> I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface.
I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.
Firefox has been making great strides on the performance and reliability side with a rendering engine and other things that they claim they could not have been done without Rust. If that is true, the investment probably already has paid for itself.
Directly monetizing programming tools is quite difficult.
And, as other have said, Rust has already paid off for them with the vastly improved performance of FF Quantum.
I think a better avenue for Mozilla would be offering an equivalent to Chrome Enterprise and GSuite. A paid set of services and managed functionality for Firefox.
Last I heard, the performance issues for GMail and GSuite was due to them using an outdated draft version of an internet standard that Chrome implemented, but no one else did. Offering a paid 'Mozilla Mail' may bring some needed competition.
I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.