Mozilla launches venture fund to fuel responsible tech companies | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla launches venture fund to fuel responsible tech companies

blog.mozilla.org

143 pointslaurex149 comments

No. This is not how we build a better internet. You can try to say "These companies will be responsible, and about people." all you want. But if the fundamental structure is still a for-profit corporation with equity investors expecting a return then that will inevitably trump whatever public good these companies were supposed to have at heart.

The only way we can actually achieve a better internet and a better tech sector is by changing the fundamental structure of the companies that build it. That doesn't have to mean they don't make money, but it does mean that making a profit for investors cannot be part of it.

Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans. These might actually change the dynamics. But investor owned, for-profit companies funded by venture capital will not. No matter how much we might wish it otherwise.

> Non-profits funded by grants. Employee owned businesses funded by loans.

Serious question: is there any evidence to suggest that non-profits and employee-owned businesses are on average better at serving the public good?

There are power asymmetries inside non-profits and employee-owned businesses, and these can lead to the 'power brokers' inside these organizations steering or commandeering the organizations for their own benefit.

Yes, GEO Coop keeps a fact-sheet: https://geo.coop/story/fact-sheet

With most citations being from: https://geo.coop/story/benefits-and-impacts-cooperatives

For example:

> Since most cooperatives are owned and controlled by local residents, it is more likely to promote community growth than an investor-oriented firm. Since cooperative business objectives are needs oriented, cooperatives are more likely to stay in the community (Zeuli, Freshwater et al 2003).

Awesome, thanks

Yeah, there's definitely quite a bit of evidence. But also, they're better - not perfect. The issue you pointed to is real and does happen. But it's not as ubiquitous as "investor funding companies putting aside all other concerns in pursuit of profit" and the harms that stem from it tend to be more contained.

It's a different set of problems too, cooperatives tend to have issues doing anything bigger than a local Bodega.

Even in software, once you're big enough to have a real user base you need infrastructure, servers, people to keep those servers alive, and on and on and it dilutes the mission because even while there's no scumbag investors, factions within the company will want more for less and vote that way internally.

>> it is more likely to promote community growth

What does that mean?

I think of things like: a cooperative is unlikely to ship all their jobs overseas, so they will invest locally in the business instead. They will probably also be less inclined to pollute because the decisions are not made by people who live in the fancy clean neighborhood, but live all over the area.

There's perhaps a third way that looks more like Mozilla itself (setting aside the problematics with Google), or Ghost, or Signal. Funding a trust/nonprofit that owns the companies and itself has accountability to the greater good. That bakes in transparency and pays people fair market wages but isn't built in a way where investors or even founders are driven to 'get rich.' Where business goals are around sustainability rather than hypergrowth. The current VC model simply doesn't align with human-need driven software products, at least in the consumer sector.

I agree 100%. I think my website[0] would be a perfect candidate for something like this, but I'm not going to apply because taking VC money would mean I won't be able to guarantee to my users that I'll keep the soul of it intact.

[0] https://withoutdistractions.com/cv/faq (Note: it's still in beta)

I don't know about employee owned businesses funded by loans. But Mozilla (ignoring the foundation/corporation technicality) and Wikipedia, showed me how generally flawed these kinds of non profits are.

They have some insane mismanagement of funds, which don't go where they are most needed, and where user want funds to go. Firefox's market share has dropped tremendously under Mitchell Baker. If it were a traditional company, she would have been fired ages ago (instead she has had her pay increased). The way they work they just have to convince their benefactor (Google) to keep giving them money. There are no investors that demand growth, so it's all just internal politics with no performance incentives.

I could maybe understand it if at least, unlike most for profit business, Mozilla would actually be amazing with privacy and treating their users well. But they are barely better than Chrome. It's almost impossible to disable and keep disabled all telemetry. They've pushed things like Pocket, a Mr Robot plugin into users, and so much bullshit.

> They have some insane mismanagement of funds, which don't go where they are most needed, and where user want funds to go

How is that any different from 'efficient' private companies...

I'm curious about your gripes with Wikipedia. I donate regularly because it's still growing more useful to me year after year and has resisted ads and obscene partnerships.

It's definitely better than the Mozilla situation, but here[1] is a good look at what I'm referring to. Basically their spending is insane and increases a lot each year (although it seems that 2020-2021 was the first period that it didn't increase).

Their spending and rate of increase doesn't really make sense. I really like Wikipedia and use it a lot, but remember that the content comes from people that doesn't get paid, so when you think of what the funding gets you, think of the tech, servers, etc, not the articles themselves.

