,
they obviously do, it's Mozilla._

What in these decisions should make that obvious? Just because its Mozilla
doesn't mean its management staff understand tech.

Cut the CEO salary and remove some management first.

~~~
mkozlows
They cut 25% of their workforce. That's 250 people. Figure all-in loaded cost
of $200K per person let go, and that's $50 million in budget they cut.
Mitchell Baker had made $2.5 million. You don't get $50 million out of non-
technical cuts.

~~~
fgonzag
But a pay reduction to all C level execs would free up a few million that
would allow you to maybe keep some of (what the community consider) Mozilla's
most important projects.

I used to donate to Mozilla until these news. In fact, I started specifically
donating because of the Servo and Rust projects. I was impressed with the way
Mozilla was pushing the envelope and once again returning to the forefront of
tech, in an open source manner.

Instead, C execs keep getting raises and the guys doing the real work keep
getting axed.

------
blub
Mozilla's decision makes a lot of economic sense. They got rid of projects
requiring lots of engineering effort with negligible benefits for the company
or for the internet or for our privacy.

I'm not sure at this point if it makes sense for them to keep the Firefox code
base or give up, switch to Chromium and focus on what they do best - spy less
on us than Google. When Microsoft gave up anyone paying attention knew this
was coming.

The only company that can still afford to develop a Chromium competitor is
Apple. I hope they're not forced by the masses of web developers to switch to
Chromium too.

~~~
cordite
It’s still WebKit under the hood isn’t it?

The JS engines are different though

~~~
andrewflnr
No, IIRC Firefox's render engine is called Gecko, and it's a completely
separate (older I believe) lineage from Webkit.

Ed: I may have misunderstood which "it's" you were referring to. Oh well.

~~~
cordite
I meant between Safari and Chrome. Saying Apple maintains their own, yet they
share tech.

------
condercet
Mozilla has decided to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as a business
strategy.

~~~
burtonator
The HN community is going to hate on me for this but it's partially their own
fault for spending money trying to differentiate in the browser.

They should just focus on Chromium. It's going to win anyway. Mozilla has a
small market share percentage and eventually the gap is going to be large
enough they will have to abandon the FF code base anyway.

It's looking like they're going to focus more on the consumer market and
building consumer products and less on infrastructure.

FF as needed back when all the browsers were proprietary.

Sure... Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it
can always be forked. There's nothing advantageous in maintaining FF as a
dedicate code base. It's just duplication.

One of the major points of OSS is to prevent people from competing on things
that are non-differentiating. If's OSS so they can fork it and make their own
changes if they want.

~~~
est31
> Google can do evil things with Chrome but Chromium is Open Source - it can
> always be forked.

It takes more to maintain a Chromium competitor than its source code. You also
need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing web.

If Google decided to close the source code in 2030, nobody would be able to do
anything about it. Mozilla would have laid off its last engineers by 2025 and
they'd have found new jobs by now, having 5 year old outdated knowledge about
how browsers work. Even if you have engineers with the required knowledge, you
still need to organize them, etc. All of this takes time, and gigantic
investments.

~~~
criddell
> You also need engineers to implement new features of the rapidly changing
> web.

What kind of things are rapidly changing these days?

~~~
jlokier
JavaScript itself (ES language changes), APIs callable from JavaScript (there
are a lot), CSS, HTTP(s)/TLS and evolving security, ever-evolving
compatibility requirements to keep popular pages working, performance
expectations of the rendering model (what must be smooth nowadays didn't used
to be and it's expected by sites), things like WASM, WebGL (new version on
its) & WebGPU, the sandbox, evolving security patterns (HTML/HTTP/JS security
model is complex) and dealing with new security issues (it never stops),
compatibility with OS version releases (always new issues), compatibility with
GPU drivers (always new issues), video codecs.

These things by themselves require a well-funded team to keep the browser
relevant to modern sites. Well-funded because they take a lot of time and
ideally to be done to a professional standard. The number of spare-time or
independently-wealthy volunteers around to do the work seems thoroughly
insufficent compared with what it would take to keep up.

That list doesn't even have new user-visible features (so nothing to "sell" to
users except "we still work with current sites").

They are just moving-target "basics", minimal expectations by users and sites
to remain "current" on the web. I'm sure I've left off a lot too, it's just
off the top of my head.

------
varbhat
What's the focus of Mozilla now given the layoffs of Rust,MDN,Wasmtime and
Servo?

Is Mozilla/Firefox becoming VPN company?

