Gregory's ServerPeople, always: Mozilla, please just make a web browser
Mozilla, 2014: here’s a phone!
Mozilla, 2018: all in on VR!
Mozilla, 2022: let’s do crypto!
Mozilla, 2024: hurrah AI!
 72 comments
 @thomasfuchs There are valid technical reasons why when companies want to build their own browser-based tools (Vivaldi, Electron, various embedded systems like Opera in cars) they license Chromium and not Mozilla when both are equally available AFAIK.  @raven667 @thomasfuchs they're not equally available. Mozilla (appears to?) put virtually zero effort in actually making Gecko or Spidermonkey usable outside of Firefox. Ok, Spidermonkey has its own website now, very cool. Does it have actual docs in a readable format? Lol no. Now Servo definitely is showing hope. Probably (why and/or because) it's no longer a Mozilla project.  @raven667 @thomasfuchs I own a FirefoxOS phone (https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS) and I can confidently say: it sucks. Yes, part of it is the extremely cheap hardware, but part of it is also the software.  @claudius @raven667 @thomasfuchs let's face it, user-facing FOSS is usually a subpar copy of commercial software. I use a ton of FOSS on my home lab and elsewhere but that's how it is. @stooovie Also I don't *nearly* spend as much time on fixing shit on my Windows PC as I do on my Linux laptop. @claudius @raven667 @thomasfuchs I think the strengths of FOSS are in the backend and experimentation. User-facing apps are almost invariably better commercial. @stooovie I think, for the most part open source is now at a weird "good enough" state. I get by very well with LibreOffice, Firefox, KiCad, VSCodium, Kdenlive, digiKam, OBS Studio, Inkscape, Krita, Blender, Joplin and quite a few others. Integration is what really sucks, though. I enjoy using some of them, I tolerate using some of them. Overall I'm pretty happy that I have all of these. I'm glad that I can contribute to them, I like that I can sometimes influence their trajectory slightly. @raven667 @thomasfuchs if I recall correctly the Palm Pre webOS phones were essentially browser-first phones. Great while they lasted, but ... they didn't last. @thomasfuchs I want to like Mozilla that people praised for after Google announced Manifest V3, it gave more problems than I can fix or do workarounds like tab grouping, PWAs, notifications etc, of which are unsupported on Android and barely on desktop. Went back to Chrome. 🤷 @shadow @thomasfuchs Yeah, why is PWA support in Firefox so weird when this should be well inside their core competency. Also what held back XULRunner vs Electron.   @thomasfuchs I believe they are doing that because they can't get enough funding for their browser development just by making a web browser. 😩  @BoydStephenSmithJr @thomasfuchs Exactly: Browsers are a shitty business. So Mozilla is scrambling to find a way to make money and to far they didn’t have much luck.  @BoydStephenSmithJr @thomasfuchs and their main funding comes from the incumbent competitor, Google. I get their desire to get some proper revenue going and they make great privacy focused products like vpn, email masking etc  @thomasfuchs nodds in agreement @mozilla need to fucking get their shit together and make #Firefox great again... @ijimkoz @thomasfuchs they teased on their Twitter that it's in development. Tbh that's the biggest feature I need from them right now  @thomasfuchs "Buh buh buh they say the AI gonna be open source! It's OPEN SOURCEEEEEE! le ethical ai alternative"   @mark they’re literally making most of their money with their browser (via referral fees from Google and other search engines)  @stooovie @mark @thomasfuchs Well. We know they aren’t making a good browser. @thomasfuchs Funny how ever since the phone debacle, they've basically just been chasing trends as a way to secure funding from what few VC techbros aren't already just sucking the dick of the highest-"valued" company to do it. They could be doing something good and making a profit. @ADisorderlyFashion @thomasfuchs Mozilla is not funded by VC money. They actually have ~ $1B in the bank, they are just bad at spending it. @fabrice @thomasfuchs So they're chasing the shit everyone else who seeks VC funding is because they suck with money? That's worse somehow @thomasfuchs @ADisorderlyFashion The AI/ML they ship is pretty good, it's the on-device private translation.  Mozilla, last decade, terrible leadership. They should stop blaming others and the industry for their incompetence. They neglected those who truly wanted them to succeed and supported the product all those years. The money they collected went into corporate greed a.k.a “foundation” @thomasfuchs  @thomasfuchs Mozilla and Ubuntu both scrapped their phone OS because of cloud blah blah Internet of Things yadda yadda @gunchleoc @thomasfuchs Nah, Ubuntu scrapped it because it was a money sink and wasn't getting to a commercially viable point nearly fast enough, unfortunately. The IoT stuff was more an attempt to salvage something useful from the underlying code.  @thomasfuchs Hey the phone thing was actually nice! But then they didn't follow through, right when it was stable enough and polished enough to be used by non-techies…  @thomasfuchs Let's be honest, would we pay a subscription to support Firefox development? @fell @thomasfuchs Yes I would be willing to take a subscription, if I had confidence my subscription went to development of things I want: Not buying people fibre, chasing fads, or squandering the money on executives. (I note here I have not researched to see if they DO squander money on executives, but I'm pessimistic). @kgoetz @fell @thomasfuchs their ceo’s pay has been climbing inversely proportional to firefox’s userbase  @dveditz Instead of mocking your users, your company could not go on wild expeditions and repeatedly do hugely unpopular shit. https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/6/22870787/mozilla-pauses-crypto-donations-backlash-jwz @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io seems a little disingenuous to frame just accepting donations in crypto as equal to the rest of the stuff you list...  @thomasfuchs Also Mozilla 2014: Lets physically make the internet faster! https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/mozilla-is-investing-in-a-faster-internet/75185/ (and similar reporting at the time). Definitely not sure its feasible as their core business.  @thomasfuchs Money doesn't grow on trees and they've taken heat for receiving Google sponsorship. What are they supposed to do to sustain themselves? Donations aren't enough. @astrojuanlu They're supposed to concentrate on their core product, not waste money on products that go nowhere. Like the ones I listed. Which went nowhere. @thomasfuchs @astrojuanlu Who says? This is built into your entire ethos surrounding this topic, but it isn't clear to me why it is the case that they ought not to diversify their offerings (notwithstanding your phrasing where you can somehow predict what will go nowhere). @thomasfuchs i dont think money is the problem right now, but they’ve realised that in the long term a webbrowser alone will not bring in sustainable revenue. And since user economy is “I want everything, but not pay for it” that presents them with quite a big problem. I just wish they’d pick a strategy around firefox and stick to it. They’re now spending random money to see what sticks, and so far nothing has…  @thomasfuchs funny that the WebVR they made back then still gives us a big plus in the webXR space today.  @thomasfuchs Mozilla making an operating system for phones and, maybe, desktop computers (like Chrome OS) does make a lot of sense to me because we’d profit from having more alternatives. That could work if companies that make hardware for open source software (Fairphone, Librem, Framework, etc.) supported them. My (possibly wrong) impression was that they gave up relatively soon. But VR, crypto, and AI all seem like bad fits for Mozilla. @rauschma Unlike computers, phone operating systems compete on services they offer, for example iCloud on iOS; not on the OS itself which is essentially trivial and only for supporting the services. Mozilla has none of these services. This is why Microsoft failed as well, arguably even having some of the services and plenty of resources. @thomasfuchs Mozilla providing those services (e.g. everything that Proton provides) could be a good fit and make them money.  @rauschma @thomasfuchs A lot of the untapped but interesting potential of Firefox OS was how many of the services they tried to build like web standards or as could-be web standards and for general cross-platform access by a web browser. There were some interesting ideas they had that never got quite fully built. Hard to tell if that idealism was what lead to the huge budgets of the project or if patience would have been deeply rewarded. @thomasfuchs Mozilla needs to stop trend-hopping, but at the same time Mozilla needes to diversify its revenue streams and stop being dependent on Google's money. I am not a fan of most of the stuff Mozilla has tried to pivot to, but some of them make sense to me (Mozilla VPN), and I don't have good solutions either 🤷 @kdj8 @thomasfuchs Not really, the Mozilla Foundation allowed people to donate to them crypto via a third-party.  @thomasfuchs The sad thing about the mobile OS it's that could work, considering that KaiOS is a thing and it's a fork of firefoxOS @thomasfuchs Hubs was actually kind of a nice place until they started barring it with a Mozilla account But yeah, all other are crap >.>  @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io Ever since Thunderbird has split off from Mozilla they have done exactly what everyone wanted; Just build a better e-mail client. @thomasfuchs @mozilla needs to stick with what theyre good at: the web I could see the phone, I might be able to see vr, but ai? crypto?? no. Firefox has only been getting worse over time, i still miss being able to set your own search engine |
@thomasfuchs honestly, a browser/PWA-first phone OS isn't a terrible idea, or maintaining a basic Linux desktop like GNOME and making it a ChromeOS-alike, or domain/email hosting, each of which could be a paid product, with certified hardware partners alongside a DIY ecosystem, to improve the sustainability of Mozilla. Mozilla could also stop trying to be a Silicon Valley tech company and run more efficient operations. They could be a lot of things which they aren't :-(