Mozilla (the Company) has always had problems. They want to be something they're not. But the people on the Mozilla engineering team are top-notch and rarely affected by company drama (and probably feel the same way as you do about it).

Mozilla is one of the few places you can do this specific type of really interesting engineering work, without having to be at Google/Apple/etc.

(ex-Mozillian here :) )

What happens to the Firefox core dev team if the Mozilla Foundation's main revenue source -- the Google search tie-in -- dries up? Google is probably just waiting for the day that Firefox market share is below a threshold of viable competition, at which point they'll pull the plug on the search engine contract and it's game over for the Mozilla Foundation, unless the Mozilla Corporation can step in and save it, which clearly it is not in a position to do.

It's possible Google will keep paying what is peanuts to them not to be technically an absolute monopoly (by keeping Firefox alive at insignificant usage level)

I think that's what's already is happening and has happening for some time. While google keeps generously funding them (even after the Yahoo debacle), they at the same time sabotage the Firefox market share every way they can (I am talking about actual sabotage, not just being "better", and not just the Firefox market share, they got caught sabotaging the original Edge as well). This way they can still say to regulators around the world that they do not have a quasi monopoly on browser (engines). "Look there is independent Apple and independent mozilla, at least!"

That actually seems like the more nefarious route, and thus the more likely one for Google.

Some search engine will be willing to pay for the spot, whether bing, ddg, or something more esoteric (ali-something?)

Why ex?

I left 8 years ago! I loved it there, but left to start ReadMe.com.

But I still love the people there (and created https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24135032 recently)

Quick look at the profile (unless you recognize the name) reveals Gregory is the founder of ReadMe.com (when you guys moved from io?!), so supposedly ex to start his own company!

Last summer! It's the most expensive thing I own haha

Wow, did that help business, or was it more of a vanity thing? I was thinking domains didn’t matter all that much.

I think pg sums it up the best: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

"The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you're so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you're a marginal company."

I'd say there's a few major reasons: protecting the name and signaling we're a real company to larger corporations.

For us, we also host websites that allows JS/CSS/HTML, so being able to put our assets on a separate domain helps with security issues.

> years doesn't have long to live

the market share is really worrying but OTOH Mozilla just secured another multi year deal with Google so in the short-medium term they are fine financially. I hope that a reason for all those projects cuts is at least partially creation of finacial reserves, in theory they do have enough cash and momentum to stay technologically relevant for at least 10 years.

Google needs Firefox to exist for anti-trust reasons. If they don’t buy fire fox’s traffic, bing will.

I always wondered if firefox would actually change default engine if google stops the cash. It would remove some chunk of users at least imo, can firefox really afford it?

They’d change the default for fresh profiles but they wouldn’t dare overwrite existing installs. The former is a minor nuisance that would only cause minor grumbling but not affect market share. The latter would be actively hostile and cause significant loss of trust.

I think last time if you were still on default you moved to the new default.

But it's hard to find a definitive record.

They switched to Yahoo for a while.

Safari and edge are enough, I doubt google needs Firefox as a competitor like gates needed Apple (and injected funds)

I thought Edge was now a paint job over Chrome?

I'm going off the top of my head here, but you can watch Netflix in 1080p (and 4K I believe, I only have a 1440p monitor) on Edge, to see up to 1080 in chrome or FF you need an extension with 4K not being possible.

I don't know if it is a tech-issue or legal, but since it can be fixed with an extension, I guess it's tech?

So is Safari, there's only really two engines now, Chrome (Edge, Safari, Opera, Brave, et al) and Firefox (Tor).

Safari isn't Chromium-based, it's WebKit; Chromium forked Blink out of it.

Oh, my mistake.

Isn't that the very definition of a "trust"?

Not according to some very well-paid lawyers, so I guess no.

I think it will take more time to say that for certain. Warp is an exception, but most of the recent improvements to Firefox were initially prototyped and developed in the experimental Servo engine which was to my knowledge intended to eventually replace all of gecko. Most of the team for that has been let go.

