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Comment by jjcon | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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