I like Mozilla, I respect their mission and their good nature. I can’t help but feel the billions they receive from Google make it too easy for them to be, at best, unfocused and, at worst, lazy. They offer a lot of random services like this. I fear this play is just chasing another possible mediocre revenue generator for them. Like pocket, like Mozilla vpn and private relay, etc.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Maintaining a web browser is an intensely cost and time prohibitive endeavor, especially nowadays. The FOSS community can maintain a lot of things but the sheer scale of Firefox, the need for expertise, the necessary labor, it just can't be done by volunteers and donations, at least not without using Chromium. They have to get a cash infusion from somewhere.
I don't like it anymore than you do but ultimately the issue isn't Mozilla, it's the state of the technology market. Silicon Valley is no place for a non-profit organization right now, no matter how much we need it.
What we need is regulations and anti-trust, but even that may not truly save us.
They need money. That's it. That's the long and short of it.
If you're interested in donating, go to https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/?form=donate
Those donations cannot be used for Firefox development due to the structure of Mozilla.
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I get paid next week and will definitely be donating, thank you for the link!
What's stopping web standards from being made simple or unchanging enough for a smaller project to maintain a functional web browser?
At this point the web is about as complex as an operating system in terms of complexity. That needs really strong specific standards in order for it to work, and in turn projects like web browsers are huge and complex.
If someone wanted to build a web browser that only followed the simpler parts of the specifications, it wouldn't work for many websites* and people would not use that browser.
*Whether or not sites need to be so complex is another question entirely, but the reality right now is that they are
Occasionally when I do web stuff I look into the big frameworks but quickly get overwhelmed and go back to simple html/css/js, so yeah I kind of just don't get what the point is or why anyone needs or wants complexity there. Large websites always do most stuff serverside anyway it seems, so where is this complexity even getting used? It is very mysterious to me. Suspect Google etc. are pushing stuff no one needs in this regard as well to move the web towards something only they can handle.
simple html/css/js,
There's a very large number of DOM and browser APIs now though... Even with basic JS without libraries or frameworks, you can still build fancy 2D and 3D graphics (WebGL), interact with USB devices, allow input via game controllers, stream H264 video, implement custom caching, use push notifications, and a bunch of other things. The web browser has to implement all of that complexity. They're all useful in different scenarios.
That's a good point, I guess I haven't been too aware of all that stuff.
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This seems like a reasonable and insightful take. Is there a way a non-profit could still survive in silicon valley? For ex, IETF isn't a profit focused organization.
I'm not sure if this qualifies exactly but the FOSS 3D package Blender has been surviving for quite some time. They're in Amsterdam, not silicon valley, but they seem to do really well off primarily donations and funding from some big companies.
I think the key there is funding from big companies. There's tons of standards and the like in which big companies take part - both in terms of code and financial support. Big projects like the rust compiler, the Linux kernel, blender, etc. all seem to have a lot of code and money coming in from big companies. Sadly there's only so much you can get from individuals - pretty much the only success story I know of is the wikimedia foundation.
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I hope they hit on something stand-out soon. To establish more sustainability. Seems like everything is in change right now.
What should they be doing instead? Begging for donations? I do agree in general, tho. Seems they should at least be squirreling away some (or most) of that money into a foundation, because they're obviously going to need it one day.
Would be great if they did not get money from google. They could set.up a donations program or something and regularly ask for it like Wikipedia. Donation based browser, peoples Browser.
You can donate to Mozilla, and I do. https://donate.mozilla.org/en-GB/
A lot of people will have to donate a lot to equal the amount they are getting from Google though, and if Google pulls that money I feel that Firefox would end before people donate enough to make up the shortfall.
Money donated to Mozilla goes o ly ti the foundation. The money paid by Google goes to the Mozilla Corp (Firefox).
Asking for a donation would be a damn near fatal blow to retention and they know it. Given how its going with Google's anti-trust case though, they'll need to ask for money at some point.