~~~
ChrisSD
They're refocussing on the user experience of the browser. They're stopping
their more developer friendly endeavours and research projects such as servo.

The VPN client and Pocket are just ways to make money to fund browser
development. Firefox itself does not and can not make money (and not from lack
of trying). It turns out people don't want "ads", "nags" or "suggested
content" in their browser.

~~~
yulaow
I understood the exact opposite, that they are moving out from the "focus on
the firefox browser" mantra because it is not a competitive strategy anymore
and they want instead to find and build new products.

~~~
ChrisSD
They need to find a build new products to actually make a decent income.
Firefox alone doesn't do that. They are still committed to the core browser.

~~~
shi314
When their other products sell, they would probably just use a chromium fork
with FF branding and some tweaks to make it resemble FF to sell nostalgia like
Ubuntu.

~~~
anticensor
Iceweasel was a thing.

------
fs111
What is actually left of mozilla after this?

~~~
blub
The projects which are essential for Mozilla. These were all side-projects
which maybe a FAANG can afford, but not a normal company.

Mozilla was operating a long time under the mistaken assumption that they're a
tech powerhouse when they're obviously not. You can lie to yourself only for
so long before the market corrects your assumptions the hard way.

~~~
stonogo
They fired the Servo team. Servo's CSS engine is shipping in Firefox. Servo's
rendering engine was supposed to become the primary Firefox graphics engine.
It's weird to call that a side project when it's clearly development aimed at
becoming the basis of their primary product.

~~~
blub
Their primary product is the Mozilla brand and the browser, not a CSS or
rendering engine. The innards can be swapped out and even the entire browser
could and probably will be.

Always follow the money. If they got rid of these people it likely means that:

a) Rust is not part of Mozilla's future any more

b) Gecko's future doesn't look too bright either

------
627467
I'm not technical enough to understand what are the strategic implications of
this.

I have been reading a lot of reactions to this that involves hitting at
C-level of MozCorp (mostly around their pay, but also perceived lack of
focus?) so I wanted to understand what are the strategic changes that
management is enacting.

Is building a web-based platform not a priority for Mozilla anymore? What is?
Or is it that the layer of intervention on the web platform has shifted to
other things, other than rendering engine and documenting it's capabilities?

------
AsyncAwait
Is the plan now to sabotage every core Mozilla project people care about and
focus on selling 3rd party VPN services?

------
outworlder
I wonder if Rust has enough momentum to sustain itself now.

~~~
rglullis
Wasn't Microsoft hinting that it was going to adopt Rust for some projects?

~~~
zelly
Microsoft has Rust bindings for WinRT and I think some internal tools at
Azure. But Microsoft has a long history of creating programming languages for
every niche, so they'll probably make one in the tradition of Rust.

[https://github.com/microsoft/verona](https://github.com/microsoft/verona)

------
kiba
Does Mozilla not make enough money to sustain long term investments?

~~~
stu2b50
They make 90% of their revenue from Google paying to have Google be the
default web search on FF. A deal which is expiring in 2021 and hadn't yet been
renewed.

~~~
portmanteaufu
The deal was renewed today[1], which makes the layoffs that much more
baffling.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla-
extends-critical-firefox-search-deal-with-google/#ddfa8dd6ea2d)

~~~
mvn9
Then it was a negotiation tactic. Mozilla showed that they don't desperately
need the money because they are willing to cut all expenses. Thus, Google
can't play the 'take whatever we offer or you will be bankrupt in 2021'-card.
Firing the developers should have led to a better deal and they can now
silently rehire them back.

~~~
the_duke
Google doesn't need the search engine placement in Firefox. The market share
is tiny. (sadly)

I can imagine that Google is somewhat interested in keeping Firefox alive as
an independent browser though, just to ward off monopoly issues.

Yes, there are plenty of Chromium reskins, but Firefox is the only other
remaining full, cross-platform browser engine.

------
sg47
Given Microsoft's recent forays into Rust, they should acquire these engineers
and put their muscle behind Rust.

~~~
Rochus
They also have people in the C++ committee (even making proposals to add
features made popular with Rust also to C++) and they have their own C++
toolchain.

------
baybal2
This is why I call people to not rely too much on "opensource" software held
on corporate life support.

------
jlokier
One reasons some people use Rust is to target WebAssembly and WebGL.

