I am tired of Firefox shitty takes.
Does anybody expect them to say anything else? Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant like Google or being funded by someone with very deep pockets, like… er… Google.
Even MS bailed and ceded power to Google, because it simply didn’t make financial sense. Apple does it but they’re pretty meh in terms of implementing standards and such… there’s a reason 3rd party WebKit browsers are rare. They comparatively run it on a shoestring budget, and they’re Apple FFS - their wealth is practically limitless!
People aren’t going to start paying to use Firefox, and that money needs to come from somewhere. The community rejects giants paying Mozilla (understable sentiment), rejects paying for Firefox (also understandable), and rejects Mozilla selling data (definitely understandable). Some say donations, but be real, that won’t make hundreds of millions per year.
What is the solution here? I’m not trying to be contrarian I just don’t know what they can actually do. You’d hope that the Linux Foundation or something would chip in, but nope, they help Chromium instead. I worry for the future of web browsers.
That said, I’m also deeply uncomfortable with Google being able to pay to be default search on so many products. It gives them a huge advantage. I don’t want them to have that advantage. It’s anticompetitive and scummy as fuck.
Mozilla are definitely between a rock and a hard place here. I don’t like some of the decisions they make, but damn, I’m not sure I have the smarts to come up with better ones, given the position and market they’re in.
If I’m correct, the linux foundation took up development of the Servo engine when Mozilla dropped it. So they don’t focus entirely on Chromium, and may be the ones to take back after Mozilla for Firefox/Gecko engine if needed (you did not said that ofc, but i think it’s important to mention). There’s still a long way to go with new engines such as Servo and Ladybird, but that may be good alternatives in the future.
I don’t think Mozilla had any involvement in Servo.
They started the whole thing. They invented and implemented a whole programming language to implement the thing. Then they integrated Stylo (Servo’s CSS engine) and a couple smaller bits into Firefox which made it a hell a lot faster. Then they set Rust free and shelved Servo because from the perspective of Firefox going forwards with rewriting more in Rust would’ve been a lot of investment for diminishing returns. Stylo was the big one, enabling before unseen parallelism in rendering.
Servo, even with FSFE funding, still has ways to go. Ladybird, I wonder why they even bother. If they want a C++ browser engine that hasn’t been touched by big money then there’s KHTML, Webkit/Chromium’s direct ancestor. There’s a reason KDE dropped development: It wasn’t worth the effort. Qt wasn’t willing to pick it up either.
I know I’m in the minority but I would pay yearly to use Firefox. Not sure how much I’d pay, but I am getting into the habit of purchasing software instead of allowing it to purchase me
Subscribe to their VPN. I don’t use it, but do it to support Firefox
Does the money for that go directly to the dev teams? I wouldn’t want it to be swallowed up by Mozilla bureaucracy.
I bet most of the money goes to Mullvad because they run the actual VPN service. Mozilla just does the front end and user management.
That’s rarely how donations work, though. Ultimately you need to have some level of trust that the people at the organisation you are donating to know a lot more about where, when and how your money can be effectively used than you do. Your pre-donation requirements/demands are extremely unrealistic and I’m not sure if people like yourself are genuinely delusional about this fact or if you just use it as some sort of moral bargaining tactic to never feel bad about the fact that you don’t donate any of your money to the causes you supposedly really want to.
For me it comes down to “do I want pay for this product so it sticks around?”. If yes then I have to trust the org that makes it to be reasonably sensible. They’re probably going to do a better job of putting the money in the right place to stay in business than I am.
I, too, would pay. Probably $200/year. What I don’t know is how much we need to keep up development.
You can donate to software development freely right now. This and many others developers
I could but I’d still be getting the same Firefox which has a nagging incentive to cooperate with advertisers and google. The benefit of having to pay for software is that their revenue stream comes directly from me and not from a 3rd party. It’s not about supporting the developer for me, it’s about knowing that the product I pay for is the product I get
As far as I can tell you can’t donate to Firefox specifically. I would if I could.
Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year
And then there are heroes we don’t deserve, but sorely need: git.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan.
I would legit pay $40+ for Firefox… it’s gotta make and keep some promises around security, compliance, configurablity and compatibility, etc. though. It also needs to be a decently long term purchase. I’m not doing it for every version they release, maybe a lifetime license or at least a 4-6 year cadence if it’s a bit cheaper.
