Mozilla Lays Off 250 Employees While it Refocuses on Commercial Products (zdnet.com) 124
The Mozilla Corporation announced today it was laying off approximately 250 staff members in a move to shore up the organization's financial future. From a report: The layoffs were publicly announced in a blog post today. Employees were notified hours before, earlier this morning, via an email sent by Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation CEO and Mozilla Foundation Chairwoman. Baker's message cited the organization's need to adapt its finances to a post-COVID-19 world and re-focus the organization on new commercial services. Baker said that after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mozilla attempted to minimize the healthcare crisis' financial impact with "immediate cost-saving measures such as pausing our hiring, reducing our wellness stipend and cancelling our All-Hands [meetings]." However, Baker said that Mozilla's "pre-COVID plan is no longer workable." "We have talked about the need for change -- including the likelihood of layoffs -- since the spring. Today these changes become real," the Mozilla CEO said today.
Guess there is gonna be layoff news (Score:3)
This is gonna get old real fast. Companies are going to be cutting staff like it's a recession.
Truth is Firefox updated their browser on Android after like forever, and the interface was clearly done by designer, not someone who uses a product...just awful. Great browsing through.
Re: (Score:3)
Companies are going to be cutting staff like it's a recession.
That's because we're in a recession (or will be by the time two quarters of pandemic have passed). Check the economic stats.
Re:Guess there is gonna be layoff news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Considering the candidates available for the election in the US it's not hard to get depressed.
Add to it the tensions between Russia, China and India that seems to escalate.
2020 isn't at end yet and it's like You ain't seen nothin yet. [youtube.com]
Time to invest in Firefox? Not. (Score:2)
While I concur with your sarcasm, the thread is an example of diversion by a poor FP.
However, if we're playing the markets, then my prediction is a big downturn in October as China takes the profit of flushing Trump. When you control the timing of the market shifts, you can always make a profit these days. As seems to be standard and international policy these years, the losses will be socialized (and added to the "not my fault" Covid-19 red ink) while the profits will be privatized (but less visibly than i
Re:Guess there is gonna be layoff news (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's the pandemic - not the fact that they employed over a thousand people to build a browser and a scant few other products most people know or care about, and they give all these products away.
Instead, they spent the last decade pissing away their flagship product's market share, ignoring technical shortcomings while alienating long-time users with pointless or even detrimental UI redesigns in an effort to make Firefox LOOK more like Chrome, only without the superior performance and technology. They integrated useless crap like Pocket, which should have been an add-on. They finally focused on performance, stability, and security rework, but far too late in the game to matter.
I hope Mozilla hangs in there, but their leadership has failed them rather badly. We really should have an open, free browser that's a viable alternative to Chrome. Even Microsoft has thrown in the towel, and the alternatives aren't really worth mentioning. Maybe selling VPN services will work out for them, because at the end of their deal with Google in 2021, if they don't have an alternative revenue stream lined up, it's going to be messy. And frankly, with Firefox's dwindling market share (just a bit over 7% now), any new deal they strike is going to be much reduced in revenue.
90% of revenue (Score:2)
Google is 90%of their revenue, and their business does not compete against Google.
Apple had a Messiah...not the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Not being tied to Google could be an incentive for users to switch
Why? (Score:2)
Users don't care. Apple have a deal too. You don't see see them smashing their phones. You might be so anti-google... personally I just change my defaults.
Re: (Score:2)
if they force google to be more fair and allow duckduckgo and other engines to be default on android
...then almost everyone will just switch it back to Google.
Re: (Score:2)
That "update" is one of the most crash-prone releases for a long time for me. I have now reverted back to version 68 with an APK and disabled the auto-update on the PDA where I have most problems.
A number of plugins don't work with that release either.
Also look at the ratings on Firefox in the Playstore after this "upgrade". This most recent version have a lot of one and two star ratings.
Solid as a rock (Score:2)
I have used the version extensively and is solid as a rock, and have been laughing at the 1 stars on the play store, and the consensus is great engine shame about the UI
Re: (Score:2)
Companies are going to be cutting staff like it's a recession.
Oh man ... no one told you? https://www.npr.org/sections/c... [npr.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Companies are going to be cutting staff like it's a recession.
