More bad news from Mozilla.
The Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a “relentless onslaught of change.”
[…]Announcing the layoffs in an email to all employees on October 30, the Mozilla Foundation’s executive director Nabiha Syed confirmed that two of the foundation’s major divisions — advocacy and global programs — are “no longer a part of our structure.”
↫ Zack Whittaker at TechCrunch
This means Mozilla will no longer be advocating for an open web, privacy, and related ideals, which fits right in with the organisation’s steady decline into an ad-driven effort that also happens to be making a web browser used by, I’m sorry to say, effectively nobody. I just don’t know how many more signs people need to see before realising that the future of Firefox is very much at stake, and that we’re probably only a few years away from losing the only non-big tech browser out there. This should be a much bigger concern than it seems to be to especially the Linux and BSD world, who rely heavily on Firefox, without a valid alternative to shift to once the browser’s no longer compatible with the various open source requirements enforced by Linux distributions and the BSDs.
What this could also signal is that the sword of Damocles dangling above Mozilla’s head is about to come down, and that the people involved know more than we do. Google is effectively bankrolling Mozilla – for about 80% of its revenue – but that deal has come under increasing scrutiny from regulars, and Google itself, too, must be wondering why they’re wasting money supporting a browser nobody’s using.
We’re very close to a web ruled by Google and Apple. If that prospect doesn’t utterly terrify you, I honestly wonder what you’re doing here, reading this.
Time for all Mozilla donors to move their donations to the independent options like Ladybird.
Does Ladybird Pay for advocacy and global politics teams? If not, then it’s time to move for other browser.
I just want a browser, I don’t want to know which is the global politics.
Just give me a good browser, just this, without bullshits.
And now Firefox will pay for developers, not politics.
At this point at least, Ladybird pays only for developers.
This is nonsense… it just means they are not paying for fluff “advocacy” jobs.
Mozilla has been wasting astronomical amounts of money and putting almost none of it back into the browser.
Actually that advocacy has real world impact. How many banks or other systems block an unsupported browser? Why because no one tells/forces them to.
For example, in the UK, advocacy is what gets your browser supported by the government websites.
https://www.gov.uk/help/browser
In the EU, there are so many treaties still in effect that force support of IE.. Those are painful to comply with, let me tell you!
We are talking about them blowing millions of dollars on that… literaly VERY literally better to spend that money just implementing the required features. Also banks features are usually very basic to begin with. All of this is just blowing money out thier butts instead of putting it towards real improvements.
If it has to support IE that means a lowest common denominator exists… so basically nothing to support there because they are required to support something old which is compatible with everyone.
i am sorry, but real world does not conform to our purely-technical fantasy. you hate it, i also hate it. it is what it is.
“banks required features” are about guaranteeing that your money does not get stolen by using an insecure web browser. or rather, that the bank is not to blame for it.
this is why some banking apps will outright refuse to run on a hacked phone, and it’s perfectly normal that companies will “blow money out of their butt” to have their products recognized for specific use cases. sometimes certified for compliance. being a product backed by a company definitely helps with that.
on paper you might think that you just need to support some js and subset of web standards, but bank may refuse you service if you use an exotic browser – or an outdated one.
Hopefully some politically incorrect people to assume similar roles to pursue browser wars.
For me, there is basically Servo and Ladybird.
I expect Mozilla and FF will be dead on the Linux world within a couple of years. Why do we use FF? Because it’s support for the free Web standards. That’s been dwindling for years now… I expect this news will be the straw that breaks the camels back.
We had a whole open future and we threw it away.
So much for the interwebs. If there is no way to browse WWW outside the Windows and Mac world then I guess I’ll be doing my surfing on Gemini.
It wouldn’t be anything revolutionary when I say it is sad to lose so much of good Netscape->Mozilla heritage and lose good alternative for commercial giants’ browsers.
But if Mozilla/Firefox dies in the end I guess it’s high time to stop fussing and whining and come knocking on Brave’s door.
I’m still with Firefox, though.
With the death of Mozilla it also takes thunderbird with it. Yes, it’s not as high profile, but it’s the only truly viable/modern desktop email client for Linux.
I wonder if we’ll end up seeing a shift to betterbird or another fork or if we are left with simplified options like Kmail
This is a real concern for my company as we are small and can’t afford Enterprise licensing from Microsoft to get full fat Outlook on every workstation. The owner and the operations manager both use their own personal Office 365 accounts so they have access to Outlook, and I have Thunderbird installed on the rest of the workstations that need a reliable and fully functional email client for Windows.
