Mitchell Baker logs off for good as CEO of Firefox maker Mozilla

Mitchell Baker announced on Thursday she's stepping down as CEO of Firefox maker Mozilla Corporation to resume her role as executive chair of the not-for-profit software house. "During my 25 years at Mozilla, I’ve worn many hats, and this move is driven by a desire to streamline our focus and leadership for the challenges …

[HuBo]

Super!

I'm glad Mitchell Baker was paid properly for her role as Mozilla CEO, especially as pay equity for women and other tech-space minorities remains such a major issue in this day and age (IMHO). I'm also happy that she is stepping down, because (in my mind) renewal is important in tech, as it is also in politics, and I think that term limits on C-suite positions would probably be a good thing, generally. I'd love for Mozilla to appoint a trick-cyclist as new CEO, to most masterfully surf that rising LLM zeitgeist!

[enistello]

Re: Super!

I too rejoice in pay equality for those who identify as women. But I abhor leaders in any industry who pay themselves very-very-good salaries for doing a not-very-good job.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Super!

Can u actually define what a good leader does ?

Do they make the sun and rain more regularly in better amounts so food grows well ?

Do they keep people from getting sick ?

Or do they talk bullshit and are rewarded for doing basically nothing ?

THey are the modern equivalent of Royalty, getting paid stupid amounts for doing basically nothign but pretending they are important for nothing. Morons like yourself are part of the problem of giving them prestige when they dont deserve it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Super!

I'm not sure whether people are upset by the sarcasm or unable to detect it.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Super!

The Board and the CEO were basically colluding, making a mockery of the oversight role of the Board.

Baker should've been fired long ago and the board should've installed someone with a technical vision for Firefox.

I also hate their failed attempts to generate revenue from other sources than Google. They even went so far as to sell themselves to the highest bidder, as if the half a billion dollars Google is paying them isn't enough. It too contributed to their sinking market share because users simply want Google. Why then sell out to some second-rate search engine for a couple bucks more?

[fxkeh]

Charity Navigator now says Mozilla is great?

"Charity Navigator, an organization that measures NGO effectiveness, would give them zero out of ten on the relevant metric."

Well, https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200097189 shows (the full) 4 stars now, so if that was the reason Patterson railed against Mozilla in 2020 I guess we should conclude that it's all okay now and he's changed his opinion?

Or... this shouldn't have been included in the article without disclaiming that the evaluation had now improved.

[Dan 55]

Re: Charity Navigator now says Mozilla is great?

Mitchell Baker is (was) CEO of Mozilla Corporation, not Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla Corporation is not a charity and it probably doesn't even need exist. As far as I can tell, its reason for being is a vehicle to pay the board and CEO.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Charity Navigator now says Mozilla is great?

The Corporation means the Foundation is basically an empty, worthless shell. All the ownership of the code, trademarks et al. are all in the Corporation.

And like you said to enable the C-level execs to feast on the spoils. I too believe the Corporation was created just for this purpose.

[Gene Cash]

killedbymozilla

I've only heard of Firefox OS and XULRunner. Am I just out of the loop?

[Dan 55]

Re: killedbymozilla

Mozilla Corporation's job is to distribute and promote these products... so that's more of a reflection on the work done by Mozilla Corporation than you.

[Mage]

Not just the big Corps

Mozilla has really messed up Thunderbird and Firefox desktop appearance compatibility, plug-ins, usability by chasing Chrome features and appearance. The arrogant removal of a Primary (previously Master) password on Mobile. Inability to easily resize and reflow Mobile browser content where zoom behaves like a a PDF.

No wonder they have lost share. It's not just the way Google, Apple and MS run their platforms, though that's bad. MS is doing with Edge what they were forbidden with Explorer. Aspects of Windows only work with Edge and aspects of Android or Playstore web links only work with Chrome/default Android Browser.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Not just the big Corps

Mozilla has really messed up Thunderbird and Firefox desktop appearance compatibility, plug-ins, usability by chasing Chrome features and appearance.

MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT!!! But you can still at least get rid of the ADWAITA default, or could... I just hope it has not been 'feature dumped'

Here's what I do, and it helps a LOT

export QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SET_FACTOR=0

export QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1

export QT_FONT_DPI=120

export GDK_SCALE=1

export GDK_DPI_SCALE=1

from command line

* gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme 'TraditionalOk'

and in about:config

* widget.content.gtk-theme.override = TraditionalOk

* widget.non-native.theme.enabled = false

(turn off URL bar search so mis-spellings do not go through google)

* keyword.enabled = false

* browser.urlbar.oneOffSearches = false

I only hope this continues to work. *I* *HATE* *2D* *FLATASS* ADWAITA !!!

[enistello]

A sense of transparency

Interesting that a company that values open-source is very closed about its staff's renumeration at the top.

Regardless, it's incumbent on right-minded folk to use Firefox and extol its virtues to all and sundry. As the web gets more Blink-ered (see what I did there?), open standards and data privacy have to be defended. Therefore if, in web wanderings, one comes across a site that renders like an arse unless driving Chome-u-like browsers, don't use it. I've been playing the "I'm so sorry I can't read/see/work your website because I am a technological fool" card for several years now, in private & professional lives, and no-one's fired me/refused to take my money yet, for being a pseudo-technophobe at least.

Firefox holds a unique place, literally one that combats the evils of the data sucking economy. I hope the new CEO can actually get that message out there. How much she gets paid is a different matter, but speaking persoanlly, she can have one of my kidneys if FF remains viable and popular enough to thrive, or even survive.

[OffTropics]

The newly appointed something for the Mozilla Foundation, we love to know, was in fact announced in March 2022 as ....

"Laura Chambers, Former AirBnB, eBay Exec & Mom of 3, Takes the Helm of Femtech Leader Willow® as CEO"

Femtech? Willow Innovations, Inc? Yes! OneWillow point com, your one-stop online source for breast pumps. Good for a Firefox success story? Mozilla Vision? Or maybe cunning rabbits?

Never mind, company's headquarters are located in Mountain View. Back to black...

[cyberdemon]

Somebody call the moderatrix, i'm choking on my coffee

[Anonymous Coward]

So expecting Mozilla to go titsup then?

[Lurko]

And the decline continues

When Cal Paterson did that analysis, Firefox market share was around 4.9%, in Dec 23 it was 3.35%, by Feb 24 it was 3.13%. Yes, a 7% loss in the last two months.

I use and like Firefox, but it's patently obvious that Mozilla have failed as stewards of the Firefox project, that the organisation has neither functioning governance nor clear strategy, and exist purely as a vehicle for people of little talent to pay themselves huge salaries. Judging purely by Firefox, Baker was a monumental failure as a leader; the same clique that appointed her have cherry picked her successor, so I fully expect the decline to continue.

3.13% market share and declining is a piss-poor place to be, and I wonder at what point does the music stop for Firefox?

And the same question separately for Mozilla - can it exist after Firefox ceases to be?

[katrinab]

Re: And the decline continues

The music stops when Google pulls the plug.

That will happen when doing so doesn't cause competition concerns.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: And the decline continues

So Mozilla is good for the next 5 to 10 years, I'd say.

[Someone Else]

Re: And the decline continues

When Cal Paterson did that analysis, Firefox market share was around 4.9%, in Dec 23 it was 3.35%, by Feb 24 it was 3.13%. Yes, a 7% loss in the last two months.

But...but...but...today is February 9th 2024. So this Cal guy is prescient? Or is he just making shit up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats what happens when your tech company is run by a sleazy lawyer

She's a career lawyer with zero interest / background in tech. But she sure made herself very rich from those DOJ "Anti Trust Insurance" deals with Google etc. I can think of a few tech ceo's with law degrees over the decades but in all cases they also had a serious interest / background in tech. And in showed.

So the biggest rat is jumping ship. Based on their burn rate expect them to be "acquired / merged" in the next 5 to 10 years.Corporate governance is a remarkably flexible concept but it takes a long time for a dead tech company to actually die. Real Networks being a classic example.

Well at least we have Waterfox etc. So who cares. Firefox is dead. Long live the code forks.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Re: Thats what happens when your tech company is run by a sleazy lawyer

I don't buy these code forks. The Firefox code is much too complicated for anyone but Mozilla engineers to improve substantially.

