There is a reddit thread that links to deleted tweets that appears like it might be related: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb
It's an eye-opener for me that people would do that. I can't even name a single developer for any software I use, let alone find and harass them on social media.
It also happens more when people decide someone doesn’t belong in the field: if you’re visibly a white male your odds are pretty low. I’ve heard more a few accounts of how the tone changes from “I found a bug” or “I don’t like this change” to “who told you that you were good enough to be a developer”.
Context for those who don't use Firefox on Android: the "whining" was people complaining that Mozilla had replaced a stable working product with what was clearly an inferior version, with less functionality (no addons) and less stability (this is the first version of Firefox to repeatedly crash on Android, in about a decade). Framing it as "different decisions than they wanted" is disingenuous and misleading. (I'd been a regular Firefox user for about a decade on Android, but have had to mostly switch to Brave because of this update. That's how bad it is.)
We still see the same dynamic on most desktop Firefox release threads here where someone will be very angry that Mozilla doesn’t let them direct development and will go strangely silent when asked how they’d deal with that problems which lead to those decisions in the first place.
And why does Mozilla have a "small team" working on Firefox Android? Their flagship product on the operating system with the largest install base.
But Android is also the most casual install base, and it comes with Chrome by default. It's probably the hardest market to gain marketshare in.
> Harassing someone because one doesn't like an update to a piece of software
Harassment is probably never okay butneither is directing obscene gestures at people.
Thank you for your contributions to open source software. Many web users, myself included, rely on free and open source projects for our work and recreation and these products would not exist without the generous contributions of kind and skilled persons such as yourself.
I hope you recover from your burnout and find a fulfilling role somewhere that respects your mental health and values your contributions.
But as someone who is still using Firefox despite Mozilla management (not the devs) ignoring us, belittling us when we voice our concerns and destroy the software we fell in love with more than a decade ago over "ux" I can understand why people are frustrated:
Firefox was in another league.
Someone wrote about Pale Moon the other day, I can sadly not recommend using it as the main browser, I'm not in a position to vouch for the security, but if anyone wonders they could try to create a few ugly modern apps or open a few known safe websites and have a look :
it feels snappy, even years after Firefox diverged! And it looks so good with all the old extensions.
A real shame even I don't really dare to use it, but the web is a harsh environment.
Thank you for your work!