Mozilla’s Uncertain Future(civilityandtruth.com)
civilityandtruth.com
Mozilla’s Uncertain Future
https://civilityandtruth.com/2020/08/13/mozillas-uncertain-future/
394 comments
Q: What do most regular people consume on the internet?
A: Video.
Q: What does Firefox suck the most at?
A: Video.
A: Video.
Q: What does Firefox suck the most at?
A: Video.
Revenue is secured. They have another deal with Google worth ~500M a year for the next few years.
But for growing it and for the future of the browser that’s TBD imo
But for growing it and for the future of the browser that’s TBD imo
I have to say this is one of the instances where I’m glad Apple’s hunger for profit and privacy engineering intersect. On Mac at least with Safari there is a privacy oriented browser left.
Maybe Apple could revive Safari on Windows?
Maybe Apple could revive Safari on Windows?
This is completely anecdotal, and maybe I’m the only one, but native browsers have become so good that I’ve gone from decades of using Netscape/Firefox/opera/chrome/whatever to mainly using Edge and Safari. I don’t really need to share a profile between my browsers as I use windows at work and Mac/iOS for personal use.
We’ve gotten to a point in time where the browser is simply really good, and I think that simply makes it hard to make a living if your primary product is a browser.
Even Microsoft abandoned having their own because they no longer needed it to be completely their own to sell their products.
We’ve gotten to a point in time where the browser is simply really good, and I think that simply makes it hard to make a living if your primary product is a browser.
Even Microsoft abandoned having their own because they no longer needed it to be completely their own to sell their products.
I still don’t understand how they spend 500M a year with so little to show for it.
What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Nothing.
I still can’t copy urls From multiple selected tabs without an extension.
What we need is a group to step up, create a new browser, capture the 500M/year payday and put the money to work.
What’s the last innovation they dropped on the world? Nothing.
I still can’t copy urls From multiple selected tabs without an extension.
What we need is a group to step up, create a new browser, capture the 500M/year payday and put the money to work.
The mentioning of DoD contractors made we wonder: would the EU help fund the development of Firefox, in order to secure competition in the browser market?
Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in seeking out these funding options and a brutal focus on openess, but the latter IS something Mozilla knows how to do.
Mozilla would need to restructure and move Firefox to the foundation, but MDN, Firefox and possibly Rust could be funded by donations, corporate sponsors and perhaps the EU, assuming the money could be directed correctly. It would require a management skilled in seeking out these funding options and a brutal focus on openess, but the latter IS something Mozilla knows how to do.
Mozilla must put the advocacy bits aside and focus on the core product. Perhaps the problem with a non-technical CEO is that the advocacy and new shiny stuff is given as much importance as the invisible (and insanely complex) work that makes a browser fast and safe.
A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves. Instead they axe the future of Firefox.
A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves. Instead they axe the future of Firefox.
Five years ago it was clear that possibly the best thing that could happened to the future of Firefox, Mozilla, and the Web would have been for Mozilla Corporation to have gone belly up. But we're past the point where that might do any good with respect to salvaging Firefox or Mozilla's name.
Mozilla Corporation's role today is to siphon away any attention or enthusiasm that might otherwise be directed towards the ideals that Mozilla was originally created to facilitate. The Mozilla Corporation was supposed to have been set up to further the ideals of the then already extant movement that had been operating on a shoestring budget. The imprimatur should have been to direct its paid staff towards doing the boring work that unpaid (but highly effective) volunteers weren't interested in—not to wrench control away and consolidate power within a (now-proven ineffectual) company making ill-conceived commercial plays while trying to fit in with the culture of the Valley and squandering billions.
In the early 2010s, I attended a conference—one sponsored by Mozilla—and brought in on their dime, having been a fairly involved contributor for a few years, but not someone on the corporate payroll. Another guest and I mentioned how poor a job the travel agency had done, essentially fleecing Mozilla and doing much worse than if we'd arranged for travel and accommodation ourselves and then forwarded the bill. "Mozilla has a lot of money" was the response. After the better part of a decade, Mozilla's revenue has only grown, and so has their propensity to squander money.
The best option we have now is for folks to wake the heck up, to realize that the Mozilla that exists is not the one portrayed in either its messaging or fixed in the minds of casual slacktivists, to start a grassroots effort (a la early Firefox) to work on an independent browser—where, unfortunately, the best bet at this point is probably in leveraging WebKit against Chrome and Blink, given what an untameable mess the modern Web has become (not helped by the FirefoxOS efforts; nor the mess that Gecko codebase has become)—and most importantly never allow that effort to be subverted in the way that the Corporation managed to cannibalize and take over Mozilla.
