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Comment by blurbleblurble | Hacker News Reader

Damn. This sound like the actions of a few inside Mozilla... Cause it's definitely not in line with the organization's stated goals. So where's the accountability? The people who made these decisions should be held accountable.

Also, even since 57, this week Firefox ("stable" build) consistently gets hung up with just one tab open and spins 100% CPU on one thread. I hope it isn't trying to invert the word "robot" when the thread gets stuck.

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I am also concerned about the accountability. It's been some time -- 48 hours or so, and not even a brief statement from management?

This is like PR 101 to me. The most shocking thing so far is their silence -- Mozilla is not a new organization!!

Here is the closest I've seen to a statement: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/lookingglass. I don't think the explanation that "The Mr. Robot series centers around the theme of online privacy and security" is what the users were looking for...

So ironic. "Hey the show's about privacy, WE'RE about privacy! Let's invade everybody's privacy to talk about privacy!"

Not uninstalling or anything but now I'm keeping an eye on my about:preferences

Well, I am uninstalling and switching to Iridium right now and it's not JUST because of this Mr Robot thing. I wasn't happy with the direction of Firefox for a while but waited for Quantum to see if things would change. The technology improved, but everything else got worse. So it's time for me to say 'bye, bye' to a browser I've used for more than a decade.

I also think it was a silly thing to do, but it is not the case that the additional code violated anyone’s privacy.

There’s no need to be hyperbolic.

But they brought into their "experience" to become one with the mr robot brand in a unique and intuitive way which lines up perfectly with the Mozilla manifesto!

It's the weekend. Execs don't work on weekends.

It does not matter how few they are, if they are the ones making the decisions then they represent Mozilla. Unless dramatic change occurs immediately, we can only conclude that Mozilla is shoveling crapware into Firefox.

Ultimately, and I don't say this as an excuse but as reality: if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. Yes Mozilla is a foundation and gets a lot of donations but you'd have a much stronger leg to stand on if you paid for the browser. Are you willing to pay $50 or more for a web browser so that there's no temptation for the vendor to sell out to advertisers?

Yes, actually. At the same time though, we see examples of trust eroded even with payment (cable companies, or the latest Windows 10 crap). I suspect that it’s no longer enough to merely pay for such things; you need a way to verify trustworthy behavior top to bottom.

Oh, stop that stupid trope already. There are many other ways of sustainable FOSS development, proven for decades. Look at sqlite, the Linux kernel, the GNU ecosystem etc.

Do we really need an update to a web browser every 6 weeks?

A web browser should display information FULL STOP. When the new HTML standard comes out, implement it. Until then just provide security fixes.

It's really not that hard or expensive (500 Million USD should be enough).

Stop changing the UI, adding crap that should be addons (that's why there's addons), adding adverts, adding spyware ("telemetry"), etc.

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Curiously all the Mozilla developers and apologists who are so enthusiastic about defending Firefox (and down voting critical comments) have taken the day off...

> Curiously all the Mozilla developers and apologists who are so enthusiastic about defending Firefox (and down voting critical comments) have taken the day off...

I mean, it's Saturday, so yeah, they probably did. This comments section looks more like a pitchfork mob than a group that wants to have a reasonable and civil conversation about embedded extension policy and revenue models. I myself would prefer to spend it with my loved ones than arguing with a comments section mob on the internet.

It's interesting you choose to frame overwhelming dissent and anger at shady behavior as a 'mob'.

By summarily dismissing a bunch of legitimate concerns by multiple users you are basically saying users don't matter.

That kind of ivory tower attitude never worked well without leverage.

Mozilla still makes SeaMonkey, which might be what you're looking for:

https://www.seamonkey-project.org/

Up to date browser engine (at least it seems that way, it does pretty well on https://html5test.com/), still gets security fixes, but the UI hasn't been changed significantly in years.

But you realise, that the web today is a bit more than static HTML and that it doesn't upgrade step by step with arbitrary standards, but rather all the time?

> Until then just provide security fixes.

You'd lose the non-security bug fixes and the performance improvements. I wouldn't like it, and it would surely be obsolete/irrelevant extremely fast.

Regarding the performance improvements.

Sometimes it seems it's more about job security. How many rewrites do you need?

Mozilla's Law:

(Use McConaughey Voice)

As Intel processors get faster... Mozilla's software stays the same... speed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

> if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer

Debian. FreeBSD. OpenBSD. Dillo. Netsurf.

Or, Windows 10.

Sometimes, free stuff is a product. Sometimes, you pay and are still the product.

All of those projects have their constituencies, and it isn't always the typical end-user.

I've donated/paid more than $50 to open source projects that are less useful to me than Firefox. So yes, I would. While I know that Mozilla accepts donations, I don't think they've ever asked me for one.

I see asking for domation in firefox bottom quite often

If it was a one time payment of $50 then the answer is yes, of course.

How many people would need to pay that to fund the Firefox team for the next five years though? My guess is: not enough.

Yes I am. But I am a small minority.

How about if I pay for pretty Apple hardware? Also I just used lynx yesterday and it was fine.

> Also, even since 57, this week Firefox ("stable" build) consistently gets hung up with just one tab open and spins 100% CPU on one thread.

I mean, this probably isn't the right venue to ask about this, but that sounds rather serious. I know you're probably a bit disenfranchised at this point, but could I ask you to capture a profile using https://perf-html.io and file a bug?

If filing a bug is too much work, you can email me (email in profile), but filing a bug will get more eyes on it quicker.

I'll try and reproduce/file a bug when I get a chance! I know that's a meaningful contribution to the project!

It is, thanks.

Yeah, same here. Awful performance and stability on MacOS. Going to back to Chrome <sigh>

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