Most of these forks are merely following Firefox's commits and adding their own proprietary sauce to it, mostly in the form of extra sleazy snooping or integrating their own search engine. They almost never add anything of real value.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Thats what happens when run by a sleazy lawyer...except Waterfox does nt crash..

Well as a Firefox user since before it was called Firefox (since 2002) I got so sick of its regular crashes and immense memory foot-prints that I installed Waterfox to give it a spin. Well Waterfox did not crash all the time like Firefox but the foot-print was still stupid big. But one out of two is not bad. So they must be doing something right. Been using Waterfox daily for several years now without the very regular crashes that were such a feature of Firefox.

I did laugh out loud at the "Firefox code is much too complicated for anyone but Mozilla engineers to improve substantially" line. The codebase is pure spaghetti but I have seen little evidence in the last decade plus that anyone in Mozilla is technically competent. The "lets invent a new programming language" to fix problems in a large code base is always a guaranteed sign that you are dealing with bozos. Which has been proved over and over again. No one in Mozila knew how to rearchitect and refactor a large codebase. Not that difficult. If you actually know what you are doing. Just keep it simple and apply total discipline. But not as much fun as inventing yet another stupid language that just reinvents the features of a whole bunch of other languages over the last five decades.

Sure the Chrome build is pretty insane but when you dive into the code it mostly makes sense. Mostly. So easy to find your way around. But the current Firefox codebase is still the total swamp it always was that has a genealogy that goes back to Navigator and some all the way back to the original Mosaic codebase. Remember that? I do. Last time I looked at the Rust code in the codebase it just replicated so many of the sloppy programming habits that made the Firefox codebase so unstable in the first place. I'd guess no one involved ever wrote code that absolutely had to work. Always. Like for embedded system. Code that is written assuming everything will work will always fail in the field. Code that is written assuming everything can fail will always work in the field

Anyway. Have Chrome, Waterfox, Opera and Firefox installed on this machine. Chrome, Waterfox and Opera get used daily. Firefox now only gets launched by accident when I click on the wrong icon.

It did not have to be this way. But this is the end result of the utter technical incompetent (and DotCom 2.0 greed) of the Mozilla senior management for well over a decade.

Its dead Lister.

[Benny Cemoli]

Re: Thats what happens when run by a sleazy lawyer...except Waterfox does nt crash..

>>"Anyway. Have Chrome, Waterfox, Opera and Firefox installed on this machine. Chrome, Waterfox and Opera get used daily. Firefox now only gets launched by accident when I click on the wrong icon."

Have Brave and Firefox on my system. Use Brave daily and Firefox rarely if ever gets used. Not sure why I'm keeping Firefox on my system. Probably wouldn't miss it at all if I just deleted it and recovered the disk space. Mozilla hasn't really offered anything unique in the way of web browsers features to make me want to keep it.

As you said, it didn't have to happen this way. But here we are and there we go.

[Mage]

Re: Well at least we have Waterfox etc

We don't really since he abandoned Waterfox Classic. I can't see the point of the current fork.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Well at least we have Waterfox etc...its all about competence

So we have two builds of essentially the same codebase. One build is stripped down to what 99.99% of users want. The other build is all bells and whistles.

One build is very stable, rarely crashes. The other build has proved to be so unstable over the years and crashes so often that it has suffered a catastrophic loss of market share. To less than 3%.

One build is maintained by a small group of volunteers. The other build is maintained by a company that employs hundreds of devs and spends over $200M p.a on R&D.

And that is the most damning indictment of Mozilla. Spending huge amounts of money to produce garbage builds. But hey it bough Google over a decade of insurance against a DOJ Anti Trust Case for Browser market share monopoly. Although at 3% market share one wonders how long Google will keep paying the annual insurance premium.

[StrangerHereMyself]

Winner

Firefox could've been a winner had they followed through with rewriting the core engine in Rust and integrated Tor into their Incognito mode. Instead they did neither and went off on some wild goose chase trying to make their own operating system, which they claimed they needed to remain relevant.

What they need is someone with engineering creds at the top and to let loose all the lawyers and MBA's which are only out to fill their own pockets.

I doubt things will be much different with someone from the Mozilla board at the helm. It's all the same breed.