> But you don't see people complaining about those things, which largely didn't make Mozilla any money, you see them complaining about things that do make Mozilla money

Yeah, for 2 reasons.

1. Mozilla is a non-profit that takes donations.

2. These "money makers" make their money by tricking Mozilla users into selling their private data to advertisers.

And if you pay attention, you'll notice that people don't generally complain because Facebook gave us React or Llama. They complain about the facebook moneymaker of selling private data and advertising. But even then, they don't complain as much about facebook because facebook doesn't take donations.

Mozilla should've finished rewriting Firefox completely in Rust to give them an Unique Selling Point. They didn't because of management's hubris to build their own mobile operating system to take on Google (its largest financier). Google probably warned them that it would pull back its money if FirefoxOS managed to grab any significant market share. So it was destined to fail from day one.

I'm surprised they didn't integrate their own internet search engine into Firefox. But the contract with Google probably prohibits it and Google would immediately pull the plug on Firefox if it got wind of it anyway.

The head of a non-profit shouldn't be raking in millions. Not even in the Valley!

Instead they dreamed up the idea of being a multi-billion corporation next to the non-profit so they could give management commensurate compensation.

Agreed. Put half of it in investments every year, and after a few years they'd have had enough to sustain a browser nearly indefinitely.

That said, the terms of the contract are not public, and it's possible that it was restricted in a fashion which did not permit such usage.

Exactly, and now that these same businesses have LLMs, the savings they got using open source is no longer relevant. I expect we will see far more personal open source projects and a divestment from larger ones. More 1 or two people open source projects and less 100+.

Continue to exist in what form? Seamonkey aka Netscape Navigator still exists. Firefox can keep existing but not get updated enough to be a viable alternative to Chromium anymore.

In that I fully agree, but the reason it has to be at a fast pace is because when Google adds things to chrome, developers will use them and don't have to care enough about market share. I think unless Firefox gains enough market share to matter, we'll be stuck in this race.

We've seen what happens when almost everyone uses one browser engine (Internet Explorer): that vendor gets undue influence over the direction of the web, and their proprietary extensions make it difficult for others to compete.

We would end up in the same place if everything is based on Blink/WebKit; arguably we're partway there already.

Hopefully Servo will provide a competitive browser engine and full browser in the future as well, with the bonus of being great for embedding. But it's not quite there yet. And other potential competitors have their own problems. Firefox is, for the moment, the most popular and only viable browser not based on Blink/WebKit.

If what is left are Chrome forks, the Web is gone, replaced by Chrome OS Platform.

Firefox provides one of two browser engines.

If there's only one browser engine the Web immediately closes up like a giant impenetrable clam. All of humanity will be left outside, doomed to scrape forlornly on the shell with our nails and dream of the pearls within.

Without pressure from Firefox Chrome would have removed the hooks extensions need for effective ad blocking a long time ago.

How is firefox not essential to the open web?

More competition is better than less.

Yeah, they should be forced to split Chrome into a separate business and stay out of the browser business permanently. Anything short of that either won't help or will further strengthen their monopoly.

The Firefox-Bing experiment proved that the amount of search engines the "free market" can sustain is one (1). You won't get more without proactive government interference and proper legislation. Meanwhile Firefox loses funding.

"Nibbling at the edges" is what the competition authorities are proposing.

It sounds like you two agree.

I would love to see it be funded by the EU, but it shouldn't be owned or developed by the EU.

That’s true but I think most people’s beef is that most of the funding for Mozilla isn’t going to that work. Wethers that’s the case or no I have no idea, but that’s the general sentiment

I would have agreed with you a couple years ago. But a few motivated volunteer developers and some LLMs could do it (possibly along with some moderate community funding).

? They make $680M a year and use it to shill for the very company responsible for destroying the open internet. Firefox hasn't been easy to recommend for over a decade now. Where on earth is that money going if not to drain money from projects that actually work for humanity?

I'm aware that this very revenue is what Mozilla is complaining about. But the CEO could get off his fat ass and do his job finding an actual business model instead of just being a parasite.

They definitely shouldn’t. Mozilla has talented engineers, but it’s been catastrophically mismanaged for almost 20 years at this point. Keep Firefox, but let Mozilla finally die.

They could fund Lady Bird browser. Less legacy code to worry about. Run it lean like Blender.

Mozilla wasted most of its money on crappy features no one wanted. They should not be subsidized by anyone.

Why Mozilla in particular ? Or its that just what you like ?

Nope. Why should my money (taxes) fund a US corporation?