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apfelwoiSchoppen ,
@apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world avatar

Opinion piece by a person who has little to say outside of ad-hominem.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Yeah, and she didn’t quit, she stepped down to get previous position on the board.

ghostsinthephotograph ,

Indeed. Article reads like a spoiled brat. “Get over it”. The second something like that appears, it’s crystal clear the writer thinks they’re above the reader.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

Lets just take Firefox and make it the open source standard. If we all get behind it like we did for Blender, we might succeed.

TheGrandNagus ,

I doubt it tbh.

For blender it’s fine, but for browser engines it’s different because of their sheer size, complexity, need to adhere and collaborate with others to form web standards, need for security experts, day one vulnerability patches, etc.

If Mozilla dies, random volunteers or existing projects like LibreWolf can’t just pick up the slack.

Volunteers can’t run a modern web engine, it takes hundreds of millions per year to upkeep.

There’s a reason why we’re down to just Google, Apple, and Mozilla. Nobody wants to foot the massive bill unless they have a damn good reason for doing so.

It’s probably more expensive to maintain a browser engine than a full operating system at this point. It’s truly insane how large and costly they are.

Sanctus ,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

I’m sure Linus was told the same at some point.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

The Linux kernel is actually a perfect example of this.

It’s worked on by hundreds of companies, and the bulk of the work is done by a small number of megacorps.

If it was worked on by a group of volunteers doing bits whenever they had spare time, it’d be in a much less useful state right now.

You’re seriously underestimating how large and complex web engines are. There’s a reason we’re down to 3 engines and the community hasn’t been able to create one.

It’s hard to do. It requires hundreds of millions a year to keep going.

If it were genuinely so trivial to maintain a browser engine, more would be doing it. Even easier, Firefox forks could take over maintaining the engine, as opposed to just tweaking the browser (not even having to work from scratch with a new engine). But they don’t, for the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

GhostMatter ,

KHTML was the basis of WebKit and then Blink/Chromium, so the community did make something. It was just overtaken by the corporate projects, for those same reasons you mention.

long_chicken_boat ,

those days the web was way simpler than it is now. complexity has doomed every web engine not maintained by a mega corp (and some that were, Microsoft killed their own).

ByteJunk ,
@ByteJunk@lemmy.world avatar

I feel like you missed the point.

Webengines are not more complex than a full OS, and yet, Linux works as a community driven project and Chromium does not.

The difference is that Linus is the one with final say in Linux, and he never sold out to a company. Chromium is Google.

It will never be a “community” project, because Google pumps so many resources into it. The goal is obvious: to make sure that it’s always ahead of any competitors, and anyone willing to catch up would have to match Google spending.

The brilliant move here by Google was making it open source. This ensures that no other megacorp needs to fight them, as long as their interests are aligned.

Edge has died already. Safari will follow. The future is grim.

TheGrandNagus , (edited )

Nah, you’re missing the point.

Again, maintaining a web engine takes hundreds of millions. It’s no small task.

Volunteers can’t do it.

We cannot simply take over from Mozilla if something happens. It needs corporate or governmental backing, a permanent workforce, management at the top who work on setting web standards alongside other companies, etc.

The Linux kernel was brought up against my argument, but it is in fact an argument for it. It is worked on by megacorps, and without that corporate funding would be little more than a tinkerer’s side project.

Linux has the benefit of companies relying on it and therefore wanting to maintain it. Firefox doesn’t. Businesses have chosen Chrome.

rottingleaf ,

Linux is its own OS, not a Windows clone with the goal of binary compatibility.

With Web browsers the problem is in trying to deceive ourselves that the Web itself is a neutral space. It has long ago become a hostile space, controlled by the enemy. Its standards are intended to prevent pluralism.

FoolHen ,

Check out Ladybird tho, from serenity os project (it also works in Linux). It’s developed by an open source community, and some companies are sponsoring it’s development. It’s not at a usable point, but it’s development has been impressive. If more money is donated by other companies it could be an alternative, maybe

rottingleaf ,

Of course they can’t compete on the adversary’s field when that adversary has bigger resources and monopoly in many areas.

What I don’t understand is why nobody has tried to sell the idea of an alternative Web to the wider audience?

Like Gemini, only without the “minimal” and “non-commercial hobbyist” parts.

Without trying to follow Google/MS/etc on the path intentionally chosen to not be passable for others.

whoelectroplateuntil ,

Arguably since mainly what people actually want from the Web is just a cross-platform document renderer/UI system, if you designed something new from the ground-up with zero legacy nonsense, well, those are both complex problems, but I somewhat suspect we’d end up with something better and easier to develop for than the Byzantine nightmare that is the web.

Network effects would limit growth, but I think as the web gets shittier and shittier there would be growth.

rottingleaf ,

It’s just that when people compare this to Linux vs Windows\MacOS - the correct comparison to what Mozilla is trying to do would be ReactOS vs Windows. Where’s ReactOS? Right.

Arguably since mainly what people actually want from the Web is just a cross-platform document renderer/UI system,

Yes, most customers want that and it’s rather cheap to develop (not being childish, look at Gemini again, it just should be repeated with the same means, limiting extensibility of the standard, and different goals - one, more rich markup, two, some way to replace Flash of the olden days and\or the script nightmare of today without allowing the replacement to grow into a similar monster, three, some degree of content-based addressing, like in P2P, so that CDNs and big platforms would be less important, four, something to replace the centralized PKI system with all those wildcard certificates sometimes issued to bad guys and everybody saying oops).