I feel like this relationship of: one company pays a competitor to promote an unrelated product that could very reasonably be used to engage in anti-competitive behavior should at the very least be heavily regulated by the SEC, or possibly just outright prohibited. Alphabet is the epitome of the mega-corporation who has the resources to compete viciously in almost any industry, but has the breadth for plausible deniability about who their competition is.
"What? Mozilla isn't competition...browser? Oh you mean chrome? That little thing? Nah, we just do that on the side. We're an ad company."
Meanwhile: "What? Meta? You mean like Facebook? We don't compete with them, hah, remember Google+? They compete with TikTok...Oh ads? I guess so, but that's kind of a side thing. We do mobile os/web analytics/email/whatever."
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We desperately need a company like Mozilla to take the reigns of something like Lemmy. The original developers are far too biased and short sighted to see the bigger picture, it needs to be an independent group that promotes more open source development.
It's open source, anyone can fork the repo any time they want. The original devs won't like it but also there is bugger all they can do about it. It's just that it would be a full time job to take on and no one has the time.
The solution for capitalism-out-of-control is not more capitalism. The less big money players in the fediverse the better.
Mozilla is a non profit. The most "capitalist" they get is the Mozilla Corp a company owned by the foundation which is basically just for tax purposes. Having a big player in the fediverse helps.
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lemmy and reddit are too niche. mozilla getting into mastodon or friendica is far better
God someone needs to help friendica. Mastodon and lemmy both have pretty decent ux. Friendica looks like it's from 2006.
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What do you mean? I haven't followed the development directly, I've just been a user and so far things seem to be going pretty well. Curious what shortsightedness you are talking about?
Yeah I've considered leaving Lemmy because of who is in charge of development right now. They were not ready for its sudden burst in popularity and are not handling it well.
Could you expand? How aren't they handling it well?
The biggest issues that have come up so far are moderation and database optimization. The moderation issue is significant enough that large instances have considered shutting down, but the database optimization thing is what really drives me crazy. It is absurdly expensive for hosts considering we only have 35k MAU (just one of our midsized instances should be able to host the whole userbase for the cost they currently pay) and it has been largely deprioritized to the point that contributors who have tried to fix it have been told off.
It’s one thing if it’s just a couple of devs working on the project and trying their best, it’s an entirely different thing when a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues. At this point a significant number of users have been lost because the devs have been largely unable to capitalize on previous waves on growth due to slow development.
Not to mention things like authorized fetch, which if fixed would ensure Lemmy/Mastodon interoperability and would effectively make Lemmy the go to place for groups on the fediverse. This would constitute a huge boost in engagement from the broader fediverse.
Because of all this Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute. A fork would probably be a significant improvement as far as brand perception goes.
Exhibit 1: https://programming.dev/post/5180682
Definitely seen arguments on bugzilla, should disqualify Mozilla too.
That post seems like an overreaction. Which makes me think that the linked GitHub issue is just the straw that broke the patience of the developer that has moved on. Which is fair, but their action to post an emotional and negative public announcement is as immature as the thing they're complaining about.
I am a dev, but not a Rust dev.
Rust, Go, and C# look like the future to me. Everyone is moving to strongly typed, explicitly typed languages for a reason.
Rust is as fast as it gets, and much much safer and easier than C or C++ at the cost of slightly odder syntax than higher level languages.
Microsoft has done great things with C# and open source and multi-platforming. It's the easiest, quickest, safest way to develop business applications. The performance is really pretty good until you compare it to Rust.
Go is between the two, but probably a little closer to Rust.
Other languages will stick around the same way Fortran has still been in use despite being deprecated for 30 years. But really nobody should be developing anything new in PHP.
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@AdmiralShat @Kushan It's federated right? so you don't need to leave, just move on to a different federated server in the network.. or am I missing something?
It's the developers of the software itself, not the hosts of any particular instanve.
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I think Mozilla has poor judgment and bad leadership. I don't mind if they participate but they shouldn't be in charge
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They're a bit late to the party, but better late than never...
not really social media is basically booming right now with the implosion of twitter
Better Nate than lever.
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