A significant portion of this blog post is complaining about Mozilla’s repeated attempts to find new revenue streams that aren’t Firefox. It’s a sentiment I see a lot and I just don’t get it.
They complain about Google paying to be the default search provider being a bad thing, and yet when Mozilla says “yeah, we hear ya, that’s why we’re trying to find stuff to diversify into so we can become less reliant on Google” people cry and shout “you should be sticking to Firefox, why aren’t you focussing on Firefox??”
Like, which is it? Do you want Mozilla to diversify and have a more sustainable revenue stream, or do you want them to focus on Firefox and commit to reliance on Google? Because maintaining a project as big as Firefox without any funding simply isn’t possible, and people aren’t going back to paying for web browsers.
What these people want is not at all realistic. Devs want to be paid for their work. They can’t have that if Mozilla follows idiots like Lunduke’s “don’t take money from Google, but also don’t do anything that will make money. Only do Firefox.”
I’ve yet to see a single one of these people offer any alternative that comes even remotely close to being feasible.
I’m okay with Mozilla trying to diversify their source of incomes, as long as it’s focused on privacy. Firefox Relay is a great example of a paid service that helps preserving some privacy and I gladly pay for it.
I hope they’ll make more privacy-focused optional services like that. If it helps paying for Firefox continued development while detaching from Google then it’s a good idea.
The privacy of… checks notes
| Category of Personal Information Collected | Third Parties to Whom Personal Information is Sold/Shared |
|---|---|
| browsing history | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| search history | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| your device’s precise location | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| a profile about a consumer | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| records of personal property, products or services purchased | Advertising partners, Service providers |
Source: Mozilla
Good comment. I like the fact that Mozilla is branching out into Relay and VPN as subscription services. I’ve got to pay someone for VPN, after all, and email masking looks interesting. If the revenue from those kinds of useful subscriptions helps to sustain Firefox and it’s derivatives, so much the better.
That’s the thing. They aren’t different people. Just people with unrealistic expectations.
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms, I’m not sure why you decided to respond to this comment exclusively.
IIRC deleted response to your comment pointed out that you say Mozilla employees need to be paid, but Mozilla fired its employees and then paid its CEO more. So if we’re talking about misaligned ideas…
They get roughly as much in donations as they spend on ff dev. They get a LOT more from google, that they spend on… bs.
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
Of course they spend it on more than just Firefox. What part of “we’re trying to diversify” don’t you understand?
And I’m sorry, Lunduke is not a trustable source. He went seriously off the deep end years ago.
From a great Linux content creator to a crazed Qanon, COVID conspiracy anti-vaxx nut trying to pedal all kinds of nonsense, who loves to shit on LGBT Linux devs. I really don’t know what the hell happened to him.
It depends what “diversify” hides.
Do you mean:
- Work on ethical projects that don’t scrape user data
- Stay away from trendy buzzwords like VR and AI
Or do you mean
- Buy a data-harvesting company along with all the private data it harvested
- Inject the data-harvesting company’s code into your browser, along with some extra ads
- Create a website content generator that’ll create soulless slop for SEO spammers?
Because right now, Mozilla has chosen the second route. The anti-privacy, anti-ethical route.
If Mozilla reaches the logical end state, will it even matter if they still exist? They’ll be soulless corporate trash too. There won’t be anything worth preserving.
How do rambling blog articles full of terrible assumptions and analysis like this get posted? Is there an alternative technology community I could sub to that cares about quality content?
Firefox Marketshare nosedives
That can’t be true, literally everyone on the Fediverse uses Firefox.
This is for the year 2022. The reddit migration was 2023.
Also the fediverse is less than 0.1% of social media market share.
lol people keep saying this but it’s all bots and trolls when you go look over there
The fediverse is not anywhere near large enough to stabilize those numbers.
This is the real problem with these Silicon Valley fads like crypto and AI - they cause idiot tech executives to disinvest in their worthwhile products in an attempt to get on the bandwagon.
I’d like to have the same kind of bonuses when I don’t meet my KPIs
