- Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward
- Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian
- Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox.
- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
- Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period.
- Make whatever partnerships are needed to have a steady stream of income, be that donation or selling out to Google or Bing.
Firefox is in trouble. Firefox is also Mozilla's raison d'être, and they should embrace that. We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight.
Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope
"- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money"
That has to be the first on the list, because that is the prerequisite for everything else.
Unfortunately there is no mechanism to achieve this within Mozilla. The people that need to go won't; they've got their trophy titles and they've feathered their nest as they want it. Thus Mozilla and Firefox with it are doomed.
Solving that would take a fork, just like it did with Netscape. It would also require an endowment of capital to fund a core of developers for years just to catch up with blink/webkit/etc. At this point the best plan might be to adopt the latter.
Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge.
So at this point what is the value proposition of saving Firefox? That's a rhetorical question; I get it. I just don't know if it's enough to attract the developers and funding to do it. It's conceivable; one could imagine a leader with the passion to inspire people and attract the funding and developers.
Maybe that person exists. If so they won't be doing it under Mozilla.
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO.
But all those projects have commercial support in some way because other companies rely on them and provide resources. It's unclear to me how Firefox achieves the same. Maybe that's a question a CEO can answer.
If you think you need a CEO then it makes perfect sense to me to pay them a competitive salary. For the same reason you should pay your devs a competitive salary. You can't just say "they should work for less". That's unfair and unrealistic. Either you need one and should pay for a good one, or you don't need one at all.
> Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian.
You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health.
Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct competition feasible. Giving Mozilla a few hundred million dollars extra isn't going to make a difference.
>> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight.
There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succeed. Firefox is very usable and increasing its market share starts with you. Or to use another cliche - be the change you wish to see.
That's not to say Mozilla doesn't need to get their shit together, but if market share drops too low they will not be able to get money to do the things they need to do.
I agree with your topline goal, but I am surprised by the way you think about it. Most of what you recommend has no obvious connection to firefox-the-program.
Like...
> - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian
> - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox.
> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
> - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period.
All of these are good suggestions if the problem is that Firefox is running out of money or has too few resources. But that's not my impression at all!
Google's strategy with Chrome demonstrates how valuable it is to develop other compelling services that use cutting-edge standards supported by your browser. Google does it in a way where they freeze out other compatible browsers, but Mozilla does not have to. I would say that the number one thing that Mozilla can do to support the web is to make web standards meaningful again - and the best way to do that is to develop things aside from web browsers to demonstrate the value of those standards.
> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives.
I don't think Mozilla having non-Firefox projects harms Firefox. I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center, with many other ongoing projects.
If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Google will set the standard, taking input from any other tech player big enough to have a seat at the table.
Its bad enough ISO certification boards and official positions of the W3C can be bought or corrupted. Let there be only one engine, controlled by Google? And even the pretense of a open and fair playing field goes away.
Open source and open protocols were not resistant enough to for profit corporations.
Now our standards are dwindling, open source projects and standards boards re completely co-opted, and the conversation on mailing lists and forums sounds like the never ending squabbling and finger wagging from your Fortune 500 HR department.
Foss and open standards have been captured by capital. And it shows in the culture.
Hell, it shows in the conversations around places like this.
However, I think they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. They have wasted so much money on the wrong things, IMO.
I think that's a bit too far - for example, Thunderbird is a great web client. I do think they should have found a way to hold onto the Servo team and make that engine more useable and better than the base chromium engine. If they had been able to keep the Rust foundation on board, it would have also made sense.
However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on the wrong products.
Another interesting idea: what if they courted alternate browser projects and/or environments like electron to use the Firefox engine the way those currently tend to use Chromium?
I don’t know if Firefox is currently harder to integrate than Chromium, or if they would just need to gain some sort of edge (no pun intended). But they could for example:
- Provide first-class documentation for integrating
- Provide some kind of stripped-down version that’s optimized for Electron-type scenarios; perhaps they could make it more resource-light for this usecase than Chromium is
Gaining marketshare this way could garner better support from websites and/or libraries, and might also prompt corporate support from invested companies
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.
I feel they should start trying to out “out innovate” the other browser developers. Stop playing politics, which Google will always win, and just start making new “cool shit” that developers want to use! Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use.
Also, they should be attacking things like electron, and “hybrid” mobile app development. Build a toolkit based on Gecko for cross platform development that addresses the problems with electron.
I would instead argue that Firefox's Gecko engine is beyond saving and that any money invested in it now would be better donated to other community projects because there isn't enough resource to catch up. Sticking with Gecko will eventually lead to the dismise of Firefox the organization.
Microsoft, with their resource and their ability to bundle Microsoft Edge in with Windows, couldn't get any appreciable amount of marketshare. Firefox, with less resource than Microsoft, won't fare any better.
Rebuilding Firefox with Chronium would salvage whatever the mindshare/marketshare left. Then Firefox could still wield some influence with their marketshare and the threat of forking Chronium.
This set of policies would spell the end of Mozilla, and the end of Firefox unless the community (or another org) picked it up. Mozilla is mostly funded by search engine companies, the largest being Google, and any direct attempt to compete with Chrome would probably end a significant chunk of that funding.
Like it or not, unless Mozilla does what Google sees as acceptable, Firefox can't continue. The only way to turn Firefox around and continue development would be to find an alternative benefactor.
Use all/most of the money from the Google deal to build a fund. Even doing this for a couple years will build a huge backup plan for Firefox and they can look at not relying on the deal for survival. Instead work off the interest earned on the fund.
Cutting organizational expenses might be good for unrelated reasons, but I don't see how that increases the market share of Firefox, and I can think of a few ways it could decrease their market share.
on a more serious note, what if mozilla fires ALL execs? will it just crumble under its own weight or will that "industry linked remuneration" be replaced with more money for actual developers who get things done and are not in for the quick buck like address bar ads?
> Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share)
And people wonder why non-profits and NGOs don’t attract the best talent. This entitled mindset is the why.
That people who want to do good work should earn less. Perfect! Let them pay for their vacation with goodwill and air.
This is especially rich coming from the HN crowd. Everybody wants a revolutionary but in the neighbour’s house.
Assuming the board are unable or unwilling to salvage FF for the sake of Mozilla, would it be worth considering starting a new non-profit browser based on FF? A new organization without all that baggage? WaterWolf or something?
Donating money isn't going to help them. It might help them look good to some techies that follow that information, but otherwise most wont care.
Mozilla needs to focus on other products to use in tandem w FF. Email service that is private, VPN (i think they have a partnership), Thunderbird, zoom like platform. They need office/business solutions most likely. Devtools, dev services, etc.
I'm not saying forget FF, but they can't just focus on 1 product or they are doomed.
They should also consider more "Oxidation" of Firefox components, if only because it lowers the bar for mere mortals to make open source contributions.
My thoughts on this are that every time I see a news piece about Firefox it's about "social justice", some code of conduct controversy, or something else utterly unimportant to web browser selection.
Being "Open Source" does nothing for me when Firefox engages in the same crap as other closed source browsers, like Pocket. Mozilla also allowed social issues to take precedence over retaining good engineers. Whether you like it or not, even assholes have a basic right to exist and the more recent culture of shun and cancel has had negative consequences for society as a whole. Maybe they were assholes, but I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are.
I suppose the problem with Mozilla is the CEO/people who make decisions about Firefox, replace them and maybe Firefox could be revived. But I have extraordinary doubts that Firefox is salvageable at this point. Mozilla's priorities have strayed so far from mine that I cannot see them becoming something I care about any time soon. I suspect it is similar for others.
There is not one issue with Firefox, the people in charge are not competent. It's mistake after mistake after mistake. These mistakes are a direct result of prioritizing diversity over talent.
- Prioritise getting the new extension framework fully functional. And continue innovating on the capabilities that are exposed. Especially on mobile where the new fenix engine is still limited to a small whitelist of extensions
- Sort out the multi-profile story. Container tabs are great, but the chrome model is also a great fit for many workflow (e.g. different people in a house or home vs. work profiles).
- Try and work on making Gecko easily embeddable again. Webkit/Blink gets all the attention because it's easy to embed into things. I suspect Gecko needs to compete in this market if it hopes to survive. It needs to have more than one company invested in it.
This ship has probably sailed now as they've fired most of their Rust and Servo teams. But IMO they ought to have created a rust-based cross-platform UI framework. They tried to do it web-based with Firefox OS but that was too slow. But with a Rust solution I think they could have owned both the mobile and desktop application spaces, which could potentially have made them a bootload of money and been a huge win for linux.
This is my personal opinion only, so take it with a grain of salt.
----
Mozilla can't save Firefox. It's not that Firefox can't be saved, but rather that Mozilla as an organization is not capable of doing so.
My take is this - Despite a history of being relatively privacy friendly, the vast majority of funding for the organization comes directly from Google (To the tune of ~90% of their total funding, straight from Google so that Google can maintain its position as the default search in Firefox).
That leads to insurmountable conflicts of interest - They claim they are for people and for privacy, but they are funded almost entirely by Google, and have to secure search deals for their continued existence (the latest just this year: https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...).
In this light - I believe it actually BENEFITS mozilla to keep Firefox relevant, but not good enough to replace Chrome. If the browser genuinely becomes good enough that customers start switching from Chrome to Firefox en mass, Mozilla needs a replacement funding plan because Google can essentially turn the lights off at any point by simply refusing to pay them for search at next contract renewal.
While they've dipped their toes into paid products... most of them are not particularly relevant or compelling on their own merits (that's not to say they're bad, just not all that innovative or likely to drive enough revenue to replace the 500million a year google is paying them)
So not only do I not believe that Mozilla is capable of "saving" Firefox in this way, I don't believe they have the right incentives to even seriously try.
#1 reason: Google has been spending millions of dollars on ads. 2010 many subway, buses, and TVs had ads about how fast Chrome was. Advertising works! Early adopters switched, followed by mainstream users.
Additional Key Strategies:
Google focused on developer experience with its tools.
Google shipped a good enough extension system.
Google invested in matching or beating a few key features but kept Chrome a leaner project overall. Worse is better and 80/20 rule.
Ecosystem evolution:
Google successfully got every major browser vendor to move to their rendering engine, except for Firefox. Gecko has always been harder to embed.
Slowly over time, some web devs stopped testing their work on Firefox since they were using Chrome and most browsers "just worked" like Chrome. Every week I hit a site that I have to use in Chrome because of a bug I'm seeing in Firefox.
Mozilla went all-in on trying to disrupt itself with a mobile phone operating system, which didn't work out.
Mozilla dabbles in many strategies (Privacy, Games, Advertising, WebXR), but none have been successful in growing active daily users.
Some people say Mozilla should focus on executing Firefox, but I think Mozilla is smart for trying to re-invent itself because the browser is a commodity, and if Google wants to own that on-ramp to the internet, it will.
Netscape and Firefox 1.0 were massive products. Mozilla needs a 3rd act to return to a significant marketshare.
> #1 reason: Google has been spending millions of dollars on ads. 2010 many subway, buses, and TVs had ads about how fast Chrome was. Advertising works! Early adopters switched, followed by mainstream users.
Not to mention paying the likes of Adobe, Avast, AVG, and Oracle to have their installers auto-install Chrome using dark patterns.
The amount of people in HN who think they can do a better job at being the CEO of every company; or being the president of any country; or being better than whoever is trying to something, astounds me.