My boss (ops manager) has told me in the past that I can move us to Linux workstations once all of the software and hardware we use will work. For software the only holdout is our accounting software; we have been told by the developer that we are one of the last few holdouts who haven’t moved to the cloud hosted version, which oddly enough puts us in the same position as a few extremely large corporations. Our company files are supposedly some of the largest they’ve seen due to using the software since the mid-late 90s, and it would be a nightmare when we have any sort of data corruption if not for the hourly, daily, and weekly backup schedule I keep us on.
As for hardware, apart from a couple of warehouse label printers that don’t have Linux drivers we are basically there. All of our workstations are 7th gen Intel or newer, so we can’t run Windows 11 on those oldest ones but we can move to Linux and we will be fine. Once that happens I will most likely go with either OpenSUSE or Fedora KDE. That doesn’t solve the email client problem or web browser problem, but at least it gets us secure and performant workstations.
Morgan,
One client is in a similar boat with Quicken. They are being heavily pressured to migrate to a subscription version they don’t want. The boss there doesn’t like the idea of handing over the reigns to such critical business functions.
Quicken is also rather finicky. Surprisingly it doesn’t run on a proper client/server database but uses file shares. Are you by any chance referring to Quicken as well? Haha.
I don’t like to name names, but yes it’s Quickbooks Enterprise Desktop. It’s an absolute nightmare and they are still trying to figure out how to host our huge company files in their cloud version. We’ve had our accounting firm working on it for the better part of two years now with seemingly no progress.
And yes, their file server situation is antiquated and horrible. The Enterprise Desktop client literally pulls the entire company file (several GBs for one of ours) into local memory across the network, and the server and clients are all juggling changes to the same in-memory file among all open workstations. The more people logged in, the slower it gets for everyone, and it’s also why there are many tasks that require single user mode. You also can’t open the company file across a wireless network or it corrupts the file, hence our wireless only workstations have to VNC into a wired client shoved into a corner of the wiring closet (that was Intuit’s suggestion for handling wireless client access). It’s a major pain in my ass.
Honestly the cloud hosted version will be better for us once we can get there, but Intuit is telling us our company files are simply too large to host in the cloud and they are working with our accounting firm on a way to do it.
Morgan,
From my earliest job decades ago companies have been complaining about that software. I believe the gripes with it are universal. The most surprising thing is how such hated software became so popular in the first place. It seems like intuit should have failed as a company early on, yet they thrived.
We have Quickbooks for just 2 people at my company and its STILL our problem child…. terrible update mechanism.
I hate the idea of moving MS Dynamics into the cloud as well.
We got off Quickbooks Enterprise a few years back, from an end user perspective it was horrendous to use, manage and maintain, poor compatibility, unreliable and limited plugins, delays getting patches. Historically it was pushed by accountancy firms, it seems for the larger part to simplify EOFY reporting, the accountants just grab one large flat file and run a script. As soon as the new owners took control they kyboshed Quickbooks almost immediately.
Personally, I’m not sure any of the small / medium enterprise solutions are all that great, cloud based or locally hosted they often feel like only 80% of the job was done.
I feel too many of the smaller solutions are really sole trader packages plus plus, rather than enterprise light.
Firebox has been my browser of choice for decades but truly it has been a while since I have felt there is much distinction between Firefox and any other “big tech browser”. Mozilla has a very corporate culture at this point. It is reflected in their product and product choices.
In my view, what Thom is urging us to protect in Firefox does not really exist anymore. Our best hope at this point for an “independent” browser is Ladybird although Servo is coming along again.
That said, both Chromium and Firefox are open source. You can tweak them. You can fork them. You can take out the bits you object to. I am typing this now from the Zen browser which is based on Firefox.
We have Blink, WebKit, and Gecko based browsers on Linux. No need to panic just yet. I agree though that the future is increasingly uncertain which is why we need projects like Ladybird to survive and thrive.
I understand that not everyone are fans of mozilla’s initiatives. But I am afraid of what their failure could mean even for other alternatives. Everyone’s benefited from Mozilla’s advocacy for the open web and standards. Defeating FF might be a watershed moment for corporate browsers using unchecked power to do what they want with no one being able to stand up to them. I get the impression some people don’t realize the lack of open web advocacy makes everyone more vulnerable. Remember google’s web DRM? Next time it could pass. Adblocker users are in the cross hairs right now and face a high risk of being blocked themselves whether running FF or not. If nobody’s left to challenge that, then the new norms brought about by corporate power will effect us all.
