this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Firefox

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I am shocked. Shocked! /s

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 1 month ago (11 children)

@dantheclamman

I am definitely starting to hate #Mozilla.

As a remark: I have always been fine with their deal with Pocket and having Google as their default search engine. In the end, there are bills to be paid.

Until I learned that e.g. Mozilla Corporation's CEO is on a multi-million dollar salary, and they're hiring ai and ad people.

Not OK for an entity where many highly skilled people code for free.

It's not what users want the cash to be spent on.

Leaving the Fedi is the final drop

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I was cool with them buying Pocket. But as a long time user of Pocket, I feel it has horribly stagnated. Far more features have been lost than have been gained.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

And JFC the monthly subscription price for Pocket is steep for what it offers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Yes, I'm grandfathered into the old cost, or I'd definitely pivot and move to Omnivore

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You are the product. All they care about is getting companies paying

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I think you might be overestimating how much code is contributed by unpaid volunteers...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

@mina @dantheclamman if so many people code for free, couldn't they have a simple Mastodon server run by a tech community? I think the actual leadership has no idea what Mozilla Foundation was.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@everton137

Running a simple Mastodon server is not a big thing.

Setting up a resilient big instance, like Vivaldi does, requires commitment.

@dantheclamman

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean vivaldi is 1/10th the size of mozilla and running a server 5x as large

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

@morrowind

Exactly! Mozilla wants people to know, they don't give a shit.

A few years of party for executives are still possible, and just before Firefox and Thunderbird go into oblivion, quickly into a new management position at an ai company (or whatever may be the hype, then).

Mark my words!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

It seems like the kind of thing the Foundation would run anyway (or sponsor as a separate project), rather than the Corporation being involved at all.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Mozilla 2012: We're winning the browser war and saving the web. You're welcome.

Mozilla 2017: Competing with Chrome is hard. What if we break all existing extensions and never let people replace them all?

Mozilla 2021: Through inclusiveness and the power of positive thinking we will facilitate leadership towards in-depth studies of what we can do to improve social media.

Mozilla 2024: Running a small mastodon instance is just too hard, we give up.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Just a little comment on 2021: It seems disingenuous, from their perspective. Steve Teixeira, In a lawsuit, is claiming that not only did Mozilla try to get him to fire employees who were disproportionately minorities, but they were within a group that was producing a profit for Mozilla.

In other words, Mozilla might have been preaching inclusivity publicly while practicing exclusivity privately.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Color me shocked

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Corporate only pay lip services to the public? I'm so shock! Shock I tell you!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Mozilla in early 2000s: We're glad we've broken you away from Internet Explorer's chains. You're welcome.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Just make a good browser.. Thats all I care about from mozilla.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I understand that they need to diversify so that they're not so dependent on Google's default search engine money. I don't know how they should do that.

But I'm not sure what they've been doing has been all that good of an idea.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

make their browser engine useable for 3rd parties and sell support, make an electron-like product and add premium features… there are so many browser-based products that people sell, and owning 1 of the only viable browser engines should be huge… the fact that firefox is still only barely able to be embedded is a travesty

it’d be especially valuable if they made a premium electron product that provided security/privacy guarantees, performance benefits, etc - they should siphon some of the profit off the number of for-profit companies that build electron apps

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

well paying execs multimillion dollar salaries aint helping thats for sure!

Also. What's the point of their mastodon server? It's cool but so what

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

with how many singular developers managed to do it based on Firefox when Mozilla couldn't pull their shit together, idk why anyone would still be holding their breath. just switch to a competent fork.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Does it matter that they don't run an instance?

As long as they have accounts and keep them up to date, that is the main thing.

How many open source projects actually run and moderate instances?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (6 children)

The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

- Mozilla Manifesto, Principle 6, emphasis mine

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This sucks (Was it really costing much money to run?) but as long as Firefox continues to work with full-flavor ublock I'm happy.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

Weird that they called it a “Beta”, like running a chat server you didn’t code is somehow an experiment. Just say you couldn’t be arsed running it anymore.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago

Unfortunate, but not unexpected.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I don't get why, I can't see this be difficult or costly to run, but then again I have no clue, never ran a Mastodon instance.

I would assume that it's not worth the small reach compared to running X / Bluesky / Threads accounts but then again, like I said, the cost must be super small. 🤷

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago

If Mozilla doesn't discontinue a Mastodon server with under 300 people, how will it continue funding the $65 million AI and venture capital investments they've been making?! 😬

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I'm not sure why they created one to begin with

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Running the server probably costs about $100 per year, plus one person's $180,000 salary

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

~~Google~~ Mozilla shutting down yet another project:

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I guess hating Mozilla is very much in fashion. The tech chatterati have made it so.

They’ll move on, as they always do. I just hope Firefox is still here.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Critiquing Mozilla when they make mistakes is not the same as hating them. It is healthy to keep these organizations accountable

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

The issue is all signs point to them pivoting to AI and ad driven nonsense - they'll move on, but if the product goes to shit so will I. The rest is noise.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

did an AI become their CEO by now? dumb moz foundation.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How defeatist of you, Mozilla. Whatever happened to your pride? Oh, it went a long time ago when you make a big deal about going 3.0 and how you claimed to have improved Firefox's performance. Been a long time, but Firefox remains ever more the same as it did way back then, just cluttered with more features that weighs it's performance.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I adore Firefox. Just tired of Mozilla trying features (FF Panorama) and hobbies (Notes) and then abandoning them

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Like all products, Firefox still maintains a small core of uncritical, devoted fans. To them, Mozilla can do no wrong.

The problem is, up until a few months ago, Mozilla advocated for privacy and other public facing values that lined up with their manifesto. Now, they are breaking away from that, and the true believers are shifting too: becoming hostile to privacy.

The people who liked Firefox because of its privacy stance, or because they were looking for an alternative to Big Tech, on the other hand, aren't 100% likely to become a true believer, and those people are the critics. Often, those critics have been around for years going on decades.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Are they still running a matrix instance?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

This is too much information being processed at a time to me! 😵‍💫

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's a little cringe isn't it?

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