Dudes, if saving Firefox was so easy that could be described in a single comment like that, it would have been saved already.
There are more people at Mozilla than the CEO, she is not responsible for all decisions. She is a quite nice person to be honest, has always been very kind to me while I was volunteering and later while I was working there. She is more into the Mozilla mission than many here.
Also, people need to understand that Firefox is not the reason for Mozilla existence, Firefox is one of the tools that Mozilla has (and depends on) to fullfil its mission. People need to wake up and realise that Firefox is the last remaining independent browser, and that fighting against Microsoft, Google, and Apple is damn hard.
There is a huge intersection between people who are often saying they know how to fix Mozilla and those using non-Firefox browsers. If people here who cares about Mozilla would volunteer, and also use the browser, Mozilla would be in a much better shape.
People who keep saying things like "cut their salaries", "cancel all projects", have absolutely no idea how all this works, or even how Mozilla works. I understand you're all frustrated, but you're going at it from the wrong direction. You need to remember that it was side projects that made Firefox. At that time the workhorse of Mozilla was the Mozilla Suite. It was also non-Firefox projects that brought up Rust and many other cool technologies.
very simple answer, because Mozilla doesn't control the infrastructure that runs on 80% of smartphones in the world and ships Firefox as the default browser.
It really has nothing to do with the bespoke features that people on HN pay attention to. Firefox doesn't control any platform and defaults matter. There's a reason Google pays them a gazillion dollars to be the standard search engine, which you can change with one click. It's also why Safari is still going relatively strong.
One thing missed when talking about Firefox's market share is desktop versus mobile market share.
If you look at Wikimedia's metrics, Firefox still has ~10% market share of the desktop browser market[0], not too bad considering Firefox is not the default browser on any platform outside of linux systems for the most part, and that Mozilla is much smaller entity than competing browser vendors. Still down from the ~30%[0] desktop share they had, but now they have 2 large competing entities offering default browsers so the decline is somewhat expected.
Also, contrast this with Firefox's ~0.7% share on mobile[0] where Mozilla has never been able to get a good foothold.
As long as Firefox isn't available as a default on mobile and as the share of mobile device web browsing increases, Firefox will keep losing total market share as a percentage.
Strategy wise, refocusing efforts on retaining that 10% desktop share might be a good idea. From there, work on building up more of the desktop share and then try marketing the mobile browser to the desktop browser community to build up mobile browser share.
Every time I restart Firefox, I get about 8 different prompts for "See what's new!" "Reset your Firefox profile now!" "See our new diversity initiative now!" etc.
It feels like opening a Windows Me installation from 2000. I just want to get browsing done.
Chrome went heavy on marketing. And their marketing was compelling. At a time when the web was really slow, Chrome advertised speed - remember those Chrome ads where they'd load web pages while something flew by the screen?
At a time when the web was dangerous, Chrome advertised security. Remember when Flash wasn't sandboxed? When Java executed automatically? When nothing had auto-updates?
Firefox caught up, but at best it's "as good". What's it really doing for me?
The answer is presumably privacy. And that's cool. But most people have a hard time understanding what "privacy" means. Further, you can say Chrome is weak on privacy, but it's hardly as bad as people make it out to be.
So basically Mozilla is, at best, equivalent to Chrome, but Chrome was way better for a long time. So it's got to convince people to come back, but its only selling point is really vague.
And then you have some other stuff like companies can manage Chrome via GSuite. So now your work computer is X% more likely to run Chrome. So now you have to choose to have a different experience at home and at work.
What would I do?
1. I'd refocus on the mission. Privacy is critical, security is critical. That would mean a number of things - how is it that Brave is the first browser to integrate TOR? Isn't that insane? TOR has been using Firefox by default forever, and no one thought "maybe we should just support this thing, and start heavily contributing to it" ?
2. I'd invest heavily in next-gen performance and security. Chrome has In-The-Wild zero days being exploited - that's an opportunity. The web is heavier than ever - that's an opportunity.
I'd focus heavily on that. I'd push benchmarks and I'd market those features heavily.
3. I would fire every executive who took a multi-million dollar bonus while firing tons of employees.
That's just day 1 stuff.
Going further I'd consider what it would look like to see Mozilla in the Enterprise. Integrations and management features built into the LTS releases are an obvious start.
#1, Listen to the users, even if it makes the developers lives harder and the code base uglier. (although the firefox build system is just sad, and is a symptom of the entire project, "make" should actually build a working browser)
Stop fsking with the UI and using creative non native looking stuff just to be cool like chrome, and instead focus on making the rendering/JS/developer tools engine best in class. Along with, stop breaking shit. Hiding shit in about:config and then silently removing the option doesn't make users happy, if they spent the time to figure out how to disable search in the address bar because they are tired of accidentally telling google/etc where they are browsing than actually honor that setting, or better yet, give them that option in the config UI rather than pretending they are all idiots and don't understand how computers work.
There are too many chrome only web sites, so make the developers happy with tools that make their jobs easier. About:memory is better these days, but its still a far cry from what it could be, and AFAIK its still doesn't have something similar for CPU or networking outside of the network and cpu tracing functions in the developer tools. I want to be able to manage my browser with similar functionality to my OS (aka what tab is sending/reading all this data, then drill into what/where its sending it along with better whitelist/blacklist functionality/etc)
Then for users, you will gain their appreciation if it feels faster than chrome, which far to often is still false (despite it too getting better). And yes, for tabs, menus and the like using the native widgets not only will make people happier when they change their system color schemes and firefox isn't doing its own thing, but the system components are frequently far far faster to render than firefox's. And yes, sometimes the code to have multiple UI toolkits is ugly, as is the code to support optimizing some JS path, deal with it, thats the job.
I could go on, but others have said some of my other points.
