Google's Shadow Over Firefox

eldavojohn writes "The Mozilla Foundation's chief executive now earns roughly half a million in pay and benefits. With $70 million in assets, the Foundation gave out less than $300,000 in grants to open source projects in 2006. And in 2006 85% of their $66 million in revenue came from Google. When these figures first came to light, people worried whether Firefox was becoming a pawn in Google's cold war with Microsoft. The Foundation addressed these fears and largely laid them to rest; but now the worry is that, even though it's clear that the community's code is what makes Firefox successful, Mozilla may be becoming dangerously reliant on Google's cash."

Comments

Would it make you feel better...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they took Microsoft's cash instead? I'm sure MS would love to have more traffic pointed at their search, regardless of the source.

Re:Would it make you feel better...

[Tim C]

Actually it would make me feel better if they took Microsoft's cash as well. The more sources of income a company has, the more secure it is. With only one or two big sources, if they lose one they may well be screwed.

Not saying that the Mozilla Foundation is likely to lose Google's cash any time soon, but that's a general principle - don't put all your eggs in one basket, and all that.

Re:Would it make you feel better...

[Lordnerdzrool]

I don't know how it would make you feel better. Getting both companies won't make Mozilla more secure. The reason Google is forking that money over is to ensure Mozilla keeps Google as the default search engine and other Google friendly policies. The only way Mozilla can take Microsoft's money is to throw away Google's money, and thus those policies in favor of Microsoft friendly policies.

Of course, this wouldn't happen as Mozilla would likely look to Yahoo before it looked for Microsoft, and even then Microsoft would have to actually look back, which it probably wouldn't, but the idea remains the same. It is the key reason Google gives the money. In turn, it allows Google to stand off against Microsoft.

That said, Mozilla doesn't have much to worry about as far as becoming over-dependent on Google. Mozilla is actually the one holding the leash and could easily tell Microsoft/Yahoo that they will make Microsoft/Yahoo's search the default for the right price if Google decided to stop paying/has financial trouble.

Given Firefox's growth, Yahoo would not say no, so at least Mozilla has one fall back.

Other Revenue Sources?

[TFGeditor]

Okay, I admit ignorance. I have never understood how Mozilla, a purveyor of free-as-in-beer software, makes money, even if only operating capital (as opposed to profit).

What sources other than Google fund Mozilla? And why?

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[Shikaku]

Hit the (default) home button. Or look at the search bar next to the address bar.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[bunratty]

Search engines.
For placement of their search engines.
Read more here.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[adamclarke77]

donations? consultancy?

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[savala]

The Mozilla Corporation also makes some money by developing "official" Firefox add-ons (titled "Companion"), such as the Firefox Companion for eBay, and the Joga Companion back during the football worldcup.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[ShieldW0lf]

Clearly, if Google is giving all this money to Mozilla and there is danger of Google getting all the say, Microsoft ought to chuck Mozilla a billion or two to stay in the race...

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[mqduck]

Here's a question: Why does the CEO make half a million a year? Are we so brainwashed that we just assume a person with the title CEO should make crazy amounts of money?

*Prepares to beat off incoming flamebait/troll mods with a large stick*

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[dryeo]

Not strictly funding but various companies supply developers. As an example the OS/2 port I'm using was developed by IBM employees who seemed to spend all their time working on Mozilla. And even though OS/2 development has stopped they are still there. I also know a Sun employee who also spends a lot of time on Mozilla.
Note by Mozilla I mean the whole family, lots of people I know don't like Firefox and use Seamonkey

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[TeraCo]

By definition, the CEO has to pay more than the job below it, otherwise there is no motivation to get people to take the job.

ie: Why would I leave my 100K tech job, to become a team leader unless it pays more.

Why would I leave my cushy team leader job to take a managers job with additional responsibility?

Why would I take HIS managers job, with even more responsibility (including legal responsibility for company performance if you go high enough) if it doesn't pay more money than what I could earn for doing the easy no-risk tech job.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[QuantumG]

Alternatively, does there *need* to be a hierarchy? Can't *everyone* take responsibility? A commercial venture seems like the perfect place for constitutional direct democracy as anyone who isn't taking responsibility can simply be ejected by popular vote.

But yes, so long as responsibility is handled by hierarchical management structures the person at the top will always be disproportionately compensated to the many people at the bottom.. otherwise, as you say, no-one will take the job.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[asa]

Why does the CEO make half a million a year?

This is incorrect. Mitchell received $300K/year salary, not half a million. If you doubt it, read the actual financial statement rather than second (or third) hand commentary.

As for the question you raise, this amount is well below the average and even slightly below the median salary for CEOs of other non-profits I've looked at, though I haven't found a breakdown between private foundations and public-benefit foundations so there could be some disparity there. Also, CEO pay in the non-profit sector is about 1/10 of what they could be making in traditional for-profit businesses so it's a safe bet that non-profit CEOs aren't in it for the compensation alone.

Add into that the costs of living in the Bay Area, where Mozilla is headquartered, and the ridiculously competitive employment landscape there, and reasonable people will surely mostly agree that this is reasonable compensation.

- A

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[mqduck]

By definition, the CEO has to pay more than the job below it, otherwise there is no motivation to get people to take the job.

ie: Why would I leave my 100K tech job, to become a team leader unless it pays more. I dunno, why would you leave your 100K team leader job to get a tech job unless it pays more? What if they both payed the same amount? Would your head explode?

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[Thundersnatch]

and the ridiculously competitive employment landscape there

Actually, the high number of tech workers out of jobs in the Valley would drive wages down, not up. What exactly did you mean by "competitive"?

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[TeraCo]

I dunno, why would you leave your 100K team leader job to get a tech job unless it pays more?

If you're asking this question here, I think you might have stumbled across slashdot on your way to teamleaderdot. Technical jobs are generally more enjoyable with far less responsibilities outside of your control. ie: In a tech job your responsibility might be: "Write a function that does X", or "Fix this broken server". In a manager job your responsibility might be "Find a way to lower your rework rate for your team of 150 staff by 7% by the end of the quarter."

If they both paid the same amount, why would you take the job with the harder goals?

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[asa]

there are not a large number of software engineers out of work in the valley. you're just wrong.

- A

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[rtb61]

Now that is a totally false statement. There are huge numbers of people employed in the tech industry who a totally crap at coding, hopeless system demonstrators, even simple hardware assembly is beyond them. Generally, oddly enough, they like to become managers, they work many hours at making themselves noticed, are very supportive of those above them, are really good at taking credit for work whether they have done it or not and have a flair for relocating failure to other terminal employees, thats what makes them good managers (not necessarily good at the job but certainly good at being promoted).

So people take the manager job because of they cant stand the actual real jobs, that they should get paid five times as much, has nothing to do with the skills as managers but has a whole lot to do with their ability to convince people and create the illusion that they are worth that (ib fact in most managers spent as much time promoting the company as they spent promoting their own salary rises, there would likely be a whole lot more successful companies). If managers can not come up with 'new' ideas on their own (stealing them just makes a company look pathetic and untrustworthy), they are not worth one cent more than typical tech jobs, they are really just bureaucrats and paper shufflers.

So, this particular job description might entail, not only making it seem ok that mozilla.com gets most of it's money from google but that it is also housed at google's 'campus' within easy reach of the googlite marketdroids. The reality is any CEO is only worth that kind of money when they can also come up with new ideas and are readily able to expand and diversify the companies income base to ensure longterm survivability. Being tied to one controlling customers purse strings is not healthy, but hey, that is their problem, and their loss, the code is still there and if anybody else wants to set up a 'mozzila/firefox/google' equivalent they should certainly go for it, just like netscape/AOL/time warner.

The hardest jobs are the under paid manual ones and don't let any crap head manager tell you different, I have done both styles of work and I wont bull shit anybody about which is the hardest, most monotonous, tedious, back breaking and not only that the pay absolutely sucks.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[TeraCo]

You sound jaded. Perhaps you should try working for a company that doesn't suck. I've worked in companies where managers actually earn their pay and have skills beyond 'not being good enough to do tech work' and it sounds like a much better place to be in than your company.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[asa]

> Clearly, if Google is giving all this money to Mozilla and
> there is danger of Google getting all the say, Microsoft
> ought to chuck Mozilla a billion or two to stay in the race...

Google isn't "giving" all this money to Mozilla. Firefox users are using Google search a lot and Google is paying Mozilla for that traffic. There is no "say" for Google here outside of that very narrow search relationship. As for Microsoft "chucking" Mozilla money, I can't see where Mozilla users would find Microsoft terribly useful like they do Google, Yahoo, and our other search defaults.

- A

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[NekoXP]

If you're asking this question here, I think you might have stumbled across slashdot on your way to teamleaderdot. Technical jobs are generally more enjoyable with far less responsibilities outside of your control. ie: In a tech job your responsibility might be: "Write a function that does X", or "Fix this broken server". In a manager job your responsibility might be "Find a way to lower your rework rate for your team of 150 staff by 7% by the end of the quarter."

Or, find a guy or hire a guy that can write a function that does X, or organise the support contract with Y to support the broken server.

If they both paid the same amount, why would you take the job with the harder goals?

Who says management should pay more than tech? You could say that the sourcing of talent is not a hard job - it isn't as physically laborious or mathematical or sheer-programmer-minded to find a programmer and your use of knowledge of code isn't so well flexed, but it IS a chore. I would say management staff who corral tech staff should be paid the same as the tech staff, unless there is also a huge tech component (joining the team and writing the API specs that function X belongs to, or coding function Y and Z in parallel to the tech guys).

There's no reason why a full manager (i.e. the pointy haired boss) should be being paid a great deal more than a guy who implements the products. This is a manager for which there is very little job progression from tech guy into it - because tech guys tend not to want to be managers.

For a project manager, team leader, this is a tech job with middle management responsibility, and this needs to pay more because it's BOTH jobs (less of tech, more of management, but still consisting of considerable tech).

If only that were true :)

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[rtb61]

I am now post manager slack and idle, I knew and understood most of my competitors, jaded no, just experienced.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[joto]

By definition, the CEO has to pay more than the job below it, otherwise there is no motivation to get people to take the job.