And I definitely don't see as an user, what Wikipedia does with their 110M/year spending, that they couldn't do with their 30M/year spending in 2011 or even less.

I mean they spend 110M/year, have a fairly simple website, and they couldn't manage to implement dark mode?[2]

I also dislike that they run donation campaigns pretending like if you don't donate they're going down, when actually their financials are extremely good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

[2] Outside of their "gadget" or whatever that is, for logged in users, which I just found exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode

About the first ref. That seems insane! I'm a young guy with little financial knowledge but how does a website like Wikipedia spend that much money? What could've changed that much other than the amount of articles and traffic, which surely doesn't cost THAT much, right?

The argument is not that these other structures are perfect or free of problems, only that they are better for society on average than equity financed for-profit companies.

Wikipedia and Mozilla are two examples. And yeah, they both have the challenges of large organizations - there's plenty to criticize in both. But to say that they wouldn't have these problems if they were for-profits is to simply ignore the universe of for-profit companies.

Want a company ignoring their user base and going off on crazy side projects? I give you Meta. Want a company that steadfastly ignores its users and regularly does things directly harmful to them (including paying customers) with complete lack of accountability? I give you Google.

And I would still argue that if you take the totality of impact of Mozilla and Wikipedia it is orders of magnitude more positive than any of the private companies I just listed off. Wikipedia is one of the best things on the internet. What ever governance struggles they are happening right now the public good they have done and are continuing to do is immeasurable. And it's pure public good. You cannot say the same thing about any private companies that could be considered their impact peer.

As someone who is building a VC firm with a focus on social impact I can say unequivocally that this can be done. You can be focused on doing good while also being a capitalist. It's not a binary. If an investor is interested in only making lots of money, there are plenty of funds that do that. However, there are a tremendous amount of investors who are happy getting a lower return on their investment if it means they can contribute into something that is making a difference. I don't see how this is any different.

It starts that way with good intentions. Pro-profit structures inevitably corrupt, however. It has always been this way with very, very few exceptions.

Mozilla: Please please please just concentrate on making an awesome browser people want to use. Then market it.

They have failed at that, so now they're just figuring out ways to spend the free money they have.

They didn't fail they were sabatoged by an incompetent CEO.

which one?

Perhaps the one that has multiplied her own salary while the browser gets less and less relevant.

https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

So, where in your plan do they make money?

Same way anyone with a platform product makes money: premium tiers or paid extensions.

And yet the market leader by a wide margin doesn't do any of that. They are bankrolled by a near monopoly on ads in various markets.

They're a non-profit.

They still have bills to pay. Being a non-profit doesn't mean they don't need revenue.

For starters they can fire the CEO that's seen their market share decrease by an order of magnitude while seeing her pay increase by an order of magnitude.

After that go down the org chart and fire everyone not coding for the browser.

Then you can live off donations until the end of time.

This strategy won't work if no one is organizing the work ahead. They can't be coding full time and administrating a project as complex as a modern browser. Especially not when competing against a complex beast like Chrome. (Though I do agree there may be too much money going into admin.)

Well it isn't working now so not much will change.

You can’t live off donations unless you make it look like a subscription

Mozilla Corp (the company that does most of the dev work) isn't a non-profit, although given their relationship with Mozilla Foundation (which is a non profit) maybe it's not a big distinction.

Apache had $3M in revenue and $1.5M in expenses in 2021 [0] with about $1M in donations.

Mozilla spent $262M in 2020 [1]. They manage money poorly.

[0] https://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2021AnnualReport.pd...

[1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...

I think those are comparing very different organizations with different aims. There's a big difference between employing a bunch of people to actually build a complex product that you expect normal people to actually use, vs supporting the governance of OSS projects that are built by other people, largely employed by companies using or offering services around those projects.

They are very different. But my point is that Apache is very successful and produces lots of great software.

You don’t have to pay $100M in developer salaries to produce great software. Mozilla is not that great despite having lots and lots of employees.

Perhaps rethinking their approach would be useful. But if their revenue goes away, it doesn’t mean Mozilla the browser goes away.

Maybe Mozilla should just be a governance process rather than a software developer. The browser would probably have similar quality.

The Apache Foundation doesn't produce the software, people paid by various companies do. This is quite similar to the Mozilla Foundation and Corporation relationship.

Who would employ people to work on Firefox if the corp side shuts down eg. because they lose their revenue?

It's hit or miss. Many Apache projects are basically open source abandonware. It's great that there's an organization to manage the rights to these projects but Apache doesn't have much power to keep them going.