People who want the Byzantine nightmare, or the ad-stuffing system with some websites existing today, are all on the other side. Only if the ad-stuffing system isn’t really required for what we need to do, then those people should lose the competition and go bankrupt. I hope I’ll see that happen.

but I somewhat suspect we’d end up with something better and easier to develop for than the Byzantine nightmare that is the web.

That’s certain.

Network effects would limit growth, but I think as the web gets shittier and shittier there would be growth.

There absolutely would, especially in the times of “there’s an app for everything”.

TheGrandNagus ,

That would be excellent, but trying to convince everybody to move to a “new web” would be extremely difficult in itself, even before we start to think about the likes of Google that very much want to maintain the status quo

rottingleaf ,

Just leverage the app mentality. They do have a hundred apps for every stupid thing. Just one more.

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

The issue is that Firefox needs an org to get the Widevine DRM from its vendor (Google). Without it, they can’t support Netflix or Apple TV or YouTube.

grue ,

Yet more proof that the DMCA needs to be repealed and DRM needs to be illegal.

veniasilente ,

Or we can just drop DRM from the Standard. It’s honestly about 15 years past about time.

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Okay have fun not using YouTube

veniasilente ,

Youtube vids doesn’t use DRM, at least not for the free offerings.

In fact, via yt-dlp you can download Youtube stuff in a variety of free formats.

Cope.

HeyLow ,

Firefox will live on regardless of Mozilla’s support. Since it’s FOSS the community will keep it alive

LinkOpensChest_wav ,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

True, but web designers already treat Firefox and its offshoots as an afterthought. Do you think without Mozilla it would get even worse?

AlpacaChariot ,

Will it though? Seems like the kind of task that requires a huge amount of effort, way beyond the kind of capacity you get from casual contributions in peoples’ spare time…might be difficult to maintain feature parity and implement new standards without a full time team on it.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

couldnt you say the same about linux?

Kidplayer_666 ,

Linux is cheating by having every major tech company help develop the kernel

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

firefox doesnt have any corporate friends besides mozilla?

BarbecueCowboy ,

Not many and none that I can think of with deep pockets (besides google). I think the corporate world has almost completely piled on Chrome.

Toes ,

Sounds like we just gotta add Firefox to the kernel while Linus is on vacation.

smileyhead ,

Linux is currently mostly made by big corpo, but they are held by community and Linus’es checks.

Unfortunetly for browsers most of the giants focused on Chromium, which Google has final say over. Also Linux is OS, where browser should be simple and websites should work even if some one API is not supported. In Chromium’s world web"apps" are won’t be compatible with anything non-Chromium. Any browser would be required to support 99+% of Chromium features or not work.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

the corporate world seems desperate to kill it. its chrome/edge or GTFO

z3rOR0ne ,

In swear this mainly has to do with it’s about:config being so much more robust and vast than chromium’s //flags settings. The fact so many privacy related forks (Librewolf, Mullvad, Mull, Tor) are based off of firefox and not chromium (Ungoogled Chromium) should point to why these corporations are seething at it.

Google was/is keeping Firefox afloat via funding as the article points out. This is mainly due to the fact that Google didn’t have a real competitor in the browser space for some time until Microsoft got Edge off the ground and finally killed Internet Explorer.

Personally I see Firefox as being the superior browser for privacy and customization. I also don’t think it’s going anywhere, but it’s funding relying so heavily on one entity is an issue. If Google decides to pull it’s funding of Firefox and no other major corporation steps in to provide the needed cash flow… well who knows, guess it’ll be a chromium world after all.

artic ,

Good corpos should made suffer ,the more they cope and seethe the better

MisterD ,

They all want to FULLY control the end user.

  • probe and profile the device used
  • force unstoppable ads
  • require GPS location and maybe 2fa to make sure it’s you that is watching the ads. -web assembly alone will make script blocking impossible and enable scammers to run anything they want.

The end result will be something like the DVD menus from the 90s and 00s. The difference is that it will have full access to all the data on your computer or device.

pop ,

People like this scare me.

Kaldo ,
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

I often can't tell if they are just saying stuff like that to cope or they are really that optimistic/naive. It's a similar mentality to people constantly giving benefit of the doubt to kickstarter / early access projects that have like a 1% chance of actually living up to the made promises.

HeyLow ,

Well if by some feat it dies, the only competitor to chromium would be WebKit and Goanna(A fork of Gecko)

HeyLow ,

I scare me too

jol ,

A huge portion of Firefox code is ancient. Never mind that the codebase is gigantic. Small FOSS projects fail to organize properly, I can’t imagine maintaining Firefox without Mozilla would be a small feat.

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

And when I see Mozilla Corp’s CEO Mitchell Baker stepping down, I wonder if it’s really because she’ll be more useful devoting all her time to the foundation than overseeing Firefox’s decline into a web browser afterthought.

Almost ten years after Chrome appeared, in 2017, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard admitted, "Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want.

Baker told Fortune she decided to step down as CEO because she wants to draw attention to our increasingly malicious online world “and how humans are engaging with each other and technology.”

In Baker’s subsequent blog post, she announced that Laura Chambers, a Mozilla board member and entrepreneur with experience at Airbnb, PayPal, and eBay, will step in as interim CEO to run operations until a permanent replacement is found.

In Fortune, Chambers was more forthcoming: She’ll “focus on building out new products that address growing privacy concerns while actively looking for a full-time CEO.”

It’s hard to buy that all’s well with Mozilla, given Baker’s poor results at shepherding Firefox forward and the lack of a real replacement CEO.

The original article contains 777 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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