Prestige is also a motivator. There is more prestige in being "the boss", than in "the employee". And some people seem to actually enjoy working with people instead of computers.

Then again, I doubt they want just about anyone who is willing to take the job, as CEO. They want someone who is well qualified to do the job. And if so, they need to have a competitive salary. The way it is, CEOs typically are paid more than software engineers, and software engineers are typically paid more than fast-food customer representatives. That's because there are fewer people who are qualified, and would do a good job as a CEO, than as a fast-food customer representative.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[joto]

Alternatively, does there *need* to be a hierarchy? Can't *everyone* take responsibility? A commercial venture seems like the perfect place for constitutional direct democracy as anyone who isn't taking responsibility can simply be ejected by popular vote.

I agree. And most likely we will see more companies like that in the future. The company "Gore" (behind Gore-Tex) is the only one I know about. But actually, I'm quite happy to work in a normal abusive corporate hierarchy too. There's no way you are going to make the workplace a completely "shit-free" environment. In a corporate hierachy, shit moves downwards, but it still had to start somewhere, which is at the top. In a "everybody take responsibility" environment, the amount of shit isn't reduced, it just takes a different form, and is equally distributed, instead of just moving from the top and down.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[bynary]

Where did you find this definition you're referring to?

I think the GP is correct in saying that we have been duped into thinking that the guy in charge has to make more money. I don't know about you, but I work as a software engineer because I enjoy writing software. Someone who's in a leadership position because it pays more is not really someone I want as my CEO. I want a CEO who is a dyed-in-the-wool leader that will do the job regardless of how much it pays.

ie: Why would I leave my 100K tech job, to become a team leader unless it pays more.

Why would I leave my cushy team leader job to take a managers job with additional responsibility? Because you would rather be a leader than a follower...because what really motivates you deep down is enabling others to get their jobs done...because you know the difference between a vocation and a job.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[joto]

As for Microsoft "chucking" Mozilla money, I can't see where Mozilla users would find Microsoft terribly useful like they do Google, Yahoo, and our other search defaults.

You can't understand why Mozilla users would want the mozilla foundation to get more money? Mozilla users want a better browser, and they believe that money helps developers make it better. I doubt there's a single user on the planet who wouldn't believe money from Microsoft would be helpful. And the fact of the matter is, that the mozilla foundation accepts donations from anyone, even Microsoft, if they should want to.

The other question is: What's in it for Microsoft? And the answer is: nothing. Microsoft has their own browser. They prefer people to use their own browser. Internet Explorer already has 90% marketshare, or more, so giving money to a competitor doesn't make any financial sense. If microsoft didn't have Internet Explorer, it might make sense for them to donate to the mozilla foundation, as long as they could get in certain features they wanted. But that's not how the world is.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[asa]

> As for Microsoft "chucking" Mozilla money, I can't see where
> Mozilla users would find Microsoft terribly useful like they
> do Google, Yahoo, and our other search defaults.

>> You can't understand why Mozilla users would want the mozilla
>> foundation to get more money? Mozilla users want a better browser,
>> and they believe that money helps developers make it better. I
>> doubt there's a single user on the planet who wouldn't believe
>> money from Microsoft would be helpful.

Sorry. One of us misunderstood. Google doesn't just give money to Firefox. They pay for search traffic. Microsoft wouldn't just give Mozilla money, they'd want traffic in return and this is where my point comes in that I don't think that Firefox users would find Microsoft services useful like they do Google and Yahoo and others. Given that users aren't clamoring for Microsoft services, putting them in the browser seems like a bad idea.

>> The other question is: What's in it for Microsoft? And the
>> answer is: nothing. Microsoft has their own browser. They
>> prefer people to use their own browser. Internet Explorer
>> already has 90% marketshare, or more, so giving money to a
>> competitor doesn't make any financial sense. If microsoft
>> didn't have Internet Explorer, it might make sense for them
>> to donate to the mozilla foundation, as long as they could
>> get in certain features they wanted. But that's not how the
>> world is.

I disagree. I'd wager that Microsoft would pay more than any other search service if Mozilla would make them the default in Firefox. They do have a browser, IE, which has about 75-80% (not 90%) of the global browser market, and they'll definitely use that browser to drive traffic to Microsoft Live services, especially Live Search. That's no reason they wouldn't pay for additional traffic to their search services from other sources.

This is no longer a browser war, it's a web services war and it's all about traffic. There are only two or three big players in web search and Microsoft is not at all happy playing third or fourth place in that game. They'll use any tool at their disposal, including cash, to buy their way up a place or two. Firefox, if it sent the bulk of its search traffic to Microsoft's Live Search, could probably give them a gain of one full place -- surpassing Yahoo and moving in on Google's market.

Again, this isn't about donations. Google isn't "donating" to Firefox. This is about search traffic and what that's worth to the search providers.

- A

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[joto]

Sorry. One of us misunderstood.

That's a diplomatic way of putting it, yes.

Re:Other Revenue Sources?

[TeraCo]

I want a CEO who is a dyed-in-the-wool leader that will do the job regardless of how much it pays.

Here is your answer. The 'supply' of these people is much smaller than the 'demand'. Capitalism dictates that they will cost more.

The lesser of two evils

[Hemogoblin]

Better to be reliant on Google's cash, than not having any cash at all.

Re:The lesser of two evils

[martin-boundary]

The real question is if having your hands tied by revenue concerns makes the product technically worse.

Mozilla is highly successful, but this success seems to have more to do with paying for advertising in places such as the NY Times than actual technical excellence.

Anybody who's looked into the guts of XPCOM and XUL knows that the code base is way messed up. It's so messed up that it took about five years of (paid) work from the time Netscape provided the initial open source code to the time that Mozilla 1.0 was finally ready to merely browse the web.

If that's what tons of cash brings to the table, no wonder NASA hasn't sent anybody to the moon in over thirty years.

Re:The lesser of two evils

[slyn]

Or is it?...

DUN DUN DUN!

Re:The lesser of two evils

[WilliamSChips]

Did you seriously just compare getting money from Google to rape?

Re:The lesser of two evils

[Scruffy Dan]

raping a girl would be the greater (by a very large extent) of the two evils.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because adblocking is built into Opera, doofus.

Opera doesn't need add-ons to do everything useful. For some reason they figured they might as well integrate them.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Ajehals]

Although if the Firefox code base remains open, and as long as extensions can be written, there is nothing to stop anyone from creating ad-blocking extensions, after all it is something that many people seem to like, moreover if there is (however unlikely it may be) a concerted effort to prevent ad-blocking technology within Firefox there is always the option of creating a fork with those countermeasures removed.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea that the Mozilla Foundation *appears* to be dependent on Google's advertising revenue, and I can see how that *could* impact decision making, but I dont see a whole lot of alternative funding streams, nor a threat that could not be overcome, that is after all why we like open standards and open code, no one person or group truly has 100% control and it is nearly impossible to take something that is free and open and turn it into something proprietary and closed..

NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[unity100]

im no zealot, but, if any misconduct happens to come in the way of firefox from google, no amount of publicity stunt, good deeds can make it up. heed the words of a developer.

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[Jugalator]

Haha. If that's not zealotry, what is? The kind of guy that walks over to Larry and Sergei's homes to decapitate them?

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[unity100]

this is how zealots are created.

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[FasterthanaWatch]

this is how zealots are created. No, Zealots are created by warping them in through a gateway.

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[totally bogus dude]

My wife for hire!

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[Kalriath]

Ugh. That's "my life for Aiur" (actual spelling of Protoss homeworld notwithstanding).

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[FasterthanaWatch]

Ugh. That's "my life for Aiur" (actual spelling of Protoss homeworld notwithstanding) I think, perhaps, the GP was aware of that...

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[totally bogus dude]

You're right. I first saw the "my wife for hire" interpretation on slashdot, and it made me laugh so much I can't help but replace it whenever I hear or think of it.

Kind of like how I can't hear Smells Like Teen Spirit without thinking "Now I'm mumblin', and I'm screamin', and I don't know what I'm singin'".

Re:NO messing with firefox will be tolerated

[Phroggy]

"It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss with all these marbles in my mouth..."

More money...

[alexborges]

MoFo publishes everything, they have to. Im not sure im worried about what they do with all the cash. Its their cash. What is GOOD is that they are prooving how can opensource software interact with the new advertising-financed platforms like google.

There is a growing market for google-talking apps out ther, not just the browser. Integrating stuff from google to your collaboration infrastructure comes to mind, to your intranet portals... i dunno, a bunch of stuff could be developed for the google "platform".

I think differently from those that look at SAAS as a potential danger to software/data freedom. Sure, theyll be able to offer a great deal of services that will force you to upload data and then you will only be able to do what they expose in their apis, but thats okay, if you dont want it, then dont use it.

The fact that google has been able to mostly provide open apis so that one can work with them opens a wealth of posibilities like the one mozilla is exploiting. How about gnome integrating google stuff as a first option for several things like the remote gmail drive perhaps-- which we do have, just not "on gnome" as it is, and letting google plaster some advertising somewhere in exchange (and youd be able to opt-in for that if you want it, granma could opt-out if SHE wanted. And then some google money could flow into gnome, or kde, or both.

Good, good thing for the future.

Money spent on R&D

[unixmaster]

Shouldn't a technology company spend more than $300,000 on Research & Development? There many bugs in Firefox, even some security bugs stay unfixed for years. And equally important memory leak bugs. I think more money could be spend on better timely responses to security bugs and also fix speed/memory problems plaguing Firefox.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Derek Loev]

They do! Their chief executive just spent a whole month "researching" new yachts. And believe me, it's going to be fast!

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

They're spending far, far more than $300,000 on their software developers. Do you really think they have just three developers?

BTW, what "important memory leak bugs" do you think need fixing? I'm seeing almost no signs of memory leaks. I'd rather they focus on bugs that I actually see, such as not remembering the scroll position or not importing IE favorites in the correct order.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[jesser]

According to the financial statement, Mozilla spent $11,775,516 on "software development" in 2006. I'm guessing that mostly means salaries and benefits for employees who work on Gecko and Firefox. So the bulk of Mozilla's spending is on developing (specific) open-source software.