Firefox is losing market share due to shortsighted/poor decisions from leadership, and a harsh anti-competitive landscape from Microsoft/Google/Apple.
Firefox is difficult to save because it's been on constant life support from Google to misdirect antitrust investigators. Saving Firefox would involve not only raising its market share (which would probably have to involve a deal from Google/Microsoft/Apple or legislation because they currently preconfigure their systems/devices to use their proprietary browsers, which are mostly "good enough") but also find a way to wean Mozilla Corp off of the Google payments, which would mean investments in tangentially related services (like VPN, etc.)
I don't care that its losing marketshare as long as its still used and supported, just like how I don't really care that most computer users aren't using the command line anymore. The age of the average user being choosy about their web browser is over, and the hand wringing about market share is not important. Users either use the browser that ships with their OS (safari, the limited people on edge), or they download chrome because youtube and gsuite have been giving them banner ads to download chrome for a decade and that's where their autofill passwords are saved.
Instead, mozilla should really lean in on catering to the techie who is going to come to the conclusion to use firefox no matter what mozilla really does anyhow, just from the fact that its not google and you can do more with privacy oriented extensions. It's always frusterating when mozilla does things they really don't have to do, like break certain CSS configs with the move to proton for no reason other than change is good I guess (like, why pull another python 2/3-esque debacle when you don't really have to and could just support legacy syntax?), or taking out niceties like the built in RSS reader, which I found handy to confirm a feed looked OK before throwing it into my actual RSS reader. There are other issues too. Maybe I'm not doing it right in firefox, but I have to go into chrome to find the correct CSS selectors to use in a given webpage for javascripting.
Maybe it has to do with its competitors being a 1.7 trillion dollar company and a 2.5 trillion dollar company!
Winning against those requires not only better technology AND marketing AND consumer favor, but also leverage in the legal processes that enable/disable network effects. So anti-trust is unfortunately one of Mozilla's biggest hopes.
Restore "User Customizable" as a top-level priority. I came to FF initially over 15 years ago because add-ons could change almost anything including fundamental appearance and workflow. When changing to the new, far more limited add-on infrastructure ~5 yrs ago, Mozilla promised that new APIs would be added to re-enable hugely popular add-ons like Tab Mix Plus yet this and other add-ons users relied on still remain impossible to implement.
This "Have It Your Way" capability would be a profound differentiator and user value proposition to stand out from the sameness of Chrome and Safari. I still use FF but to make it usable I have to install my own UserChrome.css and User.js which isn't easy for non-tech people. On top of that I regularly have to go "fix" new UI behaviors that Mozilla's designers keep shoveling into the UX in a constant game of Whack-a-Mole.
Be the "User Agent" in the truest sense of the word that is sorely missing in the browser landscape nowadays. For that, two things are necessary:
1) become absolutely trustworthy again
2) become the power user's choice again
To me, 1) means absolute control over updates and network connections. Become the antithesis to the patronizing "Ask me again later" school of thought which has become so sickeningly widespread over the last few years, and instead accept that "no means no", whether you disagree or not.
And I don't have to mention "partnerships" with entities like Cliqz or sneaky downloads of marketing extensions.
2) - Firefox tried to appeal to average users and failed, losing a lot of what made it appealing to the power users and evangelists in the process. Reversing that will be painful, because it means allowing people to shoot themselves in the foot, and accepting that some people will do that occasionally.
Making a useful power user browser means accepting that a lot of its value will be created by other people, and supporting that with a deep and comprehensive extension system, instead of clinging to Googles table scraps. Having a useful extension system also means the ability to install from any source I want, no Ifs and Buts.
All of these are risky. Useful tools often are. Give Firefox back its USP and a reason to exist, because "it's not Blink" on its own simply isn't good enough... even if maybe it should.
The best way to predict the future is to analyse the constraints on what can happen.
There is no mass-switching campaign in favor of Firefox. The only foreseeable hope of one happening in the future, is if ManifestV3 kills adblockers, and people decide to switch to Firefox; but now there are so many competitors that oppose ManifestV3 (Brave, Opera, Vivaldi) that Firefox isn't ideally positioned to benefit.
Otherwise, there is no reason to expect the factors behind Firefox's decline to disappear.
Apple bundles Safari with their platforms. Google advertises Chrome on their web properties. Microsoft heavily discourages Windows users from switching away from Edge, and occasional "bugs" reset Edge as the default browser. Most corporations promote Chrome to their employees.
There is no major reason to expect any of this to change. The likeliest change is antitrust action, with "browser choice" screens[0], but I don't see why that would help Firefox more than other browsers.
There's no reason to think that continued incremental improvements in Firefox (the current path) can prevent its decline.
The ballsiest thing Mozilla could do is switch to a forked Blink engine (Mozillium?); they'd save tons of engineering resources which they could refocus on user-facing features & UX, they'd have better webcompat with cutting-edge things (VR, MIDI, etc), they'd still be a part of web standards decisions (since they could still choose how their Blink fork deviates from Google's), and could encourage other Chromium forks to rebase on Mozillium instead of Chromium. But Firefox's most diehard fans would never forgive Mozilla, and they might lose as many users as they gain.
It's hard to think of anything Mozilla can do to double Firefox's market share. Continued decline is the most likely path.
Firefox, like most modern software, is suffering from Winchester house syndrome. Hiring full-time UX designers and making them perpetually justify their salary will eventually turn any software into an unusable, unlearnable amorphous blob that blindly follows trends and alienates even the most determined users, much like hiring dozens of full-time plumbers for your house would transform it into a sci-fi movie set given enough time and money.
Firstly it is much much harder to keep a clean sheet, when you focus on privacy, than when you merely focus on introducing features and pushing your own agenda like the Chrome project does. Just one misstep and you can already lose lots of believers of the good cause. And missteps Mozilla had more than enough of during the recent years.
