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With FF being one of the last bastions of actual web-freedom on the internet, it wouldn't surprise me for people to start digging for things in an effort to get rid of them once and for all. Especially with Google's new attempt at web-DRM.
Not many browsers left that aren't chromium/webkit based. Feels like it's only a matter of time before Google succeeds where Microsoft failed back in the early 00's...
Mozilla has been mismanaged for years. Their share of the browser market tanked while the current CEO earned millions.
Hell, when they were Netscape they lost to IE. IE became the default that it did because Netscape Navigator would take 5 minutes to boot up, and would load pages slower too.
Yes. Because Microsoft lost an entire gigantic anti-trust case over building the Browser into the OS.
Of course it loaded faster when MS poisoning the well of open web standards with embrace and extend.
And we have the records to prove this.
You're merging two different events into one.
I'm talking about the rise of IE. When it was an outright better browser. You're talking about events that happened when it was at its peak popularity, but was an outright outdated browser, coincidentally just when Chrome was ramping up.
Just like Firefox is now over Chrome.
Except now, with Google doing things MS never even dreamed of, there isn't whisper of any investigation or sanctions from the EU.
In a way I agree with you, but it's kind of well known that Mozilla depends a lot on Google from earning money. So I'm not sure that if Google pushes the DRM project, Mozilla will bite the hand that feeds it.
But the good thing is that we will probably see that very soon :)
Uhm, aren't all questions raised in that text completely on point?
I'm as far left as it gets but none of these expenses make any sense to me. The CEO pay is bonkers. Wtf are they doing? Why does the CEO deserve to basically collect the entirety of donations for... basically just extending a cash cow deal with Google?
I don't give a damn if the author is on the right but so far this looks sus as fuck.
Firefox being as good and fast as it is probably more an accomplishment of individual teams inspite of company leadership and that should be called out.
Can't sell yourself as the underdog if you're got almost half a billion in assets.
The CEO didn't get that money from the Mozilla Foundation though, but rather Reportable compensation from related organizations (W-2/1099-MISC/1099-NEC) which can be anything like parent companies or subsidiaries, etc. https://www.mlrpc.com/articles/decipher-form-990-sections-compensation-reporting/
Not sure if that makes it better, but the other compensation looks fairly alright to me.
This 'related organization' is Mozilla Corp, for-profit owned by the Mozilla Foundation that has Baker as its CEO as well.
I'm a lifelong Mozilla user, but these things stink a bit. I find even more concerning the dependency from google
I am not a fan of high compensation overall on the C-Level. What I'm worried about most with these types of companies is being destroyed from within. That's generally heralded by bringing in high cost outside consultancy firms.
I don't see that yet on their balance sheet. No idea what Mozilla Corp. does, but the Mozilla Foundation is still doing things I am aligned with.
But as with all things, constant vigilence is key. More and more it feels like there's barely anywhere left to invest time or money in. Fediverse is truly a ray of sunshine at the moment. But I wonder how long that'll last until it's been subverted by commercial interests.
A CEO that brings lots of money and consistently gets to lower the share of your flagship browser seems like a good candidate to destroyed from within. How can Mozilla stay independent when most of their money comes from these 'royalties' and most of it is from Google? We're talking hundreds of millions agains 7 mil in donations that barely pay for the CEO. How are they gonna push back against this webDRM shit google is trying to pull (or any other thing)?
I feel the same as you, I've been using Mozilla/Firefox since forever, because I felt they were doing things I'm aligned with. But I don't know anymore. I don't know if they are doing it or they have started to become just muppet opposition.
Enshittification spreads fast, once it takes roots its to late. But it sure seems like, lately, it's an all out attack on any freedom left on the internet
If Google is successful with their garbage webDRM, I feel we might actually get a sort of reset back to the early 2000s internet for those that care to get out of that corporate hell hole the "internet" has become.
And thanks to the Fediverse we might not even need something like Google ever again. But then they'll start attacking the infrastructure itself. Make it prohibitively expensive to run such instances, etc. Attack them with content that gets instances banned, etc.
No matter where one looks, it feels it's an all out war on any minor comfort or freedom left to the non-ultra-rich-ultra-connected.
So. As for Firefox. What's a good alternative? I'm very fond of the container thing they got going, but everything else can be replaced, I believe.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and providing new data points instead of just coming up with reasons to assume my questions had malintent. Appreciated!
All good. I have no idea about these taxforms, but since the compensation didn't show up on the pro-republica form analysis but is visible in the 990 form from mozilla itself, I went and tried to find out what's going on. No idea if I am right though. Don't know US taxlaws at all.
Agreed. The only official Mozilla response to Google’s WebDRM that I’ve seen was on the git page where the Firefox engineer raised the concern. Mozilla’s Google liaison shot down the statement opposing WebDRM as “premature” since it is currently “only a proposal” (by a working group of Google engineers).
Less than one minute in reading and there's already one big misrepresentation and one outright lie.
He tries to 'clear' the misconception that Mozilla develops software by showing the areas of focus of the foundation, making a point about how it should be software development and instead are some vague ideological goals.
But the foundation should be ideological. The browser is ideological and lots of the users use it because of ideology. There would be absolutely no issue with that even if the fact that is the corporation and not the foundation the one that focuses on software development weren't true. Open the frontpage of any big open source project that works with a foundation (GNOME, Fedora, Linux) and you will see front and center the big focus on promotion of ideological values. And those are values focused on internet freedom, which are absolutely related to software.That's what a foundation does. That's the way things are. And yet open mozilla.org and the first thing you'll see is the software it makes. So what's really the accusation there?
