Steve Teixeira, Mozilla’s New Chief Product Officer(blog.mozilla.org)
blog.mozilla.org
Steve Teixeira, Mozilla’s New Chief Product Officer
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/steve-teixeira-mozilla-new-chief-product-officer/
174 comments
HDR support for YouTube has been available on Mac for a few versions now: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/100.0/releasenotes/
Would you complain about the employees attitude at Burger King if they had like 3 people running it? That’s pretty much what Firefox is today, trying to operate as a modern browser.
Firefox has about $500 million USD revenue per year.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/13/mozilla-expects-to-generat...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/13/mozilla-expects-to-generat...
> Doesn't pick up the operating system PKI trust store.
This was super frustrating for me. I filed a related bug when loading the CACKey module stopped working.
While that bug didn't get fixed, I found out about two settings to do what you want.
Set security.enterprise_roots.enabled and security.osclientcerts.autoload to true in about:config and restart Firefox.
Doing that plus loading and trusting the appropriate certs in Keychain Access makes my CAC/PIV work.
This was super frustrating for me. I filed a related bug when loading the CACKey module stopped working.
While that bug didn't get fixed, I found out about two settings to do what you want.
Set security.enterprise_roots.enabled and security.osclientcerts.autoload to true in about:config and restart Firefox.
Doing that plus loading and trusting the appropriate certs in Keychain Access makes my CAC/PIV work.
They never actually fixed the bug.
Notice the word "roots" in "security.enterprise_roots.enabled"?
The PKI hierarchy is more than just "roots". A tree is more than just a stump.[1]
No amount of begging or pleading with the Mozilla dev team ever succeeded in convincing them to read the Microsoft documentation for how PKI works in Windows.
There's a set of constants in the Win32 headers that defines the various certificate trust stores in Windows. You know, "machine", "machine policy", "user", and "user policy" multiplied out to make combinations with "root", "intermediate", "crl", etc...
Over 20 years they have slowly, one at a time added a random subset of them. RANDOM. Just... one... at... a time... in some unfathomable order. It was mind-blowing to watch this unfold.
The simplest thing they could have done was simply support all of the stores by copy-pasting the whole block of constants and writing a for loop across all of them. Done. Fixed. Close ticket.
But noooo... got to keep those tickets open for decades and decades by making sure that whatever is there remains permanently incomplete.
It boggles the mind.
[1] As a random example of how this can be broken in Firefox is that it is unable to use LDAP to load an intermediate CA certificate. The use of LDAP is common on large Windows-based enterprise networks, because it's the default. It's trivial to "push" these intermediate CA certs into the local trust store of every machine using policy, at which point the protocol support no longer matters. Firefox could have simply picked up the certificate from the local store. It already has the code for doing this for Root certs, but refuses to use identical code for Intermediate certs.
Notice the word "roots" in "security.enterprise_roots.enabled"?
The PKI hierarchy is more than just "roots". A tree is more than just a stump.[1]
No amount of begging or pleading with the Mozilla dev team ever succeeded in convincing them to read the Microsoft documentation for how PKI works in Windows.
There's a set of constants in the Win32 headers that defines the various certificate trust stores in Windows. You know, "machine", "machine policy", "user", and "user policy" multiplied out to make combinations with "root", "intermediate", "crl", etc...
Over 20 years they have slowly, one at a time added a random subset of them. RANDOM. Just... one... at... a time... in some unfathomable order. It was mind-blowing to watch this unfold.
The simplest thing they could have done was simply support all of the stores by copy-pasting the whole block of constants and writing a for loop across all of them. Done. Fixed. Close ticket.
But noooo... got to keep those tickets open for decades and decades by making sure that whatever is there remains permanently incomplete.
It boggles the mind.
[1] As a random example of how this can be broken in Firefox is that it is unable to use LDAP to load an intermediate CA certificate. The use of LDAP is common on large Windows-based enterprise networks, because it's the default. It's trivial to "push" these intermediate CA certs into the local trust store of every machine using policy, at which point the protocol support no longer matters. Firefox could have simply picked up the certificate from the local store. It already has the code for doing this for Root certs, but refuses to use identical code for Intermediate certs.
I'm a PKI user not a PKI programmer. Please forgive the ignorant question I'm about to ask.
How can you have an intermediate certificate in a trust store mean anything? Wouldn't its trust be based on the root that signed it? It seems to me either the intermediate cert is signed by a trusted root (in which case mission accomplished) or it isn't, in which case it's the root (not intermediate) that needs to get added?
Again, not anywhere near my area of expertise. Assuming my understanding is wrong, it would be helpful for me to learn how, and id appreciate the guidance.
How can you have an intermediate certificate in a trust store mean anything? Wouldn't its trust be based on the root that signed it? It seems to me either the intermediate cert is signed by a trusted root (in which case mission accomplished) or it isn't, in which case it's the root (not intermediate) that needs to get added?
Again, not anywhere near my area of expertise. Assuming my understanding is wrong, it would be helpful for me to learn how, and id appreciate the guidance.
It's not (just) about trust, it's mostly about how the CA certificate is "obtained".
Firefox supports only HTTP for retrieving an intermediate CA certificate, and can only do this "live".
Say you have a "leaf" certificate, and you already trust its Root CA, but there is no copy locally of the intermediate CA certificate. What now? Firefox will look for a HTTP URL in the leaf certificate pointing at the intermediate CA's certificate endpoint. It'll download and cache it on the fly.
This is fine... on the public internet with public CAs.
It's not generally robust on internal networks. For example, many "secure desktops" deployed in the military, security agencies, parliament, etc... don't have unfettered outbound access. They may need to talk to internal HTTPS endpoints but have no access to Internet-hosted CA endpoints publishing the intermediate certificate!
Windows solves this by allowing a single machine to download the CA certificates and the associated CRL files, and pushing this out to the workstations via policy. Firefox solves this by timing out and failing.
Similarly, HTTPS is the new-kid-on-the-block for PKI infrastructure! Its original use-case was for things like Smart Cards. Windows started out deploying certificates via LDAP, not HTTP! Firefox just does... nothing... if it sees only an LDAP URL in the certificate and you get an error.
Last but not least, truly paranoid admins don't just trust every public CA for every purpose. It's possible for a Windows network to deploy updated trust lists that restrict CA purposes. Similarly, it's possible to push out certificates you distrust and have anything using them rejected, whether or not the parent CA has published a CRL entry to revoke the certificate.
Right now, there's a lot of admins in Ukraine adding Russian CAs to such rejection lists. Get it?
Firefox has it's own unique and special way of managing all of this, and just ignores whatever the operating system tells it... except for a random subset here and there. That's not documented. You have to go read (and understand!) the C++ code to figure out what it does or does not do.
Oh, and to add injury to insult, the method for managing the Firefox certificate trust list changes semi-regularly, so most of the URLs in the docs are now 404s.
I've given up, and so have millions of other admins.
Firefox had a philosophical opposition to supporting enterprise customers on Windows, and they've paid the price for that philosophy with increasing irrelevance of their core product.
PS: Chrome / Chromium / Edge have their own issues, but nowhere near as bad. One major concern is that for non-public CAs used at a large scale, it's basically impossible to revoke certificates for any Chromium-based browser on unmanaged networks. It's still very difficult on managed networks. An example would be a University with tens of thousands of unmanaged workstations using an internal CA for things like VPN or WiFi access.
Firefox supports only HTTP for retrieving an intermediate CA certificate, and can only do this "live".
Say you have a "leaf" certificate, and you already trust its Root CA, but there is no copy locally of the intermediate CA certificate. What now? Firefox will look for a HTTP URL in the leaf certificate pointing at the intermediate CA's certificate endpoint. It'll download and cache it on the fly.
This is fine... on the public internet with public CAs.
It's not generally robust on internal networks. For example, many "secure desktops" deployed in the military, security agencies, parliament, etc... don't have unfettered outbound access. They may need to talk to internal HTTPS endpoints but have no access to Internet-hosted CA endpoints publishing the intermediate certificate!
Windows solves this by allowing a single machine to download the CA certificates and the associated CRL files, and pushing this out to the workstations via policy. Firefox solves this by timing out and failing.
Similarly, HTTPS is the new-kid-on-the-block for PKI infrastructure! Its original use-case was for things like Smart Cards. Windows started out deploying certificates via LDAP, not HTTP! Firefox just does... nothing... if it sees only an LDAP URL in the certificate and you get an error.