I don't know what the "less than $300,000" thing refers to. Maybe it refers to monetary grants to other open-source projects, or maybe it refers to things like buying laptops for volunteers so they can contribute more effectively.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[vidarh]

You can keep hiding your head in the sand if you like, and ignore the fact that for lots of people Firefox gets unusable within hours of browsing due to memory usage. It won't make the bugs go away though. Firefox behavior is so bad that I currently have my Mac's system activity monitor permanently open so I can regularly see how much memory Firefox uses to know whether it's getting close to the level where I need to restart before my system will start trashing. Currently it's thankfully taking "only" 660MB after a couple of hours of browsing.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[cyfer2000]

And there are a whole bunch of developers not on Mozilla.org payroll.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

I'm not hiding my head in the sand. I'm asking which important memory leak bugs you think need fixing. Why don't you simply say which ones specifically you think need fixing rather than try to start an argument? How would a Mac user reproduce the memory problems you see? If you can explain, someone can file a bug report and the problem can be fixed. On the other hand, if you keep trying to fight about it nothing productive will result.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[totally bogus dude]

It is actually possible that it's something related to your system's configuration, the extensions your using, or perhaps just the sites you visit. The work PC I'm on at the moment has been up for 6 days, and Firefox has been running pretty much since startup. Currently 11 tabs open. It's using 135 megs of memory of the machine's 3.6 gigs (it has 4 gigs, but it's XP 32-bit).

Maybe the Mac version behaves completely differently. Does Firefox allocate and use memory in the same way across all platforms, or does it do weird platform-specific things?

Sorry you have severe problems with it, but the fact is, for many people, it's a stable browser than runs from when the system starts up til when the system shuts down without any issues.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

Sorry, I have never seen such a bug, and the vast majority of people I talk to has never seen it, either. I have used Firefox for up to a week, and memory use goes up to only 200 MB. It doesn't go up when nothing is going on. Anyway, the set of steps to reproduce needs to be, guess what, reproducible. I can't reproduce the random sites you visit. Feel free to discuss the bug in the Firefox Bugs forum at MozillaZine and see if anyone else is seeing a problem like that caused by a bug in Firefox.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Rakishi]

I'm sorry but the problem is YOU or YOUR system not firefox in general. Maybe it's a mac problem but thats a minor user base so it's far from a major bug.

Any recent version of firefox not running horrendously broken extensions doesn't have memory problems. Older versions had problems and extensions can leak memory if badly designed but firefox itself doesn't. I keep it open for WEEKS and it never goes over 200mb unless it needs to, say for massively image filled threads (and then it goes back down when it no longer needs to).

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Teriblows]

i'm using 490mb, but i have over 70 tabs open:P firefox gets the blame for many a shoddily built system i bet. low quality psus, borked windows installations and other nonsense. it can use a lot of memory but it also does a lot. i rarely crash and i'm quite the tab whore. perhaps because firefox so easily uses resources it puts strain on systems quite easily and thus reveals instability.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[krelian]

You can check any firefox related article on slashdot and see that everyone is complaining about the memory usage problems. It looks like you and your friends are the exception and not the norm.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[donnacha]

You're kidding, right?

Everyone I know using Firefox on the Mac has the same problem. Reproducible? Perhaps the foundation could just buy a Mac for testing.

In the six months since I switched, the system has been rock solid and every other application has been fine, only Firefox needs to be repeatedly restarted due to ballooning memory use.

Right now, after just two hours of light usage since Firefox last slowed my entire system to such a crawl that it had to be restart, one window and three tabs open (Gmail, Google reader, slashdot), Activity Monitor shows Firefox at 322MB real memory, 824MB virtual and growing. I don't actually know how high it goes before becoming completely unusable (haven't bothered looking) but it must be pretty high - I have 4GB of memory installed in this laptop and, usually, no other apps running.

That is with the most recent FF, 2.0.0.9 - there is, absolutely, a problem; perhaps if the foundation were not in such a rosy financial situation they would have an incentive to fix problems that affect a significantly large minority of their users.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

I can see people complaining on Slashdot and a few other places, yes. I hang out on the Firefox Bugs forum, and nearly no one there sees any problem at all. No one comes by and points out any problem. Come to think of it, no one here is giving any details of any problem. So what problem are you complaining about, specifically? Could you give a set of steps with which I could reproduce the problem? Could you give any details at all, whatsoever?

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

No, I'm not kidding. Not one person has stopped by the Firefox Bugs forum and pointed out any problem like you are describing. Why not do it? You might find that after you give a few details of your problem, someone can submit a bug report and the problem can be fixed. If no one does, however, do not be surprised if the problem is not fixed.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[donnacha]

I'm sorry but the problem is YOU or YOUR system not firefox in general. Maybe it's a mac problem but thats a minor user base so it's far from a major bug.

Spoken like a true idiot.

Clearly, you think it makes sense to blow massive amounts on evangelizing Firefox with full-page ads in the national press while, at the same time, writing off the entire Mac platform rather than address a technical problem.

Perhaps this is the core of the problem: any commercial application would be desperate to grow rather than reduce their marketshare. Instead, we have a grossly overpaid layer of bureaucrats who know little and care less about the technical enthusiasm and volunteered time that made Firefox a success in the first place.

This might be fine if it wasn't for the fact that sharper, hungrier competitors have their eyes on the same prize. Anyone who writes off millions of their existing users as "a minor user base" simply no longer gets it, especially when you consider that members of that "minor user base" are proportionately far more likely than Windows users to also be contributing developers.

My main fear is that this idiot's may all too accurately reflect the Foundation's own short-sightedness, arrogance and complacency.

Does Firefox today = Internet Explorer in 2003?

Re:Money spent on R&D

[RebelWebmaster]

I'm just curious, have you tried playing with a recently nightly build? Many developers actually do use Macs and have spent a lot of time working on improving things for Fx3. If you haven't already done so, try it out and see for yourself. If nightlies aren't your thing, Firefox 3 Beta 1 should be officially released some time within the next few days. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

And no, Firefox today != IE2003, not even close.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Rakishi]

Clearly, you think it makes sense to blow massive amounts on evangelizing Firefox with full-page ads in the national press while, at the same time, writing off the entire Mac platform rather than address a technical problem. 90% + of computer users are on PCs, it makes perfect sense to target them and ignore other platforms.

As for addressing the problem, is the a bug ticket on it? Can yo reproduce it on a clean ff install? Can others reproduce it? It's hard to solve a problem that cannot be reproduced and that seems to be the case for many of these bugs that people somehow think can magically be fixed in 10 seconds.

Perhaps this is the core of the problem: any commercial application would be desperate to grow rather than reduce their marketshare. Many, many, many commercial applications ignore the mac and linux markets totally while others release sub-standard versions for them (see MS office and IE for example). It's beyond logical, they can either spend money to retain 10% of 5% of the market or to retain 10% of 90% of the market, assuming it costs the same to fix the same severity bug on both. As a result bugs on less used platforms if they only appear on those platforms logically take lower precedence.

Instead, we have a grossly overpaid layer of bureaucrats who know little and care less about the technical enthusiasm and volunteered time that made Firefox a success in the first place. Enthusiasm takes you only so far, in the end it's much better if there is money to pay you for what you're doing.

This might be fine if it wasn't for the fact that sharper, hungrier competitors have their eyes on the same prize. So? If someone does it better then let them, I'm not a fanboy or fanatic so I could care less. FF has a lot of problems that are probably unfixable due to it's code (and it's complexity, design or what not). If someone can do it better from scratch then all the power to them.

Anyone who writes off millions of their existing users as "a minor user base" simply no longer gets it, especially when you consider that members of that "minor user base" are proportionately far more likely than Windows users to also be contributing developers. So why haven't all these "mac firefox developers" fixed your bug already? Well? Firefox is open source and they can easily enough contribute, heck you claim they do already. Then again even if mac has twice the rate of developers it's still only what a fifth the total number as there are on windows?

Re:Money spent on R&D

[oopsilon]

For what its worth, I tried to reproduce this on a clean copy of Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Seamonkey 1.1.6 (with Adblock Plus) on Windows XP. The "local ISP webmail" has been substituted for an AIM mail tab.

Current memory usage on Firefox: 102MB
Current memory usage on Seamonkey: 135MB -- have at least 5 other windows open in Seamonkey

CPU usage on each browser is about 10-20% on a 2.0Ghz P4 with 512MB RAM.

This leads me to believe you (or the bug reporter) either have an extension doing something dodgy, or that local webmail app has some interesting code inside which makes the browser hang up.

As the one comment to that bug asks, do these problems exist in Firefox safe mode as well?

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Rakishi]

The only thing I've seen mess up firefox cpu wise recently were:
-slashdot, I think it's some horrid flash ad.
-badly coded javascript on webpages
-badly coded extensions (I got ff to infinite loop to death with one of mine before by accident).

Also 200mb of memory seems normal actually, if you want it to use less you need to probably change the caching options and so on.

Likewise I find that bug report to be very spare on actual details and how to reproduce it. See you ASSUME that the bug shows up for everyone easily while it's bloody clear (due to lack of complaints) that it doesn't. Then of course when your failure to provide enough information /analysis (exactly what set of web pages triggers it, when doesn't it trigger, etc.) makes the bug unreproducible to everyone else you bitch that FF devs suck (when in reality only god himself could do anything to fix it given your information).