Will this change at Mozilla mean that evolving features in WASM, WebGL and
other "advanced but it works on all evergreen browsers" features becomes a
less interesting target as Firefox starts to fall behind the leading edge due
to lack of developers, but still has enough users to make the "lowest common
denominator" fall behind as well?

Or will Firefox keep up somehow?

Or will it stop keeping up, and site/webapp developers working with leading-
edge web platform features like evolving WASM just drop FF from concern at the
cost of a few percent more users?

I know plenty of developers already don't test or know much about Firefox, and
many sites don't work properly on it. I've had a number of commercial sites
where I couldn't even login or couldn't pay except by switching to a different
browser. But I have the impression people that folks working on leading-edge
tech stuff are a bit more likely to include FF in their matrix, and the
assumption is FF is quite up to date (more than Safari) so it's worth
bothering with as an alternative target.

------
a-nikolaev
Maybe, donating to Mozilla would be nice, instead of giving to Wikipedia or
other projects that don't need more money.

~~~
AnonHP
Donations to Mozilla go to Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organization.
These layoffs are in Mozilla Corporation, which doesn’t get the donated money
and is mainly funded by the partnership with Google for the search engine
setting in Firefox.

~~~
jdashg
The foundation can totally fund the corporation at their leisure, so I'm not
sure where this idea is coming from. Money is fungible, and if the foundation
thinks the best use is funding e.g. dev-tools, they can either direct money to
the corporation or how engineers themselves. (Usually the latter)

------
spaetzleesser
I think for Rust to succeed long term it needs to be run more like C/C++ with
standards and multiple compiler implementations for as many platforms as
possible. I would be very nervous betting on Rust for a big long term project
if there is uncertainty about Mozilla’s future.

------
qppo
I wonder if someone is going to pick up the mantle that Mozilla dropped. One
of the FAANGs, maybe Oxide?

~~~
oconnor663
I wonder if Microsoft could be interested. They've written a lot recently
about investing in Rust internally. Also VSCode seems to be the de facto
standard Rust IDE these days.

------
poletopole
Does anyone know what the consequences for this will be? WASM was what
motivated me to learn Rust.

~~~
williamstein
He just added another tweet to address this question: "Another thing to
clarify: Rust, Wasmtime, and the Bytecode Alliance will all be more than fine!
[...] They all have a bright future!"

~~~
poletopole
Damn, that was a cliffhanger.

------
aazaa
> One thing I want to clarify: I was the engineering manager for this team. I
> didn't lead strategy for Rust — that's @nikomatsakis. And together with
> @luke_wagner I supported @linclark in leading strategy for Wasmtime and Wasm
> outside the browser.

Looks like Lin Clark was one of those affected:

[https://twitter.com/linclark/status/1293207099766431744](https://twitter.com/linclark/status/1293207099766431744)

edit: fortunately I'm wrong and need to read more carefully.

~~~
mkl
Not like you're implying though: "I was not included in the layoffs, but I am
deeply affected by them."

~~~
aazaa
Facepalm - I botched the interpretation of that one badly. No ill intended - I
actually interpreted it as she was let go for some reason. Fortunately, I'm
wrong. Doesn't look like a comment can be deleted.

------
coldtea
Time to get off the Firefox train. Brave (the browser) it is...

------
coldtea
I'd like to see Microsoft stepping up to the plate and hiring the Rust team...

------
mola
Mozilla tech brought value right? MDN bright value right? Wasm, rust etc,
brought value. But no profit.

Could it be that profit isn't synonymous with value? Just a thought.

~~~
perryizgr8
Of course it isn't. Think about the value Linus Torvalds created with his
contributions to Linux and git. He's wealthy, sure, but not even a fraction of
that value generated profit for him.

------
twblalock
Rust, not Firefox, is likely to be the enduring legacy of Mozilla.

Rust will survive if Mozilla does not. I doubt Firefox will.

------
simion314
I am wondering if Mozilla considered to re-skin Chromium as similar to
Microsoft.

------
sjwmozilla
Oh man Microsoft or some other less activist company needs to sponsor rust

------
voldacar
Hopefully this will mean fewer "We're rewriting $WORKING_SOFTWARE in Rust!!!"
posts

~~~
AsyncAwait
Am I to read that as you rooting for Rust to die?

~~~
secondcoming
No, just the overenthusiastic rustafarians