Last but not least, truly paranoid admins don't just trust every public CA for every purpose. It's possible for a Windows network to deploy updated trust lists that restrict CA purposes. Similarly, it's possible to push out certificates you distrust and have anything using them rejected, whether or not the parent CA has published a CRL entry to revoke the certificate.
Right now, there's a lot of admins in Ukraine adding Russian CAs to such rejection lists. Get it?
Firefox has it's own unique and special way of managing all of this, and just ignores whatever the operating system tells it... except for a random subset here and there. That's not documented. You have to go read (and understand!) the C++ code to figure out what it does or does not do.
Oh, and to add injury to insult, the method for managing the Firefox certificate trust list changes semi-regularly, so most of the URLs in the docs are now 404s.
I've given up, and so have millions of other admins.
Firefox had a philosophical opposition to supporting enterprise customers on Windows, and they've paid the price for that philosophy with increasing irrelevance of their core product.
PS: Chrome / Chromium / Edge have their own issues, but nowhere near as bad. One major concern is that for non-public CAs used at a large scale, it's basically impossible to revoke certificates for any Chromium-based browser on unmanaged networks. It's still very difficult on managed networks. An example would be a University with tens of thousands of unmanaged workstations using an internal CA for things like VPN or WiFi access.
> - Doesn't pick up the operating system PKI trust store.
Mozilla has to ship its own cert store to have any sort of political power over CAs (which has almost always been a good thing).
Mozilla has to ship its own cert store to have any sort of political power over CAs (which has almost always been a good thing).
So, what's the realistic alternative that can be trusted?
> The core team has lost its way and is too busy playing with stupid pet projects with no business value.
My guess is it has more to do with browser development being an arms race. And Mozilla cannot just bank on its search ads, web ads, OS sales, office apps, or hardware to pay to keep up. And the biggest services all have and push their own browsers.
Think how much better Firefox had to be to unseat IE6. It was way better for years and still took a long time to gain market share. And it arose when the oligopolies were waning, often without their own browsers. Now most markets are cornered. And each big player has their own browser. (All largely based on WebKit.)
My guess is it has more to do with browser development being an arms race. And Mozilla cannot just bank on its search ads, web ads, OS sales, office apps, or hardware to pay to keep up. And the biggest services all have and push their own browsers.
Think how much better Firefox had to be to unseat IE6. It was way better for years and still took a long time to gain market share. And it arose when the oligopolies were waning, often without their own browsers. Now most markets are cornered. And each big player has their own browser. (All largely based on WebKit.)
You mean to say you can't build a competitive web browser with ~$500 million/year income?
Give me the $500m a year and I'll give it a punt.
Give me the $500m a year and I'll give it a punt.
In this market and starting from a legacy codebase I don't think it's possible without literally paying people to use it.
Just to offer a counter-point to the general mood of the thread: I've had ... no annoying bugs related to FF in the 2-3 years since I switched to it.
I use FF on windows and in WSL2 Ubuntu and on FF Nightly on android. I do watch YouTube/Twitch a lot, of there's a problem with those sites in FF I'm not aware of it.
Maybe most people just aren't encountering these issues and they're prioritizing bugs that affect more devices?
Sad about the negativity in this thread. I hope FF stays around since TreeStyleTabs are like my most valued bit of software at the moment and it would be a pain to have to replace them.
I use FF on windows and in WSL2 Ubuntu and on FF Nightly on android. I do watch YouTube/Twitch a lot, of there's a problem with those sites in FF I'm not aware of it.
Maybe most people just aren't encountering these issues and they're prioritizing bugs that affect more devices?
Sad about the negativity in this thread. I hope FF stays around since TreeStyleTabs are like my most valued bit of software at the moment and it would be a pain to have to replace them.
This is likely at the top because you've manage to hide your irrational dislike of Firefox underneath a semi-plausible veneer of technical complaints, while others who more directly get upset at percieved political differences haven't been upvoted as much.
But it's still the same BS.
HDR on Youtube is not 'the basics'. Don't be silly. And you listed it twice because you had nothing better to add.
If you want to attack the lone remaining independant browser maker because of some political disagreement you have with them, then fine. That is also stupid, but at least it's honest.
Don't lie to us or yourself by scraping together this frankly absurd list of minor gripes and passing it off as a serious technical complaint about how Firefox is managed and developed.
But it's still the same BS.
HDR on Youtube is not 'the basics'. Don't be silly. And you listed it twice because you had nothing better to add.
If you want to attack the lone remaining independant browser maker because of some political disagreement you have with them, then fine. That is also stupid, but at least it's honest.
Don't lie to us or yourself by scraping together this frankly absurd list of minor gripes and passing it off as a serious technical complaint about how Firefox is managed and developed.
I don't dislike Firefox, and I don't think it's irrational to say that the Mozilla organisation has wasted too much time, effort, and money on unimportant side-projects instead of focusing on improving their core product.
HDR on YouTube -- or anywhere for that matter -- is table stakes these days, and I don't think it's silly to say so. Would you buy a television that can't handle HDR in 2022? A phone that can't handle HDR in 2022?
Two points:
1. There used to be a time when Firefox was way behind, and their big "come back push" marketing argument was that they had essentially 100% compatibility on something like the top 1 million web sites. Now? Major features are missing on the number one video streaming site. That's not a small regression!
2. Browsers are essentially operating systems now. Applications are written for web browsers, not for Linux, Mac, or Windows. There's a reason even Microsoft is using Electron for most of their new applications. Essentially we now have Google-Web-OS and Apple-Web-OS, and even Microsoft has failed to deliver their own Web-OS (Edge). Mozilla's attempt is like the Linux Desktop compared to MacOS. It fails on the basics in the same way Linux can't get sound right or HDR video playback working. Meanwhile MacOS (and Safari!) has calibrated wide-gamut colour that Just Works.
We only interact with computers through two senses: sight and hearing. Mozilla can't get one of those two working consistently, correctly, or with the full capabilities of displays available for a decade. (I bet Firefox has languished in its sound capabilities also, but I'm not an audiophile, so I don't know the specific issues.)
I have a HDR laptop, a HDR TV, and a HDR phone. All three run browsers. Firefox is missing this key feature on all three platforms, making it a no-go for manufacturers, or anyone who wants to use the #1 video streaming site in the world... with their web browser.
This is my point: Mozilla has wasted time on vanity projects while they fired to Servo team.
The top comment on a similar post 10 months ago agrees with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813250
Maybe that commenter is irrational too?
HDR on YouTube -- or anywhere for that matter -- is table stakes these days, and I don't think it's silly to say so. Would you buy a television that can't handle HDR in 2022? A phone that can't handle HDR in 2022?
Two points:
1. There used to be a time when Firefox was way behind, and their big "come back push" marketing argument was that they had essentially 100% compatibility on something like the top 1 million web sites. Now? Major features are missing on the number one video streaming site. That's not a small regression!
2. Browsers are essentially operating systems now. Applications are written for web browsers, not for Linux, Mac, or Windows. There's a reason even Microsoft is using Electron for most of their new applications. Essentially we now have Google-Web-OS and Apple-Web-OS, and even Microsoft has failed to deliver their own Web-OS (Edge). Mozilla's attempt is like the Linux Desktop compared to MacOS. It fails on the basics in the same way Linux can't get sound right or HDR video playback working. Meanwhile MacOS (and Safari!) has calibrated wide-gamut colour that Just Works.
We only interact with computers through two senses: sight and hearing. Mozilla can't get one of those two working consistently, correctly, or with the full capabilities of displays available for a decade. (I bet Firefox has languished in its sound capabilities also, but I'm not an audiophile, so I don't know the specific issues.)
I have a HDR laptop, a HDR TV, and a HDR phone. All three run browsers. Firefox is missing this key feature on all three platforms, making it a no-go for manufacturers, or anyone who wants to use the #1 video streaming site in the world... with their web browser.
This is my point: Mozilla has wasted time on vanity projects while they fired to Servo team.
The top comment on a similar post 10 months ago agrees with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28813250
Maybe that commenter is irrational too?
I've recently purchased a monitor with poor HDR that I knew was not worth any cost premium, and I'm using it with an operating system that still has to get basic HDR infrastructure in place. I do not feel like I'm missing out. Other stuff is way more important in comparison, and no matter what you pick, there will always be tradeoffs to make.
The guy comparing using Firefox to eating shit? No, he's a sober-minded example to us all.
You're doubling down on this HDR thing it seems. Vimeo only added HDR, and only for Apple platforms recently:
https://vimeo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015301027-Wat...
What rational basis do you have for believing that Firefox's lack of HDR support is a prime concern, and that they are not addressing it sufficiently, other than the fact that it mildly inconveniences you?
