I am tired of Firefox shitty takes.
It really is a shitty take. Mozilla are essentially saying they depend on Google remaining a monopoly; and that we shouldn’t fight the bad guys because the bad guys might hurt us if we try.
The Mozilla blog post was all about the DOJ asking to end search-bar payments, and how this might hurt independent browser. But I saw no mention of the DOJ saying that Google must sell Chrome; which I think is very relevant to the discussion about browser dominance.
More and more I believe that Mozilla’s current leadership are acting in their own self interest, not for the public good.
Maybe making a browser doesn’t need to be so damn expensive. Let the web standards freeze so we aren’t constantly chasing shiny things. The browser is in a really good spot today. What else does it need to be?
There’s a ton of stuff I still want to be supported, especially web assembly.
But for most things, yeah, we could probably slow down a bit.
Hardly surprising, looking at how many former google and Facebook employees are in Mozilla’s management.
Libre Wolf isn’t bad.
Having been a firefox user for a few years now, Screw Mozilla. What a mismanaged shit-show they’ve become.
I get that browser development costs a ton, and that they’re in a shitty position. But to make this ode to stockholm syndrome blog post… what on EARTH?
Best case, Chrome gets split off into a separate organization free of meddling and they can fund themselves with reasonable donations / investments. In reality, I’m sure Google and other advertising companies will try to get into it and buy the behavior they want, like special-interest groups in US politics.
But if Chrome ended up under any organization with reasonable management who wasn’t completely beholden to advertisers, I’d switch back to Chrome pretty quickly (assuming the whole Manifest V2/V3 thing got un-fucked).
Does anybody expect them to say anything else? Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant like Google or being funded by someone with very deep pockets, like… er… Google.
Even MS bailed and ceded power to Google, because it simply didn’t make financial sense. Apple does it but they’re pretty meh in terms of implementing standards and such… there’s a reason 3rd party WebKit browsers are rare. They comparatively run it on a shoestring budget, and they’re Apple FFS - their wealth is practically limitless!
People aren’t going to start paying to use Firefox, and that money needs to come from somewhere. The community rejects giants paying Mozilla (understable sentiment), rejects paying for Firefox (also understandable), and rejects Mozilla selling data (definitely understandable). Some say donations, but be real, that won’t make hundreds of millions per year.
What is the solution here? I’m not trying to be contrarian I just don’t know what they can actually do. You’d hope that the Linux Foundation or something would chip in, but nope, they help Chromium instead. I worry for the future of web browsers.
That said, I’m also deeply uncomfortable with Google being able to pay to be default search on so many products. It gives them a huge advantage. I don’t want them to have that advantage. It’s anticompetitive and scummy as fuck.
Mozilla are definitely between a rock and a hard place here. I don’t like some of the decisions they make, but damn, I’m not sure I have the smarts to come up with better ones, given the position and market they’re in.
Web engine development is more costly than even OS development
Unfortunately, many applications that used to be desktop applications in the past are now programs that run in the web browser. It doesn’t matter anymore if they are a lot less effective than being native.
we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant
That is the problem - the web needs to be a lot simpler, browser development should cost fractions of that. It got unnecessarily, absurdly complex.
SASS has pushed the work their app developers should be doing onto the development teams of web browsers.
I know I’m in the minority but I would pay yearly to use Firefox. Not sure how much I’d pay, but I am getting into the habit of purchasing software instead of allowing it to purchase me
You can donate to software development freely right now. This and many others developers
As far as I can tell you can’t donate to Firefox specifically. I would if I could.
I could but I’d still be getting the same Firefox which has a nagging incentive to cooperate with advertisers and google. The benefit of having to pay for software is that their revenue stream comes directly from me and not from a 3rd party. It’s not about supporting the developer for me, it’s about knowing that the product I pay for is the product I get
Subscribe to their VPN. I don’t use it, but do it to support Firefox
Does the money for that go directly to the dev teams? I wouldn’t want it to be swallowed up by Mozilla bureaucracy.
That’s rarely how donations work, though. Ultimately you need to have some level of trust that the people at the organisation you are donating to know a lot more about where, when and how your money can be effectively used than you do. Your pre-donation requirements/demands are extremely unrealistic and I’m not sure if people like yourself are genuinely delusional about this fact or if you just use it as some sort of moral bargaining tactic to never feel bad about the fact that you don’t donate any of your money to the causes you supposedly really want to.
I bet most of the money goes to Mullvad because they run the actual VPN service. Mozilla just does the front end and user management.
