5 ms·

I think a fundamental lack of understanding/humility is the core of this conflict along with Mozilla's long and storied history of creating controversies/proble

I think a fundamental lack of understanding/humility is the core of this conflict along with Mozilla's long and storied history of creating controversies/problems out of thin air. The Mozilla leadership seems to have a unfortunate tendency to emulate the behaviors of the tech companies that their core Firefox project is often seen as an alternative too. Firefox is a good browser but is prevented from capitalizing on the skepticism the consumers feel toward the tech sector by Mozilla using the exact same language and dark UI pattern to promote things like pocket that the user-base never asked for, and jump on to the lets enforce the use of AI everywhere that's driving discontent within the proprietary ecosystems, and this is yet another example of this class of behavior from the Mozilla leadership.

lopis 11mo ago
It's the mismstch of expectations that causes good communities to create drama. If this was Google, no one would care, as one expects Google to just do what is best for the business. But with companies like Mozilla we expect a bit better. But the truth is they are barely better and the leadership plays by the same rulebook.
- small_scombrus 11mo ago
  People did used to have decent expectations for Google back when they at least pretended to care about the "Do no evil" tagline
  - hinkley 11mo ago
    It's pretty clear they've been full evil for a while. It's documented at least back to 2011 but the rest of us didn't clue in for a while after.
  - matt89 11mo ago
    Indeed but it feels like a lifetime ago. I miss those days where I would look up to google and their products, as something new, cool and "not-evil".
    - hitarpetar 10mo ago
      it's always been marketing
      - neilv 10mo ago
        Maybe. But if the founders were at all pre-gold-rush Internet people, sentiments like "don't be evil" seemed (in my impression at the time) more the genuine norm than the exception.
  - saalweachter 10mo ago
    "Don't be evil." "Do no harm" is the doctor thing.
  - lopis 10mo ago
    Google burned all that goodwill to fuel their growth. It worked great for them. But now they have none left.
- Stranger43 11mo ago
  But why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate the desperation and authoritarianism of a potentially stagnant tech sector. I don't think it's malevolence from the mozilla leadership team but more that if you hang around people who have bet their lifesaving on the success of cloud based LLMs, being cautious and making their use "optional" might begin to sound like a really controversial position even if that's actually what the users/community want from Mozilla. Firefox market share have been declining and it's not easy to point to any obvious technical problem, so the reason for the decline is likely that the Mozilla corporation keep messing up the narrative by acting like just another Silicon Valley tech firm.
  - toyg 10mo ago
    > why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate [...] tech sector. Because they live in the same places. They go to the same restaurants, they have the same conversations, they have personal friends at FAANG... they live and breath the same ideas, the same opinions, the same perspectives. They are in a bubble, and think "their" org should partake in the same behaviours as all the other companies out there - if anything, because it will be useful for their CVs when they inevitably look for a new job next month or next year. I don't blame them, it's inevitable human behaviour. Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US.
    - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
      >Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US. They don't even have to leave the state. Just don't be stuck in that same stagnant SV bubble and bring in people with genuine ideas and initiative.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    The people running the show are not the people who started and enforce the idea of an open source initiative, that's why. If most of the current administration got ousted tomorrow you'd see them pop up as senior executives in the very companies Mozilla theoretically decries. Wolves see the community sheep build and then move in under wool coating. Doesn't mean they still are not in fact a wolf.
small_scombrus 11mo ago
I'm always surprised that stuff like the AI integration isn't done as a pre-installed extension. If it's Mozilla signed then you could give it extra permissions so it still works the same, but then people who it offends can remove it. Like how their tab containers system is a (not pre-installed) extension
- a13n 11mo ago
  ehh this reads a bit like the hn comments complaining about sites that don’t work with js disabled like what percent of firefox users do you think actually care about this?
  - lancebeet 11mo ago
    Given the abysmal market share of Firefox today I think a large percentage of the remaining users do actually care.
  - small_scombrus 10mo ago
    I'm sure it's a very small amount, but as well as making me personally happy*, (I feel) it would play into their image as the good guy. "Do you want the most minimal stripped down version of FireFox? Well you can have it!" *and after all, isn't that what's really important /s
  - ThatMedicIsASpy 10mo ago
    enough to move to zen after 20+ years
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    No one care about this story at large. It's a pretty bad argument to make among the population that does care. Every HN user can leave Firefox and it'd still be running. Fortunately, history has shown you don't need a majority of users decrying something to get noticed.
badgersnake 11mo ago
> Firefox is a good browser Increasingly it isn’t. It’s crashing 2 or 3 times a day for me now, and video conferencing is barely usable.
- ngruhn 11mo ago
  Hasn't crashed for me once and I use it daily.
  - trenchpilgrim 11mo ago
    Been crashing for me and friends for about a week now, mostly on youtube
    - ACCount37 10mo ago
      That's on YouTube. It doesn't work well on anything now, and hasn't for a long, long while.
      - surajrmal 10mo ago
        Works well on chrome and android. I've never had issues
    - tremon 10mo ago
      Blame Youtube for that. It is very much in Google's interest to have Youtube misbehave on non-Google browsers.
      - ghssds 10mo ago
        No website should be able to crash a good web browser. It's totally a Firefox failure.
    - notanastronaut 10mo ago
      Google has been caught red-handed causing deliberate issues for non-Chrome browsers. Try changing the browser-agent and see if you still have issues.
myaccountonhn 11mo ago
I think it's in the organization as well. They had really good outreach programs and educational content (though I think that's now gutted) that talked about tech ethics, but their product just follows the same bad behavior.
Aerolfos 10mo ago
>The Mozilla leadership seems to have a unfortunate tendency to emulate the behaviors of the tech companies that their core Firefox project is often seen as an alternative too. But of course, they need "competitive" salaries so they can hire "great talent" from the tech sector so that the company doesn't fall behind or something.
- xg15 10mo ago
  There is still the conspiracy theory that Mozilla is mostly a sock puppet by Google by now, mostly kept alive so Google can say that Chrome is not a monopoly. Behavior like this doesn't do a lot to dispel that theory.
- Seattle3503 10mo ago
  How would you develop Firefox?
  - Aerolfos 10mo ago
    I'm sure people will come out of the woodwork to tell me just how wrong this is, but say various Linux projects or the kernel seem to have better (better, not perfect) governance structures. Not being obsessed with rapacious growth, not chasing trends and features that look good on delivery metrics but instead building a stable product would go a long way. And frankly, for descriptions on what the product should be, standards to implement (or not), and overall strategy for a project that tries to do its best for tech as a whole - Mozillas own writeups are spot-on! They just don't seem to act in accordance with the "vibe" and ideals that blog posts etc. talk about.
  - nativeit 10mo ago
    You certainly have a style. Much better: how would you run Mozilla/develop Firefox? Any answer that’s not fully bulletproof immediately rules any other opinions you may hold illegitimate. /s
ErigmolCt 10mo ago
Mozilla has a real pattern of shooting itself in the foot
xnx 10mo ago
I wonder what the Apache Foundation could do with the immense budget of Mozilla.