Re:Money spent on R&D

[passthecrackpipe]

wait, you talk to other people? or just yourself in the mirror. i see you time and time rolling out the same arguments, and talking about reproducing this issue, and everytime somebody does, it either doesn't happen to you (so its not true) or its because of some other bullshit excuse. Troll.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

Yes, I hang out at the Firefox Bug forum on MozillaZine every day, just waiting for someone to come by and point out a bug. People rarely do. The problems discussed there rarely turn out to be bugs in Firefox. They are typically fixed by uninstalling a buggy extension, creating a new profile, deleting Windows prefetch files, updating hardware drivers, or some other simple operation. As I've said many times before, if you're still seeing problems, file a bug report or discuss it in the Firefox Bugs forum so it can be fixed.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[bunratty]

Yep, that's pretty much what the MozillaZine Knowledge Base article on Firefox CPU usage says. If anyone can demonstrate a CPU use bug in Firefox, please do. Make sure you give steps we can follow so we can reproduce the problem. If we cannot, there is little hope of troubleshooting and fixing the problem.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[slyborg]

I dont know what kind of extension sets or sites people are using, but with CustomizeGoogle, NoScript, and ABP, I see no evidence of massive memory usage by FF on OS X 1.4.10 on either Intel or PPC, and I haven't for any of the FF2 releases.

I suspect that there is a problem, since I assume people are not just ranting for no reason (maybe not such a good assumption on /.) but it must be linked to a particular machine configuration or browsing pattern. I don't consider myself a hardcore user, by any means, but I do my share of browing on Youtube, etc. and I leave my browsers running pretty much until an extension update needs a restart. I just have never seen this behavior. The 1.x versions leaked for me pretty consistently on OS X, but FF2 has not show the reported behavior.

Are you running APE? Any other kind of kernel extension?

Re:Money spent on R&D

[napolj2]

Everyone I know using Firefox on the Mac has the same problem. Reproducible? Perhaps the foundation could just buy a Mac for testing.

Actually, many Firefox devs now use Macs as their primary desktops.

That is with the most recent FF, 2.0.0.9

That's the problem. FF2 is based on Gecko 1.8.1, which is now over 2 years old. FF3 (the first beta should be out in a few weeks) will be based on Gecko 1.9, which will have a mind-bogglingly large number of refactorings and core fixes (literally, several thousand bug fixes/enhancements and several millions of lines of code changed). The Mac graphics code now uses Cocoa widgets on top of Quartz (through Cairo) as opposed to Carbon widgets on top of Quickdraw; there's a new Mac theme, and HTML forms are now rendered as native widgets. The result is that FF3 now looks and feels like a native Mac app. Oh, and Linux support will see many improvements in FF3; see this blog post for details, and this one for information on what needs to happen next.

As for memory use, Gecko 1.9 has seen a lot of memory-related work, including a cycle collector for XPCOM (their COM system). Memory leaks seem to be way down. One dev thinks some memory problems might not be due to leaks but rather memory fragmentation. Planned for the big Mozilla 2 rewrite (to be in FF4 or later) is the whole new Tamarin VM (based on that big contribution from Adobe), which will perform garbage collection on the entire codebase.

For now, though: Often memory leaks are caused not by FF itself but by extensions; try running through a typical browsing session in Safe Mode and see how the memory usage compares.

Re:Money spent on R&D

[Rakishi]

First of all firefox has somewhat high memory usage in general, it's not a bug but simply how it works. The memory usage in the 2.* branch is stable but not tiny, some people don't like that while most don't care (why else do I have so much ram in this machine?).

Also everyone is not complaining, a small number of people are complaining (I've seen a lot of people complaining on slashdot, this ain't it) which apparently your own delusional mind thinks is "everyone."

Re:Money spent on R&D

[donnacha]

Awesome reply, thanks, will jump to FF3 as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who gave a useful reply.

Donnacha

But how much

[crowbarsarefornerdyg]

Of that comes from the fact that when you start up Firefox for the first time, you are not only taken to Google as your homepage, but Google is also the default search engine in the integrated search box?

Re:But how much

[crowbarsarefornerdyg]

Dumbass. I meant how much of the $66 million is from the default homepage and search box. Who couldn't figure that out?

I can't forgive the fact that you truly ARE a coward who can't talk shit without hiding your nick.

Beyond FUD

[savala]

Mitchell (Mozilla's "chief lizard wrangler") wrote a fairly large blog post, not only about the numbers as published, but also saying some things on the directions Mozilla is moving.

Far more interesting reading than the fluff news.com article, let alone the random FUD spouting by the submitter.

Re:Beyond FUD

[aos101]

Asa Dotzler, the Director of Community Development at Mozilla also blogged about his thoughts on Mozilla's revenue model:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/10/firefox_finance.html

Worth a read.

Re:Beyond FUD

[QuantumG]

sounds about right.. it costs about the same amount in support (things like IT, accountants, lawyers, office rental, etc) that it does in salary.. so an average salary of $76k is about average.

What is REALLY bothersome

[WindBourne]

is that they only gave out 300K to opensource? It is FAR less than what they are paying their CEO? Something is WAY wrong. As it is, most of Firefox WAS done as OSS, and the foundation would not exist with it. They should be spending a LOAD of money on OSS.

Re:What is REALLY bothersome

[RebelWebmaster]

Check out their financial FAQ as well. They specifically talk about how they'll be increasing money spent on grants in the next year.

Re:What is REALLY bothersome

[thePsychologist]

I don't see how you can complain about that. They can do what they want with their money. They're giving away a free browser that thousands of people use, and now they can to do what they want with their success. They even gave 300K back - could have been worse, could have been nothing. I'm not saying it's fair. I think CEOs and other top dogs get paid way too much (sure they ought to be paid more but not _that_ much more).

Our university president gets a quarter of a million a year - how is that fair? It's not for what he does it seems. Yet that's how the system works.

Re:What is REALLY bothersome

[Gerv]

[I said this further above, but...]

It's actually hard work to spend money.

No, really.

OK, so we could just hand out large chunks of cash to anyone who came asking for it, with no oversight and no follow-up. If we'd done that, we'd probably have been able to spend quite a lot more. Would that have made you happier?

What we actually did was solicit and carefully vet proposals, draw up consulting contracts where appropriate, monitor progress and make staged payments. Amongst all the other things we do to keep the show on the road. And we'll be doing more of it next year.

Gerv

File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

The Firefox CPU hogging and memory gobbling bug would take some serious troubleshooting to find, and no one wants to do the work, apparently.

First, the Firefox CPU bug you've been complaining about (Firefox consumers lots of CPU after the computer wakes up from standby or hibernate) was fixed in Firefox 2.0.0.8. If you're still having any problems with the latest release of Firefox, let developers know by filing a proper bug report, including steps to reproduce the problem.

Second, there is no sign of any "memory gobbling bug" that I can see, just a few little leaks here and there and some memory fragmentation. If you're still having any problems with the latest release of Firefox, let developers know by filing a proper bug report, including steps to reproduce the problem.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're still having any problems with the latest release of Firefox, let developers know by filing a proper bug report, including steps to reproduce the problem.

Oh, please. That's nowhere near as fun as bitching on random websites.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[CTho9305]

Oh, please. That's nowhere near as fun as bitching on random websites.

Yeah, if he actually filed usable bugs, they'd get fixed, and then he'd have nothing to whine about any more.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[zaivala]

That's great for Windoze users... I'm using Firefox 2 for Linux, and the longer I leave Firefox up, the slower it runs. Of course, the easy fix is to restart Firefox, but just telling you it's still noticeable on my system.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Elfan]

There are currently 290 open bugs with the mlk keyword. What gives you the expertise to judge that they are not significant? And that is for true leaks only, not other memory related bugs. There are critical crash bugs like #263160 that are memory related and have not been fixed in years.

Now that said things are improving, the developers are paying attention, and I look forward to improvements in FF3. But it has been people insisting that there aren't bugs are everything is fine for years while that was plainly not the case that made this situation so much more unpleasant than it had to be. FF works for you on your system with your habits (and I'm happy that's great!). For others it is barely functional between crashes and performance degradation. But like I said, now that the problems are being recognized they are starting to be fixed, and that is as it should be. Just stop pretending that because things are fine for you they must be for everyone.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[sxeraverx]

No memory gobbling bug? Please explain to me why FF's using 300+ *MEGABYTES* of memory with only a single tab open? And despite using very little CPU, FF's response becomes incredibly slow. FF needs to go back to its roots of being a minimalist browser, with just addons to give you what you want. Instead of incorporating new features, devs should introduce official extensions, using them for what they were meant for.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[vidarh]

Well, I certainly see both "memory gobbling" and CPU hogging with 2.0.0.9. In fact I've seen no change in behavior in that respect over any of the latest versions. But seeing as developers have mostly pretended the memory leaks aren't there for a couple of years now (because they are hard to reproduce for a lot of people), I'm not surprised.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[BenoitRen]

There are no "minimalist browser" roots. Firefox was always meant to be a web browser with 'right set' of features. Check the roadmap.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

Things aren't fine just for me. I see very few people complaining about Firefox's memory usage. When I ask people who say they are experiencing memory problems how I can reproduce them, they cannot seem to find any demonstration of a memory problem at all. So, just what is this horrible memory problem people keep vaguely referring to? It seems to be quite rare and elusive. I wish developers would fix the more noticeable bugs, ones that can easily be demonstrated and are experienced by many.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I didn't say there's no memory gobbling bug. I said there's no sign of one that I can see. Would you like to point out the bug to me so I can see it? How would I reproduce the problem? If you do, I would be happy to file a bug report. As it is, no one has been able to point one out to me for over a year. It must be quite rare and elusive if no one can demonstrate it out of over 120 million users.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

No, developers have not pretended that memory leaks aren't there. There are plenty that are easily reproducible, and about 100 memory leaks have been fixed in the past year. In fact, they can find so few leaks now that they've needed to look at other ways of reducing memory use. Please stop fabricating lies about memory problems in Firefox. If you want to point out a specific "memory gobbling" or CPU hogging bug, fine, let's have it so a bug report can be filed and the problem fixed.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[chaoticgeek]

Wow, you have a serious issue, however I'm thinking that it is not just Firefox, what are your extensions? I've got ff open with 6 tabs and 6 extensions installed and I'm only using 50 to 55 megs of memory. Side bar in Vista uses 13 megs itself and that does less so I think that is pretty good usage on ff's behalf.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Willful ignorance. Ignorance.

Open browser. Go and open tabs for all of Yahoo's most popular articles. About 30 tabs. Memory usage: 175M

Close all tabs.