For me it comes down to “do I want pay for this product so it sticks around?”. If yes then I have to trust the org that makes it to be reasonably sensible. They’re probably going to do a better job of putting the money in the right place to stay in business than I am.
I, too, would pay. Probably $200/year. What I don’t know is how much we need to keep up development.
I would legit pay $40+ for Firefox… it’s gotta make and keep some promises around security, compliance, configurablity and compatibility, etc. though. It also needs to be a decently long term purchase. I’m not doing it for every version they release, maybe a lifetime license or at least a 4-6 year cadence if it’s a bit cheaper.
I don’t think $40 would support much use time. Maybe yearly would be fair. Idk what kind of money they need but it’s clearly a lot.
I’m paying for vpn 60 bucks per year, for storage 70, I’d give the same for a decent trustworthy browser.
If I’m correct, the linux foundation took up development of the Servo engine when Mozilla dropped it. So they don’t focus entirely on Chromium, and may be the ones to take back after Mozilla for Firefox/Gecko engine if needed (you did not said that ofc, but i think it’s important to mention). There’s still a long way to go with new engines such as Servo and Ladybird, but that may be good alternatives in the future.
Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year
And then there are heroes we don’t deserve, but sorely need: git.sr.ht/~bptato/chawan.
The solution is for Firefox to die and for all the payments to be paid to Servo instead.
Servo survived all the problems that got thrown at them without excuses.
Meanwhile Firefox seem to shot themselves every week by their own choice.
I mean who the hell thought that integrating AI into Firefox for example is a good idea.
Servo isn’t a functional browser. You’re not comparing apples to apples.
Removed by mod
Why doesn’t Mozilla just fork Chromium? Anything bad sneaks in, they rip it out. New feature? Develop it specifically without paying for the whole browser. From the user’s perspective, very little changes, but cost savings would be massive.
It would also be a good high profile tab of “bad things Chrome/Chromium is doing”
EDIT: It would also justify regulating Chromium like a monopoly, though I think that government ship has sailed.
Chromium is code that Mozilla is not familiar with and has a reputation for being poorly documented.
A fully divergent fork isn’t likely to make development any easier for Mozilla. And a soft fork puts them at the whims of Google’s development decisions. If Mozilla needs to pivot, joining with WebKit seems the more feasible option, though that would also likely be a battle to keep a Windows port maintained.
Apple could pitch in just for the sake of sticking it to Google.
I mean, I see their point, but it’s still a bad take. At the end of the day, this monopoly needs to be broken up. Also, have they tried not hiring a bunch of new executives and capping CEO pay at 300 000?
Mozilla is such a disorganized company. Why wouldn’t they find another search engine deal besides Google? It’s possible that they could find another deal somewhere, but it seems to me that they don’t care — more like they’re a controlled competitor. I’m not surprised considering they scrapped their wording regarding privacy, which leads to a lot of ambiguities.
Based on nothing, I too am going to assume they haven’t tried.
I’m pretty sure that the main reason Google funds Mozilla is to be able to avoid claims of monopoly on browsers. I don’t think we can have it both ways.
If anyone else was confused by the typo, difficult > default.
I’m not sure what to think. On one hand, yes, Google is of course slimy. But if Mozilla loses it’s big source of funding (and crumbles as a result), that may put things in a worse place?
Then again, it’s a shame that the only major competing browser engine is funded by the dominant browser’s company. Maybe Mozilla can be fine without it?
The one good thing I could think of is that Firefox could come under new management. But then again, how that management will be funded I don’t know. Likely they will run in to the same problem as Mozilla.
Pathetic.
How is chrome going to be funded if it’s broken off?
Oh no.
I wish there was a better way to do it but sadly right now this is it. If you want independent browsers to continue they need funding from somewhere.
They can take the salary of the CEO to fund the browser, they can ask for donations that go directly to the browser, they can make subscriptions with useful services. So many ideas that they didn’t try in the past 10 years. But it’s easier to get free money from Google and do nothing.
I’d love to live in whatever fantasy land selfless compassionate CEO’s come from, sadly it’s just a fantasy.
I don’t think it matters whether the person is compassionate or selfless. It should be a position with a low fixed salary and a bug bounty. That way if the CEO wants to get paid, they have to directly contribute to the browser. Create the job and the compensation around your ideal candidates.
honestly I don’t see the thing here. unless its about edge being a respin of chrome. all macs come with safari, all windows edge, ironically its a few linux distros that come with chrome while others use a default foss browser. I feel like their biggest monopoly is windows giving up and using their core rather than making their own.
Mozilla has been taken over from within by google parasites…
Frankly its days are numbered and we will need a solution how to keep the engine development going.
