[furi]

I feel like we've already seen this pan out once. Mozilla received a large payment from Google for many years for making Google Search the primary search engine in Firefox. They used that money to pay large salaries, launch a dozen side projects (none of which ever achieved anything like the success of Firefox) and aim for lofty goals much like Wikimedia is doing here. Now the money's drying up (because Firefox's market share is dwindling) and Mozilla are having to cut staff, including staff who work on Firefox development, to survive.

It's less obvious what would cause Wikipedia's money to dry up, but in light of Mozilla's example the only part of this I disagree with is the article's negative angle on the endowment. Creating an endowment like that is exactly what Mozilla should have done.

[modo_mario]

>Now the money's drying up (because Firefox's market share is dwindling) and Mozilla are having to cut staff, including staff who work on Firefox development, to survive.

I think Mozilla did some good or at least had the right intentions with some of their sideprojects and think they should keep trying.

On the other hand I have to contain myself from insulting their current CEO in this context given she made her wage shoot up whilst their marketshare was shrinking so much, laid of so many from the servo team among many others which i think could have been very important for firefox's future whilst at the same time running projects like giving half a million to artists to look into the potential intersection of AI and racism if I understood it well. I wonder it's a project by one their new board members the addition of which i don't exactly see the point of either.

I don't think they should keep themselves busy with this kind of stuff but if they do fine... If they keep themselves busy with this kind of stuff they should try to make an impact but if they want to analyse and highlight fine. If they want to analyse and highlight i feel like they should give this money to researchers or a study or so. But then they give the money to some bloody artists. If it works i'd like em to fix world hunger with a painting next. And what's worse.... They do it whilst they're laying of the staff of the ship they're sinking.

[clusterfish]

Lemme know when you've outcompeted a free product advertised on Google home page that Google considers a strategic priority, then I'll listen to everything you have to say about how it's Mozilla's mismanagement that caused the decline of Firefox. Once Chrome was a priority for Google, Firefox stood no chance no matter the funding.

[furi]

You misunderstand me. I don't think Mozilla's mismanagement was responsible for Firefox's decline in market share, although it probably can't have helped. My concern is that now that that decline has happened, for one reason or another, Mozilla's mismanagement of their finances means the entire existence of Firefox is at risk, along with the seat at the web standards table that it represents.

[zozbot234]

> none of which ever achieved anything like the success of Firefox

Hi, let me introduce you to this weird newfangled language called Rust... /s

[furi]

Rust is definitely a significant and important project. That said, Firefox's peak market share was a little over 30% of desktop browsers (in 2009 so they weren't yet a sideshow), while Rust isn't even currently in the TIOBE Index top 20 (can't find any easy way to see a peak position sadly).

More importantly though, we have other Rusts. Rust has half a dozen competitors and essentially nobody thinks that making a robust new systems programming language is an unachievable goal. Firefox is the only non-profit browser engine we have and most people consider it an impossible undertaking to develop a new one from scratch at this stage. Indeed, Microsoft recently tried before conceding defeat and switching Edge over to Chromium's Blink.

[GuB-42]

Rust was supposed to be the basis of servo, a truly awesome engine that should have been under the hood of Firefox long ago. That should have been the best thing to come out of Mozilla.

We got some of it: the Rust language and Quantum. I would say the only two good things that Mozilla did in the last 10 years.

Finally, in 2020, the Servo and Rust team got the recognition they deserved, they got laid off...

It is almost like the old joke with the rower, where on a boat race, a team of eight people rowing and one steering beats a team with one person rowing and 8 steering. The losing team change its structure, now with a complex hierarchy but still a single rower, who eventually gets fired.

[influx]

How much are they bringing into Mozilla with that?