You don’t need to spend millions of dollars to do that, you need to be publicly relevant. Just like when Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg talk people listen (I am not saying that they don’t spend money in that things). I bet that the money Mozilla spent in the things you mentioned is much less than what it spent in other useless things. Mozilla was successful because Firefox was very relevant back them.
Without the alternatives like Firefox, I also see thinks like Manifest v3 just being pushed through. Or choice will be to adopt Edge over Chrome or something like that.
Mozilla’s innovations are part of the what we still have fairly open web.
But I guess Google won’t be paying Mozilla anymore and pretty much all of Mozilla’s alternative business ventures failed. Cutting costs will be necessary, their browser market share had fallen too.
Agreed. Losing a large body that maintains and advances a competing web browser is not good for all the derivatives as well as small competitors. It will only strengthen the reliance on the mainstream evil.
LibreWolf and Betterbird lives here.
This is the dark side of having the browser being an execution environment for code: The codebase becomes huge, and it takes lots of money to maintain.
There is a reason most “independent” browsers are Chrome or Firefox in a trenchcoat with some bells and whistles added. Those “independent” browsers are reliant on a codebase they have no creative control over and largely don’t understand.
So, where do we go from here? Frankly, I haven’t got a clue.
I think you meant “regulators”, not “regulars”.
Also, Google funding its competition is a strategic move to distract regulators from all the dirty ways they used to make Chrome surpass Firefox (like advertising it on every Google property there is and forcing Android Android OEMs to bundle it with AOSP if they wanted access to the Play Store and Play Services). So, unless the antitrust regulators are involved, Google will keep funding Mozilla even if Firefox’s market share is 0.1%.
Problem is, antitrust regulators are being involved, and that’s the reason for Mozilla’s panic.
Now who didn’t see this one coming?
Might wind up being unnecessary though TBH… I doubt the second Trump DOJ is going to continue with breaking up Google. They’ll probably be busy with juicier targets, like abortion providers and random trans people.
After just a few days of the Trump win and he is not into office yet. The Taliban, The Houthis and Hamas has wound down their war efforts and is now talking about peace and coexistance with the US. China has lowered the amount of bellicose talk against the west and Xi now sounds a lot friendlier to the US and the rest of the west. Even russia seems to be open to peace negotiations now. I have no idea what the end results will be, but if his second term will be as his first, perhaps he truly will be remembered as a “peace president” he is the only president in my lifetime that has not fanned flames of wars and instead ended wars. But who knows, i am not able to see the future.
I take it you’ve forgotten the entirety of Trump’s first term?
Edit: nevermind, I see you’re in Sweden, so you are basically unaffected by his domestic policies. Enjoy your nice life in a country that has socialized medicine.
How am i not affected by the tax cuts in the US, when i am in europe? For the better i might add. And the biden realignment of the tax code of the trump cuts was negative for everyone but the super rich, i give you that. But the original proposed cuts to taxes changed how much the “regular people” had to pay in taxes to the federal government and sent more of the burden onto corporations and not people. Yes this grants people that also have high income more money (or to keep more of their earned money). There is a taxation curve that most people do not understand. You can tax every person in the entire US 100% and not pay off the national debt, that is why corporations exists in the US. Otherwise it would all be private businesses personally owned by a person and not just a “legal person” like they redefined it during the biden restructure.
Democrats was the party of slavery, jim crow, keeping latin america poor through resource extraction and selective immigration. Now they pretend there was this “great switch” just because the south started to vote republican. Newsflash, the south which has majority black states, realized that the democrats was never their friends.
To summarize, i would like to end with a quote from democrat president (supposedly elected after the switch) Lyndon B Johnson: “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democratic for the next 200 years”
War on povery impoverished the growing black middle class in america and the “projects” did the same as they did in Sweden, lots of drugs and crime.
You can never tax a population and corporations more than 17.2% before it becomes detrimental to growth. Some countries decide to tax the poor, like france in the 1700s, the extremely rich as in italy during Saddams regime.
The tax imposed can never go above, at least historically if you are to gain growth and prosperity. Biden failed in this regard HEAVILY. And since Kamala did not distance herself from Biden she lost all votes from economically savvy people.