But that's not going to happen, because Mozilla continues to position itself as the organization where folks with a casual interest in the health of the Web are supposed to direct their good vibes, while thoroughly proving itself to be unworthy and incompetent at upholding the principles it's supposed to be fighting for, and while time and time again, the public have proven themselves to have short attention spans on the order of months—so, by the end of the year Firefox and Mozilla will be back to being perceived as your old chum that's fighting the good fight, instead of being steered by a bunch of clueless, well-salaried Bay Area devs LARPing as some motley crew with your best interests at heart, all while the term "non-profit" gets bandied about in public discussions, much to their delight.
Mozilla Corporation's role today is to siphon away any attention or enthusiasm that might otherwise be directed towards the ideals that Mozilla was originally created to facilitate. The Mozilla Corporation was supposed to have been set up to further the ideals of the then already extant movement that had been operating on a shoestring budget. The imprimatur should have been to direct its paid staff towards doing the boring work that unpaid (but highly effective) volunteers weren't interested in—not to wrench control away and consolidate power within a (now-proven ineffectual) company making ill-conceived commercial plays while trying to fit in with the culture of the Valley and squandering billions.
In the early 2010s, I attended a conference—one sponsored by Mozilla—and brought in on their dime, having been a fairly involved contributor for a few years, but not someone on the corporate payroll. Another guest and I mentioned how poor a job the travel agency had done, essentially fleecing Mozilla and doing much worse than if we'd arranged for travel and accommodation ourselves and then forwarded the bill. "Mozilla has a lot of money" was the response. After the better part of a decade, Mozilla's revenue has only grown, and so has their propensity to squander money.
The best option we have now is for folks to wake the heck up, to realize that the Mozilla that exists is not the one portrayed in either its messaging or fixed in the minds of casual slacktivists, to start a grassroots effort (a la early Firefox) to work on an independent browser—where, unfortunately, the best bet at this point is probably in leveraging WebKit against Chrome and Blink, given what an untameable mess the modern Web has become (not helped by the FirefoxOS efforts; nor the mess that Gecko codebase has become)—and most importantly never allow that effort to be subverted in the way that the Corporation managed to cannibalize and take over Mozilla.
But that's not going to happen, because Mozilla continues to position itself as the organization where folks with a casual interest in the health of the Web are supposed to direct their good vibes, while thoroughly proving itself to be unworthy and incompetent at upholding the principles it's supposed to be fighting for, and while time and time again, the public have proven themselves to have short attention spans on the order of months—so, by the end of the year Firefox and Mozilla will be back to being perceived as your old chum that's fighting the good fight, instead of being steered by a bunch of clueless, well-salaried Bay Area devs LARPing as some motley crew with your best interests at heart, all while the term "non-profit" gets bandied about in public discussions, much to their delight.
Yesterday I started donating $10/month to the Mozilla Foundation. TIL it’s not the Mozilla Foundation that develops Firefox.
I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail was the same as logging into the browser.
If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who would. And I would bet that your average Firefox user is an order of magnitude more likely to do this than your average chrome user.
So I wonder why they don’t do this? I’ve had similar frustrations for other products I get for free that I wanted to pay for.
I stopped using Chrome when they added the “feature” that logging into gmail was the same as logging into the browser.
If there was a little notification to the top right in the Firefox with a link to “pay”, even if it was optional, there is some proportion of users who would. And I would bet that your average Firefox user is an order of magnitude more likely to do this than your average chrome user.
So I wonder why they don’t do this? I’ve had similar frustrations for other products I get for free that I wanted to pay for.
Does somebody know what the remaining ~750 people are working on? How many of them work on Firefox, Pocket, Lockwise, VPN, HR, marketing, ...? Is there somewhere an overview about that?
Many here disapprove with the recent layoffs and especially the areas affected by them, but I'd like to better understand how many people still work on Firefox (desktop browser, mobile browsers, dev tools, servo, ...), compared to topics like Pocket and VPN and supporting roles like HR or marketing, to get a better picture of how how I feel about Mozilla's future.
Many here disapprove with the recent layoffs and especially the areas affected by them, but I'd like to better understand how many people still work on Firefox (desktop browser, mobile browsers, dev tools, servo, ...), compared to topics like Pocket and VPN and supporting roles like HR or marketing, to get a better picture of how how I feel about Mozilla's future.
A possible alternative source of income for Mozilla I think would be, and one I haven’t seen mentioned before, providing consulting services in their areas of expertise.