That’s a good point and I agree. But it’s not like they detract from the other products. I think for open source foundations it’s not about average product value but overall value of the portfolio.

If these were business lines then of course it’s bad to have stinkers or abandoned products. But with Apache products it doesn’t cost them anything (or almost nothing) to keep them around and have amazing products (httpd, spark, lucene, etc) ad well.

I think the issue with Mozilla is that their browser has really floundered despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on development. That’s the problem they need to fix. It would be curious to see what Google’s spend is on Chromium and Chrome. I’d be surprised if they have 100 developers working on it.

Glad that you identified not fostering a community of outside condtributors as one of Mozilla's failings.

Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund') != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)

So what? Corp is owned by Foundation and pays Foundation millions every year. They even pay for the Foundation's legal services. Mozilla Foundation is Mozilla Corporation's albatross.

That the foundation doesn't seem to have any interest in the browser seems to be one of the big issues of the Mozilla setup to me. Then again the Corp and Foundation share leadership.

I had been a Firefox user since 2009 but over the last few years general sites like news and blogs slowly started breaking layouts and events, with JavaScript heavy sites sometimes crashing, esp on m1 air. I found toggling JavaScript and installing extensions is too tedious, esp on iOS devices so I had to move to safari as my primary with brave as a backup.

I still have Firefox on all my devices and seriously hope they focus on engineering instead of playing ideology when their revenue stream is shaky at best. I’d honestly pay for tab continuity and other UX improvements as a feature if they improve their css and js engines. I know that chromium has now become what IE was at one point but if Firefox can’t render properly and provide consistent js performance I find it harder and harder to recommend to non technical users.

This is from someone who evangelized FF in the 2010s and got many friends on board.

Javascript off by default makes websites better more often than it breaks websites. I find that whitelisting sites that need first party javascript doesn't take much time and covers 99% of cases; very rarely does a website actually require 3rd party javascript to be whitelisted.

> concentrate on making an awesome browser

Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does. I'll be honest, it is difficult to distinguish between browsers these days. But we have holy wars like vim vs emacs, when really the differences are quite small and rather dumb.

The reason I use Firefox is literally three things: 1) I don't want Chrome to have a monopoly, 2) I get ad blocking on my phone, 3) if I'm going to install an ad blocker on my browser, I also want my browser to not be tracking me. I'll be honest, these are the only truly unique features (that I use). Otherwise it is near indistinguishable from Chrome.

I'm happy with FF and while that's still true I don't mind Mozilla branching out. If I wasn't happy, then yeah, there's a priority issue. But honestly, what's so important that's missing? I don't get this holy war. It just seems like war for the sake of war, and no one benefits from that except those on top.

> Is it not? I honestly can't think of anything I'd want it to do more than it already does.

Give me 4x less battery draw and I'll try Firefox again, I want to use and like Firefox but every time I give it a go power usage remains a massive issue. I get at least 4x less power draw in the same activities on chromium based browsers and safari.

I spent my last evening, and this one, on working around the fact that firefox still doesn't support modules in WebWorkers.

And yes, I have a valid reason to use webworker: I'm making writing an online compiler playground.

More than half the time, the firefox debugger plainly crash when opening my app, and I have to open a new tab and retry.

For some reason I can't put a breakpoint on the statement after an if on the same line.

And these are my issue only on the last hour ! I'm using firefox everyday but yes, there is room for improvement.

I expected them to add Time Travel Debugging: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-is-te...

It was working on mac, then they fired a lot of staff, including the one who were developing it, and now they made their own company out of it: https://www.replay.io/

And to the one who says "you can contribute", yeah no, I tried, the official docs (back then) gave you the non-optimal ste^s (full clone of the repo (multiples hours due to upstream servers being slow), full local compilation).

The worst of it is, the doc tell you to compile firefox, so multiples minutes of wait to test a change, a change made to the devtools, which is entierely written in JS.

Oh and of course, you can't plug a debugger on the devtools, so you are stuck with console.logs.

Edit: minutes after writing this comments, my just tab crashed: https://i.imgur.com/s1y1JsO.png

Brave has it all, really.

Eich's back at it again :D.

I'm pretty sure I have opened the devtools for the devtools on Firefox before, maybe try using the whole-browser devtools? (I don't remember how to enable it but once it's enabled press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I to open it)

The android version is still... not great. It only supports about a dozen hand picked extensions for instance.

How many does mobile Chrome and Safari support? Last I checked it was zero. This is an example of what I'm trying to say: there are things to critique, but a perspective matters.