NaGERST,
Do we live in different universes? That is the opposite of what happened under Trump’s administration…
https://itep.org/corporate-taxes-before-and-after-the-trump-tax-law/
Traditional republicans cared about balancing the debt, but all of them are out of the party now. Whether people are in favor of Trump or not, it should be stated that he lead many of his private companies to bankruptcy and he brings that same mindset to the federal government…Debt exploded under trump’s first term and most economists are projecting his policies will repeat this: giving tax cuts to the corporations at the expense of the national debt, where it inevitably becomes the burden of individuals. Our corporations are taking in trillions, and yet we have tax policy that has us subsidize their taxes 🙁
I doubt many republicans actually want to admit it, but the last budget that produced significant surplus was under Clinton when taxes on corporations and the wealthy were raised following deficits generated by earlier tax cuts.
https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/
Nobody likes paying taxes, but one of the reasons middle class taxes are high is because the economic elites who take home a very significant portion of the country’s GDP do not pay their fair share. It’s easy for Trump to say he’ll fix the economy for everyone, but it’s a lie. He’s a showman feeding on the desperation of the middle class who he rightfully identified as struggling, but he is just exploiting the economic struggle for political gain. His policies are not actually for the middle class, they are for himself and wealthy donors.
The parties actually did switch social roles though. The Democrats of today would identify more with the OG Republicans and visa versa.
NaGERST,
For better or worse though Trump’s only plan is to stop conflicts by putting up the white flag. Take the way he resolved the Afghanistan war. He ended it yes, but it was by way of putting up the white flag for the taliban to take over.
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/568154-trumps-deal-with-the-taliban-set-the-stage-for-the-afghan-collapse/
Trump’s plan for Ukraine is expected to be the same. Put up a white flag and let the russian invasion stand.
Some people won’t mind this because they feel we shouldn’t be involved in international affairs, but it is reminiscent of our attempts to stay out of previous world wars. How did that work out? Coalitions like NATO were formed to never allow such things to ever happen again. For better or worse politicians that seek to retreat from NATO and the protection of international boundaries in general virtually guarantees a repeat.
In the short term, people in the US may feel indifferent thanks in large part to the physical isolation that separates us, but just as in the past this indifference leads to countries falling one at a time. Trump doesn’t mind because he’s all in on dictators ruling the world, but it leads to the fall of democracy worldwide. It’s just surprising how many people are oblivious to this and nonchalantly elect the would be dictators who favor this collapse.
This is is exactly why so many high level republicans: congressmen, DOJ staff, military generals, whitehouse aides, etc spoke against Trump. He is a danger to the constitution and democracy, but the danger is even more poignant now that all of them have lost their jobs 🙁
I mean Google as a company is very much anti-Trump and has been manipulating search results and youtube contents against him. I think they were also the #1 corporate sponsor for Kamala Harris. If he’s not completely braindead (who knows) he’ll try to minimize Google’s influence and power.
I mean they did specifically state that advocacy is still part of the mission, just not a separate organizational unit.
I love Firefox to death, but I hate to admit I’ve been forced to move to other browsers. This really feels self-inflicted.
Their biggest misstep by far was abandoning the embedded capabilities to “streamline development.” In large part all this really allowed developers to do was spaghetti-code the browser, sacrificing all of the roads Mozilla could have gone down outside the browser. Meanwhile Webkit proliferated into multiple projects that offer exceptionally clean embedded experiences, which is why we have Chrome, Edge, Electron, Brave, Opera, Steam, OBS, VSCode, various web crawlers, and about a dozen other high-profile apps using it.
Imagine for 5 seconds the free development and sponsorships Mozilla would be getting today if they had an embedded option. Look at what was happening with Servo! Samsung, Meta, and a lot of big players were like “Yes! We will contribute to this. Embedded option good. Like Mozilla. No Google.” and then Mozilla in its infinite wisdom was like “We’re going to piss this all away, even though long-term this would help make us independent from Google and competitive with Chrome. Who needs other companies contributing to our code? What is this? Open source?”
They had every opportunity to really push their strengths as an open project, but Mozilla seems to prefer isolating itself at every opportunity. I’m frustrated because I don’t think it’s too late – but we’re getting closer and closer to the point where it will be.
Mozilla: Open the f*ck up. Get something embedding into something else. Make your engine viable outside Firefox so major companies wanting the hell away from Chrome contribute and use it. Making your engine – and its divorce from Manifest V3 limitations – common enough that your technology does the advocating through raw competition. Firefox is one application competing against an ecosystem – having a single browser isn’t going to work anymore. Chrome has hundreds of stakeholders now who refuse to let it die. Mozilla, by not getting embedded, has limited itself to one stakeholder – itself.
I switched to Librewolf today, and I think that’s going to be final. Most of the things where it doesn’t work are edge cases; as for the lack of dark mode due to privacy implications, my shitty eyes need Darkreader anyway. Also it’s very obviously faster than stock Firefox, gee I wonder why.