Oh man ... no one told you? https://www.npr.org/sections/c... [npr.org]
And now we're two more months into the recession, but somehow even though it's incredibly obvious, some people don't seem to realize it.
I hope to God ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I remember when interfaces were designed by programmers. It wasn't pretty.
Want to take a trip down memory lane? Have a look at any piece of software "designed" for Amateur Radio. Do you really want to relive that hell?
What's with all the hate for Mozilla's interfaces anyway? This all started when they essentially cloned the UI of Chrome, which the same people complaining claimed that they loved!
For all the whining, you'd think their programs were hard to use. I've never once had a problem. with Firef
Re:I hope to God ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not that we hate the UIs more than any other UIs - its just that
Once you have learned the UI, and organised everything where you can find it, they come and fuck it up.
Firefox has a particularly egregious "feature" whereby it randomly decides you are using an older version (WTF???) and therefore can no longer use all the settings, configurations, preferences, etc you had built up over two or three years, and must start afresh.
Our family PC has about seven users, and this has happened to at least four of them over the past 12 months. The only changes have been when Mozilla has forced an upgrade on them.
While I can understand there might be a reason behind the madness, the solution is totally fucked and whoever implemented it should definitely be fired, along with everyone else on the team responsible.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Firefox has a particularly egregious "feature" whereby it randomly decides you are using an older version
I've been using Firefox longer than it's been called Firefox. This has never happened to me or anyone I know. This is also the first time I've heard that claim.
I'm guessing you're just trolling for karma by repeating nonsense and making up nonsense of your own to fit a narrative. I'm not buying it.
Re: (Score:2)
I, too, have been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this happened to me on a work Windows computer not too long ago. I was pretty annoyed. In fact, it somehow happened TWICE the same morning. I had mostly restored my profile information (few bookmarks, UI layout, extensions) and was testing that it loaded right by restarting Firefox and it told me a second time that I was not allowed to use my profile anymore, and I had to start over again! I did make a Firefox account just for that compute
Re: (Score:2)
It happened to me several times in the last year. Firefox creates a new profile and makes it the default. You can go back to your old profile if you like. Firefox used to just pop up a button at the bottom of the window asking if you'd like to "refresh" your profile. At some point, they stopped asking and started just doing it.
So no. He's not just a troll. As another user who's been using firefox since before it was called firefox, it does do this. It's one of many changes that seems hostile to exis
UIs are worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but saying programmers cannot design UIs is insulting. In reality programmers have been taught UI design...I was.
Thowing words like scientific research around is just stupid, understanding how that is relevant to the program is different.
My favourite UI disaster is settings in Windows. you can see the science that made that an unusable mess.
Re: (Score:2)
Thowing words like scientific research around is just stupid,
Exactly. It's like these people don't realize that the "scientific research" in question consists of A/B and focus-group testing on randomly-chosen schlubs, not power users or even those with basic computer literacy.
The art and science of modern UI design amounts to a race to the bottom. When smart people work hard designing an interface for morons, mediocrity is the best thing that can possibly happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Not surprising (Score:4, Interesting)
If the clusterfuck that is Android Firefox 79 is any indication, that company will have a hard time ahead...
It's hard to fathom how anyone could be dumb enough to completely revamp the UI, make it less usable, break all addons except five, take away any possibility of advanced configuration and completely purge most if not all saved user settings like bookmarks.
Oh wait... that seems par for the course. I haven't seen a good UI in a decade. I haven't seen many products actually improving over time.
It's a really shitty time to work in or with IT.
Re: (Score:2)
Except... (Score:2)
This is not about that, one on the killer Applications on Android was up until a few days ago Firefox.
The underlying engine and as blocking are still great...the UI has destroyed it because you can't get to your content anymore. It's truly bad. I haven't see a company shoot themselves so bad since Nokia.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not about that, one on the killer Applications on Android was up until a few days ago Firefox.
The underlying engine and as blocking are still great...the UI has destroyed it because you can't get to your content anymore. It's truly bad. I haven't see a company shoot themselves so bad since Nokia.
This! I ditched firefox on the desktop when they broke gnome keychain integration,. Until a few days ago when I got the upgrade firefox on android was the superior choice, now I'm just confused.