Safari for MacOS and mobile does have an extension library. Sure, it’s not as good as Chrome or Firefox on the desktop, but there are several extensions available that I use regularly.

Can I setup ublock origin on Safari mobile? (Is it event supported on Safari desktop?)

Thats my main use case for Firefox extensions

No, that’s a level of control that is unfortunately by design not available on Safari. AdGuard is a decent alternative.

It feels like you intentionally missed my point. uBlock is the number one add-on that most people care about (at least in my circles).

Kiwi Is built on chromium and supports pretty much every extension I've tried

This is exactly the problem with the current Firefox direction: It's tries to mimic Chrome with a few differences here and there. Chrome should not be the baseline. Slightly better than chrome does not mean good.

I see that as more convergent behavior rather than explicit intention. What do you specifically want to be different?

Real, meaningful extension support? Like was mentioned upthread?

I'm willing to be neutral about this as long as zero (0) executives from Mozilla take jobs at these "responsible tech companies." Otherwise, imo it's just people setting up their next gig with google's money laundered through Mozilla.

This makes me so angry to see. I feel like all the things I find important in technology are getting obliterated and the organizations I used to rely on turn out to be useless. If we ever lose Linus it's fucking over

It seems like almost every non corporate org has been misdirected in to harmful social justice work. Wikipedia spending 98% of their budget on non Wikipedia related expenses for example. Mozilla working on censorship and deplatforming efforts, even the Tor project feels compromised.

Pretty much the only org that still has its original goals in tact seems to be the EFF. I’d be happy to donate to Wikipedia again if they actually spent the money on their tech. I don’t care if they want to rewrite the whole site in Rust, it’s better than spending it on non tech rubbish.

We're watching the birth and growth of a new religion. Similar patterns happened during the start of Christianity in Rome and Islam in North Africa. Institutions repurposed, language was repurposed and edited, exponential growth of ideologically possessed population, and eventually massive social upheaval. There's not a word for it yet - "wokism" maybe - but we're in for a doozey.

I don't think that's really true. True believers are willing to sacrifice for their beliefs. Most woke crazies can't handle the slightest adversity or pushback, when management is no longer on their side it's over

Don't forget about the ACLU and their recent involvement in the Amber Heard debacle.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...

Linus Torvalds is a gem with huge impact, but Linux kernel development also has a lot of other good people.

He isn't just a "gem". He's the closest thing in my personal head canon to the god emperor. He's protecting us and our freedom to compute from all the forces of chaos. It is a seriously dark future if we ever lose him

When, not if. Unless we die first.

If we have to sacrifice 1000 nerds a day to sustain him so be it :)

> He's the closest thing in my personal head canon to the god emperor.

I lost respect for him when he got in to bed with Microsoft and other sponsored companies. It may of pushed Linux in to the lime light but this only opens Pandora's box to the point where you now have corporate entities pushing the direction they want. I see Linus as figure head of an agenda that the corporate sponsors want.

Wasn't Linux suppose to be competitor to windows, an open source free alternative? That's why I installed Linux fifteen years ago and which has now been replaced with FreeBSD which is another good if not better protector of freedom.

On the python front, we seem to have already lost Guido to this new religion.

I'm not even anti-woke, I just want someone to care about the fucking technology. I want someone to care about privacy, individual agency, centralization of power. Growing up in hacker culture I really never thought it would end up like this. Wouldn't have predicted this future

There desperately needs to be a fork of Firefox that sheds the terrible organisation that is Mozilla. They have destroyed a great product and paid themselves handsomely to do so. Technically incompetent, but full of cunning.

You seriously can't just "fork" a web browser these days and run with it.

I mean, sure, technically you can, and there are.

These are enormously complex pieces of software. Even Microsoft threw in the towel.

You need a large corporation, with a large amount of money (in this case, most coming from Google) to sustain this sort of inititiative.

Do we need a large corporation building our roads, pumping our water, etc?

Sure, the work on these is sometimes done by corporations, but the they are (ideally) publicly owned and and any for-profit entity is (ideally) accountable to the public.

I think we need the same for our core internet infrastructure, including browsers. The Mozilla foundation could have been that but they don't seem to be interested in funding and developing the browser in a publicly-accountable way.

On the other hand, browser are only so complex because other giant corporations (or one in particular) push for them to be so complex. This should also be fixed via anti-trust enforcement.

Then finally, I think you also overstate what it takes to maintain a browser. Especially when you keep the scope reasonable (focus on web pages, don't chase the never ending torrent of features added for web apps) then even creating one from scratch is doable for a relatively small team: https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...

> These are enormously complex pieces of software.

