I just saw a post complaining about the Mozilla layoffs.
I wanted to point out that the vast majority of their income (over 85% in 2022) is from having Google as the default search engine - Ironically, the anti monopoly lawsuit against Google will end this.
Expect things to get worse.
Please don’t assume it was just a cruel choice.
They have enough cash reserves to last 3 years without any income. But 15% of income is Google free. If Google disappears, they will surely get an income hit, but someone else will gladly pay some price for that position, perhaps half of what Google is paying. People are really blowing this out of proportion.
Taking funding from your biggest competitor is a weird business choice.
Where should they be “taking” funding instead?
I don’t know. Crowdfunding? How does Thunderbird keep it self afloat? Maybe better integration of the community as in more say in what will be developed depending on how much money you donate etc.
That’s the Mozilla paradox right there. A company like theirs cannot survive on the market without breaking their own ideals.
Mozilla should approach proton to try and get accuired. I would love to see Firefox and Thunderbird become part of the proton landscape.
Well all it’ll do is make Proton lose more money.
They are not positive ?
I think they are but Mozilla is not profitable and will be an expense source. Idk if it’ll make Proton negative but it definitely won’t improve their business.
mozilla is not profitable because of how much they pay their CEO.
its the same situation as reddit.
ideally donations like lots of other FOSS projects
Serious question, is there actually a FOSS project out there at the scale of something like Firefox that survives on only donations?
No because people choose diss cause it’s free. I mean they might say other things but then the vast majority do not donate to anything. People are cheap and that’s why we are where we are with all the ads.
Feels kind of weird, if thats the case how did Linux come as far as it is today?
Why keep people on a payroll if you can get volunteers, for free!?
Ironically, the anti monopoly lawsuit against Google will end this.
People are quick to assume this, and there’s a very good chance that they’re right, but I don’t think we should take it as a given. It’s always possible that there could be some sort of court decision that allows Google to keep funding Mozilla after the “breakup” is complete.
In any case, we don’t yet know what the outcome of the antitrust case will be, so I think it might be best to avoid making statements of certainty like this until we see how things really shake out.
We should definitely take the possibility of this happening very seriously though.
Rip, time to find new income sources
Mozilla does not look any reliable for people that loves FOSS, yet our current web seems like it’s either Firefox/Gecko or Chrome/Chromium browsers. I wish people were more aware of emergent projects like Servo or Ladybird - even better if they could donate to them. I’m positive either of them could be a serious competitor to the Chrome hegemony.
You are really underestimating the complexity of the task of building a web engine.
Another problem is that Chrome is already ubiquitous and most of the web sites are simply ignoring the Gecko and only optimise against Chromium.
Don’t get me wrong, I truly wish we had more completion and I hope those projects take off and with time become a viable alternative of Chromium but I am somehow doubtful.
Honestly I’ve been saying for some time that Mozilla’s resources would be much better spent making Firefox a soft fork of Chromium. Primarily: use the Blink browser engine and V8 JS engine, with only the changes to those that they deem absolutely necessary, and maintain a privacy-forward Chromium-based browser. Maybe try and enlist the help of Brave, Vivaldi, and other browsers that are currently Chromium but which prefer more privacy than Google offers.
It’s not zero effort, and especially as Google continues to develop Chromium with assumptions like the removal of Manifest V2 it might take some effort to maintain, but it cannot possibly be as much effort as maintaining an entire browser.
You’re right about the fact that building an engine is hard, but Socraticly speaking, then why are there so many blink-based browsers and so few gecko-based ones? The answer is because blink is easy to embed in a new project and gecko isn’t.
If Mozilla really wants to take back the web (and I honestly don’t think they actually do), then what they should really be doing is making gecko as easy to embed in a new browser as blink is. They don’t do this, and I suspect that they have ulterior motives for doing so, but if they did, I think we would be much closer to breaking chrome’s grasp on the web.
Because let’s face it: Mozilla makes a pretty damn good browser engine. But they don’t really make a compelling browser based off it. Ever noticed how Mozilla has been declining ever since they deprecated XPCOM extensions? It’s because when they provided XPCOM, it enabled users to actually build cool and interesting new features. And now that they’ve taken it away, all innovation in browser development has stagnated (save for the madlads making Vivaldi).
They need to empower others to build the browser that they can’t. That’s what would really resurrect the glory days of Firefox in my opinion.
Building a free (as in beer) engine for others to build great browsers on, is a pretty thankless task. Individuals may take pride in such a task, but for a company that needs to pay their staff, it’s a fruitless endeavor. I assume it’s much harder to earn money, if people are not using your software itself, but the forks that add all the cool stuff.
I suspect that they have ulterior motives
Rather than guessing at the motives of others, let’s remember Hanlon’s razor.
chrome enshitification made me switch back to firefox after 7ish years of using it as my daily driver and likewise was true for netscape.
those two previous experiences tell me that i need to start making preparations to switch away from firefox; but i can’t bring myself to do it because all of the other viable alternatives are chrome based. since google already has begun publicly enshitifying chrome further i think i’ll end up going with just about any other browser project that i can find and i think that these two are the two most likely candidates.
are you aware of any others?
Various websites suck in one browser or the other or simply don’t work in more than one single browser. We’re not that far away from the days when Internet Explorer (IE) was the only thing that loaded a site (often for something work-related… groan)
That said, if you need Chrom(e/ium) and want a non-data-sucking version, I think Ungoogled Chromium is your best bet currently.
For the Firefox side of things, there are already several forks that aim to do things differently/better. Floorp is one I see recommended regularly. There seem to be a larger number of Firefox forks focusing on security/privacy than Google forks, but this is the most well-regarded from my research.
Simultaneous post-enshittification from both Chrome/Chromium and Firefox is probably (hopefully) leading towards more active development/contribution to these (and other) forks!