Secondly they time and time again incorporate things, that privacy minding people do not wish to have in their browser and make the defaults so that it is "on" by default. This erodes people's trust in Mozilla's vision and where the journey is going.
Another reason, which is a huuuuge fail in my opinion is, that I still!! cannot donate specifically for Firefox, for Thunderbird, for whatever, but only to Mozilla overall. I cannot donate with a cause, but only with trust, which has been slowly eroded. They will not get those donations they hope for and then in turn make stupid decisions, thinking that not so many people want, what they are making now, because they do not donate. Duh! I would immediately donate to projects like Thunderbird. You can pry Thunderbird from my cold dead hands! They should shut up and take my money.
[+] [-] selfhoster11|4 years ago|reply
- Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward
- Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian
- Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox.
- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
- Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period.
- Make whatever partnerships are needed to have a steady stream of income, be that donation or selling out to Google or Bing.
Firefox is in trouble. Firefox is also Mozilla's raison d'être, and they should embrace that. We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight.
[+] [-] Jayakumark|4 years ago|reply
https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
[+] [-] topspin|4 years ago|reply
That has to be the first on the list, because that is the prerequisite for everything else.
Unfortunately there is no mechanism to achieve this within Mozilla. The people that need to go won't; they've got their trophy titles and they've feathered their nest as they want it. Thus Mozilla and Firefox with it are doomed.
Solving that would take a fork, just like it did with Netscape. It would also require an endowment of capital to fund a core of developers for years just to catch up with blink/webkit/etc. At this point the best plan might be to adopt the latter.
Thing is the market is producing this without Mozilla. Brave and others are delivering real alternatives to Chrome, Safari and Edge.
So at this point what is the value proposition of saving Firefox? That's a rhetorical question; I get it. I just don't know if it's enough to attract the developers and funding to do it. It's conceivable; one could imagine a leader with the passion to inspire people and attract the funding and developers.
Maybe that person exists. If so they won't be doing it under Mozilla.
[+] [-] mulmen|4 years ago|reply
If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO.
But all those projects have commercial support in some way because other companies rely on them and provide resources. It's unclear to me how Firefox achieves the same. Maybe that's a question a CEO can answer.
If you think you need a CEO then it makes perfect sense to me to pay them a competitive salary. For the same reason you should pay your devs a competitive salary. You can't just say "they should work for less". That's unfair and unrealistic. Either you need one and should pay for a good one, or you don't need one at all.
> Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian.
Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct competition feasible. Giving Mozilla a few hundred million dollars extra isn't going to make a difference.
[+] [-] phkahler|4 years ago|reply
There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succeed. Firefox is very usable and increasing its market share starts with you. Or to use another cliche - be the change you wish to see.
That's not to say Mozilla doesn't need to get their shit together, but if market share drops too low they will not be able to get money to do the things they need to do.
[+] [-] aeturnum|4 years ago|reply
Like...
> - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian
> - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox.
> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money, and cut their salaries (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share).
> - Make sure that all donations from now on are redirected to things that support Firefox development and nothing else, period.
All of these are good suggestions if the problem is that Firefox is running out of money or has too few resources. But that's not my impression at all!
Google's strategy with Chrome demonstrates how valuable it is to develop other compelling services that use cutting-edge standards supported by your browser. Google does it in a way where they freeze out other compatible browsers, but Mozilla does not have to. I would say that the number one thing that Mozilla can do to support the web is to make web standards meaningful again - and the best way to do that is to develop things aside from web browsers to demonstrate the value of those standards.
> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives.
I don't think Mozilla having non-Firefox projects harms Firefox. I think there is every reason to believe that a healthy Mozilla has Firefox at the center, with many other ongoing projects.
[+] [-] loudtieblahblah|4 years ago|reply
Its bad enough ISO certification boards and official positions of the W3C can be bought or corrupted. Let there be only one engine, controlled by Google? And even the pretense of a open and fair playing field goes away.
Open source and open protocols were not resistant enough to for profit corporations.
Now our standards are dwindling, open source projects and standards boards re completely co-opted, and the conversation on mailing lists and forums sounds like the never ending squabbling and finger wagging from your Fortune 500 HR department.
Foss and open standards have been captured by capital. And it shows in the culture.
Hell, it shows in the conversations around places like this.
[+] [-] jms703|4 years ago|reply
However, I think they need to answer the question, why should Firefox exist? If there is no compelling reason, well, there you go. If there is, double down on that make that reason shine. They have wasted so much money on the wrong things, IMO.
[+] [-] ameminator|4 years ago|reply
However, I do agree that their leadership has made terrible decisions and they've absolutely focused on the wrong products.
[+] [-] brundolf|4 years ago|reply
I don’t know if Firefox is currently harder to integrate than Chromium, or if they would just need to gain some sort of edge (no pun intended). But they could for example:
- Provide first-class documentation for integrating
- Provide some kind of stripped-down version that’s optimized for Electron-type scenarios; perhaps they could make it more resource-light for this usecase than Chromium is
Gaining marketshare this way could garner better support from websites and/or libraries, and might also prompt corporate support from invested companies
[+] [-] generalizations|4 years ago|reply
They fired the CEO that knew what he was doing. Personally, I think Mozilla is getting what they asked for.
[+] [-] samwillis|4 years ago|reply
I feel they should start trying to out “out innovate” the other browser developers. Stop playing politics, which Google will always win, and just start making new “cool shit” that developers want to use! Hire the best innovative thinkers in the industry and set them free to invent browser apis for developers to use.
Also, they should be attacking things like electron, and “hybrid” mobile app development. Build a toolkit based on Gecko for cross platform development that addresses the problems with electron.