Then the "internet" should be rewritten. If the browser is now on such a complexity level that making a new browser is "impossible" than it's safe to declare the internet as dead.

How is the internet to evolve otherwise?

It is disappointing every time the next swing in Mozilla's focus further reduces the amount of resources and mindshare allocated to providing safe, trustworthy and quality web browsers and related web tools.

Mozilla has been hijacked for years now. Is there a way to recover the original spirit in which it was first founded?

The Mozilla Foundation has no members. The directors elect the next set of directors, so the current group sets the future direction of the foundation. There isn't really a way to recover the original spirit of the foundation unless they have a change of mind.

https://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-bylaws.pd...

It was over after the Brendan Eich debacle

I was supportive of getting rid of him at the time, but after seeing what that path lead to, I now think we need to just stick to business and keep people private lives out. I really don't agree with what he was doing but that shouldn't matter for the purposes of running a successful company and product.

To have a functioning society we basically have to accept using products and projects from objectionable people because almost everyone is objectionable in the perspective of someone else.

I wasn't familiar with this bit of history.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26868536

Unfortunate.. especially considering OkC is now wholly owned by Match. They stand only for making money, so the whole esposé effort effectively ended up as a no-oo.

"In February 2011, OkCupid was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp, operators of Match.com, for US$50 million.[15]"

[15] https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2011/02/02/little-rock-na...

OkC was wholly owned by the same company that owned Match in 2011, before anything in 2014 involving Mozilla. It was always all about money.

Dear Mozilla. Can you venture fund yourselves to fuel development of Firefox so it is less sucky? Or just fully fun development of rust and rust ecosystem and get out of browser business.

Is Mozilla advancing rust or other interesting tech now?

Rust is born out of Firefox project. Firefox is now written in rust.

To be more specific, less than 10% of Firefox is written in rust, according to their lines of code stats. Looking at how Servo was put out to pasture, I dont know how much that will grow under Mozilla's stewardship?

That was the original idea, until they fired most of the developers that eventually found a job at Apple, Amazon, Oxide, Microsoft, Google, Ferrous Systems...

They are now driving where Rust goes, and it isn't in Firefox which has stop rewriting stuff and now adopted WebAssembly sandboxing instead.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/02/securing-firefox-with-weba...

3% and decreasing, already tier 2 in many companies browser compatibility matrixes.

What about doing just the browser?

Apparently, Firefox is not sexy enough anymore. So now the CEO needs another shiny new thing for his/her CV.

It’s not and hasn’t been for a very long time.

I don’t think Mozilla is gonna find their Satya Nadella to shake things up.

They’re stuck in this “ethical” realm that failing businesses like to hide and play victim. To be fair, they were always ethical, back then there was an Angelina Jolie philanthropic vibe. These days it looks more like the owner of an old Subaru Outback smothered in PETA stickers

Its time for Firefox to become phoenix again, and relaunch from the ashes of Mozilla

For perspective, Mozilla is sitting on $800+ million in net assets, most of which is cash and investments.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...

Invest in tech worker cooperatives instead of for-profit corporations; it seems like more of the same Silicon Valley VC money pumping otherwise. :|

Just today I ranted about how much Firefox sucks nowadays. It would never actually load the page until it was restarted. And after doing so it took 2-4x as long as Chrome for the same page.

Can Mozilla ever not?

Hmm, I was puzzled when Ubuntu doesnt report any FF update but FF did, and requires a restart. Why did they ditch the tried and tested method?

Besides all the publicly stated reasons for doing this, is this just an excess money dump in order to retain non-profit status? Like the Gates and Zuckerberg Foundations, etc do for tax reasons?

“Responsible” according to whom? As if everyone agrees. Hint: we all have our own opinions.

You’re free to give away your money as you see fit, but man, such sanctimonious and collectivizing language is lame.

Do the moves that got you to the dance please.

What are you doing, Mozilla? I thought you are dying?

It would be nice instead if Mozilla invested in its web browser for a change.

I was going to say that I think this is a good idea. Yay! Potential new things that I'd like to use and help privacy and are decentralized should get funded!

Then I looked at their three initial investments and realized that's not exactly what they are going for, at least not right now. But for the future of the web and firefox, Mozilla needs to be more than self sufficient and this is a good way to work towards that.

I'm mixed as to the recent moves by them, but at least they aren't doing nothing.

This is early stage funding. So basically $30 million are expected to be spent without any return or accountability (probably in middle east and africa, given the CEO profile)

Similar to the Wikimedia Foundation, empire builders are running amok at Mozilla. Expanded mandates + expanded headcount = more clout.