Re: (Score:2)
If the clusterfuck that is Android Firefox 79 is any indication, that company will have a hard time ahead...
It's hard to fathom how anyone could be dumb enough to completely revamp the UI, make it less usable, break all addons except five, take away any possibility of advanced configuration and completely purge most if not all saved user settings like bookmarks.
Oh wait... that seems par for the course. I haven't seen a good UI in a decade. I haven't seen many products actually improving over time.
It's a really shitty time to work in or with IT.
I got to keep my bookmarks but they are in the menu only, the old way was imho much better. It went back to google as the default search and the duck is not selectable (this varies on locale), I had to manually add http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%25s [duckduckgo.com] . I tried the url bar att the bottom for about 3 minutes before giving up, I type with my thumb and it just isn't convenient.
Bookmarks (Score:2)
The special thing about the new UI is they put collections/tabs(sic) front and center when they are exactly the same as folder/bookmarks...only less functional...you can't open in private tab for instance. It's my largest complaint. The obvious overlapping of functionality is astonishing. Worst UI choice I have ever seen.
Re: (Score:2)
I recently installed Firefox for Android due to bugs in Chrome. A few days later the search function stopped working all on its own. This is literally how they make their money.
Doesn't bode well.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh wait... that seems par for the course. I haven't seen a good UI in a decade
Neither I have. Stuff like grey text on grey background, inactive tabs/buttons/checkboxes are often highlighted now whereas the active UI-objects are the ones greyed-out , 50 commands hidden in the hamburger menu, hamburger menu in desktop applications, hip & new icons like the underlined down arrow could mean download, or it could mean save, or it could have a dozen other things depending upon the application. I wonder how
Re: (Score:2)
Or requiring a dozen clicks to get to basic settings. That shit's a direct dark pattern. Fire the person who ordered it.
Fitts' Law, FFS. Stop making my life harder, stop requiring more clicks and secret toggles for access to things.
Re: (Score:2)
Once you get more than eight options, you need hierarchical text dropdowns.
Or Kanji.
Kanji has stayed much the same for 4,000 years. It does not get randomly "upgraded" every three months.
Kanji can be looked up in a dictionary.
Icons are mostly completely indecipherable, with no means of even Googling them, and obviously devoid of any possible merit, except perhaps to create equality between il
Stupid Design (Score:2)
8 only...you can say that as many times as you like, but as for simply letters alone we manage 26 or more, and we are pretty good with shapes and this is gonna hurt colour!!!
Usability does not mean less icons. Icons are great. I agree monochrome vague icons are worse than just text.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't seen a good UI in a decade. I haven't seen many products actually improving over time.
Good for whom? Improving for whom?
I get it. We're all power users here, but let's not pretend we make up the overwhelming majority of the market. That market is made up with people who call the beige box the "harddrive", and get suckered into Apple's "what's a computer" marketing. People who understand the symbology of the hamburger but have never seen a floppy disk in real life. People who by-n-large couldn't give a shit about their privacy or FOSS.
That is the target market for most software these days. Th
What nonsense (Score:2)
Weak defence and seriously using science...you are like a diet coke advert with a woman in a labcoat saying it doesn't make you fat. Studies and research not correctly interpreted and applied are a mess. I am trained in UI design. I am that scientist. It's in my Degree name.
Ignoring Power Users, are users too. They are also just Users. Firefox is a great example it uses Collections and Bookmarks...what are the differences, you get just the text like the program. Now for the power user you could type in the
Re: (Score:3)
I haven't seen a good UI in a decade. I haven't seen many products actually improving over time.
Good for whom? Improving for whom?
I get it. We're all power users here, but let's not pretend we make up the overwhelming majority of the market. ...
Maybe not. But that's all firefox has left. If Mozilla alienates the rest of us, the company can collapse in the woods without making a sound.
A bit of history. Internet explorer was alienating it's users and web page developers. Mozilla took the remains of firefox and built a browser that was as easy to use as any browser and flexible enough to entice power users. Power users helped their friends and website user switch to firefox of the browsers that came install be default. It was a winning strateg
Re: (Score:3)
Any time you reference the past to describe the present you have to remember that the user base has dramatically changed over the years. The fact that power users had to "help" should say everything. That is not acceptable in 2020, not for the mobile generation, not for grandma who learnt everything she knows about computers by playing on an iPad. Interfaces are defined by masses and the masses are turning away from traditional interfaces that are common on the PC.