You're doubling down on this HDR thing it seems. Vimeo only added HDR, and only for Apple platforms recently:
https://vimeo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015301027-Wat...
What rational basis do you have for believing that Firefox's lack of HDR support is a prime concern, and that they are not addressing it sufficiently, other than the fact that it mildly inconveniences you?
baffled by a lot of the demands already in the thread. Firefox needs one thing right now and that is market share or else the browser is dead in a few years.
Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge. The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
The mobile battery drain is a disaster as well. with less than 1% usage on android phones there should easily be room for many more users if you baked in ublock origin and fixed the performance because people actually do hate mobile ads.
Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge. The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
The mobile battery drain is a disaster as well. with less than 1% usage on android phones there should easily be room for many more users if you baked in ublock origin and fixed the performance because people actually do hate mobile ads.
Five years ago, Firefox was already declared dead:
https://andreasgal.com/2017/05/25/chrome-won/
Mozilla can't push their browser. They don't have Android, Youtube, various other services with billions of users. Not even Microsoft is successful in pushing Edge (except for the corporate world) as they too have no giant consumer-facing services.
Moreover, Firefox is virtually absent on mobile (0.5% market share). On massive websites (some I see at work), Firefox doesn't even show up on dashboards, it's not even in the top 10. Some weird obscure regional browsers outrank it.
Technically speaking, Firefox is an irrelevant browser and has been for several years now. You may love it for sentimental or philosophical reasons, but the real world cares little about that.
Anyway, the bleeding will continue without a leverage to push the browser. It's not an engineering problem.
Mozilla can't push their browser. They don't have Android, Youtube, various other services with billions of users. Not even Microsoft is successful in pushing Edge (except for the corporate world) as they too have no giant consumer-facing services.
Moreover, Firefox is virtually absent on mobile (0.5% market share). On massive websites (some I see at work), Firefox doesn't even show up on dashboards, it's not even in the top 10. Some weird obscure regional browsers outrank it.
Technically speaking, Firefox is an irrelevant browser and has been for several years now. You may love it for sentimental or philosophical reasons, but the real world cares little about that.
Anyway, the bleeding will continue without a leverage to push the browser. It's not an engineering problem.
> It's not an engineering problem.
It kind of is.
Back in the day Firefox managed to steal a significant chunk of Internet Explorer's marketshare just by being better.
It can pull off the same nowadays - there's a major disease currently plaguing the web that a browser is perfectly positioned to eradicate: advertising. The code is already written and licensed permissively (uBlock Origin) and all they need is to bundle it (just like they are currently bundling Pocket).
That's the ticket to Firefox's resurgence - be better than the competition in a way that the competition can't beat (because it would be counter-productive to their advertising-based business model). A simple side-by-side comparison of a major newspaper's homepage in FF vs Chrome will sell it to the masses.
It kind of is.
Back in the day Firefox managed to steal a significant chunk of Internet Explorer's marketshare just by being better.
It can pull off the same nowadays - there's a major disease currently plaguing the web that a browser is perfectly positioned to eradicate: advertising. The code is already written and licensed permissively (uBlock Origin) and all they need is to bundle it (just like they are currently bundling Pocket).
That's the ticket to Firefox's resurgence - be better than the competition in a way that the competition can't beat (because it would be counter-productive to their advertising-based business model). A simple side-by-side comparison of a major newspaper's homepage in FF vs Chrome will sell it to the masses.
[deleted]
Here's the thing, it isn't a single problem, it is the combination of many, just like Windows Phone/Windows Mobile.
You may be overlooking the larger point, it is just one thing: monopolization. If you control the defaults you win, as long as it doesn't suck too bad.
Why did IE so quickly destroy paid browser market then languish for so many years? Because they had a lock on desktop market share. Google and Apple just have to be mediocre because they own the hardware, services, and/or distribution.
Mozilla cannot take from other business arms to bankroll its browser. It has to sell defaults, ads, or find other markets.
Why did IE so quickly destroy paid browser market then languish for so many years? Because they had a lock on desktop market share. Google and Apple just have to be mediocre because they own the hardware, services, and/or distribution.
Mozilla cannot take from other business arms to bankroll its browser. It has to sell defaults, ads, or find other markets.
Mozilla conquered a significant chunk of Internet Explorer's marketshare back in the day despite the latter being the preinstalled default.
The problem isn't just defaults, it's that Mozilla isn't giving people enough reasons to actually switch. A stock Firefox install isn't going to give you any major benefits over Chrome, and the only benefit (ad-blocking - but with an extension you need to install manually) isn't something Mozilla is looking to capitalise on.
Mozilla can win over the masses in one day by just embedding uBlock Origin and using that fact in their PR and marketing - no bullshit useless features such as "Colorways" or Pocket, no dubious social justice/political activism, instead, just say "the web sucks and Firefox makes it tolerable" with a side-by-side comparison of FF vs a stock browser on a popular newspaper's website.
The problem isn't just defaults, it's that Mozilla isn't giving people enough reasons to actually switch. A stock Firefox install isn't going to give you any major benefits over Chrome, and the only benefit (ad-blocking - but with an extension you need to install manually) isn't something Mozilla is looking to capitalise on.
Mozilla can win over the masses in one day by just embedding uBlock Origin and using that fact in their PR and marketing - no bullshit useless features such as "Colorways" or Pocket, no dubious social justice/political activism, instead, just say "the web sucks and Firefox makes it tolerable" with a side-by-side comparison of FF vs a stock browser on a popular newspaper's website.
> Mozilla conquered a significant chunk of Internet Explorer's marketshare back in the day despite the latter being the preinstalled default.
My point is what FF did then was unusual, requiring the incumbent to be negligent for a long time. Chrome and its derivatives are moving quickly. (Perhaps even wrecklessly so given security implications of some of their 'standards'.) Chrome also sets the standards Mozilla must now follow to keep up, and exceed to overtake it.
Isn't it strange that even huge well funded competitors have all given up and just fork Chrome? They do it because they cannot compete starting from their own foundation. Chrome is too entrenched and moving too fast.
> Mozilla can win over the masses in one day by just embedding uBlock Origin and using that fact in their PR and marketing.
Brave has ad blocking preinstalled, so does Chrome to some extent. I don't think Mozilla would stand out with UO alone. And even if it did and became dominant what would that mean for creators who are ad supported?
My point is what FF did then was unusual, requiring the incumbent to be negligent for a long time. Chrome and its derivatives are moving quickly. (Perhaps even wrecklessly so given security implications of some of their 'standards'.) Chrome also sets the standards Mozilla must now follow to keep up, and exceed to overtake it.
Isn't it strange that even huge well funded competitors have all given up and just fork Chrome? They do it because they cannot compete starting from their own foundation. Chrome is too entrenched and moving too fast.
> Mozilla can win over the masses in one day by just embedding uBlock Origin and using that fact in their PR and marketing.
Brave has ad blocking preinstalled, so does Chrome to some extent. I don't think Mozilla would stand out with UO alone. And even if it did and became dominant what would that mean for creators who are ad supported?
> requiring the incumbent to be negligent for a long time
But the incumbents are negligent. Their browsers, based on their business models, no longer serve the needs of their users. This is an opportunity for Firefox.
> Brave has ad blocking preinstalled, so does Chrome to some extent
Haven't used Brave so can't comment on it, but Chrome doesn't and can't have powerful adblocking due to its parent company's business model - not to mention that one reason to block ads would be privacy which is also a problem with Google, so it would be a non-starter even if it was blocking ads.
> even if it did and became dominant what would that mean for creators who are ad supported?
I wonder how we dealt with this argument back in the day where OSes were full of security holes and the antivirus industry was starting out?
But the incumbents are negligent. Their browsers, based on their business models, no longer serve the needs of their users. This is an opportunity for Firefox.
> Brave has ad blocking preinstalled, so does Chrome to some extent
Haven't used Brave so can't comment on it, but Chrome doesn't and can't have powerful adblocking due to its parent company's business model - not to mention that one reason to block ads would be privacy which is also a problem with Google, so it would be a non-starter even if it was blocking ads.
> even if it did and became dominant what would that mean for creators who are ad supported?
I wonder how we dealt with this argument back in the day where OSes were full of security holes and the antivirus industry was starting out?
But Firefox used to be the default. It's what people were used to because it used to be significantly better in the past. Then they stopped keeping up ...
Apart from FirefoxOS and random EU browser ballots I'm not aware of anywhere Firefox was the default. You seem to be saying because many people chose Firefox it was their default. But that's not a common use of the word in this context.
