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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

It's been pretty obvious over the last 5 years or so that the Mozilla we once knew is dead and gone forever. The MBA types have completed their takeover of a once venerable engineering organization. I'm glad that Firefox still exists as an alternative to Chrome, but the differences between them from a privacy and freedom standpoint are increasingly negligible. And with this move it seems very obvious what management's sole focus is at this point: "trimming the fat" of what little community focused efforts they had left, and boosting revenue.

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> The MBA types have completed their takeover of a once venerable engineering organization.

And yet, in the last 5 years we've seen some of the greatest leaps in Firefox in the form of adopting technologies in Servo. And that's ignoring the growth of Rust adoption and so forth.

But you're right. Obviously the problem is the technologists aren't in control.

It's definitely not monopoly abuse on dominant platforms, the fact that browsers don't make money (even Microsoft couldn't do it), the lack of diversification in their revenue models...

If they just got the tech right it'd solve everything!

Agreed.

The deeper reason why bundled IE was such an existential threat to Netscape, then to Mozilla, and, more generally, a Web that wasn't under the thumb of any one corporation, was that the surest way to squash your competitors is to take away their ability to make money.

With IE, the strategy was to make money on the OS and developer tools. You needed to buy a Microsoft IDE, which would run on a Microsoft operating system, in order to make those cool ActiveX controls that everyone was leaning on back when JavaScript couldn't quite hack it. Also Frontpage.

With Chrome, it's ads and Google One.

Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox has no way to make money on the browser. There's passing a hat, but that was never going to make for a sustainable business. Not if the only people who really care enough to toss some money in, developers, are going to continue to stick with Chrome. Which they clearly are. So they need to pivot to survive. Even if they lose some goodwill with techies. Most employees won't accept simple gratitude as a form of payment.

> There's passing a hat

Frustratingly, Mozilla has made it all but impossible to contribute financially to the development of Firefox itself. You can donate to the Mozilla Organization but there's no guarantee any of that money will be spent on Firefox development.

I would absolutely pay for Firefox if they'd let me.

Seconding this for anyone reading!

IE was largely a defensive move to prevent Windows from becoming irrelevant as a developer platform. It served its purpose and then was left to languish.

Chrome was largely a defensive move to prevent Google's ads from being disintermediated. It continues to serve its purpose.

> But you're right. Obviously the problem is the technologists aren't in control.

Like, say, Brendan Eich? Is this a case of get woke, go broke?

> Is this a case of get woke, go broke?

Yes.

> It's definitely not monopoly abuse on dominant platforms

How is the Google monopoly forcing them to make developer experience worse?

> the fact that browsers don't make money (even Microsoft couldn't do it)

Microsoft didn't even try. Microsoft wanted control, not monetization of the Browser itself. I'm pretty sure that Browsers can make money, especially from developers. JetBrains makes money building developer products, and people pay them, because their products are that much better than e.g. vscode.

Turn Firefox into a great developer browser that saves developers time and annoyance, and they'll happily give you money. Turn developers away, and they'll use a Browser that saves them time and annoyance. And at some point they'll stop testing in Firefox, just like they don't test in IE6.

> How is the Google monopoly forcing them to make developer experience worse?

My statement was a broader one about Mozilla's overall struggles in the market, not about this specific decision.

> Turn Firefox into a great developer browser that saves developers time and annoyance, and they'll happily give you money.

Just to state the obvious: Developers are not any browser's primary target user base. Not by a longshot.

I agree that appealing to developers is important. Microsoft had to learn that the hard way through the early aughts.

But appealing to developers and power users isn't going to fill the gaping financial hole left behind after the Google deal got cancelled. Developers are notoriously cheap. If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose.

> And at some point they'll stop testing in Firefox, just like they don't test in IE6.

And they'll do so because their users aren't using the browser and so it's not worth their time. For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare. Heck, I'll bet the reason Google felt comfortable cancelling the search partnership is because Firefox' marketshare fell so far that the benefits were no longer worth the cost.

Hence my comments about monopoly abuse and so forth.

> If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose.

I don't think that's obvious at all. JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia), even though there are free IDEs (one of them sponsored by Microsoft no less). Theirs are just that much better.

You're right that hobby developers are cheap, but the professional market is quite different, and even more so when you sell to enterprises. $100/yr is nothing compared to developer salaries and for all web developers, designers etc, the Browser is the major tool.

> For Firefox to remain relevant it needs marketshare.

My impression is that developers are pretty much the remaining users of Firefox. And they're kicking them out.

> JetBrains is making plenty of money ($230M in 2018 according to Wikipedia),

JetBrains isn't up against a monopolist who's willing to offer the same features for free to any comers.

Also, worth noting, the now-cancelled Google deal was worth $375M to their bottom line. So even if they could hit JetBrains' numbers (which I highly doubt), it still wouldn't fill the hole left behind.

If anything, what this says to me is that Mozilla shedding staff makes sense. If JetBrains can be profitable producing a complex IDE with half the spend (Mozilla 2018 spend was $451M), it makes me wonder just how efficient Mozilla is with their staffing.

> Developers are notoriously cheap. If they have the option of Firefox with paid dev features, or a free Chrome, I'm pretty confident I know which one they'll choose.

Exactly. Especially since Firefox is one of the only non-Chromium based browsers left. If you pivot towards only courting developers and make it a paid product, you now have a product that no longer at all represents the browsers (and rendering engines) that users are using. Why test on Gecko when (now that it's paywalled) no one is actually using Gecko?

