Firefox is fine. The people running it are not : technology

[-] underline960@sh.itjust.works 235 points 3 weeks ago

It's no longer the fault of long-term CEO Mitchell Baker, she of the six-million-bucks salary. She took the cash and left in February 2024. After the February 2024 layoffs that went with the "open source AI" announcement, in November, new boss Laura Chambers laid off another third of the staff, but somehow found the money to hire new executives.

Money is the problem. Not too little, but too much. Where there's wealth, there's a natural human desire to make more wealth. Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It's been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose. The Reg noted it in 2007, and it made more the next year. We were dubious when Firefox turned five.

...

Mozilla's leadership is directionless and flailing because it's never had to do, or be, anything else. It's never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. It's no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It's role-playing being a business.

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[-] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 106 points 3 weeks ago

mozilla and firefox need to learn more away from ai and more towards ethical not for profit governance. be the opposite of big tech and stand for the internet as a public utility and force or good and decency. instead of going ai bro, y'all need to stand up against racism and discrimination while pushing internet for everybody, free of profits.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 34 points 3 weeks ago

stand up against racism and discrimination

What does this mean for a browser company? I understand this being an important company value, but I don't want them filtering the internet or anything. Their primary goal should be to foster a privacy respecting web and a high performance, standards based browser.

I don't think eliminating profit from the web should be a goal. I don't care if websites make money, I just care they don't profit from my data without me agreeing to it explicitly.

I think Firefox needs to become financially independent, and that means finding a privacy respecting business model. My personal preference is a micro payment system where I can pay websites for content in exchange for no ads. That provides value to me and websites that I'd otherwise block ads on.

If AI is part of that, sure, just make it opt-in and very obvious when it's working.

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[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 88 points 3 weeks ago

That's a weird way of saying firefox is not fine.

[-] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 62 points 3 weeks ago

[-] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 68 points 3 weeks ago

I can't keep browser hopping. I want to stay with firefox. Please don't get worse!

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 35 points 3 weeks ago

forks cant survive without firefox unfortunately

[-] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 weeks ago

The article says you should stick with Firefox. If you have time, I'd recommend reading the entire article!

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[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 58 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, this is part of the new Reaganomics I like to call AIconomics. The goal isn't to produce a good product, the goal to make something flashy that tech billionaires want to throw cash at. It's not unlike crypto. Crypto has literally no actual value yet people are shitting money into bitcoins of every type in hopes that one will hit it big. Meanwhile tech billionaires keep minting new ones to entice new suckers every other week. The tech billionaires want you hooked on AI so you'll give up your private info that they can sell to each other so they can cash in, the software companies are investing their time and resources into making AI LLMs in order to get tech billionaires to give them money. It's a viscous capitalist circle. Only thing that will stop it is heavy regulation. But with Republicans in charge that will absolutely never happen. Trump practically made his entire cabinet out of billionaires and corporate shills. And too many Democrats gave them the thumb up, so don't count of Dems doing a whole lot to stall the big tech chokehold on everything either.

[-] Twelve20two@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 weeks ago

How viscous is the cycle

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[-] oo1@lemmings.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

There's been investment bubbles, overshooting and disingenuous rent seeking in many economies before. It was temporarily reduced in many western economies by various FDR type policies in the '30s-'60s. The '70s and '80s were just the banks wresting back their freedom to implement market "rationality". And we get the benefits ever since.

People do keep voting for it though so it is hard to argue they're not satisfied. Even the ones who protest vote don't seem to see the "investment" markets as any part of the problem; or as important at all. That's either some pretty effective demagoguery, or some dumb fucking electorate.

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[-] network_switch@lemmy.ml 38 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation – one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi

...

Zawinski has repeatedly said:

Now hear me out, but What If…? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

Building THE reference implementation web browser, and

Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.

There is no 3.

This makes sense to me. I initially thought everything that Proton does, that should have been Mozilla. They should have been a collection of services to compete with like O365 and Google One. So I didn’t see a problem with Mozilla selling a VPN, even though if I remember right it being just a Mullvad rebrand.

Right now to me it looks like Proton is the closest mostly missing a web browser and a more cloud office offering.

Mozilla functioning more as the reference browser for others to finish packaging and supporting sounds good to me because Mozilla doesn’t seem to be great at attracting general users or even picking what businesses to try and break into.

Linux kernel devs do Linux kernel development and distros small and large do the integration with everything else needed for an operating system, branding, support, etc. Sounds like Mozilla should have been the core devs for a number of reference software projects. Firefox browser engine. Maybe an equivalent to Electron based on Servo. Shouldn't have dropped Rust and been the steward for the reference Rust compiler. Could have been the steward for FirefoxOS/KaiOS/etc. Support PostmarketOS maybe.