That's what I mean, in the same way Chrome is a "default" now. It's the first thing people install without even thinking too much about why.
> Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge. The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
How many people consciously make an informed choice about which browser they use, to begin with? When I entered college, we had a system that required you to install a spyware client that certified to the network that you were not running any file sharing software - unless you were on an unsupported OS (as identified by the user-agent string), in which case it just let you pass the registration process without certification. After figuring this out, I did this for my entire dorm floor, installing Firefox in the process (as that was the browser for which I knew a quick way of setting up a user-agent spoofing addon off the top of my head). The result was an additional about 30 Firefox users because of one power user's preference of it, which was entirely based on customisability and privacy considerations. Half of the people I set it up for probably wouldn't even have known how to replace or uninstall it if they turned out to hate everything about it, and conversely no amount of pandering to non-technical users would have gotten them to install it for themselves.
How many people consciously make an informed choice about which browser they use, to begin with? When I entered college, we had a system that required you to install a spyware client that certified to the network that you were not running any file sharing software - unless you were on an unsupported OS (as identified by the user-agent string), in which case it just let you pass the registration process without certification. After figuring this out, I did this for my entire dorm floor, installing Firefox in the process (as that was the browser for which I knew a quick way of setting up a user-agent spoofing addon off the top of my head). The result was an additional about 30 Firefox users because of one power user's preference of it, which was entirely based on customisability and privacy considerations. Half of the people I set it up for probably wouldn't even have known how to replace or uninstall it if they turned out to hate everything about it, and conversely no amount of pandering to non-technical users would have gotten them to install it for themselves.
> How many people consciously make an informed choice about which browser they use, to begin with?
Agreed, very little. It doesn't mean privacy isn't important for Firefox right now because the only users they have left are those using it for privacy or ideological reasons.
Agreed, very little. It doesn't mean privacy isn't important for Firefox right now because the only users they have left are those using it for privacy or ideological reasons.
Ublock origin alone would sell FF mobile to the masses.
Side by side scroll a recipe website with chrome vs adblocked FF on the same device. Chrome one is slower, half the content is ads, some of them autoplaying videos with sound!
FF experience is the pure content.
Dunno about all the other nonsense, a lot of the mobile web is utterly unusable without adblocking.
Side by side scroll a recipe website with chrome vs adblocked FF on the same device. Chrome one is slower, half the content is ads, some of them autoplaying videos with sound!
FF experience is the pure content.
Dunno about all the other nonsense, a lot of the mobile web is utterly unusable without adblocking.
> Firefox needs one thing right now and that is market share or else the browser is dead in a few years.
> The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
That's really not the primary issue, although it will drive people back to their preferred browser if that is an issue. Firefox is fighting an uphill battle against default browsers, which are Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, and Chrome on Android phones. You can't just say "We're compatible with all the sites that already work with the browser you use" and expect people to switch. You need genuinely useful and unique selling points that can be appreciated by the average person in order to overcome the default's inertia.
> The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
That's really not the primary issue, although it will drive people back to their preferred browser if that is an issue. Firefox is fighting an uphill battle against default browsers, which are Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS, and Chrome on Android phones. You can't just say "We're compatible with all the sites that already work with the browser you use" and expect people to switch. You need genuinely useful and unique selling points that can be appreciated by the average person in order to overcome the default's inertia.
> Firefox is fighting an uphill battle against default browsers
That's not an argument. Firefox made all of its share back in the day by being better than IE even though IE was everywhere on Windows computers.
That's not an argument. Firefox made all of its share back in the day by being better than IE even though IE was everywhere on Windows computers.
What? You're right, It's not an argument. It's a statement of fact.
Firefox gained marketshare against Internet Explorer by being significantly better than Internet Explorer. I remember enthusiastically switching to Firefox, especially because it had a mouse gestures addon and was just so much faster than Internet Explorer. I also switched to Chrome because it felt like a big jump from a Firefox that had become bloated and slow. I also got my family members to switch. It was just plainly obvious how much better they were at the time.
Since then I've used Safari, Firefox, Brave, Chromium, Chrome, and a variety of other browsers for long stretches of time. All of them have large sets of upsides and drawbacks associated with them, but Firefox doesn't really have much of anything that I can enthusiastically point to as reasons to switch for my non-tech obsessed family members. That's a problem that Firefox desperately needs to overcome if it wants to continue existing.
Firefox gained marketshare against Internet Explorer by being significantly better than Internet Explorer. I remember enthusiastically switching to Firefox, especially because it had a mouse gestures addon and was just so much faster than Internet Explorer. I also switched to Chrome because it felt like a big jump from a Firefox that had become bloated and slow. I also got my family members to switch. It was just plainly obvious how much better they were at the time.
Since then I've used Safari, Firefox, Brave, Chromium, Chrome, and a variety of other browsers for long stretches of time. All of them have large sets of upsides and drawbacks associated with them, but Firefox doesn't really have much of anything that I can enthusiastically point to as reasons to switch for my non-tech obsessed family members. That's a problem that Firefox desperately needs to overcome if it wants to continue existing.
Ad blocking that actually works is a pretty big advantage (chrome is gradually killing off ad blockers )
Are people leaving FF or are people not switching to FF? Which is more important?
The amount of internet users keeps growing significantly, where almost all new users are dedicated mobile users, whom tend to use Chrome/Safari.
So the market grows in size, almost none of that growth being distributed to Firefox, hence the slow and endless bleed.
So the market grows in size, almost none of that growth being distributed to Firefox, hence the slow and endless bleed.
> Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge.
The people who wouldn't use the aforementioned browsers are Firefox's only hope - otherwise, why not just use Chrome or Edge? Firefox isn't going to win by being a more faithful Chrome copy (this current strategy has failed them for years).
The people who wouldn't use the aforementioned browsers are Firefox's only hope - otherwise, why not just use Chrome or Edge? Firefox isn't going to win by being a more faithful Chrome copy (this current strategy has failed them for years).
I use FF and I don’t care about privacy, telemetry, or Lunux. I care about performance, ad blocking, and website compatibility.
> don’t care about privacy
> performance, ad blocking
Blocking privacy-invasive garbage and ads (aka spam) will often improve performance.
So you'd still indirectly benefit from a user-focused, privacy friendly browser even if you don't explicitly care about privacy.
> performance, ad blocking
Blocking privacy-invasive garbage and ads (aka spam) will often improve performance.
So you'd still indirectly benefit from a user-focused, privacy friendly browser even if you don't explicitly care about privacy.
This. I use Firefox primarily for uBlock Origin not being gimped by Google's push for Web Extensions Manifest V3.
If you care about performance and compatibility, you prefer Chrome. If you really care about ad blocking, Firefox should be very important to you like a year from now, if Google doesn't retreat before they even lock v2 extensions out. If they back off, what's the reason you have to prefer Firefox?
what's the reason you have to prefer Firefox?
Two reasons: 1. inertia - I’ve been using it for 17 years and it’s still good enough to not switch, and 2. Google already knows too much about me, I don’t want to give them even more data through their browser. So I guess I do care about privacy…
Two reasons: 1. inertia - I’ve been using it for 17 years and it’s still good enough to not switch, and 2. Google already knows too much about me, I don’t want to give them even more data through their browser. So I guess I do care about privacy…
Yes you do.
Exactly. If Firefox offers the same things as Chrome, why not just use Chrome?
Firefox needs to find a space for itself in the browser market, not try (and fail) to take Chrome's space. Focus on offering features that Chrome doesn't offer and the people looking for those features will come. Stop removing customization and hackability.
Unfortunately, I think none of the people in control actually understand this, probably because they're the kind of people who are happy using Chrome themselves.
Firefox needs to find a space for itself in the browser market, not try (and fail) to take Chrome's space. Focus on offering features that Chrome doesn't offer and the people looking for those features will come. Stop removing customization and hackability.
Unfortunately, I think none of the people in control actually understand this, probably because they're the kind of people who are happy using Chrome themselves.
The better way to look at this is "Chrome doesn't offer what Firefox does" and "Firefox doesn't offer what Chrome does". That's why there's space. Some people will settle on less compatibility for better performance, battery-life and privacy.
Privacy is exactly why I switched from Chrome to Firefox. I've never run into a site compatibility issue with it. Never had a mobile battery drain issue, my ryzen laptop still gets 7-8 hours of life on battery with wifi and browsing.
> Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge. The most important thing is compatibility with major sites at this point. if people's banking or health insurance page reject Firefox, people are just going to use Chrome.