Go to Slashdot. Open tabs for comments on all current stories. Close tabs.

Go to NYTimes. Open tabs for all most popular/emailed stories. Close tabs.

Go to Yahoo. Open tabs for all most popular articles.

Go back to Slashdot to post comment.

Memory usage: 302M

Extensions: DOM Inspector. Real Player Recorder (which is disabled). Talkback.

Close All Yahoo tabs. Memory usage: 250M

Open Yahoo most popular in tabs... 324 and growing... CPU usage ~ 30%. I can't open them all b/c this is getting too slow...

As long as there are attitudes like yours... it doesn't matter if a bug is filed or not...

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Thrip]

Second, there is no sign of any "memory gobbling bug" that I can see... I guess you never use Firefox, then. I keep up to date with the latest version, and I have to close and reopen it several times a day to free up memory. And everyone I've ever talked to about it has the same issue.

...just a few little leaks here and there and some memory fragmentation i.e., memory gobbling bug. And when you say "some" that should read "a massive amount of."

Don't get me wrong, I much prefer Firefox to any other browser I've tried (and I've tried more than most people). But that's no reason to pretend it doesn't eat up all your computer's memory, when in fact it does.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Your.Master]

Steps to reproduce: Use firefox for a while on any computer I've ever used it on, with multiple windows with multiple tabs. The fact that I can't find a simple set of steps to reproduce the problem doesn't mean that it isn't actually a legitimate problem, nor does it mean it is rare. It *does* mean that it is elusive, which is the entire problem. I was back to using IE7 (Opera annoyed me too much with the little "I know better than you how to navigate" quirks like centring the mouse for scrolling when I middle click when I just missed middle-clicking a link) until I got a new computer. Which runs firefox (and Vista) just fine even when it gobbles up memory.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I've never seen it, and nearly everyone I see on the Firefox Bugs forum has never seen it. It sounds pretty rare to me. There may be some problem, but few people seem to ever see it, and no one can describe it in enough detail to file a proper bug report. Without a bug report, it won't be fixed. Sorry you see the problem, but no amount of continuing to state that you see the problem will be productive. We need details of the problem, such as a set of steps to reproduce it, to track it down and fix it. If no one ever reports this information, it cannot be fixed.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Allador]

Good Lord, its trivial to reproduce the memory leak issue.

Open up digg.com (without your noscript extension running).

Open the first 20 or 30 pages in new tabs.

Close them, repeat.

Firefox will now be using in excess of 500MB of memory.

Close firefox and re-open (with the same session), and FireFox will drop to between 100-200MB.

Let it sit or browse again, watch it inflate memory use again.

Close all the tabs except one, go to about:blank (or whatever firefox calls it).

Notice how the memory use doesnt go down?

These are pretty much textbook definitions of memory leaking, firefox is consuming memory when it needs it, but then not giving the memory back when its done.

It's quite easy to get FF to grow up to 1GB or so of memory usage, standby and hibernate helps.

It's trivially reproducible.

The only way you dont encounter this is if you use very few tabs, and you close and restart firefox often.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[edwdig]

Firefox's roots go back a while (2 years?) before that roadmap was written. The original goal was to make a minimal browser, however, people soon realized that Mozilla never really was bloated. Stripping out the "bloat" from Mozilla ended up with a negligible amount of speed & memory improvements. Then parts of the UI code were rewritten to provide features that people always wanted in Mozilla (such as customizable toolbars). In the end, Firefox ended up being a little slower and a little more memory hungry than Mozilla. Hence they made up the "right set of features" line.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[edwdig]

How often do you close Firefox? I generally have one session open for weeks at a time on my laptop, staying open through several hibernation cycles a day. On the rare occasion I check on the memory usage, it's always 150+ MB for typically 4-5 tabs without anything fancy in them. I've never had any extensions installed until I just recently added Adblock, which doesn't seem to have changed things.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I got up to 272 MB after opening up 20 pages in 20 tabs, and after closing all tabs but one memory usage went back down to 131 MB. I opened up 30 different pages in 30 tabs and memory use went up to 205 MB, and after closing all tabs but one memory use went back down to 136 MB. It seems like memory use is going down after closing tabs to me. You may want to discuss the matter further in the Firefox Bugs forum on MozillaZine to see if anyone else can see the problem. Like I said, I have not been able to reproduce any memory problem described to me in over a year. I should note that I'm using the latest nightly build of Firefox 3 on Windows.

Close firefox and re-open (with the same session), and FireFox will drop to between 100-200MB.

Yes, of course, you're removing all the cached content and all the memory fragmentation. It's like completely clearing every single cache and completely defragging memory. Of course memory dropped. That's not necessarily a memory leak. It's memory use caused by fragmentation and caching. If it were a memory leak, memory use would keep rising without limit, or a memory leak detector would report a leak.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[sxeraverx]

I had WebDeveloper, DOM Inspector, and StumbleUpon, butI removed all of my extensions, including the DOM inspector that comes with FF by default, and nothing changed. It's an FF issue, not an extension issue. But like the AC said, opening a bunch of tabs, on a couple different sites, then closing all but one does it, as well as running FF for extended periods of time (like coming back to a couple open tabs the next morning). I've heard this attributed to FF caching absolutely everything you come across for (supposedly) faster page loading, but a 250M cache is just ridiculous.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[asa]

Are you completely uninformed or are you being intentionally untruthful here?

> Firefox's roots go back a while (2 years?) before that roadmap was
> written. The original goal was to make a minimal browser, however,

You're just plain wrong here.

The original goal, that I helped define in early 2002, was to make a browser that could actually compete with IE and gain market share where the feature bloated and designed by committee Mozilla Application Suite had failed. We didn't skimp on features and included many features, bringing it up and beyond parity with IE, that the suite never had.

> people soon realized that Mozilla never really was bloated. Stripping
> out the "bloat" from Mozilla ended up with a negligible amount of
> speed & memory improvements.

Horseshit. We cut launch time and new window time in half in just a few months. We cut the download size by almost 300%. Simply removing the other app XUL overlays was a huge performance win all by itself. Then top developers (this was Dave Hyatt, the creator of XUL, and Joe, Ben, and Blake, the most experienced XUL programmers on the earth at that time) writing much cleaner XUL with sane CSS rules and avoiding the known slow XUL features, were able to get the new browser so far ahead of the Suite performance and usability that the Mozilla leadership agreed it would be a better path forward than the Suite.

From the 0.1 release (the first public release of the browser that would become Firefox) notes:

Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser. It's a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features. A few of the features new to this release include:

• Speed, Speed, and Speed
  Phoenix was designed with performance as a primary goal. The XUL experts built a browser that starts in nearly half the time of Mozilla and its commercial derivatives. New windows also snap into existence almost twice as fast as Mozilla and commercial derivatives.

(emphasis mine.)

And that was the first release before we'd even grabbed all the low hanging performance fruit. Speed and size continued to improve with every single point release while we built great new features like complete settings and data migration, extension management, customizable toolbars, web form auto-complete, and more. The browser was more featureful, faster, and smaller than the Suite.

> Then parts of the UI code were rewritten to provide features that
> people always wanted in Mozilla (such as customizable toolbars).

Yep, we gave users a set of features that people wouldn't or couldn't implement in the Suite. We listened to the users, which had outgrown the Suite's user base in size and involvement long before we shipped 1.0, and built the browser that we believed they would love using enough to spread to their IE using friends, families, and co-workers.

> In the end, Firefox ended up being a little slower and a little more
> memory hungry than Mozilla. Hence they made up the "right set of
> features" line.

Again, this is just bullshit. Go back and read the Phoenix 0.1 release notes. "Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser. It's a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Shall I repeat it. "a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Where in that statement of purpose do you read that the goal was to make a minimalist browser?

When we shipped Firefox 1.0, the Windows version clocked in at a 4.7MB download compared to the Suite's 13MB download. Firefox 1.0's startup time on low to medium end systems was half that of the Suite and a noticeable improvement even on the fastest systems. Firefox 1.0's memory usage at startup was about 10% better than t

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[ozmanjusri]

Second, there is no sign of any "memory gobbling bug" that I can see

There is, sort of.

Stuart Parmenter has found memory fragmentation happening which makes it look like FF is consuming lots of RAM.

Basically, because FF loads many components, including Javascript, strings, sqlite, CSS parsing, HTML parsing, etc, the RAM between each used block may be unavailable as contiguous memory even if FF isn't using it. The problem is showing up mainly on Windows because the 2.6 and above kernels have built-in RAM defragging, but it could catch a Linux user if an app requests more RAM before the kernel can make it available..

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Danny Rathjens]

Are you guys looking at *virtual* memory size? Which is somewhat irrelevant? You should look at the resident set size minus the shared memory size to figure out how much memory is really being used.
When looking at RES/SHR in top, I do see the resident set size creep up with successive opening/closing of tabs (to same pages even). My numbers are a lot lower than your examples, though, which is why I wonder if you are looking at virtual mem by accident. i.e. when I started firefox, it's RES is 31MB and SHR is 21MB and it's at 94MB/19MB now after a few cycles of loading 20 tabs/closing them bumped up RES each time(even after clearing cache manually from prefs).
iceweasel-2.0.0.8 on debian stable with greasemonkey, adblock plus, and flashblock. :) (oops, this just made me realize maybe you guys aren't using linux at all and can't distinguish between types of memory use as easily.)

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[edwdig]

Are you completely uninformed or are you being intentionally untruthful here?

Asa, I normally agree with you on most things, but I think you're being untruthful here.

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html

The original goal, that I helped define in early 2002, was to make a browser that could actually compete with IE and gain market share where the feature bloated and designed by committee Mozilla Application Suite had failed. We didn't skimp on features and included many features, bringing it up and beyond parity with IE, that the suite never had.

That sure wasn't the goal I saw. The original Phoenix work came from mainly Blake Ross complaining that he didn't agree with the committee designing the Suite. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think there were a few other names involved, but Blake is the one I remember being most vocal at the time. He stripped the browser down to not much more than a url entry box and the back, forward, reload, and stop buttons. Every single feature he hesitated on adding back in due to size and/or speed concerns. To the point that "offline mode" was an extension, even though the only part of that functionality actually in the extension was the UI for it. Perhaps you disagree with my choice of words in calling it minimalist before, but he sure was trying to keep it to a very small feature set.