I don’t think $40 would support much use time. Maybe yearly would be fair. Idk what kind of money they need but it’s clearly a lot.
I’m paying for vpn 60 bucks per year, for storage 70, I’d give the same for a decent trustworthy browser.
The correct solution would have been for Mozilla to pursue alternative income a long time ago. Owning a browser gives you a lot of leverage. Instead they made a half-hearted attempt a few years back and half the products failed. I don’t know why FF fans were so comfortable holding them as the savior of the web when they were entirely funded by Google.
And now… well I don’t see a way forward either. Maybe it should just die then.
Web engine development is more costly than even OS development
Unfortunately, many applications that used to be desktop applications in the past are now programs that run in the web browser. It doesn’t matter anymore if they are a lot less effective than being native.
we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant
That is the problem - the web needs to be a lot simpler, browser development should cost fractions of that. It got unnecessarily, absurdly complex.
SASS has pushed the work their app developers should be doing onto the development teams of web browsers.
The solution is for Firefox to die and for all the payments to be paid to Servo instead.
Servo survived all the problems that got thrown at them without excuses.
Meanwhile Firefox seem to shot themselves every week by their own choice.
I mean who the hell thought that integrating AI into Firefox for example is a good idea.
Servo is just a motor not a web browser
Servo isn’t a functional browser. You’re not comparing apples to apples.
Removed by mod
Why doesn’t Mozilla just fork Chromium? Anything bad sneaks in, they rip it out. New feature? Develop it specifically without paying for the whole browser. From the user’s perspective, very little changes, but cost savings would be massive.
It would also be a good high profile tab of “bad things Chrome/Chromium is doing”
EDIT: It would also justify regulating Chromium like a monopoly, though I think that government ship has sailed.
Chromium is code that Mozilla is not familiar with and has a reputation for being poorly documented.
A fully divergent fork isn’t likely to make development any easier for Mozilla. And a soft fork puts them at the whims of Google’s development decisions. If Mozilla needs to pivot, joining with WebKit seems the more feasible option, though that would also likely be a battle to keep a Windows port maintained.
Apple could pitch in just for the sake of sticking it to Google.
Apple has the funds to maintain WebKit by themselves, and they wouldn’t want it to be cross-platform.
But they do have an interest in displacing Google’s monopoly, kinda like how they contribute to OpenStreetMaps with Apple Maps, or how Facebook finds llama.
Apple is already displacing Google’s monopoly.
Hardly surprising, looking at how many former google and Facebook employees are in Mozilla’s management.
Any sources for this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Hanna https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#jenny-choo https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#lindsey-obrien https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#tamara-greasby https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/#linda-griffin
Here’s a few
This really sucks. I JUST swapped over to Mozilla about a week ago.
Yeah. I’ve been using Firefox for the greater half of my life. I’m bummed out.
Use librewolf then or any other FireFox fork. It’s not that deep, keep a level-head
Okay, it just sucks to swap again so fast. It’s not that deep.
Edit: love the downvote for saying your line back to you.
Wasn’t me, but let me downvote you anyway. Like what will you swap to ? Suckless browser 😂
Join me on Vivaldi browser!
Isn’t Vivaldi Chromium? Would make it likely do be hit by the main branch dropping Manifest v2 support.
Vivaldi said they eventually will, but will keep it around as long as possible. So, short answer, yes.
Having been a firefox user for a few years now, Screw Mozilla. What a mismanaged shit-show they’ve become.
I get that browser development costs a ton, and that they’re in a shitty position. But to make this ode to stockholm syndrome blog post… what on EARTH?
Best case, Chrome gets split off into a separate organization free of meddling and they can fund themselves with reasonable donations / investments. In reality, I’m sure Google and other advertising companies will try to get into it and buy the behavior they want, like special-interest groups in US politics.
But if Chrome ended up under any organization with reasonable management who wasn’t completely beholden to advertisers, I’d switch back to Chrome pretty quickly (assuming the whole Manifest V2/V3 thing got un-fucked).
I wish there was a better way to do it but sadly right now this is it. If you want independent browsers to continue they need funding from somewhere.
They can take the salary of the CEO to fund the browser, they can ask for donations that go directly to the browser, they can make subscriptions with useful services. So many ideas that they didn’t try in the past 10 years. But it’s easier to get free money from Google and do nothing.