Linux foundation stewards or contributes to all sorts of software projects not just the kernel but they're all pretty much things that are relevant for users of Linux operating systems. Mozilla could have found some software centric focus that in some way came together thematically. I would guess privacy focused browser and software services

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[-] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 28 points 3 weeks ago

Sadly I am running into more and more things that don't work on firefox. Stuff like medical record portals, financial websites for my companies retirement plan. Stuff I have little choice about. And most fail silently. They don't say it is the browser. I don't know how they are doing it, but google is winning the fight.

[-] underline960@sh.itjust.works 27 points 3 weeks ago

When I asked a couple of developers who work on websites/webapps with a lot of moving parts, they said it was easiest to just test for chrome, since that's what most people use.

It's turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[-] MinusPi@pawb.social 27 points 3 weeks ago

It's so damn stupid. If your site works meaningfully differently in Firefox vs Chromium, you're already doing something very, very wrong.

[-] sheogorath@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago

Yep, this is why at least for me when I develop websites I use Firefox first for development to make sure that the website runs on Firefox.

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[-] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 22 points 3 weeks ago

If a site I have to use doesn't work for no apparent reason, I e-mail the company's Support. Let them sort it out, or provide another way I can do what I'm trying to do. Personally, I think a lot of the problems are from more and more websites integrating privacy-invading "features", and FF interfering with their operation.

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[-] NoodlePoint@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

Stuff like medical record portals, financial websites for my companies retirement plan. Stuff I have little choice about. And most fail silently.

I recall how South Korea literally painted itself into a corner for becoming too dependent on Internet Explorer after years of using it with a security implementation based entirely on ActiveX.

I'm currently using a user-agent switcher plugin. Allows me to spoof servers into believing I'm running a different browser.

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[-] xeekei@lemmy.zip 25 points 3 weeks ago

You know you fucked up when even a traditionally hardcore Mozilla fan since the early 2000s like myself has had enuff and recently switched to Librewolf.

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[-] neuracnu 22 points 3 weeks ago

For those holding out for a hero: https://ladybird.org/

Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine. Driven by a web standards first approach, Ladybird aims to render the modern web with good performance, stability and security.

[-] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 43 points 3 weeks ago

I'm not looking for a hero, I'm looking for stability.

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[-] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 21 points 3 weeks ago

the ladybird devs have a history of major transphobia though

[-] SaltySalamander@fedia.io 26 points 3 weeks ago

I truly couldn't give a single solitary fuck what opinions the devs of software I use have, no matter what that opinion is. As long as they're not trying to shove that opinion down my throat via their software, their opinions literally have no effect on me whatsoever. You either, whether you want to believe that or not.

[-] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 35 points 3 weeks ago

I think the problem is that certain views are much stronger indicators of someone being willing to eventually shove their views down your throat. If I was a big corporation shopping for, say, spam filter software, I'd rather sign a 3 year contract with a regular company than, for example, a company that is openly fundamentalist Christians. Why? Because the Christians are much more likely to start randomly making ridiculous changes that only make sense to other Christians, like spam filtering out anything with the word "Allah", etc. They may not do that now, but I need to look further than just right now because I don't want to get locked in to an ecosystem that is going to turn sour. Sure I can always switch, but why not just choose the one that has less risk of that at the onset?

Now some beliefs that I disagree with are less like this than others. For instance if the devs disagreed with me about their favorite movies, I'm not going to take that into consideration, because that's not the sort of thing or the sort of person who is likely to abuse their power to aid that cause. But transphobia? That is exactly the sort of thing that someone, as has been proven many times now, will sit on and downplay until they are given power and influence to act on it. Using their software contributes to their influence, especially in the browser world.

Lastly, all other things equal, I'd rather use the product of a smart team full of smart people, than a dumb team full of dumb people. Transphobia is a dumb belief to have, it is a result of being unintelligent. Many smart people (and let's be honest, especially developers) won't want to work with someone like that. Whether you think that's reasonable or not, it's hard to deny. It's certainly hard to picture any great trans developers wanting to contribute. So a lot of things add up, especially when looking a few links down the causal chain, to make it more than just a matter of whether they believe differently than I do.

[-] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 weeks ago

This article appears to be pretty even-handed.

My assessment? Get fucked, Ladybird. I don't want to trust my web security to people who think like this, especially since web security is very political and will only become more so as the Trump administration continues.

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[-] neuracnu 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I think this may be the issue to which you are referring:

https://hyperborea.org/reviews/software/ladybird-inclusivity/

While this is troubling to read about, this narrative’s lack of evidence or references keep me from accepting it at face value. Old mastodon chatter (and perhaps deleted posts or scuttled instances) may be difficult to retrieve, but GitHub discussions shouldn’t be hard to find.

So I’m withholding judgement for the moment.