Second point makes the previous accusation make even less sense. He proceeds to show financial balances about reduction in expenses that show that the biggest one is software development. So the reality shows that Mozilla is focused on software development. The accusation goes that precisely software development is the area with the biggest cuts. One could argue that doing more with less is a good thing, specially knowing how exactly the types like the author frequently use smaller projects like librefox or ungoogled chromium as an example of a smaller more focused project that firefox should be, but I won't do that. Instead I will point out how his accusation of the biggest cuts to software development are and outright lie easily visible to anyone with eyes and basic arithmetic knowledge. While software development saw 41 million in cuts, administration and management costs went down almost 60 million. One would think that's a good thing and exactly the kind of point he should be noticing given the accusation, but if the foundation is becoming leaner in the management side that would kind of render his whole text moot, so he ignores that.
I will keep reading and analyze each point on his own, but after this and knowing very well this kind of people I don't think anyone could trust this analysis. I'm sure I'll come across the author anonymously on 4chan attacking 'pozzilla' and their 'trannyware' (I'm sorry) or on twitter harassing women developers, and I'll let him know my opinions.
I read through it and I don't know what the issue is?
There seems to be an issue with Mozilla supporting diversity and inclusion. Also he has an issue with them having enough money to run the business. I.e. not living paycheck to paycheck.
This article is nothing.
I'm a Firefox fanboy, but a lot of these expenses do seem really odd.
Is there any organization with totally claear finances and nothing strange anywhere?
I haven't seen one.
This analysis means nothing since it is only one daya point.
Like saying "you are worst human being because you are jaywalked yesterday", there is no comparstion with other companies in smiliar business.
Those are Google and Microsoft. Are they really better than Mozilla
I think a more accurate metaphor would be "you are the worst human being because people gave you money to buy food and you spent it on luxury items".
Also, while a lot of organizations have shady balance sheets, that's not a good thing nor a reason for us to accept it.
But nothing is shady here. This is just a lot of random people on the internet who have never seen what it takes to run a corporation going "Ah, yes, hm this thing this QAnon guy says is suspicious, and I don't really know anything about how businesses of this scale work, but because he said it in a suspicious tone there must be something to suspect."
Like what?
Funny how this worthless fear mongering is appearing right as people start to protest chromium.
Great post. Does it matter if it's right or left wing? How did you concluded that
Lunduke is known to have been defending quite extremist (on the right side of the political spectrum) view point on certain subjects.
As such, many people, me included, do not really like him.
It's still just ad hominem.
Ad hominem applies to arguments. The source of an argument does not affect the soundness of that argument.
But it's not a fallacy to question an overarching narrative based on the source. If a person keeps selectively choosing facts and twisting words to forward a specific narrative, it's not fallacious to view what that person says with skepticism.
Edit: Typo. Also changed "valid" to "sound".
ad hominem: in a way that is directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
If you think his narrative is skewed and based on selectively chosen facts and twisted words, you could correct that.
And other people are doing that in the comments. I addressed your point about ad-hominem specifically. So your response is kinda irrelevant to what I wrote.
People are questioning the narrative the author is painting based on their motivations. That's different to ad-hominem.
You really want to take the position that narratives can't be skewed by the overall ethos of the author?
No.
Saying that someone leans right is considered an attack on their character now?
It absolutely matters. We need to consider that a right-wing actor is likely to exaggerate claims against an organization that is ostensibly socially-minded and represents anti-corporate interests, like Mozilla.
Organization represents anti-corporate interests.
CEO gets paid almost all donations despite poor performance.
Seems pretty corporate interests to me.
I’m not denying that Mozilla has a history of poor governance. But they are the competitor to Google here. You need to consider these things in context to understand what anti-corporate means for the internet.
The only reason they're a competitor to Google is because Google allows them to be by giving them money for the default search engine.
They're just sailing their boat until it sinks.
The author clearly has an issue with the money going to left-wing orgs specifically. They're making a big point out of all the antiracism and one of their bullet points asks why Mozilla has no problem alienating their user base.
I moved from FF to Vivaldi (couldn't find better browser, and form that to LibreWolf) due to how shitty the Mozilla Corp is. We need a fair player here but doesn't seem that we gonna have anything anytime soon
Mozilla is shitty, so you're opting for Google instead? That's like saying the air quality is bad, and opting to jump in the ocean and drown.
I said I moved back to LibreWolf (Firefox fork)
Oh sorry, my reading comprehension is clearly lacking :P I've been eyeing LibreWolf for a while, but I'm mostly too lazy to switch my addons over.
I made the same mistake lol, thought OC said he moved to Vivaldi and previously tried librewolf
@Evkob @Gargari, this is not so clear, Mozilla has made a pact with the devil some years ago and is sponsored by Google, it even employs several Google devs who develop FF, the risk of depending on outside investors. Chromium is certainly from Google, but it is, just like Gecko, FOSS and therefore every browser developer is free to gut it, throwing out any Google API, which they are doing in Vivaldi (leaving some to the user's choice in settings), no homecalls to Google.
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/a-dangerous-conflict-of-interest-between-firefox-and-google/
FWIW, Vivaldi attracts a lot of the FF power users that updates like Quantum abandoned. Vivaldi honestly wipes the floor with Firefox feature-wise especially for tab organisation, but the fact it's Chromium might push some people away.
It would've been nice if they used Gecko, but eh. I went from FF to Vivaldi to now, the Firefox fork Pulse. It's a bit janky sometimes, but with native vertical tabs and the Simple Tab Groups add-on I love it enough to use it as my main browser, and there's little to no bloat. There's also Floorp, another Firefox fork, this time from a Japanese community, which AFAIK predates Pulse and is inspired by Vivaldi, implementing some of its features like Tab Workspaces. Worth mentioning for those wanting a more Vivaldi-like experience.