You say power users are all Mozilla has lef
Re: (Score:2)
If the clusterfuck that is Android Firefox 79 is any indication, that company will have a hard time ahead...
It's hard to fathom how anyone could be dumb enough to completely revamp the UI, make it less usable, break all addons except five, take away any possibility of advanced configuration and completely purge most if not all saved user settings like bookmarks.
Oh wait... that seems par for the course. I haven't seen a good UI in a decade. I haven't seen many products actually improving over time.
It's a really shitty time to work in or with IT.
I'm running Nightly right now, says "81.0a1 (2020-08-11) (64-bit)" and I'm not noticing anything like what you are talking about. The layout I setup months ago is the same, and all my bookmarks are working.
Re: (Score:2)
I tried that Fenix or Preview or whatever it was called. Pure garbage. Missing the most basic features and I honestly hate the location bar at the bottom.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla has been insufficiently managed? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm still using an old version of Firefox, version 56.0.2, because the new version doesn't support add-ons that I need. Also, I didn't trust the new version when it was first released. There were many, many changes in the new Firefox that didn't seem sensible.
I use Pale Moon [palemoon.org] for reading Slashdot. Pale Moon supp
Re: (Score:2)
I would like to have 5 different versions of Pale Moon, each with a different color and a slightly different installation name, but otherwise the same. I like to keep my browsing subjects separate.
If it works as firefox you can make a link and add -P nameofyourprofile to keep them separate (you can just make up a name and it will be created not giving a profile name starts the profile manager).
5 different colors of the Pale Moon browser? (Score:2)
Re: 5 different colors of the Pale Moon browser? (Score:2)
Check the extensions to see if there's anything that lets you do that, I'm thinking night mode and themes.
Re: (Score:2)
I would need to have different colors for each version of Pale Moon.
I just checked and I believe what you want is themes https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org] just use a different theme in each of the profiles, haven't tried it in practice as it's not my use case. Feel free to report back if you get it working.
Better idea to use Pale Moon add-ons (Score:2)
https://addons.palemoon.org/ex... [palemoon.org] and https://addons.palemoon.org/th... [palemoon.org] are native Pale Moon extension and theme sites. No worry about compatability, because these are native Pale Moon add-ons. Each profile is independent, and can have its own combo of themes/extensions/bookmarks/preferences and about:config options etc, etc. Set your program launcher menu to do stuff like...
palemoon -new-instance -p covid
palemoon -new-instance -p slashdot
palemoon -new-instance -p youtube
etc, etc
Notes:
1) The "-new-instan
HUGE AMOUNT of cultural difference (Score:3, Insightful)
A long time ago, when I was living there, a woman in New Zealand loaned me a book that said, "In Italy, feminism is pro-woman. In the United States, feminism is anti-male." We are still recovering from that.
Re: (Score:3)
Italy sounds like it just hasn't caught up the the US yet.
Feminism WAS pro-woman, woman-power, & equality in the US in the until the 2000's. Then third and fourth wave feminism hit and it was no longer about equality, it was bring down the men. Then feminism turned into a toxid & sexist anti-male and terms like male privilege, male toxicity, mansplaining became the automatic but untrue reasons for women not getting jobs in certain fields.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
These don't look like incels to me.
Re:Mozilla has been insufficiently managed? (Score:4, Interesting)
Biological sex determines interests with significant accuracy. Here in Nordics, we've taken most of the social pressure off "needing to make money" for women with wide reaching social programs, and the obvious has happened - biological differences are now overwhelmingly a deciding factor in career choice.
So something like 80-90% of our younger teachers and doctors except surgeons and teachers of what we call "technical work", people teaching things like building things with their hands are women, and similar 80-90ish percentile of our younger engineers in all fields but environmental and textile engineering are men. That's the biological difference between sexes when you suppress most of the social factors to maximise people's choice. So people choose what appeals to them the most as an advanced career rather than be directed by social factors and hate their job. It's likely one of the reasons we tend to take top positions in the world in "nations with happiest populace" studies.