It requires money to support developers. They aren't free nor do they grow on trees. If you don't have enough revenue you won't be able to pay for your development team.

Monopolies tend to suck the revenue streams from a market. While Google may not be directly responsible their market dominance does make it harder for other competitors to make money.

The problem is you need money to hire venerable engineers. And you need to hire a lot to maintain a modern browser. Yet every attempt by Mozilla to monetize and diversify has generally been met unfavorably here on Hackernews.

They have money. Their CEO gets paid 2.5 million per year. That one time windfall they made from the search bar deal would have funded FireFox development for a sizeable fraction of eternity.

That's the price of a CEO, just like salaries in the hundreds of thousands are the prices of software devs. Of all places I would expect Hacker News to get this.

> That's the price of a CEO

Can you explain why? What does this CEO do that is worth this much money? At the very least a CEO shouldn't be earning millions when the company is slowly dying. Have a sane base salary and give the CEO bonuses tied to the performance of the company if you must, anything else is plain ridiculous.

Why is your 100-150k salary not ridiculous? You could be earning fraction of that in Poland. You of all people should understand this.

A salary of 2M is not even 1% when it comes to the labor costs of the people they fired.

Maybe they dont need the CEO in the first place but that's an entirely different discussion.

A salary of 2M could cover the salary of 5% of the employees that have been fired (assuming a 150k salary). I bet you their impact will be much bigger than a single CEOs.

I know of no country/city where someone needs 2M to live comfortably, but I haven't even called it ridiculous. What I called ridiculous is that seemingly this CEO does not have their salary tied to the performance of this company.

Usually the bonus is tied to the performance of the company. Also 150k salary != labor costs.

Anyway I find your analogy ridiculous. Lets just not hire CEOs or upper management at all. It will work for some and fail for some others but it does not prove your point.

> Lets just not hire CEOs or upper management at all.

Now that's ridiculous, it feels like you're misunderstanding me completely. I never suggested that CEOs or upper management shouldn't exist. I just think that in some cases they do not deserve the massive salary they are getting, millions per year is a crazy amount of money to earn anywhere, how can you possibly argue that it's not?

How can you argue that your salary is not crazy amount of money?

> That's the price of a CEO,

No it isn't. And maybe it's time for these executives at the top to take a pay cut given the state of their business, in order for the latter to survive.

> just like salaries in the hundreds of thousands are the prices of software devs

Only in very specific locations and roles.

Yes, and Mozilla is run out of Mountain View, California, so that's a very specific location where getting tech executives is expensive. Could they get someone cheaper elsewhere? Absolutely. Is it worth it to pay more to get a CEO that's well-connected or, at a minimum, knowledgeable about what's going on in that region? Absolutely.

I'm not saying I agree with it morally — I think CEO's are paid an insane wage and the wealth disparity in the United States is disgusting — but those are the unfortunate economics.

https://twitter.com/withoutboats/status/1217558588857544704?...

I did not mean to imply that the CEO should cost less, simply that they are able to pay that much, conclusion is that they are not poor.

> That's the price of a CEO

Is it? I bet you'd get plenty of great candidates for a 250k salary.

This is not a competitive amount to pay a CEO of a company that is pretty substantial and integral to the web as we know it today. Additionally, there is no comp related to a successful IPO or acquisition because Mozilla has no shareholders, which is how many CEO and C-suite executives are compensated.

It is for one that is laying of a quarter of its staff.

You have to pay extra to get a competent CEO to head a company that isn't expected to have big wins for a long time.

this sounds like a "nobody got fired for buying IBM."

there are plenty of capable people, but vetting those without experience is risky, and the wrong choice could be a death sentence. so everyone (except Kraft Heinz) chooses the safe low risk choice. what that risk calculation leaves out is the risk of buying an expensive ceo, having the company stagnate, and being irrelevant in a couple years.

Or you hire someone who cares about the mission and can settle for a pittance like $1 million per year.

Do you know what Mozilla Corp's 2018 revenue was? $451 million. Do you know what their gross spend was? $451 million.

So that CEO's salary represents half of one percent of their total spend.

They could cut exec salaries to zero and they'd still be bleeding to death.

> monetize and diversify has generally been met unfavorably here on Hackernews.

it's an entitled mentality i find exist here on HN about open source. It seems that there are many here who expect a high quality, free project. And apparently, the donations should be enough to sustain it.

It's not entitlement. Most people here simply don't like conflicts of interest.

It's not wise to assume a browser that's funded and developed by Google will respect the user's privacy. People who depend on advertising will never do or say anything that offends the advertisers. Scientific articles published by the pharmaceutical industry are regarded as suspect.

Open source developers on some corporation's payroll have the same problem. Are they adding this feature because it's good or because the company wants it? Why they're working on the project matters. What's their priority? Good technology above all else, or meeting the needs of their current employer?

If they're doing it for money, good technology will eventually be sacrificed in the name of profit. People will commit hacks that happen to work at their jobs and next thing we know we're stuck with them and have to maintain the stuff forever. And that's what happens when there's no malicious intent involved.

Donations are regarded favorably here precisely because they don't create any obligations for the developer who receives them. They don't create a conflict of interest.

Typical HN kneejerk emotional drivel. Might as well just say “Business people bad, engineers good” and save our eyes from having to read anymore.

"MBAs ruin everything" — HN's take on every business story.

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