I think the thing to be worried about is: what will happen when they run out of stuff that's already in the pipeline? Will they be able to execute the sweeping changes they'll need to do to stay within reach of blink long term? Or will they have to concede like opera and edge did.

> most of the recent improvements to Firefox were initially prototyped and developed in the experimental Servo engine which was to my knowledge intended to eventually replace all of gecko. Most of the team for that has been let go.

This is not the case. Servo worked on big experimental moonshot projects. They had some major successes (Stylo, WebRender), but the rest of the Firefox team wasn't sitting around twiddling their thumbs. I don't think Servo ever made up more than a small fraction of the overall Firefox workforce. They had to pick and choose their projects. Note, for example, that Servo embeds SpiderMonkey instead of writing its own JS engine from scratch: https://github.com/servo/rust-mozjs

Don't worry! SpiderMonkey still has additional cool projects coming down the pipeline, none of which are dependent on Servo.

This is correct. Servo's Stylo parallelized CSS parser shipped in Firefox's "Quantum" performance release, but a huge part of the overall performance improvement came from profiling the whole system. Fixing lots of small hot spots in Firefox frontend and Gecko really added up. It's easy for tiny performance regressions to creep in here and there.

Many people are badmouthing Mozilla because they disbanded the group working on their pet language, Rust, as if this was synonym for Firefox technology. There are many things that Mozilla does beyond working on Rust.

No, just no. they were badmouthing Mozilla because they didn't like mozilla firing their rust resources while they continue to pay enormous amounts for a CEO and other higher ups while Firefox's market share is in a death spiral currently. The only thing that can save it is better branding and "gotta have it features" which Rust can bring, along with stability.

I'm not trying to defend their management, but my opinion here is that they concluded that investing in a new language wouldn't be the best/fastest way to evolve Firefox. Google may have money to invest in a new language, but Mozilla probably needs to be more focused.

The executive pay shows that their conclusions about where money should be allocated have severe issues, so it's hard to trust that choice without more justification.

> Or will they have to concede like opera and edge did.

I am sad to say this, but I think it's only a matter of time. At this point, the list of parties driving Web standards basically consists of a whole bunch of organizations that rely on Blink, plus Apple and Mozilla.

WebKit can probably hang on for a good long while because ~15% of user-agents are required by fiat to be WebKit.

Gecko? At 5% marketshare, I fear it's dropped below the point where web developers are well-incentivized worry too much about making sure their sites run well on it. Which means that it's going to get increasingly costly for individuals to continue using Firefox.

And, at the same time, actually making sure your site runs well on it is getting increasingly difficult. The rise of client-side JavaScript frameworks like React means that cross-browser issues have moved beyond easy-to-perceive things like ActiveX controls not being supported, or CSS rendering badly. Now the big problem is differences between JavaScript engines leading to annoying performance problems. And, if a developer is planning on doing the sane thing and relying mostly on libraries for their heavy lifting, there's just not that much that any individual can do about it.

My sense, at this point, is that, going forward, the Internet does still have room for free, open, community-driven standards that aren't tightly controlled by a small number of massive corporations. However, the Web (i.e., HTML, CSS and JavaScript) does not.

This is catastrophism. If Mozilla can make a browser that developers enjoy using as daily driver, developers will make stuff for it. If Mozilla can build bridges with framework makers, frameworks will work just fine. They just need to regain some of the focus that was squandered on too many moonshots and hazardous choices (FFOS, Pocket, etc).

I think that that may no longer be enough. The elephant in the room is the Web taking over non-Web apps. If Electron is part of your deployment surface, you can't escape Chromium. If Cordova is part of your deployment surface, it's Chromium or WebKit. A nice UI on the dev tools is nice, but I imagine most people would take an acceptable UI over a nice one if the acceptable one is how you get a development environment that is more comparable to what life will be like in production.

FFOS was a moonshot that burned a lot of resources, but I also suspect it's one of the few things that, had it been successful, could have guaranteed Firefox's long-term survival.

I’m old enough to remember a time when developers couldn’t “escape” Internet Explorer 5. It took years of guerrilla but slowly things changed (yeah yeah, MS dropped the ball, but even after they picked it up FF was doing just fine). Marketshare is just one element in a complex story, and Electron is just one platform - although I agree that producing an “Electron killer” should probably be very high on the list of priorities.

