Hacker News Reader

Comment by wkat4242 | Hacker News Reader

What's so horrible about it? I don't like how they're pampering to the ad industry now but other than that I think they're pretty decent.

View on HN

They also fired a whole bunch of software engineers (including everyone working on Servo), and then massively boosted their executives' salaries, so that was certainly something.

As a criticism that applies equally to Google.

Google lays off engineers: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/11/24034124/google-layoffs-e...

Google boosts their executive's compensation: https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-google-executive-pa...

IMO it’s a matter of principle. Mozilla is supposed to be a non-profit that exists to support the development of a FOSS browser and its related projects. Over the years it seems like they’ve strayed from this mission, behaving more and more like the big corporations they claim not to be like

> IMO it’s a matter of principle.

Eh? So Chrome should be used because Google has no principles?

Here's the Mozilla Manifesto:

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

They explicitly state that they want the internet to benefit the public good as well as commercial use.

Principle number 9 is: "Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical."

Mozilla clearly strikes that balance better than Google does.

No, I never said anywhere that chrome should be used. As a matter of fact, I use Firefox myself. My original observation was that Mozilla presents itself as a benevolent non-profit yet behaves like soulless for-profit tech company, abandoning valuable FOSS initiatives and carelessly laying off employees, all while increasing executive pay

If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project. If you spend it on beer or buy Jacuzzi I'm happy too. If you chose to spend it on other projects ill be excited to learn what they are.

https://future.mozilla.org/projects/

Do you use any of that? Is there anything there I should be using? (honest question) It seems premature to donate to things I don't know.

> Solo helps entrepreneurs expand their web presence with a suite of AI-backed tools for building websites, optimizing for SEO, and showcasing your best work.

> Solo will instantly create a beautiful website so you can grow your business.

> Improve brand visibility: SEO keywords are automatically added to help drive search traffic. View statistics by connecting a Google Analytics account.

I'm very biased no doubt, it reads like I donate to progress the commercial web, more canned template websites, product SEO and to promote the use of google analytics. I'm sure it is awesome to some people, to me it is the opposite, I'm sure it is a project that should exist some place but I don't want to pay for it.

The web browser can still be infinitely improved.

> If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project.

Firefox is not a project of the Mozilla Foundation, but the Mozilla Corporation, so you just can't donate to Firefox at all; in fact, the money flows the opposite direction between them. I know it's frustrating but this argument is misleading yet keeps showing up in every thread.

Fascinating, thanks for the explanation/correction, it makes it even worse than I thought.

I don't know about their other expenses, but SEO/advertising is probably one of their better uses of money even if we don't like it. It's hard to gain market share against a browser that is pitched each time you do a Google search no matter how good the product is.

I mean Llamafile is great and is built on fantastic tech, but no I definitely want my Mozilla money to go to Firefox, not what Thing is currently in vogue by Mozilla execs.

Clicked the future projects link. Thought the DidThis project sounded interesting. Aaaannnddd it's already a dead project as of 2 months ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com