Has Mozilla provided $35M for open-source foundations that work in initiatives compatible to the Mozilla Foundation?

For the love of God can you please just focus on the browser. Right now Firefox is the one thing standing between all web protocols being decided by Google and an open net.

You'll do a hell of a lot more good by ensuring Alphabet doesn't get to arbitrarily redefine protocols embed tracking in all the web and make the entire internet cater to the whims of the tech giants than any other bullshit social justice, environmental responsibility, or other virtue signaling or political bull hockey you people are currently engaged in.

Or just spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy focused) group that does not have any connection to management and staff who get paid from deals with "tech" companies.

Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers for people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox with "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low resource computer. Browsers not designed for advertising. Browsers designed for commerce. For banking. Browsers designed for fast information retrieval. "Secure" browsers with tiny attack surfaces. And so on. Specialised browsers. All that Mozilla code should be useful to more than just "tech" companies. For the avoidance of doubt, the idea of the web browser should not be solely a neverending popularity contest to crown one program that will obviate all others. There should also be (more) unpopular, boring browsers for doing routine, boring web-based things.

The whole "web advocacy" schtick comes across as hollow when the company treats a web browser like some "holy" program that no one else can tinker with. That is exactly why we have the situation with Google. "Web protocols" are decided by whomever writes the browser, and according to Mozilla's view of the web, only a handful of people can write browsers. As it happens they work for advertising companies, companies that are becoming advertising companies or a company paid by advertising companies (Mozilla). The web is more than a f'ing advertising medium. It is a public resource. Mozilla just cannot get over itself and see how dysfunctional this has become. Mozilla thinks the web is dead without advertising. It is the other way around. The web is getting suffocated by the influence of browser-enabled advertising spend.

And then we have the obvious conflict of interest. Mozilla execs get paid from deals with "tech" companies. We are then asked to believe Mozilla is going to make these companies more "responsible". Difficult to see how that is going to work when those companies are the ones paying Mozilla. Maybe if Mozilla threatened to "democratise" the web browser so it was not the exclusive domain of "tech" companies. A web with many clients. Those companies have come to rely on the power over web users they have through controlling "the" browser.

> spin off the browser to technically-focused (cf policy focused) group

Browser development is the main project of the technically-focused Mozilla Corporation, while it looks to me like the project here is under the policy-focused Mozilla Foundation.

Thank you!! People constantly conflate the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation.

Strange that people would confuse thing with wholly owned subsidiary of thing, yes.

Especially when this press release isn't trying very hard to make the distinction clear

We all know it's a technicality used for finance and separation of accountability.

In any other sane universe we'd call these shell corporations and tax avoidance schemes.

> Mozilla could be releasing multiple "experimental" browsers for people to play with. Trimmed down versions of Firefox with "features" removed that anyone can compile on a low resource computer.

The number of people who will actually compile a browser themselves is a rounding error to a footnote on the graph of browser stats. I can't imagine how that can make a dent in anything.

Do you just have faith that by doing this, Mozilla would empower some developer in his basement to come up with a killer feature that will allow them to burst back into the forefront of browsers?

Came here to say this, I feel like Mozilla is so out of touch with their (rapidly shrinking) remaining users

Is it possible that making money as a VC firm on the side is the solution to Mozilla's funding problem - being dependent on a deal with their main competitor - so that they can keep working on the browser?

Although I understand your sentiment, there was a big uproar (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot of stuff that wasn't directly related to Firefox, such as MDN web docs or the experimental Servo browser engine. Building a healthy and innovative ecosystem requires not developing tunnel vision. Having a future requires investing in the future as well as the present.

Some would no doubt consider incubating their own programming language, Rust, to be a distraction, but it's a clear benefit to programming / computer safety that they did, and presumably makes Firefox more fun to work on since programmers famously enjoy Rust.

Focus is good, but like most good things it's best in moderation, otherwise you reach diminishing returns while sacrificing everything else that matters.

> Although I understand your sentiment, there was a big uproar (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot of stuff that wasn't directly related to Firefox, such as MDN web docs or the experimental Servo browser engine. Building a healthy and innovative ecosystem requires not developing tunnel vision. Having a future requires investing in the future as well as the present.

Funny how under that goal Firefox has gone from 30% of the market to 3%:

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Mozilla today is a net negative for the web. We would be better with them dying in a fire so something new can take their place and actually be something that people want to use.

> We would be better with them dying in a fire so something new can take their place and actually be something that people want to use.

Or at least we might get an antitrust suit that forces google to unload Chrome.