UPDATE: Commenter lime!@feddit.nu wrote this terrific comment that provides confirmation of the above narrative, corrective action that the LadyBird engineering team has taken taken, plus some vitally important context of the entire kerfuffle. A+ work.

[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 weeks ago

You don't consider it rather exclusionary to imply that only men use computers?

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[-] NotAnonymousAtAll@feddit.org 12 points 3 weeks ago

some context and/or link would help for everyone who just learned about this project and knows nothing about the devs

[-] fuzz@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 weeks ago

I'll just copy a comment I made a while back. It was about the usage of "he" instead of gender neutral pronouns in the documentation:

So I looked further into this, and while I found awesomekling's comment to be a cause of concern, I'm hoping it's a cultural misunderstanding due to his Swedish background.

That comment is from 3 years ago, and since then there was a commit merged, that had the sole purpose of fixing these pronouns.

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[-] cygnus@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 weeks ago

There was a pull request to change "he" to "they" somewhere in the code and the dev refused, saying people should leave "their politics" out of it. I wouldn't say it's transphobic specifically - it may also be misogynistic. Either way, it doesn't look good.

[-] lime@feddit.nu 36 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

i can offer some context to that, but first let's clear up that all the documentation has since been updated to use second-person pronouns, making it both friendlier and gender neutral. kling is fully on-board with that change.

the issue came in right after the big wave of people doing drive-by "code of conduct" PRs. there was a plague of accounts that only did that, and had no other connections to either projects or people. this is obviously a form of political activism, and while it's not malicious, it does get in the way for volunteer developers of big open-source projects who are usually already swamped with work they're not paid for. so creating these giant documents that have not been pre-discussed with the team doing the project is disruptive and misguided. having a code of conduct is good, but it needs to match the project.

anyway, in the middle of this a big PR comes in which changes shitloads of documentation. the standard PR view doesn't show each change, it just shows "n files changed, +n lines -n lines", and a description talking about "gender-neutral language". now, kling is not a "typical" developer. he's a former addict who started doing serenity and ladybird as therapy/rehab. i don't know what that's like, but i imagine it means you don't have a lot of mental overhead for things you don't want to do. so kling saw the description and the massive change set and didn't want to deal with it.

it took a while but he was convinced to change it. if he had not, i would not be as charitable.

[-] neuracnu 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This is very valuable context.

For citations, the only references I see to "pronouns" in their github project is in a section called "Human language policy" in CONTRIBUTING.md (link). Here's the relevant part:

In Ladybird, we treat human language as seriously as we do programming language. The following applies to all user-facing strings, code, comments, and commit messages: ... Use gender-neutral pronouns, except when referring to a specific person.

That sounds pretty cash-money to me.

There's one additional reference in a pull request discussing whether or not to use "we" when referring to recommendations of the engineering team (as in "we recommend" vs "it is recommended"). Minutia.

I'm not as interested in litigating this matter than I am in putting it to bed (along with any and all definitive citations and evidence such that I can refer back to this comment thread in the future when the question inevitably comes up again.)

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[-] chunes@lemmy.world 22 points 3 weeks ago

The fact that they are now selling our data seems like both a browser problem and a leadership problem. If the browser were fine, we wouldn't be seeing a moderate exodus to choices like Librewolf and Zen.

[-] bigredcar@lemmy.world 21 points 3 weeks ago

Firefox still hasn't fixed Bug 1938998 despite me reporting it multiple times. There's a reason why Firefox is almost non existent on mobile. I've been using the internet for 26 years, and have used Mozilla based browsers since 2001, I want them to survive to the next era of the internet, but they are struggling to keep up. Opera and Edge already gave up their engines, Webkit and Blink are basically the same engine with different standards enabled, and Firefox is under 2% on some days on Statcounter. I feel that soon AI based browsers using their own AI-engine will probably take over the internet soon anyway.

[-] expr@programming.dev 32 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I use Firefox on mobile all the time. Works fine for me. The fact that I get adblock on mobile makes it a no-brainer to use over chrome.

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[-] AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works 24 points 3 weeks ago

I have never encountered that bug, seems like an issue with the duck duck go not doing proper url encoding. I daily Firefox on mobile and its the best option by far with all the available extensions and of course working adblock

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 20 points 3 weeks ago

I use it on mobile. It's mostly OK tbh, and the addition of a working ad blocker means it's far better than Chrome for me.

In fairness that is an invalid URL in my book, but it should at least be consistent across desktop and mobile, or at least tucked behind an option.

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[+] MajesticElevator@lemmybefree.net 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

[deleted]

[-] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Excuse you, I don't have a problem.

[-] aceshigh@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

I just moved back to ff in November, because of ubo. I have to move again? Where to?

[-] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 23 points 3 weeks ago

Did you read the article? It says Firefox is the best choice you have, and all of the criticism is directed at the organization's leadership.

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