That is the entire truth. Privacy, Telemetry and Linux are red herrings to increasing market share and do not make any money or help Firefox since the majority of users do not care about any of this. If a website isn't compatible with Firefox or is broken and has missing extensions, then the users will just move to Chrome and never look back.
Thanks to the re-usability of the Chromium engine it has created many derivatives, just like the ecosystem of Linux distros which people are free to choose. This is what Firefox could have been to cement the browser market and Firefox was once ahead at one point, but did nothing to keep it up and watched Google over take them.
What a disaster Mozilla has been for the past 14 years and yet they are still unable to make money outside of accepting Google's money.
That is the entire truth. Privacy, Telemetry and Linux are red herrings to increasing market share and do not make any money or help Firefox since the majority of users do not care about any of this. If a website isn't compatible with Firefox or is broken and has missing extensions, then the users will just move to Chrome and never look back.
Thanks to the re-usability of the Chromium engine it has created many derivatives, just like the ecosystem of Linux distros which people are free to choose. This is what Firefox could have been to cement the browser market and Firefox was once ahead at one point, but did nothing to keep it up and watched Google over take them.
What a disaster Mozilla has been for the past 14 years and yet they are still unable to make money outside of accepting Google's money.
I'd argue that the most important thing for Mozzilla to capture is the tech segment because they are the ones who dictate the future of a browser. People didn't switch their "internet" from the e icon to Google because they cared about their browsers. They did it because their "tech guy", whether their nephew who was good with computers, the guy they bowled with who did computers, or whoever in their family setup their computer, installed Chrome for them. 90% of people don't care about the browser but the 10% who do care a lot, and they are the ones who will set the long term trends.
So Mozzilla doesn't need to be a power user browser but it does have to appeal to the things tech people want. That's how it has a future that's how it keeps going. Because FF is open source, it doesn't need a revenue stream, shareholders or a board. At the end of the day it just needs enough people who love it to keep using and supporting it.
So Mozzilla doesn't need to be a power user browser but it does have to appeal to the things tech people want. That's how it has a future that's how it keeps going. Because FF is open source, it doesn't need a revenue stream, shareholders or a board. At the end of the day it just needs enough people who love it to keep using and supporting it.
> Privacy, Telemetry and Linux are red herrings to increasing market share and do not make any money or help Firefox since the majority of users do not care about any of this.
It would be a delusionally ambitious premature optimization for Firefox to target the majority of users. Firefox needs to target a niche well, then grow that niche. If that niche were stamp collectors or people who read historical romance novels, Firefox would barely lose any market share if it focused on them exclusively and converted them all.
It would be a delusionally ambitious premature optimization for Firefox to target the majority of users. Firefox needs to target a niche well, then grow that niche. If that niche were stamp collectors or people who read historical romance novels, Firefox would barely lose any market share if it focused on them exclusively and converted them all.
> Privacy, telemetry, and Linux don't matter, sorry folks, if they did people wouldn't use Chrome or Edge.
The only remaining share of Firefox is because of these users. Good luck dropping the ball on that one and not ending with a 0% share.
The only remaining share of Firefox is because of these users. Good luck dropping the ball on that one and not ending with a 0% share.
> Steve comes to us most recently from Twitter, where he spent eight months as a Vice President of Product for their Machine Learning and Data platforms. Prior to that, Steve led Product Management, Design and Research in Facebook’s Infrastructure organization. He also spent almost 14 years at Microsoft where he was responsible for the Windows third-party software ecosystems and held leadership roles in Windows IoT, Visual Studio and the Technical Computing Group.
This guy is sounding like bad news all around. I want the CPO to be someone with a strong tech background and I mean actual tech not tech bro. This guy's resume reads like a list of out of date buzzwords. This is another MBA suit that is going to make FF worse not better, mark my words.
This guy is sounding like bad news all around. I want the CPO to be someone with a strong tech background and I mean actual tech not tech bro. This guy's resume reads like a list of out of date buzzwords. This is another MBA suit that is going to make FF worse not better, mark my words.
"Mark my words". This is Mozilla. They're inevitably going to crash and burn, and I say this as a pissed-off Firefox user.
The bar for “actual tech” must be extremely high if Twitter-scale ML, Facebook-scale infrastructure and Microsoft IDEs and Technical Computing group don’t count.
The expanded quote is...
>... I mean actual tech not tech bro.
... under which it becomes a lot more obvious what OP is referring to. "Actual tech" in the older, "Technology will transform the world for good!" sense, rather than, "Let's use technology to make the most money possible, fuck it," sense.
>... I mean actual tech not tech bro.
... under which it becomes a lot more obvious what OP is referring to. "Actual tech" in the older, "Technology will transform the world for good!" sense, rather than, "Let's use technology to make the most money possible, fuck it," sense.
Ah, oldskool values. Mi amor.
> Twitter-scale ML
That one made me laugh. Their "ML" can't even detect crypto scammers impersonating Elon Musk despite them using exactly the same name, profile picture and replying using very predictable texts that a basic regular expression can pick up.
That one made me laugh. Their "ML" can't even detect crypto scammers impersonating Elon Musk despite them using exactly the same name, profile picture and replying using very predictable texts that a basic regular expression can pick up.
It's probably in their financial interests to not clamp down too hard on crypto considering how much the crypto chuds love Twitter. I get so much 'like' spam from verified (how the fuck?) crypto scammers.
I'm curious what one can actually accomplish in 8 months in that role. I don't blame Steve for jumping around and probably getting a huge raise in the process - I see it happen all the time with the "leaders" in my organization who show up, say they're excited to learn, pitch a few ideas, make some sweet connections, and then are on to their next post 9 months later.
But I do blame the companies for repeatedly falling for these kinds of people.
But I do blame the companies for repeatedly falling for these kinds of people.
> This is another MBA suit that is going to make FF worse not better,
I don't think Borland had Delphi and C++ Builder developed by "MBA suits".
Yeah, he might have morphed since then... I still think of him as one of the guys behind Delphi, but it's been damn near a quarter century since he left Borland. But denying he has any real tech chops is just way wrong.
I don't think Borland had Delphi and C++ Builder developed by "MBA suits".
Yeah, he might have morphed since then... I still think of him as one of the guys behind Delphi, but it's been damn near a quarter century since he left Borland. But denying he has any real tech chops is just way wrong.
Some guy who writes lisp interpreters and text editors isn’t going to save Mozilla.
I’ve been following Mozilla for what I can gather has been 20 years. Maybe more. It’s been a company chasing ideals. Guess what? The market really doesn’t care all that much. If 1-3% market share is all that mattered, then they could prop their feet up and coast.
This company is dead in the water. This new guy is a pacifier until the inevitable.
This company is dead in the water. This new guy is a pacifier until the inevitable.
How much funding would a new nonprofit need to hard fork Firefox and try to actually get it right?
Unless FF becomes a compellingly better browser for the average user, it will keep on losing to the default Edge/Chrome/Safari.
Unless FF becomes a compellingly better browser for the average user, it will keep on losing to the default Edge/Chrome/Safari.
Working with my finance team, we guessed, minimum, three persons per component team, for very narrow definition of components. There were roughly 50 components we identified (poorly) and some overlap but...we were looking at (again min) 150 good (expensive) devs and like 30 to 50 eng-managers. And still need to fill roles for vision, finance, architecture, etc.
So, at this point...millions per year.
However, I've been maintaining a small fork, with just small tweaks by my self, and LibreWolf has some patches too - for very little money.
So, at this point...millions per year.
However, I've been maintaining a small fork, with just small tweaks by my self, and LibreWolf has some patches too - for very little money.
> However, I've been maintaining a small fork
Do you mind elaborating? I'd really just like some "Unmozillaed Firefox" or "Firefoxium" that removes some of the crap Mozilla tries to impose ("no, you can't install extensions from outside of the store", "using a userChrome.css? haha, no"). But all prominent FF forks are full of crazy "privacy enhancements" that mean virtually no web app will work.
Do you mind elaborating? I'd really just like some "Unmozillaed Firefox" or "Firefoxium" that removes some of the crap Mozilla tries to impose ("no, you can't install extensions from outside of the store", "using a userChrome.css? haha, no"). But all prominent FF forks are full of crazy "privacy enhancements" that mean virtually no web app will work.
Sure. Building Firefox is pretty easy. And then you can pick/choose the patches from LibreWolf maybe. And also for example strip out the Pocket shit, or frob all the defaults to what you like (no DNS over HTTP) and tweak the style too, and even "fix" the default HTML styles.
