Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off The Mozilla Foundation is laying off about a third of its staff. The non-profit org, which oversees the corporation that develops the Firefox web browser, insists it will continue its advocacy mission, though its approach may change. "The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate …
Your first instinct was the correct one
If Mozilla were to fall apart, maybe we (developers) can TAKE OVER the project and do a retro UI and "feature freeze" and just keep it up with the CONSTANTLY moving DOM/CSS standards, fix bugs, and make "lean and mean" performance enhancements.
Too many too frequent releases, and "up"grading is HIGHLY OVERRATED!!!!!
Seriously, the ad/script/etc. blocking, add-on, and privacy features are WAY superior to chrome!!! OR is that why they're being (quite possibly) DRIVEN! OUT! OF! BUSINESS!!!???
I’ve just put a Pi-Hole on my network. Is great!! (and a real eye-opener about how much crap it stops - I’ve not really noticed until now because my laptop has all sorts of filtering on it anyway …but I digress)
It would be even greater if I didn’t get constant grief from other family members because their websites keep breaking :-(
Yea, i'm hoping these 36 people were all in charge of mucking with the UI, adding the phone home options, pestering about refreshing your browser & syncing stuff. Oh and deciding to ignore my DNS choices over theirs - is my latest rant!
Give me Firefox ~4 again or thereabouts please and stop Mucking with the UI. Yes i want a menu bar, no i don't want HUGE tabs that i have to google how the hell to shrink back to normal again
/edit
Forgot about the constant nag to update as others mentioned
Basically if they didn't have en ESR branch i would have ditched it yonks ago.
/
I doubt know why you’re being voted down - this is a long running and well documented issue.
I for one am getting really bored of clicking-away the “there is an update available” box that pops up every day (and yes, I know it can be suppressed but I don’t know where the file it to edit on Linux - all the instructions I have found so far refer to a windows installation, and besides, WHY take away the “fuck off and stop asking” button that FF USED to have until recently). This is a classic example of not listening to users
That sounds like you have maybe installed Firefox manually? In any sane Linux distro, the distro packagers will have disabled the update checks and nags, and just let the package manager take care of updates (and, if your distro gives you the choice, choosing the ESR version helps, because what sort of lunatic wants to update their browser every 6 weeks and find that things have been shuffled around for no good reason yet again?)
In Xubuntu - and perhaps other Ubunti - the developers have decided that Firefox updates are essential to security, so they are installed automatically. You are given no choice, can't delay them and only find out when it attempts to restart, losing all your open tabs and any work in them while doing so.
(living/working in a tiny software-dev bubble world where customers cannot 'bother' you)
This is a common problem in software development, EPITOMIZED by Micros~1 since "Windows APE" and TIFKAM.
/me now goes off and continues working on a customer-requested mod that will take days' worth of my time, and costs the company more money than it earns from it, but preserves the business relationship... which is sometimes MORE IMPORTANT
Yeah, well, Firefox, the browser, is still my mainstay, but it's struggling and seems to be getting buggier on edge cases. I mostly like it because of NoScript (which can often be annoying too).
On iOS, it a) doesn't do well to save pages to the home screen. Chrome does. b) sometimes doesn't open links from SMS. Chrome does. As a result, I've had to change to Chrome as a default browser.
On Linux, CTRL+F doesn't actually open a search dialog. You have to use the menu, which lists CTRL+F as a shortcut. I think it does repeat searches though, once opened.
What's their latest marker share? 3%?
IIRC a software millionaire recently sponsored Ladybird, a fledgling browser, because he says FF does not accept direct sponsorship/donations. Heck, if we were promised it would just go to the browser, rather than "advocacy", I'd happily pay a one time $50-ish fee (no, not a sub).
Not that I agree with his politics, but Mozilla might have benefited from keeping Brendan Eich as a CEO. Esp judging from Brave.