For example, demand for Rust engineers seems to be steadily increasing[1] and I can’t think of a better company with a larger concentration of Rust expertise than Mozilla. Perhaps the same could work for other areas (ex frontend), but I’m biased toward Rust. Due to lack of experience in this regard I’m not sure if this could actually work, but I could imagine allocating part of their engineering time budget to consultation, whose income would fund their core products.
[1] Besides all the articles popping up about starting to employ Rust by well known companies, my anecdote as a full-time Rust SDE is that I’m getting more and more requests on LinkedIn, and not just for the usual crypto roles.
For example, demand for Rust engineers seems to be steadily increasing[1] and I can’t think of a better company with a larger concentration of Rust expertise than Mozilla. Perhaps the same could work for other areas (ex frontend), but I’m biased toward Rust. Due to lack of experience in this regard I’m not sure if this could actually work, but I could imagine allocating part of their engineering time budget to consultation, whose income would fund their core products.
[1] Besides all the articles popping up about starting to employ Rust by well known companies, my anecdote as a full-time Rust SDE is that I’m getting more and more requests on LinkedIn, and not just for the usual crypto roles.
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Revenue well north of $200 million every year since 2011. How hard would it have been to do the obvious thing and build up an endowment?!
I'm starting to sincerely hope there'll be a fork of Firefox or at least a separation from Mozilla, and for Quantum/Servo to be separated and made an easily embeddable. The inability to donate directly to projects has imo has had a direct result of requiring Google money.
Firefox and Quantum don't need 100M to survive. That's that just absurd. Even if you had 250 people working on it for 100k each, you still wouldn't get to anything as crazy as 100M. 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good salary.
There's no need to branch out and make all kinds of other side projects that have to fit under the Mozilla umbrella. Splitting focus like that just makes it become a juggling game of who needs the money more, shifting focus between projects and making it difficult for donators to comprehend where the money is going to.
When I donate to KDE, it's doesn't come as a surprise that I can't request my donation to be earmarked for something. The project is for a desktop environment after all. It's in the name and it's the flagship product. But when your flagship product is a browser and you don't provide people the possibility to donate to that product... well, what's the point in donating?
Even the argument of "I know better what to do with your money than you do" sounds incredibly pretentious. We hear that all the time from politicians and we clearly see where that money goes to: their pockets, their friends pockets, some other project we never heard of and THEN it goes to the project we thought it would go to. If I wanted to give my money to an institution I didn't believe in, I'd pay more taxes.
Firefox and Quantum don't need 100M to survive. That's that just absurd. Even if you had 250 people working on it for 100k each, you still wouldn't get to anything as crazy as 100M. 100k for working on open-source is a pretty good salary.
There's no need to branch out and make all kinds of other side projects that have to fit under the Mozilla umbrella. Splitting focus like that just makes it become a juggling game of who needs the money more, shifting focus between projects and making it difficult for donators to comprehend where the money is going to.
When I donate to KDE, it's doesn't come as a surprise that I can't request my donation to be earmarked for something. The project is for a desktop environment after all. It's in the name and it's the flagship product. But when your flagship product is a browser and you don't provide people the possibility to donate to that product... well, what's the point in donating?
Even the argument of "I know better what to do with your money than you do" sounds incredibly pretentious. We hear that all the time from politicians and we clearly see where that money goes to: their pockets, their friends pockets, some other project we never heard of and THEN it goes to the project we thought it would go to. If I wanted to give my money to an institution I didn't believe in, I'd pay more taxes.
Does anyone know if the new stuff touted over the last few years (servo, webrender etc) is going to make it into the mainline Firefox release?
I moved back to Firefox back when they released Quantum and was really excited about the plans to make it even better - the blog posts from Lin Clark around parallel layout engines, web render etc. made me really excited about the trajectory of FF [1]
I know this stuff is complicated and they're working to get it right, but I heard in the recent round of layoffs most of the Servo team has been decimated. WebRender is only in the mainline releases for Windows and experimental everywhere else [2]
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-h... [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
I moved back to Firefox back when they released Quantum and was really excited about the plans to make it even better - the blog posts from Lin Clark around parallel layout engines, web render etc. made me really excited about the trajectory of FF [1]
I know this stuff is complicated and they're working to get it right, but I heard in the recent round of layoffs most of the Servo team has been decimated. WebRender is only in the mainline releases for Windows and experimental everywhere else [2]
[1] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/entering-the-quantum-era-h... [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/GFX/WebRender_Where
How is it legal that the financial report of 2019 is unavailable? It's at least a big red flag, I doubt they did such a practice the other years.
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The google contract seems totally at odds with mozilla's privacy focus.
And there seem to have been too many off-target projects recently.