Funniest part is that this is a direct consequence of left wing policies that were supposed to "equalize sex differences, because far left dogma suggests that sexes are equal and interchangeable when it comes to things other than ability to give birth". And what we got is simply a liberal outcome of nature telling us yet again that it doesn't care about puny humans and their pathetic misconceptions. Nature simply reasserts itself with vengeance, and when we destroyed the social barriers, effect of sex differences on career choice has maximized.
And with places like Mozilla, you clearly have two high demand fields that draw different sexes. Profession that draws mostly women (graphic design, social engineering) and profession that draws mostly men (IT engineering, coding). And those two have vastly different, often diametrically opposed approaches to how things should work. And one of the biggest complaints that have been levelled at Mozilla over last decade or so is that they started to heavily favour the former fields and neglect and downright sabotage the latter.
Which is compatible as a hypothesis with prioritising female-preferred fields' interests over male-preferred ones.
Re: (Score:2)
How did you control for other social factors? What about trans women and intersex people? Strikes me as a great opportunity to figure out exactly what bit of biology is causing this.
Re: (Score:3)
>How did you control for other social factors?
Test group known as "less egalitarian societies".
>What about trans women and intersex people?
Too rare to be of any relevance.
>Strikes me as a great opportunity to figure out exactly what bit of biology is causing this.
Sex.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
This is the anglosphere narrative, that relies on assumptions that anglo culture is the norm.
It is not. It's simply one culture out of many with its own distinct assumptions.
Here in Nordics, before the age of twitter and anglification of everything, feminism actually was largely about equality of sexes through destruction of social barriers. There were many campaigns in 1980s and 1990s to get men to go into nursing, teaching things like languages and so on. They just didn't really matter, because when you h
Why feminism became the monster in the closet (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for polluting my youtube recommendations with MRA propaganda, asshole.
Try being a better person and maybe women will find you less repulsive.
Re: (Score:2)
>That's the dumbest thing I've read today, and I'll follow US politics.
You just described your own mental problem. I was talking about Nordic reality, not politics of a nation half a planet away.
Re: (Score:2)
I was comparing your post to the stupidity of US politics. That is, the things you said in your post are incredibly stupid.
If you have any more trouble reading, just let me know.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd suggest that you should consider that to a religious zealot, science and stupidity are indistinguishable.
But I doubt that you'll be able to comprehend that.
Re: (Score:2)
Only the most ardent, zealous and utterly insane believers in "humans are a blank slate" nonsense would suggest that entirety of culture must be erased to "make conclusions off my data".
In real world, the fact that the more you erase the social differences, the more biological differences maximize, resulting in wider gap in profession choice between men and women is one of the best established facts in sociology.
Re: (Score:2)
lolwut?
Chauvinist for observing people's actions? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Who the fsck are you to attribute thoughts to me like what theory I'd like some chauvinist arsehole to subscribe or not subscribe to. Weird that you're thinking in these terms to begin with. I only expect decent human behavior of him, which includes, not bringing in the gender question where it doesn't belong because that's male chauvinist behavior. He can think, or "subscribe" to whatever "theory" he wants to.
Mozilla gave Chrome the web (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No need for conspiracy theories. (Score:2)
If a cock with "MS" on it is masturbated nowadays, it reads "MEANINGLESS". :)
And we already know that Google adds pointless kitchen sinks at a rate faster than anyone can keep up with.
What I don't get is, why they try to follow Google... And by they, I may also mean web developers that use those functions instead of leaving the web be the web, instead of basically an OS-like platform but way shittier.
No need for conspiracy theories. (Score:2)
To be honest. I think the move to standards and how it is evolving has been wonderful and impressive, with only Safari dragging its feet taking forever to implement basics like WebP.
coming soon: Pocket 2: The Doom Bringer (Score:2)
So, how long until Firefox becomes an unstable, pay-to-play wasteland with so many Mozilla "features" that you cannot disable?
I'm thinking Pocket 2 that sends everything you read on the net back to Mozilla. Perhaps a giant Amazon logo that you need to click through to open a new tab? Maybe they will force you to use the pay version of their VPN?
Re: coming soon: Pocket 2: The Doom Bringer (Score:2)
You mean... Chrome?