Horseshit. We cut launch time and new window time in half in just a few months. We cut the download size by almost 300%. Simply removing the other app XUL overlays was a huge performance win all by itself.

And at this time period, you were just getting to the point of putting things like the history functionality back in. When you cut out 90% of the functionality, of course it's going to be smaller and faster. I also remember the days when the Gecko engine was going by it's original Raptor codename. It was extremely small and fast back then - but it also wasn't very usable, so you couldn't compare it to anything.

Again, this is just bullshit. Go back and read the Phoenix 0.1 release notes. "Phoenix is not your father's Mozilla browser. It's a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Shall I repeat it. "a lean and fast browser that doesn't skimp on features." Where in that statement of purpose do you read that the goal was to make a minimalist browser?

I did go back. And apparently I found the confusion. I forgot that it Phoenix wasn't the first name. I'm remembering back to the days when it was known as mozilla/browser. That was around for a while before it got the Phoenix name.

When we shipped Firefox 1.0, the Windows version clocked in at a 4.7MB download compared to the Suite's 13MB download. Firefox 1.0's startup time on low to medium end systems was half that of the Suite and a noticeable improvement even on the fastest systems. Firefox 1.0's memory usage at startup was about 10% better than the Suites, mostly thanks to a smaller overall UI footprint (they both used the same Gecko rendering engine which makes up about 90% of the overall program size).

Let's be fair. I just dug around the mozilla.org ftp and checked the installers. The largest Suite release was under 12 MB, with most releases being under 11 MB. Second, the default download on the web site was usually the net installer, which was a 250 KB download. If you did the browser only install, it was about a 6 MB download. And you probably also know that the Firefox installer uses 7zip while the Suite installer used zip. Firefox installers built with zip were around 6 MB, making it similar in size to the Suite's browser.

Also, I'm sure you've seen the (several year old now) browser speed tests that showed FireFox to be slower than Mozilla at just about everything.

But, in the end, the proof is in the pudding. There are about 130 to 140 million Firefox users today, coming up on our third m

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[asa]

The browser speed test you cite is bogus. Firefox, during all of my time being involved with its development and release, has always been faster at start-up, new window, and pageload, than the Suite, (with the possible exception of startup with the suite with the preloader on (turbo mode) Even then, on the hardware I had during the development of every pre-1.0 release of Firefox, Firefox bead Suite in turbo mode on a first start after reboot).

The original phoenix work came from Blake, me, Joe, Dave, Bryner, Pch, and a couple of others later on and the motivation was not to create a minimalist browser. I was there. I was a part of it from the first checkin to mozilla/browser and the goal was not to create a minimalist browser, it was to create a good browser. Viewer.exe was a minimalist browser but it was not a good browser. Chimera, the cocoa Mac browser, something we modeled some of the early m/b work on (but, in our case, using XUL) was not a minimalist browser. Ben's short-lived c# Manticore browser that pre-dated Firefox, was not intended to be a minimalist browser either, though it didn't get much past that.

Yes, it was called m/b for about three months of early active development. The people were the same as when we named it Phoenix and the goals were the same.

And that bullshit about telling users not to download Mozilla is just that, bullshit. You're remembering pre Mozilla 1.0 days. I was responsible for those pages and when I shipped 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7,and all of the dot releases in between, all of them messaged the Suite as a strong and community supported end-user offering. Claiming otherwise is simply lying.

I was there. I was responsible for every single Suite release going back to M17 and all the way up to the 1.7 release. I was responsible for every Firefox release from the first binary of m/b posted at my blog all the way up until Firefox 1.5. I shipped those products and wrote much of the user-facing content on release pages. Don't come in here and tell me I'm re-writing history unless you're going to cite some one or some documentation from someone more authority than me.

- A

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[dweazle]

Actually the high usage of memory is usually not caused by memory leaks. Read Stuart Parmenter's blog for more info regarding Firefox memory allocation and fragmentation. He has done some interesting research.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[egNuKe]

Wrong.

Firefox keeps closed pages in memory because their studies found out that more than 25% (as far as i remember) of average page visits are pages already opened in the same session.

However, Firefox limits its memory usage to a maximum which can be changed by user.
Open about:config and change browser.cache.memory.capacity to whatever you want.

You can even disable this feature by flipping browser.cache.memory.enable to false.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[BenoitRen]

The browser speed test you cite is bogus. Firefox, during all of my time being involved with its development and release, has always been faster at start-up, new window, and pageload, than the Suite

Yet there are plenty of users who switch to SeaMonkey that mention it being faster for them than Firefox. Further evidence is that when SeaMonkey switched from XPFE to toolkit there was a performance hit.

And that bullshit about telling users not to download Mozilla is just that, bullshit. You're remembering pre Mozilla 1.0 days. I was responsible for those pages and when I shipped 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7,and all of the dot releases in between, all of them messaged the Suite as a strong and community supported end-user offering. Claiming otherwise is simply lying.

If you were really there, you would remember how 1.0, 1.4 and 1.7 were stable releases, with the 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 releases being technology previews, and 1.5 and 1.6 being something inbetween.

• Look at this page. Note how it says "We make binary versions of Mozilla 1.0 available for testing purposes only! We provide no end user support.". It also says "We do not guarantee that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org domain is Year 2000 compliant.". It is like that even when Mozilla 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 are released.

• And a version of this page in mid-2003, where it says "our latest stable development branch".

You also haven't addressed the fact that Firefox got a lot of marketing which the Suite never did.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[asa]

> If you were really there,

OK. Now you've got to be kidding. That's rich. Questioning whether or not I was "there" for the 100+ Mozilla releases I managed. OK. You're clearly just joking around here. Had I recognized you were just trying to be funny, I'd have not responded to your initial comment.

- A

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

After opening the browser and going around Google maps for several minutes, I got memory use up to 55 MB. After opening 20 Yahoo articles in 20 tabs, memory use went up to 94 MB. After closing all tabs but this one, memory use went down to 66 MB. After going to Slashdot and opening the pages for comments for all articles in current stories, memory usage went up to 148 MB. After closing all tabs but this one, memory use went down to 89 MB. After opening about 30 articles from the NY Times in different tabs, memory use went up to 118 MB. After closing all tabs but this one, memory use went back down to 85 MB. I'm using the latest nightly build of Firefox 3 on Windows.

Sorry, I don't think the problem is my attitude. I simply cannot reproduce the problem of Firefox using hundreds of megabytes for no reason, no matter how hard I try. All I see is memory use hanging around 100 MB, just like I see in all browsers. That's due to memory fragmentation and caching, which I see in all browsers. Believe me, if I could see a problem, I'd be right there reporting it. Why would I not want a serious problem fixed? If you think the problem is my attitude, feel free to discuss the problem on the Firefox Bugs forum at MozillaZine. Certainly there can't be such a widespread conspiracy that we're all going to deny a serious, obvious problem?

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I'm looking at Mem Usage, Peak Mem Usage, and VM Size in the Windows Task Manager. I usually report the VM Size, as on Windows it seems to show the actual memory used. When pages are swapped to disk, Mem Usage can go way down but VM Size stays high. All the numbers I reported for VM Size here are very similar to the Mem Usage and Peak Mem Usage, because I'm not getting anywhere near the point where Firefox needs to swap memory out to disk, even with only 1 GB of RAM and opening and closing tabs like crazy.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Close all the tabs except one, go to about:blank (or whatever firefox calls it).

Notice how the memory use doesnt go down?

These are pretty much textbook definitions of memory leaking, firefox is consuming memory when it needs it, but then not giving the memory back when its done.

No, these are pretty much textbook definitions of normal memory usage:

It is impossible to tell whether a block of memory has been freed just by looking at it. You must keep track of that yourself. An additional point is that malloc does not normally return the freed memory to the operating system; it remains owned by the process until it terminates. The process can reuse it the next time it requests more memory, but other programs will not have access to it, even if no other memory is available. As a corollary, then, the memory footprint of a program is the size of the largest allocation(s) made at any one time. Thus it is always wise to free objects you do not need, especially large ones as soon as possible, to minimize this footprint.

In addition, according to perlmonks.com (and apparently perldoc -q "program shrinks"):

You can't. On most operating systems, memory allocated to a program can never be returned to the system. That's why long-running programs sometimes re-exec themselves. Some operating systems (notably, FreeBSD and Linux) allegedly reclaim large chunks of memory that is no longer used, but it doesn't appear to happen with Perl (yet). The Mac appears to be the only platform that will reliably (albeit, slowly) return memory to the OS.

Obviously this last quote was about Perl, but being written in C and relying on C's malloc and free, it'll have the same memory issues.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[edwdig]

The browser speed test you cite is bogus. Firefox, during all of my time being involved with its development and release, has always been faster at start-up, new window, and pageload, than the Suite, (with the possible exception of startup with the suite with the preloader on (turbo mode) Even then, on the hardware I had during the development of every pre-1.0 release of Firefox, Firefox bead Suite in turbo mode on a first start after reboot).

The speed test matches my experience. As for the Suite with turbo mode, you had to get a computer with so little memory that it was constantly swapping to disk for the browser window to not come up instantaneously with turbo mode on.

And that bullshit about telling users not to download Mozilla is just that, bullshit. You're remembering pre Mozilla 1.0 days. I was responsible for those pages and when I shipped 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, and 1.7,and all of the dot releases in between, all of them messaged the Suite as a strong and community supported end-user offering. Claiming otherwise is simply lying.

