Whoever takes charge, I hope he/she keeps Mozilla going in the same direction it has been in the recent past, because the work coming out of that company has been nothing short of amazing in my opinion.
Mozilla's "phoenix" legacy is alive and well. I have been very skeptical of Mozilla even very recently as Firefox's many performance problems seemed insurmountable. But here I am after many years of using Chrome typing in this box using Firefox. I also hope they don't change direction. They're on fire and rising once again.
Indeed, if it weren't for my startup, Mozilla is the first place I would want to work. I've been nodding in assent with nearly all their newer initiatives -- FirefoxOS, Persona, Rust, etc. Mozilla is pushing the Internet forward in the all the right ways.
I gotta agree with napoleoncomplex - Mozilla has truly hit its stride in recent years and for my money is an example of the corporation of tomorrow - code literate and transparent, yet still kicking arse and taking names
Edit: even corporations of tomorrow will not be immune to politics it seems - rereading the post and blog makes it sound much more like a Eich/Baker coup than a well planned transition. It will be very odd to have him stay on the board - two ex-CEOs on your board makes for a lot of looking up not down for the next one
Perhaps I'm overly skeptical, but I have a hard time envisioning them as a "corporation of tomorrow" when, AFAIK/naively assume, they exist (as a corporation that can pay salaries) merely because Google dumps $x00 millions into their lap every year.
To me, this is less "how companies of tomorrow can run", and more like a bunch of techies who hit the jackpot and so can have fun building whatever technology they want.
(Which is awesome, I'm just saying I think Mozilla has a pretty unique situation.)
>"Mozilla has truly hit its stride in recent years"
Sure the Memshrink project was a great success. It's the reason I have switched from Chrome back to FF on my netbook. However, on my desktops and home Chrome remains default.
Mozilla had their chance with the electrolysis multiprocessing architecture, but killed it off to focus on Firefox OS, the Mobile OS that none wants. So their desktop browser, their bread and butter, is gimped compared to modern multithreaded browsers like IE and Chrome. Everytime I give FF another shot on my desktops, it's always the same result. The UI starts lagging when I view heavy duty JavaScript/HMTL5 pages.
Also in their petty battles with Google, they have refused to implement some great features like WebP. Mozilla gave a list of features missing, and yet when Google addressed them all in the next WebP revision, they still refused to add the patch.
Memshrink kept FF in the game, but in recent years Mozilla has consistently made poor long term strategic decisions.
Kovacs didn't really have any public visibility during his tenure. But Mozilla has been doing great, so I assume at a minimum he "just" ran things, and didn't ruin them, which by my calculus is high praise for any imported CEO, let alone one coming into an unusual organization from a very different background. Well done!
It's a bummer, not sure why this happened. I liked Gary, and saw him as the right man to shepherd Firefox OS from conception to production.
Searching for a new CEO is a huge distraction, particularly at this crucial time when they're trying to prove a major pivot and work out commercial deals with device makers.
I'm sending positive vibes to my former colleagues!
I'm typing this into a laptop running Kubuntu (in my kitchen) which is based on a mainframe operating system (I used to talk to a PDP11 via teletype half a lifetime ago).
I'm curious as to why google continues to be a important revenue stream for mozilla, despite having 'chrome' itself. Why can't google stop being lovvy dovey with mozilla?
Google isn't being "lovvy dovey" with Mozilla. They are paying for traffic. They pay for traffic from other browsers and from iOS as well. Do you think Google has a loving relationship with Apple? I sure don't.
It's a fine relationship for both sides that simply doesn't require love, or even very much like. That being said, there's a lot to like about a relationship that's been such a win-win for Mozilla and Google for nearly a decade. How many other business relationships between major Web players have done so well for so long?
It took til 2010 for them to realize that the future is mobile?! Why would we be looking to Mozilla for leadership on anything?
iPhone came out in 2007, one could argue that mobile was growing fast even before the iPhone. By 2010 Android was a huge thing too. So, what took Mozilla 3 years to figure out about mobile exactly? Even Opera seemed to see mobile as a huge deal long before 2010.
Open source needs near-commodity hardware with open specs and kernel source (mostly). Otherwise the hardware vendor uses its secrets to build a proprietary software stack.
We had Minimo, MicroB, etc. before 2010, for all the good it did. Were you paying attention? Did you see any open source smartphone winners back then? I did not.
Android did help flatten and uplift the smartphone space, and make it open. Qualcomm helped too. Kudos to those two!
[+] [-] napoleoncomplex|13 years ago|reply
Basically, Mozilla, don't change, you're awesome.
[+] [-] btipling|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jallmann|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PavlovsCat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|13 years ago|reply
Edit: even corporations of tomorrow will not be immune to politics it seems - rereading the post and blog makes it sound much more like a Eich/Baker coup than a well planned transition. It will be very odd to have him stay on the board - two ex-CEOs on your board makes for a lot of looking up not down for the next one
[+] [-] stephen|13 years ago|reply
To me, this is less "how companies of tomorrow can run", and more like a bunch of techies who hit the jackpot and so can have fun building whatever technology they want.
(Which is awesome, I'm just saying I think Mozilla has a pretty unique situation.)
[+] [-] slacka|13 years ago|reply
Sure the Memshrink project was a great success. It's the reason I have switched from Chrome back to FF on my netbook. However, on my desktops and home Chrome remains default.
Mozilla had their chance with the electrolysis multiprocessing architecture, but killed it off to focus on Firefox OS, the Mobile OS that none wants. So their desktop browser, their bread and butter, is gimped compared to modern multithreaded browsers like IE and Chrome. Everytime I give FF another shot on my desktops, it's always the same result. The UI starts lagging when I view heavy duty JavaScript/HMTL5 pages.
Also in their petty battles with Google, they have refused to implement some great features like WebP. Mozilla gave a list of features missing, and yet when Google addressed them all in the next WebP revision, they still refused to add the patch.
Memshrink kept FF in the game, but in recent years Mozilla has consistently made poor long term strategic decisions.
[+] [-] georgemcbay|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burntsushi|13 years ago|reply
[1] - https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-April/00355...
[+] [-] DannyBee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlinksva|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arturadib|13 years ago|reply
Searching for a new CEO is a huge distraction, particularly at this crucial time when they're trying to prove a major pivot and work out commercial deals with device makers.
I'm sending positive vibes to my former colleagues!
[+] [-] keithpeter|13 years ago|reply
I'm typing this into a laptop running Kubuntu (in my kitchen) which is based on a mainframe operating system (I used to talk to a PDP11 via teletype half a lifetime ago).
Won't mobile phones be running Unix soon as well?
[+] [-] rikacomet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asadotzler|13 years ago|reply
It's a fine relationship for both sides that simply doesn't require love, or even very much like. That being said, there's a lot to like about a relationship that's been such a win-win for Mozilla and Google for nearly a decade. How many other business relationships between major Web players have done so well for so long?
[+] [-] vitno|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] programminggeek|13 years ago|reply
iPhone came out in 2007, one could argue that mobile was growing fast even before the iPhone. By 2010 Android was a huge thing too. So, what took Mozilla 3 years to figure out about mobile exactly? Even Opera seemed to see mobile as a huge deal long before 2010.
[+] [-] BrendanEich|13 years ago|reply
We had Minimo, MicroB, etc. before 2010, for all the good it did. Were you paying attention? Did you see any open source smartphone winners back then? I did not.
Android did help flatten and uplift the smartphone space, and make it open. Qualcomm helped too. Kudos to those two!
/be
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gcb0|13 years ago|reply
or is he moving to some other company? opera?