[+] [-] wolpoli|4 years ago|reply
Microsoft, with their resource and their ability to bundle Microsoft Edge in with Windows, couldn't get any appreciable amount of marketshare. Firefox, with less resource than Microsoft, won't fare any better.
Rebuilding Firefox with Chronium would salvage whatever the mindshare/marketshare left. Then Firefox could still wield some influence with their marketshare and the threat of forking Chronium.
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
Like it or not, unless Mozilla does what Google sees as acceptable, Firefox can't continue. The only way to turn Firefox around and continue development would be to find an alternative benefactor.
[+] [-] perryizgr8|4 years ago|reply
Use all/most of the money from the Google deal to build a fund. Even doing this for a couple years will build a huge backup plan for Firefox and they can look at not relying on the deal for survival. Instead work off the interest earned on the fund.
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|4 years ago|reply
This might be a perverse incentive depending on if your goal is to make Firefox a good browser or just a popular one.
[+] [-] jefftk|4 years ago|reply
Do you mean WebKit derivatives? Or are you predicting that Apple would switch to Chromium? (No way)
[+] [-] missedthecue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Permit|4 years ago|reply
Why stop there? Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?
[+] [-] 2Gkashmiri|4 years ago|reply
on a more serious note, what if mozilla fires ALL execs? will it just crumble under its own weight or will that "industry linked remuneration" be replaced with more money for actual developers who get things done and are not in for the quick buck like address bar ads?
[+] [-] crossroadsguy|4 years ago|reply
And people wonder why non-profits and NGOs don’t attract the best talent. This entitled mindset is the why.
That people who want to do good work should earn less. Perfect! Let them pay for their vacation with goodwill and air.
This is especially rich coming from the HN crowd. Everybody wants a revolutionary but in the neighbour’s house.
[+] [-] zo1|4 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...
[+] [-] javitury|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgotmysn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pers0n|4 years ago|reply
Donating money isn't going to help them. It might help them look good to some techies that follow that information, but otherwise most wont care.
Mozilla needs to focus on other products to use in tandem w FF. Email service that is private, VPN (i think they have a partnership), Thunderbird, zoom like platform. They need office/business solutions most likely. Devtools, dev services, etc.
I'm not saying forget FF, but they can't just focus on 1 product or they are doomed.
[+] [-] mccorrinall|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpark|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pohl|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpnx|4 years ago|reply
Being "Open Source" does nothing for me when Firefox engages in the same crap as other closed source browsers, like Pocket. Mozilla also allowed social issues to take precedence over retaining good engineers. Whether you like it or not, even assholes have a basic right to exist and the more recent culture of shun and cancel has had negative consequences for society as a whole. Maybe they were assholes, but I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are.
I suppose the problem with Mozilla is the CEO/people who make decisions about Firefox, replace them and maybe Firefox could be revived. But I have extraordinary doubts that Firefox is salvageable at this point. Mozilla's priorities have strayed so far from mine that I cannot see them becoming something I care about any time soon. I suspect it is similar for others.
There is not one issue with Firefox, the people in charge are not competent. It's mistake after mistake after mistake. These mistakes are a direct result of prioritizing diversity over talent.
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
- Prioritise getting the new extension framework fully functional. And continue innovating on the capabilities that are exposed. Especially on mobile where the new fenix engine is still limited to a small whitelist of extensions
- Sort out the multi-profile story. Container tabs are great, but the chrome model is also a great fit for many workflow (e.g. different people in a house or home vs. work profiles).
- Try and work on making Gecko easily embeddable again. Webkit/Blink gets all the attention because it's easy to embed into things. I suspect Gecko needs to compete in this market if it hopes to survive. It needs to have more than one company invested in it.
This ship has probably sailed now as they've fired most of their Rust and Servo teams. But IMO they ought to have created a rust-based cross-platform UI framework. They tried to do it web-based with Firefox OS but that was too slow. But with a Rust solution I think they could have owned both the mobile and desktop application spaces, which could potentially have made them a bootload of money and been a huge win for linux.
[+] [-] horsawlarway|4 years ago|reply
----
Mozilla can't save Firefox. It's not that Firefox can't be saved, but rather that Mozilla as an organization is not capable of doing so.
My take is this - Despite a history of being relatively privacy friendly, the vast majority of funding for the organization comes directly from Google (To the tune of ~90% of their total funding, straight from Google so that Google can maintain its position as the default search in Firefox).
That leads to insurmountable conflicts of interest - They claim they are for people and for privacy, but they are funded almost entirely by Google, and have to secure search deals for their continued existence (the latest just this year: https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...).
In this light - I believe it actually BENEFITS mozilla to keep Firefox relevant, but not good enough to replace Chrome. If the browser genuinely becomes good enough that customers start switching from Chrome to Firefox en mass, Mozilla needs a replacement funding plan because Google can essentially turn the lights off at any point by simply refusing to pay them for search at next contract renewal.
While they've dipped their toes into paid products... most of them are not particularly relevant or compelling on their own merits (that's not to say they're bad, just not all that innovative or likely to drive enough revenue to replace the 500million a year google is paying them)
So not only do I not believe that Mozilla is capable of "saving" Firefox in this way, I don't believe they have the right incentives to even seriously try.
[+] [-] ozten|4 years ago|reply
Additional Key Strategies:
Google focused on developer experience with its tools.
Google shipped a good enough extension system.
Google invested in matching or beating a few key features but kept Chrome a leaner project overall. Worse is better and 80/20 rule.
Ecosystem evolution:
Google successfully got every major browser vendor to move to their rendering engine, except for Firefox. Gecko has always been harder to embed.
Slowly over time, some web devs stopped testing their work on Firefox since they were using Chrome and most browsers "just worked" like Chrome. Every week I hit a site that I have to use in Chrome because of a bug I'm seeing in Firefox.