(And I still think FFOS was a silly move, because Mozilla will never be able to match the industrial muscle that FAANG can field. Mozilla on mobile can only succeed either by pushing harder to the court of public opinion (i.e. lobbying antitrust authorities to force Apple and Google to open up), or by partnering with another giant who wants to compete and can do the heavy lifting (Amazon, or FB, since Microsoft seems to have joined the monoculture for good).)

> I’m old enough to remember a time when developers couldn’t “escape” Internet Explorer 5. It took years of guerrilla but slowly things changed (yeah yeah, MS dropped the ball, but even after they picked it up FF was doing just fine).

Google also advertised Firefox on their home page.

Electron is shit though, the only good Electron app that doesn't completely drain my battery and hoard my cpu is vscode, EVERYTHING else is a steaming pile of shit, looking at you slack.

Flutter will be the interesting newcomer to the multi platform game, they've been working closely with the big OS teams to optimize performance on Mac, Linux and Windows and truly compete with native. So far I've only used it for mobile but the temptation is there and I'll eventually try it.

This is exactly what bothered me when I heard parts of Mozilla Devtools team were let go in the recent layoffs. It's as if they don't get the equation at all.

Better devtools = More developers = More testing = Smoother website = More market share.

I doubt they get it. Otherwise they would have seriously invested in firefox dev tools years ago, when allmost every web dev switched to chrome. Instead off Firefox with firebug before that.

As a vue developer I don't have issues with Firefox's javascript engine, maybe it's different for react? I develop on FF exclusively these days as I know that if it works here it'll likely be fine everywhere - except IE11 which is going the way of the dinosaur.

Though as if to invalidate what I just said, today's actually the first day where I found a bug in Chrome that every other browser got right. Flex reverse row was right aligning my div and every other browser properly left aligned it... I was pretty shocked.

Initially it was an option to become the engine, then after a time it simply became the place to try and engines and they said it would never be the "new" browser engine. It was a prototyping area.

Successful parts of Servo where integrated in Gecko, as was intended. So, in a way Gecko is largely Servo.

The two major Servo components are the style system and WebRender. But I wouldn't say that it is "largely" Servo by any means.

Agreed - what I don't get is: (https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...)

<quote>

However, our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year.

(... snip ...)

According to the organization's latest financial figures [PDF], $430m of its 2018 total revenue of $451m came from those internet giants – primarily Google, we understand. These deals were due to be renewed or renegotiated by November this year.

As a non-profit open-source operation, Mozilla spends as much as it receives; its 2018 staffing bill was $286m with a headcount of about 1,000, or about $286,000 per person, on average.

Despite the renewal with Google, which essentially guaranteed a continuation of its revenue for the next three years, Mozilla axed 250 of its techies on Tuesday, and shut down its office in Taiwan, blaming the “economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic.”

</quote>

Their cost is probably much more than just staffing - but still - doesn't look that bleak? I get the non-ideal situation of being dependent on you competitor like that, but it _has_ proven to be a robust source of income so far..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Affiliatio...

Btw.. is there any way to format a pretty quotation on HN?

Am I the only one who thinks an /average/ wage of 280k is pretty absurd?

The syntax was in emails before Markdown. I will loudly declare that it was invented in emails so that somebody will add the immediate predecessor, and so on until we end up at an original source.

News groups?

Nope, email via arpanet (1973) preceeded usenet (1980).

The fact that email preceded usenet does not mean that things cannot have been invented in Usenet before they were invented in email.

As a concrete example, :-) was invented on a bulletin board. See http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm for the details.

You're absolutely correct.

I'm not ancient enough to say first-hand. I know that threaded replies in BBSes in the early 80s at least coincided with usenet threaded replies.

I didn't have a proper email address until years later via my university.

It's good for short quotes, but without hardwrapping I doesn't quite work for full paragraphs. (Hardwrapping is bad for narrow screens)

Every single day hundreds of people are working on making Firefox better.

