Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

Pardon my french but fuuuuuck. I switched to chrome back in the early 2010s after years of Firefox use because it was faster, and I stuck with it because the the devtools were better than firebug and later built-in FF tools. But always I told myself "next year, I'll switch back to Firefox" which I was much more comfortable with ideologically.

Eventually after years of waiting FF got fast enough and the devtools were good enough (and chrome got creepy enough: the automatic browser sign-in made clear chrome was tightening the noose of browser/web/google lock-in). So I switched back a year or two ago and have been quite happy with it! This news indicates it won't be long before I have to switch again.

Mozilla's strategy seems so incoherent, at least from the outside. Who is their target demographic? Perhaps "power users" & developers like me are too small a demographic to be worth competing for (see also: the toyification of the macbook pro). But I seriously wonder if Mozilla as a nonprofit has a path forward without keeping some of the "power users", (casual) privacy nerds, and FOSS folks in the fold. Are they planning to compete with Google for casual users as "just another browser"? I really don't see how they plan to beat google in this arena.

EDIT: In Mozilla's defense, no I have not donated anything to the organization to keep FF or MDN development running (though I have contributed to MDN & FF in small ways) so perhaps I share some of the blame here. TBH I'd donate if I knew it was going to FF & MDN and not one of the two thousand other little projects Mozilla keeps starting and killing.

Actually, if you donate, literally none of it will go to Firefox.

You'd be donating to the Mozilla foundation, not the Mozilla corporation, which develops Firefox.

P.s the Mozilla foundations CEO makes 2.5 million dollars a year, and said "it would be too much a financial burden to cut C suite salaries to 500k"

https://mobile.twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1293233620711...

I did not know that. Thanks for the information, as I can now cancel my donation and save a couple of bucks each month.

After link chasing from that Tweet, this appears to be the underlying quote:

> Here's what I mean by mitigate: we ask our executives to accept a discount from the market-based pay they could get elsewhere. But we don't ask for an 75-80% discount. I use that number because a few years ago when the then-ceo had our compensation structure examined, I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

https://answers.thenextweb.com/s/mitchell-baker-aGY62z

> That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to.

I'm aghast. How could anyone survive on $500k?! Everybody at the yacht club would laugh at you. It would be simply beastly.

I know they play this game against the likes of Google and Microsoft but they have favour with people because they're not Google or Microsoft, because their product is driven by engineering, not repeatedly tainted by management.

These job losses shouldn't be at product level, they should clean out management, restructure to bring engineering up to board level, kick out the suits that are only there for the cheque.

This quote would make sense if those executives ran a successful company with a lot of users, not a sinking ship almost solely propped by market gorilla in fear of becoming sanctioned monopoly.

But 100% for those made redundant is just fine.

So how to donate to (or buy products from?) the Mozilla corporation that develops Firefox?

You can't donate. But you can purchase some of their paid products, like their upcoming VPN.

> You'd be donating to the Mozilla foundation, not the Mozilla corporation, which develops Firefox.

Do you know of a good source of neutral information on Mozilla's Foundation/Corporation split? I've heard claims everywhere from "it's an accounting thing with no practical implications" to "Mozilla is now 100% for-profit and evil", and have no idea who's right.

I don't think such a thing exists. It's a pretty niche topic.

The Mozilla foundation is a non profit which owns all of Mozilla corporation. Because foundation is a non profit, donations to it are tax deductible. They also cannot funnel money into corporation, either, as a result. It's not that easy to be a tax evasion vehicle.

It does mean that the corporation is not beholden to external equity owners; its just beholden to the foundation. But the corporation is also 100% for profit, although they evidently struggle to earn said profit.

Mozilla isn't quite a non profit nor a for profit company in aggregate as a result.

> Pardon my french but fuuuuuck.

Ditto. If Mozilla were on fire and I had time to save one thing, my selfish but unhesitating choice would be MDN.

I figured they'd shrink and, given their long-standing apparent mismanagement and bafflingly bad strategic choices, plus massive payroll/headcount bloat, eventually suffer a collapse, but I didn't expect it to be so fast. I hope something good survives this but is sure looks like they're rushing to destroy the good parts to save the bad, so, maybe not.

Despite thinking Mozilla has a bit of a branding problem, I think their strategy on paper is the right thing to do to make the Internet a better place.

A browser whos development costs are funded by privacy and security services. Partnering with the best of the best, throwing Firefox branding over the top of things, and creating a bundle/payment management for a bunch of services. HIBP, Mullvad. Even Pocket.

On the branding front they have a bit of a problem. It's just like Microsoft past troubles deciding if a product gets a Microsoft, Windows, or Office prefix. VPN is Mozilla, Pocket is Pocket, and Monitor Send and Lockwise are Firefox. They need to Creative Cloud or Office 365 this and make it simple for the consumer to dive right into the entire experience. They need more services in their bundle. The name Firefox needs to mean "we vetted the underlying provider and they meet our seal of approval." This dynamic can also function as consumer protection, in that, when they switch providers, for example from ProtonVPN to Mullvad, the user experience is a seamless transition.

Their target market should be "people who want a first class internet experience, but dont have the time or understanding to research the litany of tools they would need to employ to get it.

> Their target market should be "people who want a first class internet experience, but dont have the time or understanding to research the litany of tools they would need to employ to get it.

Why wouldn't these people just use google? If privacy and/or "freedom" aren't part of your requirements, you'd be crazy to choose FF/Moz over google. What am I missing?

The Chrome team could stumble. They could for example be too hasty in their plan to remove extension manifest v2 with the result that many ordinary user switch to Firefox to continue to get good ad blocking.

Or their CEO's pocket.

there is a pocket joke here, I can smell it

If you think of it, post it... so we can all Read It Later

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