Sometimes I wonder where Firefox might be today if, in the last 10 years, it had competent leadership singularly focused on delivering the absolute best browser in existence.
Comment A) "Screw Mozilla, all their funding comes from their Google Search deal, they're just Google in a mask"
Comment B) "Screw Mozilla, they waste all this money on side projects (that would provide non-Google revenue streams) when they should be spending all of their effort on Firefox (which is effectively un-monetizable apart from the search deal - and you can bet hard money there'd be screaming if they tried)"
Can we at least acknowledge that most of the side projects did lead to improvements in the browser and web ecosystem? FirefoxOS led to a bunch of focus on memory usage & responsiveness as well as web APIs that provided more parity between web and native apps. LetsEncrypt got a big boost from Mozilla as did Opus and AV1. Rust is in a class of its own. The VPN deal doesn't require that much investment from Mozilla since it's based on Mullvad. The voice & language database is a big boon to the current open source AI training movement, etc.
Why? These are such tiny, meaningless amounts in the grand scheme of Mozilla's finances, why focus on them so much and make such a big deal out of them?
Well, from their analyses of the companies this money is being sent to, including the copious use of scare quotes around basic terms like cis, as well as several comments about the political leanings of these organizations, it's very clear that the author of this blog post is not really upset because Mozilla is spending money that isn't related to their core mission, since it's basically a drop in the bucket, but is really more angry that the money is going to places they politically disagree with.
Their argument that this is objectively bad, as opposed to just being a reason for them and other conservatives to not donate if they really care that much, is just hogwash too. The idea that the people who are donating to Mozilla think all of that money is going to building the browser and would have no way of knowing that Mozilla is a politically motivated organization that has a certain stance and will donate money to further that stance is absurd: Mozilla makes it very clear that they as a foundation exist to do far more than just work on Firefox and a few other projects, that they have large scale social goals, and neither do they do anything to hide the fact that their values and goals are oriented very much in a progressive direction. The idea that someone would be shocked that Mozilla has a progressive leaning and is looking to forward progressive causes after reading this (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/) or many other things on their site is just laughable to me.
I have a low opinion of Lunduke. Most of his criticisms are, if not entirely false, in extreme bad faith.
I don't dabble in US politics too much because I'm European, but it felt a bit odd to read the article and encounter the way it frames things.
As if donating money to a bunch of organizations that care about trans issues, pro-choice, vaccine acceptance and a bunch of other social justice stuff is somehow a horrible thing to do, especially when the amount of money being donated is equivalent to the salaries of a few qualified engineers.
>> Why does Mozilla give so much money to political speakers that have no relationship to their core business?
What exactly is wrong with a company choosing to support a left political leaning? From what I've read of USA, those might in general be more grounded and regard privacy higher, than the right leaning stuff like needing an ID to watch pornography, banning books and all that other weird stuff, which might lead to some surveillance state.
>> Why does Mozilla seem unconcerned with alienating a large portion of their user base (which is already shrinking)?
I don't get it, who cares about this so much that it'd alienate them? It's akin to me seeing that my KitKat chocolate bar supports planting more trees, going on some charade about climate change and then boycotting their products. Surely nobody gets so worked up over some money going towards initiatives that'd arguably make lives better?
>> Why do some of the recipients of Mozilla money appear to be nothing more than empty shells of companies — not even having a simple website?
This is a better point, as are the other questions in my opinion. But at the same time, if there are corporations that support the far right, I don't mind Mozilla throwing some money in a direction to balance things out, even if it might be a bit performative due to the comparatively small sums.
You don't need to copy/paste this to all your comments. Some people may disagree with you and dismissing them like that will only lead to resentment.
> Can we at least acknowledge that most of the side projects did lead to improvements in the browser and web ecosystem?
Indeed, a lot of the stuff you mentioned _indirectly_ improved some things in Firefox-the-web-browser. Now image how much better it could have been be if all that resources had been invested in the browser quality directly.
Rust was a project started by Mozilla Research employees but not affiliated with Mozilla. Though they did sponsor it in 2009.
Seeing how many people are now criticizing Apple for hobbling PWAs with Safari on iOS, I'd say they were just ahead of their time.
It didn’t end up challenging the Apple/Google duopoly like Mozilla wanted but I think they should have stuck with it anyways.
By doing that you have to contend with low-to-nonexistent margins, green unoptimized software struggling to run on weak hardware, and the fact that nobody (users and devs alike) really gets excited or talks about entry level devices.
Mozilla might’ve caught some transitory flack for focusing on flagships initially, but it would’ve made for a much more usable product out of the gate and helped to fund R&D to make more affordable models a reality.
HN loved to hate on it's decision but a lot of them (like XUL removal) where strictly necessary for firefox to still have any chance for relevancy.
And while they did try out a lot of things but FF fundamentally has a hard time gaining new users as they have very little killer features. So stuff like pocket, VR or FirefoxOS where needed tries of FF to gain some feature with which you can gain users. Tries they lost but I would say failing to try would have been worse leadership.
You know what else could have gained them new users? Best in class mobile browser supporting full range of FF extensions! Instead they dragged their feet on extension support for years and its performance on Android is still inconsistent for me.