Mozilla went all-in on trying to disrupt itself with a mobile phone operating system, which didn't work out.
Mozilla dabbles in many strategies (Privacy, Games, Advertising, WebXR), but none have been successful in growing active daily users.
Some people say Mozilla should focus on executing Firefox, but I think Mozilla is smart for trying to re-invent itself because the browser is a commodity, and if Google wants to own that on-ramp to the internet, it will.
Netscape and Firefox 1.0 were massive products. Mozilla needs a 3rd act to return to a significant marketshare.
[+] [-] dralley|4 years ago|reply
Not to mention paying the likes of Adobe, Avast, AVG, and Oracle to have their installers auto-install Chrome using dark patterns.
[+] [-] soapdog|4 years ago|reply
Dudes, if saving Firefox was so easy that could be described in a single comment like that, it would have been saved already.
There are more people at Mozilla than the CEO, she is not responsible for all decisions. She is a quite nice person to be honest, has always been very kind to me while I was volunteering and later while I was working there. She is more into the Mozilla mission than many here.
Also, people need to understand that Firefox is not the reason for Mozilla existence, Firefox is one of the tools that Mozilla has (and depends on) to fullfil its mission. People need to wake up and realise that Firefox is the last remaining independent browser, and that fighting against Microsoft, Google, and Apple is damn hard.
There is a huge intersection between people who are often saying they know how to fix Mozilla and those using non-Firefox browsers. If people here who cares about Mozilla would volunteer, and also use the browser, Mozilla would be in a much better shape.
People who keep saying things like "cut their salaries", "cancel all projects", have absolutely no idea how all this works, or even how Mozilla works. I understand you're all frustrated, but you're going at it from the wrong direction. You need to remember that it was side projects that made Firefox. At that time the workhorse of Mozilla was the Mozilla Suite. It was also non-Firefox projects that brought up Rust and many other cool technologies.
Want to fix Mozilla? Take an active part in it.
[+] [-] Barrin92|4 years ago|reply
very simple answer, because Mozilla doesn't control the infrastructure that runs on 80% of smartphones in the world and ships Firefox as the default browser.
It really has nothing to do with the bespoke features that people on HN pay attention to. Firefox doesn't control any platform and defaults matter. There's a reason Google pays them a gazillion dollars to be the standard search engine, which you can change with one click. It's also why Safari is still going relatively strong.
[+] [-] assemblylang|4 years ago|reply
If you look at Wikimedia's metrics, Firefox still has ~10% market share of the desktop browser market[0], not too bad considering Firefox is not the default browser on any platform outside of linux systems for the most part, and that Mozilla is much smaller entity than competing browser vendors. Still down from the ~30%[0] desktop share they had, but now they have 2 large competing entities offering default browsers so the decline is somewhat expected.
Also, contrast this with Firefox's ~0.7% share on mobile[0] where Mozilla has never been able to get a good foothold.
As long as Firefox isn't available as a default on mobile and as the share of mobile device web browsing increases, Firefox will keep losing total market share as a percentage.
Strategy wise, refocusing efforts on retaining that 10% desktop share might be a good idea. From there, work on building up more of the desktop share and then try marketing the mobile browser to the desktop browser community to build up mobile browser share.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share#Summary_t...
[+] [-] nikanj|4 years ago|reply
It feels like opening a Windows Me installation from 2000. I just want to get browsing done.
[+] [-] staticassertion|4 years ago|reply
At a time when the web was dangerous, Chrome advertised security. Remember when Flash wasn't sandboxed? When Java executed automatically? When nothing had auto-updates?
Firefox caught up, but at best it's "as good". What's it really doing for me?
The answer is presumably privacy. And that's cool. But most people have a hard time understanding what "privacy" means. Further, you can say Chrome is weak on privacy, but it's hardly as bad as people make it out to be.
So basically Mozilla is, at best, equivalent to Chrome, but Chrome was way better for a long time. So it's got to convince people to come back, but its only selling point is really vague.
And then you have some other stuff like companies can manage Chrome via GSuite. So now your work computer is X% more likely to run Chrome. So now you have to choose to have a different experience at home and at work.
What would I do?
1. I'd refocus on the mission. Privacy is critical, security is critical. That would mean a number of things - how is it that Brave is the first browser to integrate TOR? Isn't that insane? TOR has been using Firefox by default forever, and no one thought "maybe we should just support this thing, and start heavily contributing to it" ?
2. I'd invest heavily in next-gen performance and security. Chrome has In-The-Wild zero days being exploited - that's an opportunity. The web is heavier than ever - that's an opportunity.
I'd focus heavily on that. I'd push benchmarks and I'd market those features heavily.
3. I would fire every executive who took a multi-million dollar bonus while firing tons of employees.
That's just day 1 stuff.
Going further I'd consider what it would look like to see Mozilla in the Enterprise. Integrations and management features built into the LTS releases are an obvious start.
[+] [-] StillBored|4 years ago|reply
Stop fsking with the UI and using creative non native looking stuff just to be cool like chrome, and instead focus on making the rendering/JS/developer tools engine best in class. Along with, stop breaking shit. Hiding shit in about:config and then silently removing the option doesn't make users happy, if they spent the time to figure out how to disable search in the address bar because they are tired of accidentally telling google/etc where they are browsing than actually honor that setting, or better yet, give them that option in the config UI rather than pretending they are all idiots and don't understand how computers work.
There are too many chrome only web sites, so make the developers happy with tools that make their jobs easier. About:memory is better these days, but its still a far cry from what it could be, and AFAIK its still doesn't have something similar for CPU or networking outside of the network and cpu tracing functions in the developer tools. I want to be able to manage my browser with similar functionality to my OS (aka what tab is sending/reading all this data, then drill into what/where its sending it along with better whitelist/blacklist functionality/etc)
Then for users, you will gain their appreciation if it feels faster than chrome, which far to often is still false (despite it too getting better). And yes, for tabs, menus and the like using the native widgets not only will make people happier when they change their system color schemes and firefox isn't doing its own thing, but the system components are frequently far far faster to render than firefox's. And yes, sometimes the code to have multiple UI toolkits is ugly, as is the code to support optimizing some JS path, deal with it, thats the job.
