With FF being one of the last bastions of actual web-freedom on the internet, it wouldn't surprise me for people to start digging for things in an effort to get rid of them once and for all. Especially with Google's new attempt at web-DRM.
Not many browsers left that aren't chromium/webkit based. Feels like it's only a matter of time before Google succeeds where Microsoft failed back in the early 00's...
Hell, when they were Netscape they lost to IE. IE became the default that it did because Netscape Navigator would take 5 minutes to boot up, and would load pages slower too.
In a way I agree with you, but it's kind of well known that Mozilla depends a lot on Google from earning money. So I'm not sure that if Google pushes the DRM project, Mozilla will bite the hand that feeds it.
But the good thing is that we will probably see that very soon :)
Uhm, aren't all questions raised in that text completely on point?
I'm as far left as it gets but none of these expenses make any sense to me. The CEO pay is bonkers. Wtf are they doing? Why does the CEO deserve to basically collect the entirety of donations for... basically just extending a cash cow deal with Google?
I don't give a damn if the author is on the right but so far this looks sus as fuck.
Firefox being as good and fast as it is probably more an accomplishment of individual teams inspite of company leadership and that should be called out.
Can't sell yourself as the underdog if you're got almost half a billion in assets.
Agreed. The only official Mozilla response to Google’s WebDRM that I’ve seen was on the git page where the Firefox engineer raised the concern. Mozilla’s Google liaison shot down the statement opposing WebDRM as “premature” since it is currently “only a proposal” (by a working group of Google engineers).
For those of us that remember IE6, this isn't a fairy tale no matter what Mozilla says. We need a non-majority web browser or we're going to pay (again).
I read through it and I don't know what the issue is?
There seems to be an issue with Mozilla supporting diversity and inclusion. Also he has an issue with them having enough money to run the business. I.e. not living paycheck to paycheck.
People deserve to know where and how much of their money is going towards, no matter what the organisation's goals and affiliations are. The fact that one of these organisations couldn't be investigated is weird and needs to be put into scrutiny.
Less than one minute in reading and there's already one big misrepresentation and one outright lie.
He tries to 'clear' the misconception that Mozilla develops software by showing the areas of focus of the foundation, making a point about how it should be software development and instead are some vague ideological goals.
But the foundation should be ideological. The browser is ideological and lots of the users use it because of ideology. There would be absolutely no issue with that even if the fact that is the corporation and not the foundation the one that focuses on software development weren't true. Open the frontpage of any big open source project that works with a foundation (GNOME, Fedora, Linux) and you will see front and center the big focus on promotion of ideological values. And those are values focused on internet freedom, which are absolutely related to software.That's what a foundation does. That's the way things are. And yet open mozilla.org and the first thing you'll see is the software it makes. So what's really the accusation there?
Second point makes the previous accusation make even less sense. He proceeds to show financial balances about reduction in expenses that show that the biggest one is software development. So the reality shows that Mozilla is focused on software development.
The accusation goes that precisely software development is the area with the biggest cuts. One could argue that doing more with less is a good thing, specially knowing how exactly the types like the author frequently use smaller projects like librefox or ungoogled chromium as an example of a smaller more focused project that firefox should be, but I won't do that. Instead I will point out how his accusation of the biggest cuts to software development are and outright lie easily visible to anyone with eyes and basic arithmetic knowledge.
While software development saw 41 million in cuts, administration and management costs went down almost 60 million. One would think that's a good thing and exactly the kind of point he should be noticing given the accusation, but if the foundation is becoming leaner in the management side that would kind of render his whole text moot, so he ignores that.
I will keep reading and analyze each point on his own, but after this and knowing very well this kind of people I don't think anyone could trust this analysis. I'm sure I'll come across the author anonymously on 4chan attacking 'pozzilla' and their 'trannyware' (I'm sorry) or on twitter harassing women developers, and I'll let him know my opinions.
It absolutely matters. We need to consider that a right-wing actor is likely to exaggerate claims against an organization that is ostensibly socially-minded and represents anti-corporate interests, like Mozilla.
The author clearly has an issue with the money going to left-wing orgs specifically. They're making a big point out of all the antiracism and one of their bullet points asks why Mozilla has no problem alienating their user base.
I moved from FF to Vivaldi (couldn't find better browser, and form that to LibreWolf) due to how shitty the Mozilla Corp is.
We need a fair player here but doesn't seem that we gonna have anything anytime soon
@Evkob@Gargari, this is not so clear, Mozilla has made a pact with the devil some years ago and is sponsored by Google, it even employs several Google devs who develop FF, the risk of depending on outside investors. Chromium is certainly from Google, but it is, just like Gecko, FOSS and therefore every browser developer is free to gut it, throwing out any Google API, which they are doing in Vivaldi (leaving some to the user's choice in settings), no homecalls to Google. https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/a-dangerous-conflict-of-interest-between-firefox-and-google/
FWIW, Vivaldi attracts a lot of the FF power users that updates like Quantum abandoned. Vivaldi honestly wipes the floor with Firefox feature-wise especially for tab organisation, but the fact it's Chromium might push some people away.
It would've been nice if they used Gecko, but eh. I went from FF to Vivaldi to now, the Firefox fork Pulse. It's a bit janky sometimes, but with native vertical tabs and the Simple Tab Groups add-on I love it enough to use it as my main browser, and there's little to no bloat. There's also Floorp, another Firefox fork, this time from a Japanese community, which AFAIK predates Pulse and is inspired by Vivaldi, implementing some of its features like Tab Workspaces. Worth mentioning for those wanting a more Vivaldi-like experience.