The workers should fire the execs and convert Mozilla into a democratically controlled worker-owned company.
Most PM and directors were brought in after firefox got big.
They can’t even find a CEO.
The people who made Mozilla great are now working somewhere else.
One wonders if that is the overarching strategy of those who fund OSS.
The difference is that it's less impactful since it has a near uBO-level blocker built-in to the browser.
I think that's the right thing to do. Honestly V3 is pretty reasonable. It's just that uBlock Origin is so important and trusted it should be an exception. It should be built into the browser, only conflicts of interest prevent this. Can't trust an ad company to maintain an ad blocker.
No consistent leadership vision or direction - do everything and anything their staff wanted, almost none of which was actual tech. They hired activists - not technologists.
Look at the results.
On the other hand, random side-projects are necessary for finding new ground before it craters you - like how Microsoft was absolutely cratered by the "smartphone" thing and their too-little-too-late Windows Phone.
The company rotted from the inside by allowing the inmates to run the asylum. Now Mozilla is severing the limb responsible for endless side-quests - but probably way too late.
FTA: "Fighting for a free and open internet will always be core to our mission, and advocacy continues to be a critical tool in that work. We’re revisiting how we pursue that work, not stopping it"
How about you just make the best damn web browser imaginable?
One of the most important and influential technology companies ever ate itself into a failed advocacy group with a couple mediocre tech hobbies. What a joke...
And not that it's the product of any of the people who were let go, but developer.mozilla.org is a pretty valuable and high-impact resource. It's more "advocacy for a free and open Internet" than it is "making a browser".
Difficult if you compete directly with your main money source
Why do I use a Microsoft product to develop in Rust? Mozilla could have built the best-in-class Rust developer experience, a la Jetbrains.
Just another mismanaged, incoherent side quest.
Besides - what were Mozilla's actual goals? Find ways to not make money?
People would throw money at a competent, coherent, privacy-centric, non-Microsoft collaborative office suite. Mozilla had Thunderbird, messaging apps, file sharing apps, etc - and somehow never got organized enough to form a single coherent strategy that would make money. Instead they were all one-off half-baked products that were DOA.
It's dumbfounding. GSuite did so well because it's not Microsoft. Today we have many offerings, from Zimbra to Zoho and more - just imagine what someone with Mozilla's reputation and morals could have done for SMB's in this space, before anyone else moved?