I’d love to live in whatever fantasy land selfless compassionate CEO’s come from, sadly it’s just a fantasy.
I think most people would be happy if the Mozilla CEOs “only” got a few hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The current pay is literally millions.
I don’t think it matters whether the person is compassionate or selfless. It should be a position with a low fixed salary and a bug bounty. That way if the CEO wants to get paid, they have to directly contribute to the browser. Create the job and the compensation around your ideal candidates.
If anyone else was confused by the typo, difficult > default.
I’m not sure what to think. On one hand, yes, Google is of course slimy. But if Mozilla loses it’s big source of funding (and crumbles as a result), that may put things in a worse place?
Then again, it’s a shame that the only major competing browser engine is funded by the dominant browser’s company. Maybe Mozilla can be fine without it?
The one good thing I could think of is that Firefox could come under new management. But then again, how that management will be funded I don’t know. Likely they will run in to the same problem as Mozilla.
Very said it is time for Firefox to go its own way.
It is Mozilla the non-profit I want gone, along with their wholly owned for profit company that controls firefox.
100%. Firefox would be better off, I suspect, by focusing on the browser, solely, and with a distributed global team that didn’t need a fancy SF office and fancy SF comp packages.
it’s not a shitty take; google signed a contract with mozilla and google should have to honour it.
if you want mozilla to be less reliant on outside income… DONATE TO THEM.
To have 90% of my donation money syphoned away into the CEO?
Not to mention the CEOs or Mozilla brought in no apparent value. The company and products have been on a clear decline but compensation packages are higher. Its fucking stupid.
I’ve been donating for a while. Not pleased to learn about the lavish CEO pay. Probably going to stop.
yeah, mozilla hasn’t had to worry about actually giving a fuck and that’s rotten them to the core
I’ve become sincerely disappointed with them. I hope they reconsider their choices but I don’t have much hope.
yes. body this fuckin post.
honestly I don’t see the thing here. unless its about edge being a respin of chrome. all macs come with safari, all windows edge, ironically its a few linux distros that come with chrome while others use a default foss browser. I feel like their biggest monopoly is windows giving up and using their core rather than making their own.
It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn’t fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.
The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.
More and more I believe that Mozilla’s current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
More and more I believe that Mozilla’s current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
I think the salary alone is enough evidence of that. There’s a point, specifics of which will depend on your living situation, at which wanting a higher salary requires the same infinite greed that becoming a billionaire requires. And I’m very sure that this point is far below 1 million dollars a year. Mozilla’s CEO makes over 6 million.
If you feel like you deserve that, you are not fit to lead a nonprofit. You have already proven that you care more about giving yourself obscene wealth than about the benefit of others.
And I’m very sure that this point is far below 1 million dollars a year.
Personally I place the amount around 600,000. Rich enough for anything reasonable.
setting one number is a little silly tho. somebody with 4 kids has totally different needs than a single person. especially if someone has a kid with special needs the costs can be huge. obviously that doesn’t apply to these CEOs but I would say one person doesn’t need more than 100k
I mean if you’re talking about “need” as in absolute need the number goes down a lot more. But 100k doesn’t go too far anymore.
Depends on where you are. In my country, 50k (€) a year could lend you your own individual house, fit all basic needs, and leave a fair amount for leisure.
Mozilla has been taken over from within by google parasites…
Frankly its days are numbered and we will need a solution how to keep the engine development going.
I think they just got too comfortable with the Google money coming in.
Maybe making a browser doesn’t need to be so damn expensive. Let the web standards freeze so we aren’t constantly chasing shiny things. The browser is in a really good spot today. What else does it need to be?
There’s a ton of stuff I still want to be supported, especially web assembly.
But for most things, yeah, we could probably slow down a bit.
A non-exhaustive list:
- creating a webpage has gotten too complicated and time-consuming
- accessibility, light/dark, should be a browser-feature, not something each.single.webpage has to implement
- monetization is an ongoing issue
- browsers need to do too much, are too complex and monolitic
- lots of duplication of software/system tasks in the browser, like process/memeory-management. But on webpage-side too, like video player, see point 1 and 2. Called inner-platform effect
I’ll be honest, I booted up a laravel project through herd and I’ve got a testing environment setup for the let go.
Pathetic.
How is chrome going to be funded if it’s broken off?
Oh no.