Brave, Brendan Eich's (previous Mozilla CEO) new company and browser, has raised $42m and has probably ~220 employees. He said even then, they had to fork Chromium because they didn't have the resources to actually do all the work involved in a feature complete browser engine. So I'm guessing $500m funding, because even Microsoft didn't invest in an outside-Chromium engine for Edge.
Brave forked Chromium to not face an uphill battle on web compatibility - they never had plans to write their own engine (they actually started with a Gecko based product in the very early days).
Is he going to run `git checkout v3.6` and make them start over?
Good luck to Steve and the team. I hope he has a broad remit, and can find a way to thrive while upholding Mozilla's values.
I hope to see new experiments, and maybe new community.
I love the internal meme of areweXyet, and wish they hosted that metric for projects and goals outside Mozilla too.
I hope to see new experiments, and maybe new community.
I love the internal meme of areweXyet, and wish they hosted that metric for projects and goals outside Mozilla too.
No experiments! Get back on the main-line, critical-path.
They should experiment with messing up less (that said some Mozilla side projects have been cool).
Is there a distribution of Firefox without any Rust, or experimental overhead? We all know it was an OSS project before there was a company backing it. We don’t need these sjw weirdos, we need a project that focuses on just a functioning core, Gecko and SpiderMonkey. Similar to how the Linux project is just a kernel and people ship their own stuff on top, as they please.
The biggest problems are the lack of people who care and funding. How could a browser be profitable, it’s fucking free. Today that’s Googles endorsement, which is the last company they need to depend on.
How could people be convinced, what is the actual problem with Chrome holding dominance?
The biggest problems are the lack of people who care and funding. How could a browser be profitable, it’s fucking free. Today that’s Googles endorsement, which is the last company they need to depend on.
How could people be convinced, what is the actual problem with Chrome holding dominance?
Are you trolling? Without any Rust? I'd like a Linux kernel, but without any C, please ...
Rust is not compatible with C++, you don’t think those bindings cause latency?
Inflation of CxO positions.
Not always good if trying to retain quality Mozilla developers.
Not always good if trying to retain quality Mozilla developers.
Ah ah. Another one eating Mozilla's revenue big time!!!
They all talk experience but never the numbers being paid.
The solution is not a well paid employee! It's an employee that likes what it does, no mater the money
They all talk experience but never the numbers being paid.
The solution is not a well paid employee! It's an employee that likes what it does, no mater the money
With how Mozilla has been behaving in the last decade I'll be ecstatic if the does as much as slowing down the worsening.
My whole family and I would switch from Firefox to Brave today if Brave (and really, Chromium, under the hood) supported multi-account containers. It's simply too amazing a feature to give up. As it stands, I have five PCs running Firefox in my house.
> accelerate the growth
Does Mozilla have any growing product right now?
Does Mozilla have any growing product right now?
Salaries for CEOs?
> There are few opportunities today to build software that is unambiguously good for the world
He’s coming from a brief stint at Twitter and long stints at Facebook and Microsoft. What could he know about building something unambiguously good for the world?
He’s coming from a brief stint at Twitter and long stints at Facebook and Microsoft. What could he know about building something unambiguously good for the world?
I don't read that as implying he believes his previous employers built such products. He is in fact emphasizing the rarity of such a thing, and I agree with him.
No it doesn’t read that way, but it raises the question of whether he really knows what an unequivocally good tech product is and whether he will stoutly refuse to compromise for the sake of growth.
I think any amount of time as a corporate decisionmaker can skew your moral compass, and he was at three companies that have history of being particularly damaging
I think any amount of time as a corporate decisionmaker can skew your moral compass, and he was at three companies that have history of being particularly damaging
Yeah I am pretty worried about this as a big FF user.
> What could he know about building something unambiguously good for the world?
His old memories from Borland, where he spent 1993-98 building Delphi and C++ Builder.
His old memories from Borland, where he spent 1993-98 building Delphi and C++ Builder.
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Please, please, please focus on making the browser better. Hammer home the privacy angle against Chrome. Force Canonical to sit down and fix the Snap launching issues. Open source Pocket and make special features a perk of donating to the browser.
Not sure if this is possible but being lean enough to handle the eventuality of Google refusing to bid to be the default search partner.
Not sure if this is possible but being lean enough to handle the eventuality of Google refusing to bid to be the default search partner.
I would also like customizability to stop being trimmed away, and ideally for some of the things that users currently accomplish with userchrome hacks to be supported directly one way or another.
The number 1 thing I want to see from Firefox is fist-class support for tree tabs. Using an extension and hacking on userChrome to hide the tab bar is getting tiring, especially with the barriers Mozilla have erected to make user styles more difficult to enable.
… and say no to Web Extension manifest v3, or at least make long-lived background pages an option instead of short-lived service workers.
Canonical is working on firefox snap performance: https://snapcraft.io/blog/improving-firefox-snap-performance...
That said, I've switched to using the firefox tarball. Start up performance isn't the only issue. Snap firefox doesn't seem to respect my dconf settings and I experienced some strange hangups that forced me to kill the browser.
That said, I've switched to using the firefox tarball. Start up performance isn't the only issue. Snap firefox doesn't seem to respect my dconf settings and I experienced some strange hangups that forced me to kill the browser.
Self-hosting Pocket could be phenomenal. I would gladly donate what a subscription costs if I could simply have it myself and improve it.
Have a look at Wallabag. You can self host it, it has browser and phone plugins, and works quite well.
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Is he of Spanish or Portuguese descent? Sounds like a Galician last name but I'm not sure.
Teixeira is a Galician-Portuguese surname.
Just out of curiosity, would such genetic disposition make him a better or a worse fit for the job? Would the people of Galicia be proud that one of their sons works for Firefox or would they be ashamed?
There was nothing wrong with his question. Your not-so-subtle implication of racism is inappropriate. Some people are simply interested in language and names.
I've never seen the surname Teixeira before and I also wondered the same thing, since "eira" suggests Portuguese but the 'x' seems like Nahuatl or Mexican Spanish (like Tlaxcala).
I've never seen the surname Teixeira before and I also wondered the same thing, since "eira" suggests Portuguese but the 'x' seems like Nahuatl or Mexican Spanish (like Tlaxcala).
I don't have the answer to either question, I'm afraid.
It's surprising that Mitchell Bakers still is Mozilla's CEO. Firefox has been bleeding users for years, but no change in the command.
> Steve stood out to us because of his extensive experience at tech and internet companies where he played instrumental roles in shaping products from research, design, security, development, and getting them out to market, and also because he was the only seemingly qualified candidate that didn't call me an incompetent overpaid retard to my face.
I believe Mozilla has been losing market share, but not users, while the market has grown substantially, often on platforms that have banned alternative browsers.
Maybe that's now changed, but if it has, and Mozilla is actually losing users, I'd say it probably has more to do with those platforms choices than any particular woman you don't like.
Maybe that's now changed, but if it has, and Mozilla is actually losing users, I'd say it probably has more to do with those platforms choices than any particular woman you don't like.
It’s 2022, it doesn’t surprise me.
"In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008.[14] On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask people and their families to commit to."
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."
In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, her salary had risen to over $3 million. In the same year the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues. Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic."
> I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market.
And your performance is actually much worse than 80% discount in other companies. Any CEO with such results would be fired in 2 years anywhere else.
> Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
Sure, always blame external factors for your own incompetence. That's what politicians do every morning during breakfast.
And your performance is actually much worse than 80% discount in other companies. Any CEO with such results would be fired in 2 years anywhere else.
> Baker blamed this on the Coronavirus pandemic.
Sure, always blame external factors for your own incompetence. That's what politicians do every morning during breakfast.
What market is she talking about? Does the market for the executives of declining browsers that lost their market share and have no clear prospects command such wages?
I've been offered over 2x as much as her to drive a browser into the ground, but I rejected the offer because my family wouldn't accept the shame of accepting such a meagre offer. /s
> What market is she talking about?
I guess that would be the CEOs of Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge), and Apple (Safari)...
I guess that would be the CEOs of Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge), and Apple (Safari)...
That would be hilarious
There must be something in the water in California.
Mozilla excessively prides itself on progressive signaling, whilst internally running the place like the most cruel neoliberal companies out there.
Mozilla excessively prides itself on progressive signaling, whilst internally running the place like the most cruel neoliberal companies out there.
Isn't that the typical way of these companies signal hell out and then be fully neoliberal. Signalling after all is pretty cheap. Or at best couple million even for big companies.
The problem is that we took the LSD out of the water.