I could go on, but others have said some of my other points.
[+] [-] chomp|4 years ago|reply
Firefox is difficult to save because it's been on constant life support from Google to misdirect antitrust investigators. Saving Firefox would involve not only raising its market share (which would probably have to involve a deal from Google/Microsoft/Apple or legislation because they currently preconfigure their systems/devices to use their proprietary browsers, which are mostly "good enough") but also find a way to wean Mozilla Corp off of the Google payments, which would mean investments in tangentially related services (like VPN, etc.)
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
Instead, mozilla should really lean in on catering to the techie who is going to come to the conclusion to use firefox no matter what mozilla really does anyhow, just from the fact that its not google and you can do more with privacy oriented extensions. It's always frusterating when mozilla does things they really don't have to do, like break certain CSS configs with the move to proton for no reason other than change is good I guess (like, why pull another python 2/3-esque debacle when you don't really have to and could just support legacy syntax?), or taking out niceties like the built in RSS reader, which I found handy to confirm a feed looked OK before throwing it into my actual RSS reader. There are other issues too. Maybe I'm not doing it right in firefox, but I have to go into chrome to find the correct CSS selectors to use in a given webpage for javascripting.
[+] [-] uniqueuid|4 years ago|reply
Winning against those requires not only better technology AND marketing AND consumer favor, but also leverage in the legal processes that enable/disable network effects. So anti-trust is unfortunately one of Mozilla's biggest hopes.
[+] [-] mrandish|4 years ago|reply
This "Have It Your Way" capability would be a profound differentiator and user value proposition to stand out from the sameness of Chrome and Safari. I still use FF but to make it usable I have to install my own UserChrome.css and User.js which isn't easy for non-tech people. On top of that I regularly have to go "fix" new UI behaviors that Mozilla's designers keep shoveling into the UX in a constant game of Whack-a-Mole.
[+] [-] janfoeh|4 years ago|reply
1) become absolutely trustworthy again 2) become the power user's choice again
To me, 1) means absolute control over updates and network connections. Become the antithesis to the patronizing "Ask me again later" school of thought which has become so sickeningly widespread over the last few years, and instead accept that "no means no", whether you disagree or not.
And I don't have to mention "partnerships" with entities like Cliqz or sneaky downloads of marketing extensions.
2) - Firefox tried to appeal to average users and failed, losing a lot of what made it appealing to the power users and evangelists in the process. Reversing that will be painful, because it means allowing people to shoot themselves in the foot, and accepting that some people will do that occasionally.
Making a useful power user browser means accepting that a lot of its value will be created by other people, and supporting that with a deep and comprehensive extension system, instead of clinging to Googles table scraps. Having a useful extension system also means the ability to install from any source I want, no Ifs and Buts.
All of these are risky. Useful tools often are. Give Firefox back its USP and a reason to exist, because "it's not Blink" on its own simply isn't good enough... even if maybe it should.
[+] [-] concinds|4 years ago|reply
There is no mass-switching campaign in favor of Firefox. The only foreseeable hope of one happening in the future, is if ManifestV3 kills adblockers, and people decide to switch to Firefox; but now there are so many competitors that oppose ManifestV3 (Brave, Opera, Vivaldi) that Firefox isn't ideally positioned to benefit.
Otherwise, there is no reason to expect the factors behind Firefox's decline to disappear.
Apple bundles Safari with their platforms. Google advertises Chrome on their web properties. Microsoft heavily discourages Windows users from switching away from Edge, and occasional "bugs" reset Edge as the default browser. Most corporations promote Chrome to their employees.
There is no major reason to expect any of this to change. The likeliest change is antitrust action, with "browser choice" screens[0], but I don't see why that would help Firefox more than other browsers.
There's no reason to think that continued incremental improvements in Firefox (the current path) can prevent its decline.
The ballsiest thing Mozilla could do is switch to a forked Blink engine (Mozillium?); they'd save tons of engineering resources which they could refocus on user-facing features & UX, they'd have better webcompat with cutting-edge things (VR, MIDI, etc), they'd still be a part of web standards decisions (since they could still choose how their Blink fork deviates from Google's), and could encourage other Chromium forks to rebase on Mozillium instead of Chromium. But Firefox's most diehard fans would never forgive Mozilla, and they might lose as many users as they gain.
It's hard to think of anything Mozilla can do to double Firefox's market share. Continued decline is the most likely path.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
[+] [-] janitor61|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ordx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelphirkalt|4 years ago|reply
Firstly it is much much harder to keep a clean sheet, when you focus on privacy, than when you merely focus on introducing features and pushing your own agenda like the Chrome project does. Just one misstep and you can already lose lots of believers of the good cause. And missteps Mozilla had more than enough of during the recent years.
Secondly they time and time again incorporate things, that privacy minding people do not wish to have in their browser and make the defaults so that it is "on" by default. This erodes people's trust in Mozilla's vision and where the journey is going.
Another reason, which is a huuuuge fail in my opinion is, that I still!! cannot donate specifically for Firefox, for Thunderbird, for whatever, but only to Mozilla overall. I cannot donate with a cause, but only with trust, which has been slowly eroded. They will not get those donations they hope for and then in turn make stupid decisions, thinking that not so many people want, what they are making now, because they do not donate. Duh! I would immediately donate to projects like Thunderbird. You can pry Thunderbird from my cold dead hands! They should shut up and take my money.