I remember the Amazon icon on Ubuntu. It is why I initially gave up on Linux after the first install…like WTF I don’t want Amazon in this new to me OS.
The problem is Mozilla started thinking about itself as a company, with its massive revenue from Google.
It isn’t. Firefox was most alive and most growing when it was still a grassroots initiative to build a better web browser.
When they go back to that - or someone forks and creates a charity with one sole focus (a great browser) I’ll start supporting them. I just don’t think Mozilla needs this size of org to build a better browser and and now they’re trying to do a bunch a crap I’m not interested in to justify their org size. They’ve got it back to front.
The Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit company founded in 2005 by the Mozilla Foundation. I think part of the problem is more people don’t realize this. It’s the same reason you can’t donate to Firefox development, donations to “Mozilla” go to the Mozilla Foundation, not the company that builds Firefox.
Yes, but the profits of Mozilla Corporation are all owned by the Mozilla Foundation, which has to adhere to all the usual 501.c3 rules about spending (i.e. it must be in furtherance of the stated mission of the org).
The profits are owned by the Corporation, which is why the Corporation does all the crazy spending and paying millions to executives, because as long as there is enough separation what they do internally does not affect the tax situation of the Foundation. After the for-profit pays taxes, the non-profit can get dividends and other payments from them, but it is not just a way to wash away tax from all the money.
The Corporation acts like a company because it is one. This is different than Konqueror, Epiphany, or most of the Firefox forks.
It seems highly likely that you have mischaracterized the meaning of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled but it doesn’t matter. The mere existence of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled is damning enough on its own.
This appears to be an experimental initiative within Mozilla right now. It’s not available to the public and may never be if it doesn’t pass muster for them.
This is a weird one. On the one hand, we have Mozilla, the last remaining browser company not sucking at the teat of either Google or Apple and we all expect for Mozilla to somehow generate enough money to pay enough employees to stay competitive on the other hand we have the users who expect them not to do anything to try and leverage their userbase to create financial independence.
The problem with Mozilla remains the same problem that they’ve had for a while. Mozilla doesn’t acknowledge the symbiotic relationship it has with its community and the community always over reacts, which means there’s a chasm where simple things should be easy but they’re not.
Take this for example, Mozilla only had to have a public facing discussion about this and then go and do it anyway.
Sometimes paying lip service works. But since they didn’t, you have people like OP who feel like something nefarious is happening and in the end Firefox users lose out as things like donations being pulled hurt.
Mozilla already shows ads, as do all the other browsers, however unlike the other browsers, you have a fully functioning uBlock that can and will remove anything that the preferences don’t cover.
Mozilla makes hundreds of millions from Google. Every single person could stop donating and they would continue along just fine (Well the CEO might need to take a 10 million yearly pay cut).
What weird is seeing people champion the enshittificstion of FOSS software.
I don’t think this should surprise anyone, given the new CEO they got and the announcement that was made immediately afterwards, followed by the layoffs. Fortunately, there are Firefox forks that we can switch to as a form of protest, provided that the forks keep these changes out of their codebases.
One thing I predict happening is that this move by Mozilla could spur more activities for the Firefox Forks. It would be a good opportunity for the developers of Mull, Librewolf, and Waterfox to think of ways to make their respective browsers stand out or be unique. Maybe we can one day see an Android version of Librewolf or a new web engine get developed in response to all this mess. Just a thought, of course.
New browser engines already exists : servo ( rust), Ladydbird (C++) are actively being developed. Both are still far from being daily driveable, but considering mozilla is apparently shiting the bed it’s better than nothing.
The tech communities are trying their hardest to get people to switch to Firefox. Meanwhile Mozilla is trying its hardest to get people off Firefox with decisions like this.
I really don’t understand where they are going with Mozilla’s new leadership.
Don’t they already show ads in pinned sites area. Since I am not a regular donor I click on the affiliate amazon link if I am purchasing something to support them. Now I feel like they are taking wrong signal due to this. More advertising enabled by default will make even harder to recommend firefox to new users.
Last I heard, which was admittedly a long time ago, Pale Moon was dangerously out of date with respect to security and web standards and not much more than a meme. I feel like I remember a significant change in leadership relatively recently, but has Pale Moon actually become a viable alternative?
Beyond that, WebKit is still a thing. Ladybird is too though it’s still quite a ways from primetime.
True, but you really think firefox forks would have the resources to keep up with security updates and such? Mull for one is a fork that only changes the default privacy changes and nothing more
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@beehaw.org
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Pale Moon is the only independent fork that I know of that doesn’t depend on gecko or ff
I remember the last few versions of Netscape Communicator had a “Shop” button.
This was the sign that Netscape had lost the browser war and was giving up.
I remember the Amazon icon on Ubuntu. It is why I initially gave up on Linux after the first install…like WTF I don’t want Amazon in this new to me OS.
I can live with ads but I’d prefer to pay a few dollars a year instead. I already support Mozilla through relay.
The problem is Mozilla started thinking about itself as a company, with its massive revenue from Google.
It isn’t. Firefox was most alive and most growing when it was still a grassroots initiative to build a better web browser.
When they go back to that - or someone forks and creates a charity with one sole focus (a great browser) I’ll start supporting them. I just don’t think Mozilla needs this size of org to build a better browser and and now they’re trying to do a bunch a crap I’m not interested in to justify their org size. They’ve got it back to front.