> Mozilla excessively prides itself on progressive signaling, whilst internally running the place like the most cruel neoliberal companies out there.
Isn’t this just most companies?
Isn’t this just most companies?
Definitely, this is just an extreme version of it.
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This alone makes me want to stop using it. I won't, because the alternatives are worse, but goddamnit that's gross.
I wanted to support firefox but when I first read this a whil eback it made me lose all sympathy and support for Mozilla. As long as she's the head, I won't be using their services and products
Why not move to a job that pays more if you're qualified? I hate that CEO comp goes up just "because market" but staff wages are stagnant or lost entirely.
She said her pay was 80% below market. Not is. Why move if you can stay and get paid the same?
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There is so much opportunity to make Firefox great. It could make a billion people significantly happier and safer online. I hope he can make it happen.
Why a billion?
Great! Now:
Stop tracking people with telemetry. You don’t need to know how many users you have. People strip FF of telemetry anyways. Look at LibreWolf and learn.
Clean up the FF addons repository. So many addons are plain malware and invading peoples privacy surreptitiously.
Get rid of Pocket. Nobody uses it and it was forced on users.
Stop piggybacking on handouts from Google. There are other ways to source revenue. Make FF donationware if you must. I would happily send you £5.00 per month if it means I and others can continue to use FF.
Stop tracking people with telemetry. You don’t need to know how many users you have. People strip FF of telemetry anyways. Look at LibreWolf and learn.
Clean up the FF addons repository. So many addons are plain malware and invading peoples privacy surreptitiously.
Get rid of Pocket. Nobody uses it and it was forced on users.
Stop piggybacking on handouts from Google. There are other ways to source revenue. Make FF donationware if you must. I would happily send you £5.00 per month if it means I and others can continue to use FF.
> Get rid of Pocket. Nobody uses it and it was forced on users.
I use it daily..
I use it daily..
So go to the website and use it. Many of us simply find it as a way for more propaganda to be fed to us unasked-for when we open up a new tab (at least, until we remember to turn it off).
In fact internally it's still packaged as an add-on that is installed on first run. Unbundling it would be super easy.
The product belongs to Mozilla, so I don't see why they shouldn't integrate it.
as with many things though it should be consent based and opt in; they can have a big button "add pocket to your firefox" and those who want it can opt in and everyone else won't have to go through the rigamarole of finding all the settings (strewn about in various locations including about:config) to disable it
That sounds far too civil and reasonable.
Because it bloats up the browser.
That said I find the articles they recommend interesting (and to steal my time ...).
That said I find the articles they recommend interesting (and to steal my time ...).
>Stop tracking people with telemetry. You don’t need to know how many users you have.
Uhhh... what? If I was in Mozilla's shoes I would 100% want to know how many users I have.
>People strip FF of telemetry anyways. Look at LibreWolf and learn.
Some people do this. Not everyone does it.
Uhhh... what? If I was in Mozilla's shoes I would 100% want to know how many users I have.
>People strip FF of telemetry anyways. Look at LibreWolf and learn.
Some people do this. Not everyone does it.
> If I was in Mozilla's shoes I would 100% want to know how many users I have.
Which they can trivially extract from the number of hits to the auto-update version checker endpoint.
That's enough. You don't need to track every single mouse-click, visited site, or anything else.
Which they can trivially extract from the number of hits to the auto-update version checker endpoint.
That's enough. You don't need to track every single mouse-click, visited site, or anything else.
> You don't need to track every single mouse-click, visited site, or anything else.
They don't track mouse clicks or visited sites. You can see everything collected by going to about:telemetry
I do think they should set up donations directly to Firefox development and support, but I disagree on the telemetry and Pocket. Telemetry is useful for improving the product and people like pocket.
Telemetry has been proven time and time again to be useless for adding improvements _users actually want_. If you want feedback, ask for it, don't secretly observe your users from a distance.
> Telemetry is useful for improving the product
Great, make it opt-in then. People have various legitimate reasons to decide for themselves whether they want to enable it or not. Keep in mind that under the GDPR it must be absolutely opt-in and the current implementation is in breach.
> people like pocket
Just like people like uBlock Origin (and I'd argue a lot more people like uBO than Pocket) and yet it isn't embedded in the browser for some reason (despite being permissively licensed and actually doing something to protect privacy).
Great, make it opt-in then. People have various legitimate reasons to decide for themselves whether they want to enable it or not. Keep in mind that under the GDPR it must be absolutely opt-in and the current implementation is in breach.
> people like pocket
Just like people like uBlock Origin (and I'd argue a lot more people like uBO than Pocket) and yet it isn't embedded in the browser for some reason (despite being permissively licensed and actually doing something to protect privacy).
> Telemetry is useful
And it should be off by default, not opt-out.
And it should be off by default, not opt-out.
> Make FF donationware if you must
How are they going to pay the CEO then? That alone is worth millions in salary every year.
How are they going to pay the CEO then? That alone is worth millions in salary every year.
I use pocket, so I’d like it to stay.
It can become an add-on which is what it is internally anyway (the browser downloads it upon first run, it's not even included in the browser build itself).
I like that extension that replaces "cloud" with "butt", I think it should be bundled :-)
I use a lot of plugins. Should they all be mandatory?
Sadly, I think Mozilla is beyond saving at this point. I was a long time Firefox user until 2021 - since inception, and Netscape before that. I've since stopped using it in favor of Brave - which actually delivers what Firefox had been promising. Mozilla's been hopelessly mismanaged for well over a decade and has been bleeding users the entire time. This is doubly unfortunate because they do have some genuinely solid tech and one of the only independent rendering engines. The CEO should have been shown the door back in 2012.
Almost like ousting Brendan Eich was an incredibly stupid move.
And we should not forget the Mozilla call for censorship, cyber-bullying and narrative control on big platforms [1]. I'm glad Firefox is dying, the web is safer without extremist actors like this.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
Being a prominent figure in tech and donating $1,000 to the campaign against equal marriage in California was an incredibly stupid move.
It’s not 1998, he didn’t stand a chance.
It’s not 1998, he didn’t stand a chance.
I think it is important to note he donated money on the side that got 52% of voters. Its not like he was in a massive minority.
I don't think the popularity or lack thereof of the side changes whether or not someone would be willing to work for Eich.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs but are not entitled to avoid scrutiny and I think he made the right call stepping down. I would personally never consider working at a company where he was in my management chain nor would I champion a browser from a company he leads.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs but are not entitled to avoid scrutiny and I think he made the right call stepping down. I would personally never consider working at a company where he was in my management chain nor would I champion a browser from a company he leads.
Why? Is it that you don't want to work for anybody that holds different views or that you are afraid that he might discriminate?
As far as I know there were no accusations of Eich treating anybody differently. Just because he opposed something doesn't mean any worker under him was discriminated against.
Do you work for yourself? If not, do you know the views held by every person you work for? Do you know for a fact that none of them hold similar views to Eich and just haven't been "caught"?
My point on the majority position is that you quite possibly work with and for people who hold the same views as Eich.
As far as I know there were no accusations of Eich treating anybody differently. Just because he opposed something doesn't mean any worker under him was discriminated against.
Do you work for yourself? If not, do you know the views held by every person you work for? Do you know for a fact that none of them hold similar views to Eich and just haven't been "caught"?
My point on the majority position is that you quite possibly work with and for people who hold the same views as Eich.
For certain issues, this one included, it’s because I would never work with someone with those views. Being against marriage equality is one of those disqualifying views.
I do work for myself, but in previous roles if I had found out about that, I would have made a change, but I’m reasonably confident it wasn’t the case in my managers or leadership. That said, perhaps someone was secretly against marriage equality, but I’d rather work with a bigot that feels they need to keep their hateful opinions a secret than with a bigot that feels they can be open about it.
I do work for myself, but in previous roles if I had found out about that, I would have made a change, but I’m reasonably confident it wasn’t the case in my managers or leadership. That said, perhaps someone was secretly against marriage equality, but I’d rather work with a bigot that feels they need to keep their hateful opinions a secret than with a bigot that feels they can be open about it.
If you work for yourself do you have any clients? I assume you do? Do you know if any of then have the same views? If you don't care or are willing to take their money then I don't see any difference. Do you give your potential clients a political test before you work with them?
I may be misremembering, but I don't think Eich was deliberately public about his support / donations. Political donations are public, but its not like he made a blog post or something. This is for all intents and purposes a private action.
I may be misremembering, but I don't think Eich was deliberately public about his support / donations. Political donations are public, but its not like he made a blog post or something. This is for all intents and purposes a private action.