IMHO, they should keep a focus on privacy, and the core browser, adding VPN and perhaps CDN services, all bundled as a subscription. Maybe also ad-free search; perhaps duckduckgo should buy mozilla, or vice-versa? I think a lot of people would be willing to pay for a 'safe, private portal' to the internet.
I think advocacy alone is almost worthless when it comes to defining standards and ensuring they're open. You have to have code (and users) in the game.
And there seem to have been too many off-target projects recently.
IMHO, they should keep a focus on privacy, and the core browser, adding VPN and perhaps CDN services, all bundled as a subscription. Maybe also ad-free search; perhaps duckduckgo should buy mozilla, or vice-versa? I think a lot of people would be willing to pay for a 'safe, private portal' to the internet.
I think advocacy alone is almost worthless when it comes to defining standards and ensuring they're open. You have to have code (and users) in the game.
> In ten years it’s possible that the Mozilla Corporation may be just a memory, with the Mozilla Foundation surviving as a modestly-funded advocacy organization.
Maybe I'm pessimistic here, but what exactly could a "modestly-funded advocacy organization" with nothing left but their brand archive against Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc?
Without Firefox, I don't see what kind of leverage they would have to continue their mission. Firefox also was what gave their brand relevance to the public.
The only thing I could see is them becoming a political lobbying organisation or "think tank", trying to advance their mission by pushing for more internet regulation. But even then, they will be pitted against vastly more powerful lobbies.
Maybe I'm pessimistic here, but what exactly could a "modestly-funded advocacy organization" with nothing left but their brand archive against Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc?
Without Firefox, I don't see what kind of leverage they would have to continue their mission. Firefox also was what gave their brand relevance to the public.
The only thing I could see is them becoming a political lobbying organisation or "think tank", trying to advance their mission by pushing for more internet regulation. But even then, they will be pitted against vastly more powerful lobbies.
Rust is dead!
I'm less worried about the product than the organization.
IMHO, Mozilla as a company has never really had a credible business model beyond Google (mainly) choosing to compensate them for directing some search traffic to them (and general ass coverage when it comes to allegations of monopolist behavior). The layoffs are a consequence of their strategy for finding alternate revenue streams being simply too weak to produce tangible results. Certainly not anywhere near levels that would allow them to justify having the ambitions of a big VC founded silicon valley based company with offices in e.g. the middle of the real estate bubble called Mountain View (as well as several other premium locations world wide).
What they do technically with their browser product is fine however and worth protecting. I just don't see that costing in the order of hundreds of millions/year. A couple of million goes a long way to keep a world wide collective of developers going. Many OSS projects manage with far less. It doesn't require maintaining offices in the downtown areas of SFO (in addition to Mountain View), London, Paris, Portland, Berlin, Taipei, etc.
I use Firefox exclusively; like many other users. The wider community of Firefox developers and users has plenty of ways to keep the project going long term in one way or another.
Same with Rust. Rust will be fine without Mozilla. It's widely used and loved by engineers useful to quite a lot of companies. IMHO the rust community is actually much less dependent on central management by anyone (including Mozilla) than the Firefox browser. Most long lived OSS projects need independence like that and thrive because of their independence.
Luckily, Mozilla has a very decent licensing policy (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/) that crucially does not include any copyright transfer. That means their role is strictly as a facilitator of development; not as an owner of the copyright to the code. That means that in principle there is room for other companies to get involved or for independent developers to get involved.
Which is why I'm not worried about the project surviving the drama of their mother organization imploding or not. I hope it leads to some sensible changes in the Mozilla Foundation.
IMHO, Mozilla as a company has never really had a credible business model beyond Google (mainly) choosing to compensate them for directing some search traffic to them (and general ass coverage when it comes to allegations of monopolist behavior). The layoffs are a consequence of their strategy for finding alternate revenue streams being simply too weak to produce tangible results. Certainly not anywhere near levels that would allow them to justify having the ambitions of a big VC founded silicon valley based company with offices in e.g. the middle of the real estate bubble called Mountain View (as well as several other premium locations world wide).
What they do technically with their browser product is fine however and worth protecting. I just don't see that costing in the order of hundreds of millions/year. A couple of million goes a long way to keep a world wide collective of developers going. Many OSS projects manage with far less. It doesn't require maintaining offices in the downtown areas of SFO (in addition to Mountain View), London, Paris, Portland, Berlin, Taipei, etc.
I use Firefox exclusively; like many other users. The wider community of Firefox developers and users has plenty of ways to keep the project going long term in one way or another.