Executive pay at Mozilla seems inversely proportional to the browser's market share... That's how performance is rewarded at the corporation, the less Firefox is used, the bigger her salary is...

Do you think there's some great "next Mozilla" that isn't taking on off due to the current Mozilla still existing?

I don't think that's the case. I don't think they have to be die for something else to take their place.

Yes, Mozilla is just good enough to not force the people who can make a web browser start because it has decades worth of inertia behind it. They remove functionality every release but there's always a work around that's ok enough to get you past it. I haven't been excited for an update from them in a decade.

the experimental Servo browser engine

How is building a new browser engine not supporting Firefox?

> there was a big uproar (rightly so) when Mozilla cut a lot of stuff that wasn't directly related to Firefox, such as MDN web docs or the experimental Servo browser engine.

MDN is a documentation site for the technologies supported by Firefox. Servo is a browser engine that's been used as a development target for efforts to rewrite major components of Firefox. These are both directly related to Firefox, as were other things that were cut.

From my vantage I don't recall the outrage whether things being cut were / weren't related to Firefox, but rather that major cuts were being made at the bottom (to features / programmes / staff) while Mozilla management were exorbitantly remunerated and receiving large bonuses/raises at the same time. Despite the severe decline in Firefox seen under their tenure.

I guess "directly related" is more controversial than I thought. I would call these indirectly supporting Firefox, and in line with Mozilla's mission.

Building public documentation for free doesn't directly help Firefox's market share, improve the browser, fix bugs, or financially get them out from under Google's thumb. Nor does building an experimental browser engine that they do not intend to use. They may help with these things, but it requires a few steps to explain how.

> or financially get them out from under Google's thumb

Ultimately, the seeming disinterest in this as one of their goals is the primary issue I have. My feelings on whether they should be investing more or less money into other initiatives are secondary.

I'm opinionated here so perhaps viewing things through that biased lens but that sentiment seemed echoed in the uproar around the cuts.

The open, standards-compliant documentation wasn't just nice for devs, but it promoted web standards that are meant to foster an open, better-functioning internet that's better for users and Firefox's market share.

The Servo engine could have been a big step forward. It's exploratory, sure, but so is VC funding "ethical" for-profits.

Mozilla Foundation (non profit org doing this 'venture fund') != Mozilla Corporation (folks who build firefox)

Mozilla Corporation is owned by Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Foundation also owns the Firefox trademark, and has the Corporation pay the Foundation for the right to use that trademark. $16.3 million in 2020 alone.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-fdn-202...

> Firefox is the one thing standing between all web protocols being decided by Google and an open net.

They're not. Mozilla management is ok to take money from Google for acting as a fig leaf and greenwash Google's "standards" and out-of-control complexity. There's no way around the fact that they're fully complicit in having turned the web into a monopolistic PoS that inspires no-one and doesn't provide economic incentives for anyone except Google. They give a shit to users, and now upper management wants to become even more like Wikimedia foundation and engage in mindless fundraising business only benefitting management.

I always find the backlash against Mozilla odd here. Not to say that they don't have lots of problems, but the top comment here is about cronyism. But as an alternative browser are we better to support Chrome? A singular company that wants to control the way the internet works (which means chromium is playing with fire too). These threads just fill with Mozilla hate which in turn promotes people's usage of Chrome. It's okay to not like Mozilla, but we do need to recognize that innovation and what's best for us and the internet relies on there being adequate competition. So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner.

A similar pattern seems to happen with other technologies. Signal is a great example. If we place apps/corporations as binary good or evil, the truth is that they are ALL evil. But that does not allow us to put pressure to push them to do good. It prevents us from promoting competition. And remember that a lot of people, even here on HN, don't understand the complexities and nuances that you're expressing your viewpoint from. So don't grab your pitch-fork, grab your pen. Do be critical, but not sensational. There is a difference between complaining and critiquing and social media tends to promote the former because people fighting encourages more engagement (not a metric HN heavily relies upon). It's up to us to break this cycle and choose how we speak and act online. It's clear at this point that those with the platforms aren't going to encourage this behavior, so we have to take the hard route.

We can be critical without being sensational.

> So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner.

I don't think hiding our criticism for "the greater good" is an appropriate path forward at all. Mozilla and Firefox have real problems and plugging our ears while they go up in flames isn't going to help. At least if we are vocal in our desires they have a chance to listen and right the ship (if there is any hope of that at this point).

Personally I'm all for the standardization around the blink engine (which has been contributed to by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and tons others) at this point. I see it as similar to the internet backend standardizing around linux. It makes it way easier for developers to reliably test against an ever evolving and complex web.