This isn’t about just any old political views, it’s about the right to marry the person you love. If you found out he was against interracial marriage, would we still be arguing this?
I think being against marriage equality makes Eich a bigot, plain and simple. I don’t spend my time going around trying to unmask bigots but he had the unfortunate luck to have his hateful views exposed. Not only was his previous donation exposed, he subsequently made it clear he still felt that way.
I think being against marriage equality makes Eich a bigot, plain and simple. I don’t spend my time going around trying to unmask bigots but he had the unfortunate luck to have his hateful views exposed. Not only was his previous donation exposed, he subsequently made it clear he still felt that way.
Sorry about such a long reply.
I don't think rejecting gay marriage is really a big issue. If he was for calling for castrating gays or something I would be there with you, but he has shown that he can separate his personal views with work and is not advocating for harm against others.
I am going to explain what I perceive his position is. I could be wrong, but am probably decently close.
Eich likely believes the definition of a marriage is something along the lines of: a monogamous relationship which is theoretically capable* of producing new life.
* meaning excluding health situations like infertility. This is an exception not a rule.
You and he have a massive difference of opinion on that definition. You seem to think the purpose of marriage is an expression of love.
The problem with your definition is that it would allow for both polygamy and more than two people in a marriage. Maybe you are fine with those types of relationships being defined as a marriage, but the majority of people are not. Almost nobody would consider it bigotry to deny the right of a polygamist to engage in multiple marriages.
This means the majority of our society believes we have the right to deny marriage to consenting adults even if they are in love. We are now just debating the exact limits we should have.
I think due to your misunderstanding of Eich's views on marriage you don't understand how his views differ on gay marriage and interracial marriage. I'm guessing you think if Eich was alive 150 years ago he would not support interracial marriage. I am not sure if that is the case. There is nothing intrinsic to interracial marriage that would prevent it from meeting Eich's definition of marriage. Interracial marriage has long been a thing for groups that interacted with different races, perhaps for the entirety of the legal recognition of marriage. The denial of interracial marriage only became a thing somewhat recently.
Eich likely believes that marriage is not just an expression of love. There is a more fundamental purpose which is to create the best environment for the rearing and bearing of children. Gay relationships are incapable of causing a woman to become pregnant. That is of course not to say that a lesbian could not be pregnant, but that a lesbian relationship does not cause the pregnancy. There is a secondary purpose which is the automatic inheritance of wealth and titles, however, with wills and blood tests having legitimacy issues is less of an issue.
There is also another issue which is changing the definition to include something that was previously fundamentally excluded. Nobody denies that words can change their meanings, but changing to mean something that is contradictory to the previous definition is questionable. If there was an attempt to change the definition of a married person to include non married people Eich would be opposed to that attempt as well. That wouldn't be bigotry.
Basically, I don't think it is bigotry for Eich to not support the change in the definition. It has always meant a certain thing and he wants it to remain that definition. That isn't bigotry.
I don't think rejecting gay marriage is really a big issue. If he was for calling for castrating gays or something I would be there with you, but he has shown that he can separate his personal views with work and is not advocating for harm against others.
I am going to explain what I perceive his position is. I could be wrong, but am probably decently close.
Eich likely believes the definition of a marriage is something along the lines of: a monogamous relationship which is theoretically capable* of producing new life.
* meaning excluding health situations like infertility. This is an exception not a rule.
You and he have a massive difference of opinion on that definition. You seem to think the purpose of marriage is an expression of love.
The problem with your definition is that it would allow for both polygamy and more than two people in a marriage. Maybe you are fine with those types of relationships being defined as a marriage, but the majority of people are not. Almost nobody would consider it bigotry to deny the right of a polygamist to engage in multiple marriages.
This means the majority of our society believes we have the right to deny marriage to consenting adults even if they are in love. We are now just debating the exact limits we should have.
I think due to your misunderstanding of Eich's views on marriage you don't understand how his views differ on gay marriage and interracial marriage. I'm guessing you think if Eich was alive 150 years ago he would not support interracial marriage. I am not sure if that is the case. There is nothing intrinsic to interracial marriage that would prevent it from meeting Eich's definition of marriage. Interracial marriage has long been a thing for groups that interacted with different races, perhaps for the entirety of the legal recognition of marriage. The denial of interracial marriage only became a thing somewhat recently.
Eich likely believes that marriage is not just an expression of love. There is a more fundamental purpose which is to create the best environment for the rearing and bearing of children. Gay relationships are incapable of causing a woman to become pregnant. That is of course not to say that a lesbian could not be pregnant, but that a lesbian relationship does not cause the pregnancy. There is a secondary purpose which is the automatic inheritance of wealth and titles, however, with wills and blood tests having legitimacy issues is less of an issue.
There is also another issue which is changing the definition to include something that was previously fundamentally excluded. Nobody denies that words can change their meanings, but changing to mean something that is contradictory to the previous definition is questionable. If there was an attempt to change the definition of a married person to include non married people Eich would be opposed to that attempt as well. That wouldn't be bigotry.
Basically, I don't think it is bigotry for Eich to not support the change in the definition. It has always meant a certain thing and he wants it to remain that definition. That isn't bigotry.
This conversation always ends up with a slippery slope argument with polygamy, children, animals, something else equally offensive. Comparing my rights to be be married to these things is precisely why I refuse to work with people “on this side”. I frankly couldn’t care less about how he or anyone else rationalizes their bigotry.
Children and animals cannot consent which is why I didn't use them, but ok then don't answer.
You don't have any answer to provide because if the requirement for marriage is any consenting adult who love each other there is no reason to not expand it to multiple people. The only reason would be an appeal to tradition, but that would discount gay marriage.
You don't have any answer to provide because if the requirement for marriage is any consenting adult who love each other there is no reason to not expand it to multiple people. The only reason would be an appeal to tradition, but that would discount gay marriage.
And why should that matter? Did he embezzle that money from Mozilla or something?
It’s nothing to do with right or wrong. It’s a controversial opinion, he was foolish to expose himself.
Great. Because if there's one group of people we definitely want penalizing controversial opinions it's the people who make our web browsers.
Politics, military, business, academia, they’re in your hair and wearing your clothes
: ^ )
: ^ )
Not sure if that comment is a stance to oppress free speech.
If you want to survive, you gotta watch what you say. Life isn’t some Alex Jones podcast.
Spoken like during pre-WWII Germany. Must be ok then (for you).
lol, a bit melodramatic no? I'm not enforcing anything, I'm saying that in times of the woke movement, you have to be careful, people have ruined their lives.
If you don't understand that, there's nothing else for me to say. Boxing me into some authoritarian stance doesn't really help your argument. Then again, I'm not really sure what your argument is, seems more like pigheaded trolling.
If anything, supporting against same sex marriage sounds pretty damn oppressive, but to each his own.....I guess?
If you don't understand that, there's nothing else for me to say. Boxing me into some authoritarian stance doesn't really help your argument. Then again, I'm not really sure what your argument is, seems more like pigheaded trolling.
If anything, supporting against same sex marriage sounds pretty damn oppressive, but to each his own.....I guess?
That’s why we have this Republic, an advanced form of simple democracy, that aims to protect the minorities.
Oppressing any side of free speech is bad, m-Kay.
Oppressing any side of free speech is bad, m-Kay.
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Eich stepped down even when the board asked him to stay on in some capacity. I think it had a lot more to do with losing the trust of the rank and file than a business decision related to appearances.
I'll probably have to stop soon. Firefox is just too buggy and incomplete.
The attitude of the developers on Bugzilla is just horrendous. Users take their time to submit detailed reports, with repro steps, explanations, references, and screenshots of how other browsers behave.
These tickets will sit in the queue for decades, sometimes with thousands or even tens of thousands of "me too!" and "is this fixed yet?" comments.
The only response you will see from anyone at Mozilla is internal paper-pushing. Assigning of categories, merging bugs, assigning to a team, or whatever. Almost never will you see an actual developer fix the issue.
Currently, Firefox the only major browser that:
- Doesn't consistently support colour management.
- Doesn't support HDR on sites like YouTube.
- Doesn't pick up the operating system PKI trust store.
- Doesn't play nice with Enterprise deployment and configuration management.
... etc ...
The core team has lost its way and is too busy playing with stupid pet projects with no business value.
The CPO should really start knocking some heads together and start asking tough questions like:
- Why are there open bug tickets old enough to drink and have little bugs of their own?
- Why is Firefox unable to correctly view content on the #1 video site in the world?
Etc...
Fix the basics!