The media autoplay forced on (with settings that don't turn it off in mobile or desktop) make me miserable and seriously considering using something else that isn't Chrome.

What, Chrome has autoplay on? How can anyone stand that? It reminds me of IE7 with auto-installed toolbars that took 1/3 of the screen.

Firefox currently autoplays video that has no audio. This is a delicate balance. If browsers disable autoplay by default, then advertisers will find other ways to push video ads in users' faces. I read an anecdote that Google tried disabling autoplay on mobile and advertisers started playing video ads using an H.264 video decoder in JavaScript that paints video frames to a canvas. So users still see the video ad, but now using more bandwidth, memory, and CPU.

Can we crowdsource home addresses of advertisers who do this, and mail them shit daily until they stop? "People will be absolute dicks if we make the user experience better" is not a good argument for making the user experience worse. If the fuckers keep escalating the badness, more people will use adblockers. And if adblockers are not enough, then it's time to start mailing them shit I guess, and escalating from there.

Or using a browser where it's unambiguously blockable. A lot of people I know care less than I do about that sort of thing. That should be enough eyeballs for ad revenue, leaving people like us unmolested by that antisocial advertising behaving.

Right. The developers are bad people because of this. Curses to them. Maybe they're <insert some giant ad-oriented corporation here with F or G in the name> employees moonlighting as traitors to the human condition, already suffering from forced information shoved at us, and attention issues?

Any other browser recommendations?

It's actually where you expected it to be; under the privacy options.

  Preferences > Privacy > Autoplay Settings... > set "Block Audio" to "Block Audio and Video"

Or alternatively

  about:config > media.autoplay.default > 5

That.Option.Does.Not.Work. I'm trying to scream it from the rooftops, but apparently I am not getting through. Go to CNN, Bloomberg, food recipe sites, medical sites, etc. Autoplay is Not Off. Windows 10 and Android, the very latest public releases.

You open a page. A big box at the top has something it it. That something is video. The video loads. By the time you scroll down, it starts to play. Oh, and it jumps into a smaller box so you're Forced to observe it and click into it to stop it.

Media autoplay is not off.

Another way to phrase that is, the media autoplay is On.

The option described above Does Not Work. Another way to describe that is, it should not have video playing by itself.

Alas, video plays by itself. Apologies in advance for being terse and not explaining myself earlier.

In short, autoplay is On and the option says it's Off.

Please let me know if I can clarify any part of this.

Just tried opening a CNN (video on top), Bloomberg (video on top) and Epicurious (video on right) page on a fresh profile (using FF 80.0 on Linux) and modifying this option from the Preferences menu. Thus for: "Allow Audio and Video" video autoplays and audio is sound, "Block Audio" video starts playing and no audio is sound (audio is muted), "Block Audio and Video" video doesn't autoplay. So either a bug on Windows or you haven't modified that option or you've modified something that clashes with that option.

I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger plugins. This is Windows and Android.

I'll try disabling those.

But did you try scrolling the page? Sometimes those videos start playing when you scroll down and they become smaller and jump to the bottom right hand corner of the window.

Just confirmed on Android that Firefox is not honoring block autoplay video and audio (Settings -> Site Permissions -> Autoplay). 81.1.1

I scrolled the pages using the mouse. It is possible that on Android scrolling is a gesture that is an interaction which activates autoplay. Maybe there is an option that overrides this but you should file a bug report as by default someone will expect to block it.

Is there any way we as a community of users can help ensure Firefox remains viable in the event that Mozilla can no longer provide enough support?

It seems a shame that such a loved & enjoyed project might fall wayside without significant financial backing. I would say I would love to help, but I have no domain expertise in browsers/rendering, or how I would develop enough to contribute.

Use it, and if you make websites make sure you support it just as well as Chrome.

Yeah all you can really do is use it and suggest it to people. I do this and have made a few converts (along with helping with best extensions to get without getting in their way)

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I would happily pay $10 a month for a brand “deluxe” version of Firefox. We all complain about how Firefox isn’t making money and we continue to exist in a world where I cannot pay for it.

It boggles the mind.