> On Linux, CTRL+F doesn't actually open a search dialog
Works fine for me on Linux Mint across every version of Firefox on 2 machines I've used for the past few years
I have NoScript installed as well as few other privacy and utility add-ons installed but I've just tested a clean profile default profile and CTRL-F works on that as well so it doesn't seem like I've tweaked anything to cause CTRL-F to work
Maybe Elon can fix it?
First, reduce costs to a fraction of what they were like he did with Twitter (now X)
Then integrate with X search, and call it the X browser with extra privacy settings, a PROPER UI, and maybe built-in secure VPN access for posters who do not want to GET ARRESTED for speaking out online...
Aaaand move the operation to TEXAS.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if they decided to become a "for profit" company. I mean, they've been raking in hundreds of millions every year whilst frivolously wasting it on all sorts of ill fated projects that didn't improve the browser in the least. They're obsessed with freeing themselves of Google's search dollars whilst they'd be better off embracing it and investing in improving Firefox.
I mean getting rid of the Foundation and just becoming a "regular" for-profit entity. That way they can also put themselves up for sale or list on the stock market (horror!).
The altruistic part of Mozilla seems more and more like a joke. I'm pretty sure the execs are thinking of simply pilfering the company and leaving the spent husk to wither and die.
That way they can also put themselves up for sale or list on the stock market (horror!).
Unfortunately that would pretty much guarantee rapid enshittification.
I'm pretty sure the execs are thinking of simply pilfering the company and leaving the spent husk to wither and die.
Classic principal/agent problem. See also: representative democracy.
The opposite, really. It ensures that the commercial side of things can't benefit from the various tax breaks (not VAT, business rates reductions and so on) available to the charity side. Think of it as a way of separating one overall organisations for-profit and not-for-profit operations.
Indeed. The marketing term AI is, like all marketing-led initiatives in software, vapourware.
You're being too literal, AI isn't literally 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Artificial Intelligence' is the term people now use when they mean 'the modern field of machine driven statistical analyses and inference'. Don't dismiss a field because it's badly misrepresented.
AI may be a horrible buzzword, but there's also advances in technologies behind it. Mainly massive advances in statistical inference due to the availability of large datasets and the distributed storage and processing needed to analyse them. These technologies aren't individually new, but the combination is only now becoming possible, and is providing tangible benefits.
Just because a technology is vastly overhyped, and misunderstood by a lot of people, doesn't make the core tech useless. It just means the noise has to die down first.
XML is a useful file format, but for a while it was 'the answer to every software solution'. This lead to a lot of people dismissing it's use out of hand because of the reputation it had got, without actually getting as far as considering if it was appropriate.
No, AI isn't intelligent, and many of the uses are bullshit, but it does have several real world examples, where, like any new tool, it does make things easier, or possible.
Culturally it's image and sound processing capabilities can be used for things like remastering old works where the source tracks don't exist, or convincingly and cheaply de-aging actors .(See the trailers for the new Tom Hanks film 'Here' as an example). It can also be used to more easily make fakes and knock-offs.
Scientifically, it's massively helped in the search for new drugs or more effectively filter large datasets in fields like astronomy.
Even personally, just being able to find that picture I knew I took by giving my phone a vague description is helpful, not life changing, but helpful. Being able to quickly touch up photos without being a Photoshop expert is helpful. Being able to take the grainy picture of my parents wedding day and upscale it using AI so it could be printed and framed was helpful. It wouldn't have made the celebrations any less, but it wasn't a bad addition.
Sure, it's massively over hyped ('Significant breakthrough in statistic analyses due to the availability of large scale information, distributed storage and processing' doesn't sound nearly as sexy), and it's most definitely not 'Artificial Intelligence', but to dismiss the entire field due to idiots misusing it seems odd.
The reality is, the good uses of AI you'll rarely, if ever, know about. They'll just make other things better (e.g., you may get a new drug, you may not know it was initially developed using AI, but you'll be happy if it makes you well).
Or.... on the other hand... there's an email client.