Same with Rust. Rust will be fine without Mozilla. It's widely used and loved by engineers useful to quite a lot of companies. IMHO the rust community is actually much less dependent on central management by anyone (including Mozilla) than the Firefox browser. Most long lived OSS projects need independence like that and thrive because of their independence.
Luckily, Mozilla has a very decent licensing policy (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/license-policy/) that crucially does not include any copyright transfer. That means their role is strictly as a facilitator of development; not as an owner of the copyright to the code. That means that in principle there is room for other companies to get involved or for independent developers to get involved.
Which is why I'm not worried about the project surviving the drama of their mother organization imploding or not. I hope it leads to some sensible changes in the Mozilla Foundation.
FWIW, as a Mozilla employee, I think this is one of the best summaries I've read of the state of Mozilla.
How are the expenses of Mozilla increasing at such a pace without having a sustainable business model? Seems like poor management.
On the graph at 2014 on the x-axis, is this the "real" reason why Brendan Eich had to resign as CEO of Mozilla Corp?
> But as the number of Firefox users decreases (due to the growing market dominance of the Chrome browser), and those users click on fewer online ads (for example, because they’re spending less during the COVID-19 pandemic), the willingness of Google and other customers to pay the Mozilla Corporation for those users decreases accordingly.
> Thus when COVID-19 hit and the Mozilla Corporation hit a brick wall in terms of search engine revenue...
Did the pandemic really have an impact on search engine revenue? From what I can tell, users are spending more time online, viewing (and maybe even clicking) more ads and searching for more things online. Google's stock is back to its pre-pandemic peak level, so they seem to be doing fine.
Did Google play hard-ball with Mozilla during their contract negotiations, and manage to lower the cost of their default search engine deal? If so, I feel like that should've generated a bigger outrage than some Chrome UX/Security people tweaking the URL bar. Especially with all the antitrust stuff going on.
> Thus when COVID-19 hit and the Mozilla Corporation hit a brick wall in terms of search engine revenue...
Did the pandemic really have an impact on search engine revenue? From what I can tell, users are spending more time online, viewing (and maybe even clicking) more ads and searching for more things online. Google's stock is back to its pre-pandemic peak level, so they seem to be doing fine.
Did Google play hard-ball with Mozilla during their contract negotiations, and manage to lower the cost of their default search engine deal? If so, I feel like that should've generated a bigger outrage than some Chrome UX/Security people tweaking the URL bar. Especially with all the antitrust stuff going on.
Inventing an entirely knew programming language with new concepts that is aiming at smart people and basing critical components of the web browser on it.
It is this kind of decision which freaks out the ordinary HN reader but is otherwise an alarm bell to any sane business responsible.
That was the nail into the coffin.
It is this kind of decision which freaks out the ordinary HN reader but is otherwise an alarm bell to any sane business responsible.
That was the nail into the coffin.
If Mozilla wants to have a future it needs to:
- Realize it lost the browser wars, abandon FF and base it on chromium. It might upset the average FF geek on HN but you're not paying for FF development - Google is. As FF user base keeps dropping Google is not going to be interested in funding their development. No one cares about FF enough to actually fund it. Google just is because they want to push you ads.
- They need another revenue model. Probably focusing on B2C products. They should start acquiring more companies to buy growth.
They've really squandered a huge opportunity.
- Realize it lost the browser wars, abandon FF and base it on chromium. It might upset the average FF geek on HN but you're not paying for FF development - Google is. As FF user base keeps dropping Google is not going to be interested in funding their development. No one cares about FF enough to actually fund it. Google just is because they want to push you ads.
- They need another revenue model. Probably focusing on B2C products. They should start acquiring more companies to buy growth.
They've really squandered a huge opportunity.
It's easy to criticize from the outside. The question we should ask ourselves is what we should have done, and can still do, to help Mozilla's mission. I just set up a monthly donation, as I should have done a long time ago.
It's really interesting that Mozilla doesn't funnel donations to software development interests. There are successful open source projects that do so, such as Linux Mint [0]. Maybe what's really broken is the idea that a browser needs a backing corporation to fund it?
Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the development of meaningful software that serves that purpose.
[0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no exception." https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953
Personally, I can see no better way to keep an open internet than through the development of meaningful software that serves that purpose.
[0] "Donations are usually quite high after a release and Linux Mint 20 is no exception." https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3953
That was a fundamental mistake. The who's-got-the-biggest-version-number dick-measuring, the constant deprecation of power features and customizability, everything that was intended to beat Chrome in a contest Google couldn't lose is the reason Firefox can't hold onto a decent market share. The 25% of internet users who wanted what Firefox offered ten years ago still want the same thing now, but Firefox decided it was worth losing that 25% trying to chase the 75%, and they lost.