lopis 11mo ago

It's the mismstch of expectations that causes good communities to create drama. If this was Google, no one would care, as one expects Google to just do what is best for the business. But with companies like Mozilla we expect a bit better. But the truth is they are barely better and the leadership plays by the same rulebook.

small_scombrus 11mo ago
People did used to have decent expectations for Google back when they at least pretended to care about the "Do no evil" tagline
- hinkley 11mo ago
  It's pretty clear they've been full evil for a while. It's documented at least back to 2011 but the rest of us didn't clue in for a while after.
- matt89 11mo ago
  Indeed but it feels like a lifetime ago. I miss those days where I would look up to google and their products, as something new, cool and "not-evil".
  - hitarpetar 10mo ago
    it's always been marketing
    - neilv 10mo ago
      Maybe. But if the founders were at all pre-gold-rush Internet people, sentiments like "don't be evil" seemed (in my impression at the time) more the genuine norm than the exception.
- saalweachter 10mo ago
  "Don't be evil." "Do no harm" is the doctor thing.
- lopis 10mo ago
  Google burned all that goodwill to fuel their growth. It worked great for them. But now they have none left.
Stranger43 11mo ago
But why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate the desperation and authoritarianism of a potentially stagnant tech sector. I don't think it's malevolence from the mozilla leadership team but more that if you hang around people who have bet their lifesaving on the success of cloud based LLMs, being cautious and making their use "optional" might begin to sound like a really controversial position even if that's actually what the users/community want from Mozilla. Firefox market share have been declining and it's not easy to point to any obvious technical problem, so the reason for the decline is likely that the Mozilla corporation keep messing up the narrative by acting like just another Silicon Valley tech firm.
- toyg 10mo ago
  > why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate [...] tech sector. Because they live in the same places. They go to the same restaurants, they have the same conversations, they have personal friends at FAANG... they live and breath the same ideas, the same opinions, the same perspectives. They are in a bubble, and think "their" org should partake in the same behaviours as all the other companies out there - if anything, because it will be useful for their CVs when they inevitably look for a new job next month or next year. I don't blame them, it's inevitable human behaviour. Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    >Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US. They don't even have to leave the state. Just don't be stuck in that same stagnant SV bubble and bring in people with genuine ideas and initiative.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  The people running the show are not the people who started and enforce the idea of an open source initiative, that's why. If most of the current administration got ousted tomorrow you'd see them pop up as senior executives in the very companies Mozilla theoretically decries. Wolves see the community sheep build and then move in under wool coating. Doesn't mean they still are not in fact a wolf.