And I say this as a lifelong Firefox user.
The Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit company founded in 2005 by the Mozilla Foundation. I think part of the problem is more people don’t realize this. It’s the same reason you can’t donate to Firefox development, donations to “Mozilla” go to the Mozilla Foundation, not the company that builds Firefox.
Yes, but the profits of Mozilla Corporation are all owned by the Mozilla Foundation, which has to adhere to all the usual 501.c3 rules about spending (i.e. it must be in furtherance of the stated mission of the org).
The profits are owned by the Corporation, which is why the Corporation does all the crazy spending and paying millions to executives, because as long as there is enough separation what they do internally does not affect the tax situation of the Foundation. After the for-profit pays taxes, the non-profit can get dividends and other payments from them, but it is not just a way to wash away tax from all the money.
The Corporation acts like a company because it is one. This is different than Konqueror, Epiphany, or most of the Firefox forks.
Librewolf
I found its privacy settings too restrictive. I ended up moving to Floorp which is much closer to the Vanilla FF
It seems highly likely that you have mischaracterized the meaning of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled but it doesn’t matter. The mere existence of browser.shopping.experience2023.ads.userEnabled is damning enough on its own.
This appears to be an experimental initiative within Mozilla right now. It’s not available to the public and may never be if it doesn’t pass muster for them.
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-thoughts-on-how-you-shop-online/td-p/43015 https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/the-future-of-shopping/
This is a weird one. On the one hand, we have Mozilla, the last remaining browser company not sucking at the teat of either Google or Apple and we all expect for Mozilla to somehow generate enough money to pay enough employees to stay competitive on the other hand we have the users who expect them not to do anything to try and leverage their userbase to create financial independence.
The problem with Mozilla remains the same problem that they’ve had for a while. Mozilla doesn’t acknowledge the symbiotic relationship it has with its community and the community always over reacts, which means there’s a chasm where simple things should be easy but they’re not.
Take this for example, Mozilla only had to have a public facing discussion about this and then go and do it anyway.
Sometimes paying lip service works. But since they didn’t, you have people like OP who feel like something nefarious is happening and in the end Firefox users lose out as things like donations being pulled hurt.
Mozilla already shows ads, as do all the other browsers, however unlike the other browsers, you have a fully functioning uBlock that can and will remove anything that the preferences don’t cover.
Mozilla makes hundreds of millions from Google. Every single person could stop donating and they would continue along just fine (Well the CEO might need to take a 10 million yearly pay cut).
What weird is seeing people champion the enshittificstion of FOSS software.
And you don’t see Mozilla’s reliance on financing from its main competitor as a huge issue?
My post covers all of your points.
I don’t think this should surprise anyone, given the new CEO they got and the announcement that was made immediately afterwards, followed by the layoffs. Fortunately, there are Firefox forks that we can switch to as a form of protest, provided that the forks keep these changes out of their codebases.
One thing I predict happening is that this move by Mozilla could spur more activities for the Firefox Forks. It would be a good opportunity for the developers of Mull, Librewolf, and Waterfox to think of ways to make their respective browsers stand out or be unique. Maybe we can one day see an Android version of Librewolf or a new web engine get developed in response to all this mess. Just a thought, of course.
New browser engines already exists : servo ( rust), Ladydbird (C++) are actively being developed. Both are still far from being daily driveable, but considering mozilla is apparently shiting the bed it’s better than nothing.
The tech communities are trying their hardest to get people to switch to Firefox. Meanwhile Mozilla is trying its hardest to get people off Firefox with decisions like this.
The purpose of Mozilla is to kill Firefox. That’s what Google is paying for.
Is this because of the new ceo?
Waterfox is a good fork to move to
If Firefox goes down because of lack of funding, so will waterfox. You will be forced to move to Chromium for security and basic web features.
If you don’t use the “review checker” feature, which I didn’t know existed until now, you will be unaffected by this change.
WTF?
I really don’t understand where they are going with Mozilla’s new leadership.
Don’t they already show ads in pinned sites area. Since I am not a regular donor I click on the affiliate amazon link if I am purchasing something to support them. Now I feel like they are taking wrong signal due to this. More advertising enabled by default will make even harder to recommend firefox to new users.
ill be happy to be wrong, but there is no alternative. if we dont support firefox; were all fucked.
Hence why we need a public option.
Pale Moon is the only alternative I can think of, it’s independent of Gecko and FF
Last I heard, which was admittedly a long time ago, Pale Moon was dangerously out of date with respect to security and web standards and not much more than a meme. I feel like I remember a significant change in leadership relatively recently, but has Pale Moon actually become a viable alternative?
Beyond that, WebKit is still a thing. Ladybird is too though it’s still quite a ways from primetime.
Librewolf on PC.
Mull on Android
librewolf is a fork of firefox, without firefox librewolf also gonna die
By being a fork it wont die, but its true that its just a few folks running builds of mainstream work mozilla is doing
That’s not how forks work. A fork can exist independently of its upstream.
Can but how feasible is that?
True, but you really think firefox forks would have the resources to keep up with security updates and such? Mull for one is a fork that only changes the default privacy changes and nothing more