Or did you mean UI features, and not engine kitchen sinks?
Nah, they won't have time for that, with struggling to add all the Google kitchen sinks. Which is probably why Mozilla died in the first place.
Death overrated (Score:2)
You seem to hate progress. The evolution of the internet has been much better, and I would refute any improvements to the engine as being a bad thing. In fact the reverse. This healthy competition has been great. MozillaS problems are elsewhere.
None who made the disastrous decisions got canned (Score:2)
can go both ways (Score:2)
If they are really focused on commercial success, rather than looking after dead weight. Then long term this could be a great thing.
Re: (Score:2)
TBH (Score:2)
It's easy to be an armchair CEO, but you have to question how the interface of their Desktop products, not anything else have crippled their company. She must look at it and go it'll be Fine and when it clearly is going pear shaped do...nothing. It is one product. That was massively successful...it broke Microsofts Monopoly...something all the governments of the world failed to do. It's bizarre.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: can go both ways (Score:2)
How is "commercial success" a great thing, if it means the opposite of being an open-source organization, and it means as much money as possible moving out or our pockets into theirs?
I want a browser that is OURS. Like Linux is ours.
But I guess, the Netscape business types culture never truly left Mozilla. Open source was just a means of leeching coding work, to abuse until the leeching of pure money could or had to be turned on again.
Because. (Score:2)
Look you seem confused. Linux is heavily funded by many organisations including Google...hell even Microsoft. Most development is paid. It works really well for me even when I use the Linux desktop. I was particularly impressed with the exfat driver improvements in 5.8
Open source does not mean it does not have to corporate. In fact quite the reverse one of the problems of Mozilla is it has to think corporate...you know basics market share... customers. It's fucking up...and not fixing the software, and I me
Hopelessly crumbing code base (Score:2)
Look at the CVE history for Firefox. Its a basket case. An old crumbling codebase written by clowns with disasters everywhere. I wonder how these cuts will impact the ineffective development resources they already have, such as the ability to find bugs in the code base, rewrite it in Rust, or get fission working already. Increasingly it is a browser used by fewer and fewer. if you use Palemoon and the other forks you are subject to all of these problems as well, since problems at Mozilla will impact the abi
Not seeing it (Score:2)
Not really sure where you are getting that impression. The engine itself seems pretty flawless. In fact as I state earlier, it is the reason to choose Android over Apple to use...but that UI. If you work on the engine you must be bitter inside with what someone has done.
Re: Hopelessly crumbing code base (Score:2)
Well, ever since the WhatWG nutjobs rebeled against the W3C, and instead of properly implementing a clean, *stable* standard, dumped their entire spaghetti code into a "living" standard (Can you smell the oxymoron? This is how James Cameron's "The Thing" must smell.), was it clear that they are all hacks.
It's wasn't a deliberate mess, like MS OOXML. They literally can't do any better than basically what made everyone hate HTML 3.2's mess. Now with direct access to you GPU, file system, and literally everyti
Bot (Score:2)
its like you are a bot. I agree more OS is being put into the browser, while I strongly don't agree with closed cloud. The fact that browsers become more and more powerful and that's a good thing. I want a more feature rich internet, and it is nothing like Microsofts disgusting behaviour of literally buying a standard and destroying the integrity of that. They are simply different things.
Re: (Score:3)
My problem is that the browser only seems to be getting more powerful in its ability to circumvent the user's privacy, security and preferences while dominating systems resources as though there were nothing else that runs on the host.
I want the browser to be "my" user agent. Not a beachhead for any company to take over a piece of my machine.
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet uses is through the roof.
Netflix and Amazon and other technology business have been making record profits.
Mozilla is not a brick and mortar operation. So again, I ask, how did your finances suffer. Or put another way, what prevented Mozilla from taking advantage of the increased online usage.
This is not about COVID-19. This about management.
Re: (Score:3)
This is not about COVID-19. This about management.
It's about riding convenient excuses. It's about planned restructures that have been in the pipeline in many companies for a long time just waiting on some random boogeymonster to blame.
Re: (Score:2)
https://fourweekmba.com/how-do... [fourweekmba.com]
"Precisely 94% of Mozilla revenues came through royalties received by search engines to be featured on its Mozilla Firefox browser."