small_scombrus 11mo ago

I'm always surprised that stuff like the AI integration isn't done as a pre-installed extension. If it's Mozilla signed then you could give it extra permissions so it still works the same, but then people who it offends can remove it. Like how their tab containers system is a (not pre-installed) extension

a13n 11mo ago
ehh this reads a bit like the hn comments complaining about sites that don’t work with js disabled like what percent of firefox users do you think actually care about this?
- lancebeet 11mo ago
  Given the abysmal market share of Firefox today I think a large percentage of the remaining users do actually care.
- small_scombrus 10mo ago
  I'm sure it's a very small amount, but as well as making me personally happy*, (I feel) it would play into their image as the good guy. "Do you want the most minimal stripped down version of FireFox? Well you can have it!" *and after all, isn't that what's really important /s
- ThatMedicIsASpy 10mo ago
  enough to move to zen after 20+ years
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  No one care about this story at large. It's a pretty bad argument to make among the population that does care. Every HN user can leave Firefox and it'd still be running. Fortunately, history has shown you don't need a majority of users decrying something to get noticed.

badgersnake 11mo ago

> Firefox is a good browser Increasingly it isn’t. It’s crashing 2 or 3 times a day for me now, and video conferencing is barely usable.

ngruhn 11mo ago
Hasn't crashed for me once and I use it daily.
- trenchpilgrim 11mo ago
  Been crashing for me and friends for about a week now, mostly on youtube
  - ACCount37 10mo ago
    That's on YouTube. It doesn't work well on anything now, and hasn't for a long, long while.
    - surajrmal 10mo ago
      Works well on chrome and android. I've never had issues
  - tremon 10mo ago
    Blame Youtube for that. It is very much in Google's interest to have Youtube misbehave on non-Google browsers.
    - ghssds 10mo ago
      No website should be able to crash a good web browser. It's totally a Firefox failure.
  - notanastronaut 10mo ago
    Google has been caught red-handed causing deliberate issues for non-Chrome browsers. Try changing the browser-agent and see if you still have issues.

myaccountonhn 11mo ago

I think it's in the organization as well. They had really good outreach programs and educational content (though I think that's now gutted) that talked about tech ethics, but their product just follows the same bad behavior.

Aerolfos 10mo ago

>The Mozilla leadership seems to have a unfortunate tendency to emulate the behaviors of the tech companies that their core Firefox project is often seen as an alternative too. But of course, they need "competitive" salaries so they can hire "great talent" from the tech sector so that the company doesn't fall behind or something.

xg15 10mo ago
There is still the conspiracy theory that Mozilla is mostly a sock puppet by Google by now, mostly kept alive so Google can say that Chrome is not a monopoly. Behavior like this doesn't do a lot to dispel that theory.
Seattle3503 10mo ago
How would you develop Firefox?
- Aerolfos 10mo ago
  I'm sure people will come out of the woodwork to tell me just how wrong this is, but say various Linux projects or the kernel seem to have better (better, not perfect) governance structures. Not being obsessed with rapacious growth, not chasing trends and features that look good on delivery metrics but instead building a stable product would go a long way. And frankly, for descriptions on what the product should be, standards to implement (or not), and overall strategy for a project that tries to do its best for tech as a whole - Mozillas own writeups are spot-on! They just don't seem to act in accordance with the "vibe" and ideals that blog posts etc. talk about.
- nativeit 10mo ago
  You certainly have a style. Much better: how would you run Mozilla/develop Firefox? Any answer that’s not fully bulletproof immediately rules any other opinions you may hold illegitimate. /s

ErigmolCt 10mo ago

Mozilla has a real pattern of shooting itself in the foot

xnx 10mo ago

I wonder what the Apache Foundation could do with the immense budget of Mozilla.