Here's the Mozilla 1.3 download page from 2003, with the warnings still there. It's the same text that was there since the 0.x releases. Archive.org doesn't seem to have the download pages for 1.4+, at least not on the random dates I tried.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030401090222/www.mozilla.org/releases/#1.3

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

We've said for years (just check Bugzilla and the Firefox Bugs forum) that memory fragmentation is one reason memory use does not go down as much as users might expect when they close tabs. As far as I can tell, all browsers suffer from memory fragmentation. If it were a big problem in Firefox (compared to other browsers), we'd still be able to see the Firefox process using much more memory than other browsers when performing the same actions. I cannot reproduce such a problem, so it looks to me like Firefox suffers from memory fragmentation about the same as the other browsers. Still, there doesn't seem to be any "memory gobbling bug". If you can demonstrate such a bug, please do. Just do it in Bugzilla or the Firefox Bugs forum, which are the proper places to discuss bugs. Discussing them on Slashdot does little good.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[ozmanjusri]

Yeah, that's why I said "sort of".

This one is already being discussed on the bug forum - I got the link from Asa's blog.

It's not a problem specific to Firefox, but it's been great ammunition for the astroturfers because simpler, less capable browsers like IE will suffer less. That's why they keep harping on it.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I use Firefox every day. I have Firefox 2.0.0.9 at work and the latest nightly version of Firefox 3 at home. I never need to close it due to freeing up memory, even after a week of use every day. I hang out in the Firefox Bugs forum every day, and none of the regulars seems to have any problems with memory, either. Now and then, someone comes by and mentions a problem, but we can almost never reproduce any problem whatsoever. Usually it turns out that creating a new profile or other simple procedure fixes the problem immediately.

Perhaps Firefox eats up all the memory on your computer. In that case, either you have a problem on your computer to fix or you have a bug to report. Please do one of those things instead on continuing to claim that there's some sort of awful and obvious memory problem. If it's so obvious, why can nearly no one reproduce it?

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[BillyGee]

>But, in the end, the proof is in the pudding. There are about 130 to 140 million Firefox users today, coming up on our third major release.

Oh. Wait, just earlier someone linked to a post of yours from 3 weeks ago...

"Mozilla has used search-related revenue to grow from about 10 full-time employees and a few million users back in 2004 to more than 100 employees supporting over 120 million Firefox users today..."

Posted by asa on October 25, 2007 10:41 AM
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/10/firefox_finance.html

Quite impressive growth indeed, 3 weeks and tens of millions of users. Or how about finally agreeing to stop using bullshit download numbers as your installed user base? Might make your calculations a little easier too. I could see how forgetting wget on a loop might add a good number of new "users" overnight.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[asa]

> Quite impressive growth indeed, 3 weeks and tens of millions of
> users. Or how about finally agreeing to stop using bullshit download
> numbers as your installed user base? Might make your calculations a
> little easier too. I could see how forgetting wget on a loop might
> add a good number of new "users" overnight.

This isn't based on downloads, it's based on active user counts.

I was slightly under-reporting a month ago since it had been a few months since I lst looked at the stats and I'm pretty contemporary with this post since I've been following the stats pretty closely the last month or so.

Thank you. Drive through.

- A

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Thrip]

We must be living in perpendicular universes. What you're saying isn't even consistent with the link you yourself posted, which starts out

I've been doing a lot of work trying to figure out why after loading a lot of pages much of your memory seems to disappear. I've never bothered to file a bug report because this is a well known problem. Literally every person I've talked to about Firefox has complained about it. It happens on every computer I use. If I have any more useful information to supply, I will file a bug report, but for now, all I'd have to say is "Yes, what almost everybody else has experienced, I also experience."

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[petermgreen]

Yeah, if he actually filed usable bugs, they'd get fixed, and then he'd have nothing to whine about any more.
The problem is it is very hard to file usable bug reports for "works fine at first but tends to suck up ever more memory and grind to a halt over long sessions in my environment". You really don't know if it is firefox core or some extension or plugin that is to blame nor if it is firefox core what part of it.

If a developer can't reproduce a bug quickly and reliablly it is very hard for them to find where the bug is and to confirm they really have it fixed.

Also mozilla is known to ignore reproducable crash bugs because they don't affect enough people. The fact they are having to do that speaks volumes about thier code quality IMO.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[mcvos]

I've never seen it, and nearly everyone I see on the Firefox Bugs forum has never seen it. It sounds pretty rare to me.

Firefox is infamous for its memory bugs and performance degradation. A lot of people consider this Firefox's main problem, and even its only important problem. Very recent versions have lessened these problems somewhat, but it is still bad enough that I've finally installed Opera on my work PC and laptop.

Perhaps the Firefox devs are not the kind of powerusers as other firefox users, but ignoring complaints from users means that you're alienating part of your user base, and that means that eventually you're going to lose market share. Probably to Opera. Firefox may remain an excellent substitute for IE for a very long time to come, but some people want more than a substitute.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

People complain that when they close tabs that memory is not released. For years, I've said that's due to caching and fragmentation. That is what Stuart Parmenter is also saying. It is a problem with every browser, not just Firefox. Even with this memory fragmentation, I never, ever have any memory problems. It is only a problem for people who check Firefox's memory usage every few minutes and think they're seeing a memory leak when in fact they're merely seeing some fragmentation. That is the "trying to figure out why after loading a lot of pages much of your memory seems to disappear" he is referring to.

If you're really having any problem at all with the amount of memory Firefox is using, such as needing to restart Firefox due to your computer running out of memory, or Firefox using more memory than other browsers when performing the same operations, please do give a set of steps to reproduce the problem. Instead of posting it here, you'd be better off posting it in a Bugzilla bug report or on the Firefox Bugs forum at MozillaZine. As far as I can tell, no one has given the details of any problem like this in over a year. It is not a "well known problem" but a problem few people can see, and no one can seem to describe in any detail.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[mcvos]

Close firefox and re-open (with the same session), and FireFox will drop to between 100-200MB.

Yes, of course, you're removing all the cached content and all the memory fragmentation. It's like completely clearing every single cache and completely defragging memory. Of course memory dropped. That's not necessarily a memory leak.

Why is Firefox caching all those closed tabs in memory instead of on disk? It might make sense to cache the previous webpage in memory, but after a tab has been closed, it's most definitely safe to rely solely on the disk cache for the content of that tab. Not doing to counts as a memory leak in my book. And in any book about proper caching, for that matter.

In fact, it might be nice if firefox noticed when its cache is growing to large and purged old data a bit more aggressively. I wouldn't be surprised if Firefox's ambitious caching is responsible for many of its memory and performance issues.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

Firefox is infamous for its memory bugs and performance degradation. A lot of people consider this Firefox's main problem, and even its only important problem.

And yet, no one can seem to explain how to see the problem. It sounds like a rumor to me. Could you point me to one shred of real evidence, hard data, that Firefox has any kind of serious memory bug or performance problem? How would I see these infamous bugs?

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[mcvos]

People complain that when they close tabs that memory is not released. For years, I've said that's due to caching and fragmentation.

Then fix the caching and fragmentation. I admit, caching properly is hard, especially knowing when to release it, but it's also Very Important.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[napolj2]

Also, I'm sure you've seen the (several year old now) browser speed tests that showed FireFox to be slower than Mozilla at just about everything.

In the Conclusions section of that site, it links to an email discussion in which they point out that the reason for this was a difference in versions of the underlying rendering engine, Gecko (1.7 vs 1.8). For a meaningful comparison, you'd have to compare a version of the Suite to a version of FF with the same Gecko version underneath.

Mozilla is working on an automated performance testing framework, Talos, as well as a suite of JavaScript performance tests; it will be interesting to see some hard numbers comparing the performance of different versions of FF as well as different apps.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Allador]

I'm looking at working set in physical memory, on winXP.

A typical scenario will be right now Firefox with 5 tabs open. Been open for a couple days, maybe 4 standbys and 1 hibernate.

Firefox 2.0.0.9

Working Set Private - 200,000 K
Working Set Shareable - 45,000 K
Working Set Shared - 32,000 K
(rounded the numbers to the thousands)

(as a comparison, VM Private Bytes are 205,000 K, with Virtual Size 385,000K)

Those ratios are roughly typical. So when it gets up over 500-600MB, the ratios are about the same.

In a more typical scenario, when I've got 20-30 tabs open all the time (stuff I want to come back to later, etc), and the box runs for a week, with like 20 standbys and a few hibernates, FireFox will start pushing close to 1GB of physical memory use.

Note that this behavior is consistent across severals years, and a number of different laptops (and therefore windows builds).

As another comparison, I've got Opera open with 32 tabs, been running for a few days, about the same duration as Firefox, and its got 116,000K working set private, with another 8,000 K shareable and shared.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

What do you mean, fix the caching? Is there a problem with the way Firefox is caching? If so, please explain what it is so the problem can be fixed.

The fragmentation is currently being looked into. I'm not sure how much of an impact that will have. If you're seeing truly serious memory problems, I doubt reducing fragmentation will help significantly. It's a way of reducing memory usage, but only typical usage. If there's a serious bug you're experiencing, reducing fragmentation will not compensate for that much.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

It's not necessarily caching the content of pages on closed tabs. I'm not exactly sure how the bfcache works. However, there are several other caches, such as "the image cache (keeps images in memory to help load them faster), font cache, textrun cache (short lived, but used to cache computed glyph indicies and metrics and such), etc." As far as I can tell, most plugins also cache themselves so they don't need to start from scratch every time you go to a page that uses the plugin.

Now I'm still not sure what "memory and performance issues" you're referring to. I'm not able to reproduce any, even though I'm trying hard. How would I see one of these memory and performance issues you speak of? If I can reproduce one, no matter how trivial, I will be sure to file a proper bug report so the problem can be fixed. Can you get Firefox to use significantly more CPU or memory than another browser? If so, please explain in detail how.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[edwdig]

In the Conclusions section of that site, it links to an email discussion in which they point out that the reason for this was a difference in versions of the underlying rendering engine, Gecko (1.7 vs 1.8). For a meaningful comparison, you'd have to compare a version of the Suite to a version of FF with the same Gecko version underneath.

If you notice, that site was later updated with Firefox 2.0 numbers, which uses Gecko 1.8. It was faster than Firefox 1.5 but still slower than Mozilla.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Allador]

Did you read your own links? The first one clearly states that the section you quoted was just applicable for one memory allocation technique on one type of operating system (malloc on Unix).