Indeed. I'm not at all sad about these cutbacks at Mozilla. They sadly too long ago succumbed to wikipissification, where, having far more money than they actually needed to focus on the core tasks of developing and improving their software (yet failing to actually invest wisely on such), they decided to piss a lot of it against the wall on all of these mostly irrelevant side projects: not that internet privacy advocacy isn't very important, but there are plenty of other organisations very active in that area, and, let's be honest, can any of us think of a single useful thing that these Mozilla freeloaders (as opposed to the good privacy features in Firefox itself) have done in this regard that achieved any media or political, or even public, influence whatsoever? It's an awful lot of money to squander on a self-congratulatory blog (etc) that I'm sure virtually nobody actually reads or pays any attention to. Good riddance to the unnecessary fluff, and hopefully a Mozilla now re-learning the meaning of what it is to feel hunger will spend its resources much more wisely from now on.
"as opposed to the good privacy features in Firefox itself"
What, you mean the ones they keep trying to break?
[side note: their add-ons on mobile devices is a complete joke; the pre-screwup Firefox would happily run a lot of regular add-ons, but now there's a curated selection of, what, maybe 16 or so? and it's been that way for ages]
"It's an awful lot of money to squander"
You're looking at it from the point of view of Mozilla. Try the point of view of the source of the money. Thinking of the wads thrown by the chocolate shop, maybe it's a tax write-off? Maybe it's enough to keep the anti-competition guys off their backs? Probably counts as a good investment for them.
"hopefully a Mozilla now re-learning the meaning of what it is to feel hunger will spend its resources much more wisely"
When has that ever been the case? The high ups, used to lots of money, respond to less money by upping the prices, shoving in adverts, and carrying on as normal - like Netflix...
"as opposed to the good privacy features in Firefox itself"
What, you mean the ones they keep trying to break?
That seems a bit unfair: I use Firefox because it's the least shit (used to be "best", but, yeah, well) browser for privacy, and it still has better privacy features than any other browser (admittedly, with a huge amount of help from NoScript and Cookie AutoDelete, and uBlock Origin, too). They're not the ones forcing people to prostrate themselves on the Manifest v3 rack, after all!
Yes, "privacy-preserving ad measurement" is somewhat murky, but given how the mainstream web works, if we really have to, I'd rather have that (if it lives up to its promises) than all of the rest of the data reapists that we have to protect ourselves from.
[side note: their add-ons on mobile devices is a complete joke; the pre-screwup Firefox would happily run a lot of regular add-ons, but now there's a curated selection of, what, maybe 16 or so? and it's been that way for ages]
Mobile is sadly a different world, and if you're using Firefox on Google Android, you're already kind of hosed anyway. Other Android forks may be less bad, perhaps.
"It's an awful lot of money to squander"
You're looking at it from the point of view of Mozilla. Try the point of view of the source of the money. Thinking of the wads thrown by the chocolate shop, maybe it's a tax write-off? Maybe it's enough to keep the anti-competition guys off their backs? Probably counts as a good investment for them.
You might not be wrong there. Sadly!
"hopefully a Mozilla now re-learning the meaning of what it is to feel hunger will spend its resources much more wisely"
When has that ever been the case? The high ups, used to lots of money, respond to less money by upping the prices, shoving in adverts, and carrying on as normal - like Netflix...
Yeah… Which is why Firefox somehow needs to be wrested from the money-grabbing parasites "running" Mozilla and put under the control of an organisation which genuinely has web citizens' interests at heart and which will use the money (and user donations) only to develop the browser, and not any of the sideshow stuff. If only…
how much of that "fluff" was political donations in the recent USA election? Interestingly enough the announcement came a couple of days after the election was 'called' for the next US Prez...
[3 guesses on which candidates the "allegedly laundered" money might have gone to, and the first 2 guesses do not count, but being based in SAN FRANCISCO with satellites in Beijing, Toronto, and Berlin should give a pretty big hint...]