Chances are that that cash has dried up as of late.
Re: (Score:2)
The people who still had Firefox installed because they did not use it very much, now use the Internet enough to justify uninstalling that crap and picking a modern browser?
Get woke, go broke (Score:2)
Wrongthink gets you fired. Rightthink gets you hired. All those artists and philosophers turn out not to make very competitive products.
Not overly surprising (Score:2)
It's not like Mozilla has been producing a browser of late. Without exception, every iteration has taken something away from the user. Usability and easy of access have been abandoned in favor of shiny.
Oh, you need to make a change? Here are the fiery hoops of death you have to jump through to find your way.
I have stayed way back (in the 50s) on Firefox installs because of their crapulence. I have no choice at work. Updates are forced out. But at home, no way I'm going near this disaster. I want something
Re: Not overly surprising (Score:2)
Actually, that is not true.
They just had to waste more and more time on implementing Chrome kitchen sinks that stupid developers and users "demanded"... until nothing was left but tears.
Which was precisely Google's plan.
Flamebait (Score:2)
You really are Trolling hard. Google is transparent in what they want. They want all the online advertising revenue. It's why Android, chrome, chrome os etc exists. They were terrified of being trapped by the old Apple Microsoft duopoly. Firefox give them that for peanuts, and a complimentary competition. Apple not so much.
Good riddance, Mozilla (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's starting to look that way. But what are the alternatives. I will not have anything to do with anything Google.
RIP Mozilla. (Score:2)
They are not an open source organization anymore.
But one of those typical sleazy Silicon Valley type *businesses*.
I suggest they change their name back to Netscape too.
Wouldn't it be hilarious of MS then killed them, and Phoenix II would be born? ;)
Welcome back Mozilla. (Score:2)
How are they sleazy corporate...wanting to make money is exactly what I want from an open source property, although all browsers now are somewhat open source. In reality how do they compare to the competing players Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft all of which I can point at questionable behaviour. I don't think you understand either open source, or shades of Grey...not just the book.
Surprised it took this long (Score:3)
I hate to say this is a surprise, but Mozilla has been tone deaf for years to what their customers have been saying. Ever since they went to a rapid release schedule they have been a royal pain to deal with for end users. For enterprises they have been hell to support and most enterprises gave up on them and switched to Chrome instead.
Their hubris was no better than Microsoft's was back in the wintel days. Talking to people from Mozilla was an exercise in "why don't you develop that"? They were absolutely oblivious that their average user was not a developer. They fully expected organizations to have a cadre of developers available that would all work around their rapid release schedule. More to the point, they were supremely arrogant with regards to what they worked on. Their answer to enterprises that wanted to try supporting Firefox was the long release version - which completely missed the point.
Contrast them with Linux where they don't have a rapid release schedule and they work with organizations and actively support stability and features that organizations need. As a result organizations are able to support them and the vast majority of code in Linux is actually created by organizations. All of which is made possible because Linux doesn't have a rapid release schedule and is willing to work with the community.
Surprised it took this long (Score:2)
Love extreme programming. In the days of large organisations technicians managing users, yearly rollouts made sense...and the market leader Google gained market share in part from doing this. Mozilla as Messing up but getting the product before customers quickly and often is not one of them, look at the massive misstep it's Android version is for not doing this...now if you had said not learning and quickly changing mistakes effectively, making this method useless...I am 100% with you.
Mitchell Baker takes $2,458,350 per year (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a huge fan of Firefox but an LWN comment just pointed out that they've been paying Mitchell Baker 2.5 million USD per year.
https://assets.mozilla.net/ann... [mozilla.net]
I was going to sign up for their VPN service as a way to support them (and I probably stil will) but damn this makes me feel like a punk.
Re: Mitchell Baker takes $2,458,350 per year (Score:2)
That is a lot of woman for someone who is failing hard
Re: When they fired Brendan Eich, it was over (Score:2)
Let's be real: It *is* shit, do donate to kiddie fucking religious extremists so pathetic, they somehow think some guy fucking some other guy wil somehow be the end of their existences ... If the priest that raped their asses as a kid didn't ruin them, then ... oh.. OK, I get it. ... :P