They said "Do be critical, but not sensational", they're not asking you to hide criticism, just to do it in a productive fashion.

> So I ask that you think of the unintended consequences when criticizing in an extreme manner.

What is this supposed to mean then? The implication is that we think of the greater good when formulating our criticism - something I am saying is the opposite of productive. We should attack Mozilla's incompetence head on, not give them a pass for deeds in a bygone era.

I noted what those unintended consequences are. They are that the less knowledgeable do not understand the nuances of the criticisms. All they hear is "Firefox bad, so I'll stay with Chrome." The reason of this is the sensational behavior, not the critique itself. I personally don't want any browser to have a monopoly (or excessive control) over the internet. A global utility. Competition is needed. Firefox has a lot of issues, no one is denying this. This would be a different issue if the the bashing were equal.

But this is akin to hyper focusing on Montana's Greenhouse emissions. They're problematic (one of the highest per capita) but clearly there are bigger fish to fry (<1% of US emissions). If we focus all our efforts on Montana then Texas incidentally gains, since they are the largest contributor to US emissions. Perspective matters.

> All they hear is "Firefox bad, so I'll stay with Chrome."

Which is exactly what I am suggesting people do in my comment (note I go on to say why I see it as a good thing that the Chrome renderer is taking over). I didn’t just criticize your critique I suggested why I thought it was wrong on multiple levels but somehow that got missed in most of these threads. Mozilla won’t win on ideology, they have to win by being a superior technology.

Thanks, I tried giving a TLDR to avoid the misinterpretation but I guess it didn't work as well as I hoped. I appreciate the defense. I just want to see productive conversations and not holy wars.

Standardizing on Blink basically yields web rendering to Google. Because they have outsized influence by controlling what gets into Chrome.

It's like saying SQL should just be whatever MySQL does, after all it's had plenty of forks and contributors.

> I don't think hiding our criticism for "the greater good" is an appropriate path forward at all.

This is an EXTREMELY bad faith reading of my comment. I specifically ended with

>> We can be critical without being sensational.

In case one did not read my entire comment. At no point do I even remotely suggest one should hide criticism. I specifically say the opposite. I am not sure who said to hide our (including my) criticism, but it sure wasn't me. Those words don't exist in what I wrote and it is hard to interpret it that way.

If you want to make these threads better just write about your own views, especially if they are not well represented by other comments. It helps a lot more than writing meta in the end.

So is this the latest scheme to embezzle the money? I am ashamed I used to donate to you useless people. I am ashamed I ever promoted firefox.

> To fuel an ecosystem of products and technology that respect users

Bring back the XUL extensions!

Something similar. I was a pretty regular doner to Mozilla for many years. I stopped because Mozilla spends money on lots of stuff I don’t care about and not on the browser.

I hope this works out for them. But I’m not sure the elevator pitch for Mozilla as a charity. Why do people donate to them?

To play devil's advocate: If Mozilla were purely focused on doing good for the internet, and had a funding problem that threatened their ability to do that, it's possible that carefully investing money in places that do some good and gives them returns is a good way to try and solve both problems at once.

Not that I have any faith in them. But this could be a good thing.

It definitely could be a good thing.

But it’s like if Doctors Without Borders/MSF started a soup kitchen in DC. Soup kitchens are good things, but if I donate to MSF I want my money to go towards a specific cause, not domestic soup kitchens.

There are already charity index funds for people who want to donate.

They gave grants to change master/slave terminology in documentation. After that, I can't donate and assume the won't wizz away my money on some stupid endeavor.

I remember when BLM was becoming a thing. I was working with a rapidly scaling concurrent system.

We had already gone through every variation of “master” and “slave” and had code using it to describe the various relationships.

“Slave” was a worker whose behavior was exclusively and directly defined by the “master”, “minions” had more autonomy, etc.

Eventually the terminology expanded and lost all sense and reason. Just our own in-house jargon.

If we could do it over we would have chosen something different, but we were fighting for solvency at that point.

COVID really messed stuff up.

Bringing back XUL extensions won't rescue Firefox, because removing XUL extensions is not what caused Firefox to lose marketshare in the first place.

https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/108/556/56...

Source for the "XUL Deprecated in August 2015" date: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/08/21/the-future-of-dev...

Source for the browser stats over time: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BrowserUsageShare.pn...

So what? XUL was a "technology that respect users" but was replaced because firefox needed to copy chrome.

So the primary opensource path to the internet now has a moral and politic agenda?

For values of "now" >= 2007, yes.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

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