Moving to Texas or Louisiana or S. Carolina or similar would cut the employee living expenses in half, and because of "progressive" and state tax rates, Moz could reduce wages to 1/3 of what they were (for employees inside the US) without affecting anyone's net disposable income (after paying for necessities) - just sayin'. SF living expenses are some of the HIGHEST, ANYWHERE.
Mozilla the foundation had 120 employees. Mozilla the corporation, owned and paid for by the foundation, has an additional 750 or so. Do the calculations again and the numbers start to look a little more normal, especially as they're not using all of that revenue to pay each worker, some gets saved so they can continue to operate if that revenue drops again.
Not really bad news if it means they actually focus on the products (Firefox, Thunderbird et al.) and not the "advocacy". The latter had some good research (like into car privacy) but a lot of it was just leftist, not tech-related "activism". Hopefully that's the part that goes away for good.
As many have noted, Mozilla is awash with cash.
They have a tsunami of $$$ flowing into their accounts every year from Google.
They are, in effect 'sales reps' for them.
Just for fun, I went through every single URL linkout to Google in Firefox's about:config setup.
There are dozens of 'em, and I deleted and nulled every single one.
Try it why don't you.
Firefox *still* connects to them.
'Privacy' my ears.
Looks like the only references to Google in my config are for "safe browsing", which you can just turn off if you like.
Yes, the, ahem, 'safebrowsing' setiing, if enabled, will send *all* your tyoed URLs directly to Googoe - for, ahem, 'checking'.
If you disbable it, then *some* of the contacts with Google will stop.
If you use 'about:config' and seach for 'goo' you'll see all the URLs which firefox uses to contact 'em.
At least you might be forgiven for thinking so. As I mentioned, if you disable 'safebrowsing' and remove every single Google contact URL, it will *still* contact them. (with whoever knows what detalls -- hard to tell, 'cos they're encrypted)
If you want to see FF's voluminous outgoing connections, you can use 'about:networking' (with the auto-refresh option enabled).
No, really, privacy my ears.
I thought that the Firefox implementation of Safe Browsing only checked the URLs locally within Firefox within the browser itself against a (regularly updated) list of unsafe sites, precisely so as not to tattle your browsing habits to Google (unlike certain other browsers)? Or did they sneakily and evilly change how it works at some point? :-(
Yes, the, ahem, 'safebrowsing' setiing, if enabled, will send *all* your tyoed URLs directly to Googoe - for, ahem, 'checking'.
No, it doesn't, it downloads a list every 30 mins... from Google, yes, but it doesn't upload your URLs. You can turn it off in settings.
"The Mozilla Foundation is reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we accelerate our work to ensure a more open and equitable technical future for us all,"
If that one statement doesn't make alarm bells go off and big flashing sign saying "WE ARE SO FOOKED" and the bullshit-o-meter to maximum, then nothing will.
I am pretty sure the next browser revolution will still not be made by microsoft or google as there will always be a newcomer and or new better ideas that
will not be beholden to advertisers and just hold themselves to true useability by the end user.
When the big corps design things they always become the slow behemoth unwilling to change. Maybe the next browser might be called Agile or something like that.
Mozilla's advocacy efforts seem non-existent....!! I cannot recall when the last time any ads or Firefox promotion
Mozilla needs to focus on things that will help increase it's market share. Making remembered passwords would help a lot. Contributing code to no script would help a lot. Currently it is way to hard to tell which scripts to unblock.
This post has been deleted by its author
Take a look at the comments above. It’s all mildly technical stuff that casual web users don’t give a shit about. The UI is crap, this bit doesn’t work, that bit is flakey, I needed to install x to get y working. You all no doubt work in tech and have an underlying interest in it. The majority of people don’t. That’s why no one gives a toss about Firefox apart from the tech community. In fact most users probably never heard of it let alone could be bothered to install it.
I open my phone and safari works. I open my laptop and chrome or edge work. You’re lucky if any casual users even install Adblock. Most don’t even know the name of the browser they’re using, they just click a desktop shortcut…
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