It also pointed out a memory allocation technique that DOES return memory to the OS, mapmalloc.

There are numerous memory allocation techniques in Windows, and you can create your own or purchase 3rd party tools to do so. Many of them actively advertise that they're orders of magnitudes faster than malloc on windows. The reason I bring this up is that malloc isnt the only way to do things.

I cant speak to O/S specific kernel calls and such, as thats not my specialty, but I can sit and watch several different pieces of software shrink their physical/working set when the memory is no longer needed. I can watch Opera and IE do it. I can watch database servers do it (MS SQL Server, with memory in dynamic mode). I'm sure I could come up with others if needed.

Now its possible that its freeing memory up and the O/S is paging it out. That would be okay, VM usage is not that big of a deal. But if these other pieces of software can do it, why cant Firefox?

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Allador]

That may be, that its user-configurable.

But shouldnt it default to a sane setting? Any setting that ends up with 800-1000MB of physical memory usage after a week of running (always growing, never shrinking) is not sane.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[petermgreen]

returning pages of memory to the OS is possible at least on windows on linux.

The problem with making a memory manager (defined here as a peice of code that allocates pages from the OS and suballocates them to meet the demands of other parts of the application) return memory to the OS is that memory has to be allocated and returned to the OS in complete pages. In other words the already complex buisness of managing a heap that stores random small locations gets even more complex as the manager must try to empty pages so they can be returned to the OS.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

The default setting will store up to eight cache pages in RAM. That will use an average of about 32 MB. If you're seeing "800-1000MB of physical memory usage after a week of running" it sounds like you're suffering from a severe memory leak. When I run Firefox that long, it uses only about 200 MB of memory. Why not grab one of the many memory leak detectors available and help find the problem?

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

I agree. It can be very hard to find a set of steps to reproduce problems sometimes. On the other hand, if the problem were as serious and widespread as many posters here are saying, I'm sure someone could produce a set of steps to reproduce a problem. And if someone has done such a thing, then perhaps people still saying that this problem is going ignored should find said set of steps and make sure someone files a proper bug report. If not, I suspect the problem will continue to be ignored, as no one has reported it.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[BenoitRen]

What's even richer is that you choose to ignore my evidence and statements and pull up some baseless statement. :)

Hurray for revisionism.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

The highest memory usage due to fragmentation he mentions is "The rest, a whopping 13,881,800 bytes, is in free blocks!" That's a grand total of 14 MB of RAM consumed by memory fragmentation. Will the people still complaining about severe memory leaks be satisfied with a mere 14 MB reduction in memory usage? If not, then they should not look to reducing memory fragmentation as a fix for their issues.

Of course he finds that "Windows Low Fragmentation Heap" can reduce memory fragmentation, but that "certainly means that early on you're going to be using a lot more memory. However, over time you may end up using less memory as you will be less fragmented and thus new allocations as you load new pages should be able to fill in to the free space more easily." So you may end up using less memory after quite a while, but early on you'll be using lots of memory. Hmmm, doesn't sound like a fix for a severe memory problem, does it?

Anyone who interprets Stuart Parmenter's blog comments as insight into "high memory usage" is quite simply off their rocker.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

Firefox seems to free memory and return it to the OS relatively well. It doesn't return all of it due to memory fragmentation, but does it do worse than "other pieces of software"? If so, someone should be able to easily demonstrate Firefox using a larger VM Size (on Windows) than other browsers when performing the same operations. Do you have a specific set of operations that will demonstrate Firefox not returning memory to the OS as well as other browsers? If so, post them and we can have some solid information on the problem.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Allador]

Do you have a specific set of operations that will demonstrate Firefox not returning memory to the OS as well as other browsers? If so, post them and we can have some solid information on the problem. Did you not read my original post on this thread?

In there is a step by step set of repro steps. Consistently reproducible.

I wonder how you can ask this question, when you've replied to two of my posts that provided exactly the information you've asked for.

Maybe this is the attitude that the firefox devs have, and explains why it isnt getting fixed.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

Firefox caches up to eight pages by default. That comes out to an average of about 32 MB used for the page cache (aka bfcache). I don't think 250 MB is used for the cache. Perhaps that's the total amount of memory used for pages you're currently viewing, the many different caches, memory fragmentation, plugins, and memory leaks all together after an extended period of time. Without a memory leak report or some other hard evidence, we can't really point to any one culprit and say that it's eating up too much memory in your case.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[bunratty]

Did you not read my replies? I tried to reproduce the problems, but I cannot. This is exactly the way things have been for over a year. I cannot reproduce any of these memory problems people keep complaining about. I also see that others in the Firefox Bugs forum cannot reproduce the problems. Without being able to reproduce any problem, we can't file a bug report and the problem cannot be fixed.

Please follow my advice, which I will give one last time:
IF
YOU
SEE
A
SERIOUS
PROBLEM
IN
FIREFOX
FILE
A
BUG
REPORT
OR
DISCUSS
IT
IN
THE
FIREFOX
BUGS
FORUM
ON
MOZILLAZINE.
That way, the bug will get the attention it deserves. Assuming that anyone else can reproduce it.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[mcvos]

What do you mean, fix the caching? Is there a problem with the way Firefox is caching? If so, please explain what it is so the problem can be fixed.

You said yourself that memory wasn't being released upon closing a tab due to caching. That's what's wrong with its caching. Rule number 1 of caching: never ever keep information that's not going to be used in memory, and closing a tab is a good indication that it's probably not going to be used. If you think you might need it somewhere in the future, store it on disk. Bad caching is an important source of memory leaks.

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Did you read your own links? The first one clearly states that the section you quoted was just applicable for one memory allocation technique on one type of operating system (malloc on Unix).

Yes, I read all the links, plus several others. This is a little more of what the onlamp.com link mentioned:

There are also alternatives to malloc. For example, a program linked to the mapmalloc library will return dynamically allocated memory to the operating system when it calls free. While no change in the code is necessary, the price is that memory allocation takes about five times longer.

Now obviously there may be other methods to return memory to the OS, but it's still a very difficult problem due to fragmentation (and according to other posters, Firefox does indeed return at least some of its memory to the OS).

Re:File bug reports rather than whine on Slashdot

[Eivind Eklund]

Open about 40 tabs, pointing at different sites. Keep doing browsing with this amount of tabs for a few hours.

Of course, how much of a problem you see depends on what platform you are on - I've primarily seen the problem on Windows, with Mac OS X showing much less of it. The fragging issue recently discovered seems to be a likely culprit.

I'll also note that for me it "seems to be" associated with flash and Javascript, though I've not been able to pinpoint clearly. And I've not come in with a bug report because it's not possible to report anything sane - just "Firefox fucks up under heavy use".

Eivind.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[sodul]

I've stopped using extensions a while ago and just use Privoxy.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[emarkp]

Note that none of the add-ons for Opera allow blocking of ads.

Perhaps because the built-in "block content" feature is excellent, so no add-on is necessary?

They DO spend a LOAD of money on OSS

[bunratty]

Every dime they are spending on employees and infrastructure goes to OSS. Or do they produce or distribute any software that isn't open source?

Re:They DO spend a LOAD of money on OSS

[WindBourne]

The reason why the mozilla foundation is doing so will is BECAUSE OF Firefox, not Mozilla. Basically, it was somebody else who took mozilla in a different direction. While I think that it is good that they have an OSS program (after all, that is what gave them access to firefox), they need to fund OSS in different directions so that they can see what is good and what is not. Afterall, the foundation was pushing Mozilla when it was dying. It shows that they have little clue about decent marketing. In fact, few companies do. Look at MS. Few of their products are instance hits. It takes BILLIONS and multiple years for most of their products before they are "overnight" hits.

Damn you, FF...

[Aminion]

... why don't you grow your own monies like everyone else!!

Seriously, people: capital is good, that's how you pay for stuff and people, and fund projects. And it's not like Google is bribing the Firefox Foundation, the money comes from search engine integration in Firefox. Also, I can't recall Firefox being involved in any shady business where they have sided with Google against Microsoft. Furthermore, The Firefox Foundation did negotiate with Yahoo before sealing the deal with Google, so they clearly have other options than just Google. Who knows, when the contract with Google expires in 2008, maybe even MS will try to make a deal with The Firefox Foundation.

From the summary:

but now the worry is that, even though it's clear that the community's code is what makes Firefox successful, Mozilla may be becoming dangerously reliant on Google's cash.

Nowhere is this fear expresses besides in the summary. Less editorializing, please.

Re:Damn you, FF...

[Aminion]

Who knows, when the contract with Google expires in 2008, maybe even MS will try to make a deal with The Firefox Foundation.
Only thing preventing this deal would be if, say, Microsoft developed its own BROWSER CALLED INTERNET EXPLORER!
/me is getting senile

Re:Damn you, FF...

[trawg]

And it's not like Google is bribing the Firefox Foundation, the money comes from search engine integration in Firefox. I seem to recall many people considering this 'adware' or 'spyware' when other companies attempted to bundle their advertising products with free/shareware :)

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Poromenos1]

You are modded flamebait, but I'm not sure I disagree. The GP says that nothing in Opera blocks Google ads, but all you need to do is add *.googlesyndication.com/* to the blocker and they're gone for good. If anything, it's the GP who's wrong..

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Anonymous Coward]

I really cannot see how the chief executive is worth $500,000 per year. Firefox is a great browser, but the actual developers deserve more of that pie.

Not only that.

[El Lobo]

I'll tell you whats really annoying... Yes, they "force" on you google as the default engine and home page. Not a big deal, change it, someone may say. The problem is , as a consultant, I meet people DAILY that not only have an idea that it can be done. They really THINK that the internet = Google, because of this: this is the fromt page they ever get.

And to make things more annoying: there are more and more free software these days that install Googlr Toolbar AND google desktop with it's annoying (bad) indexing on it. yes, you can unselect (often) the damn things when you install, but those same people never do. The result? Poogle Desktop slowing down their already blaoted computers even more? Hell, it's not only freeware. Last time I checked, even Adobe reader was bunded with G. Toolbar...

And to make things MORE annoying. More ans more sites are pushing on you some activeX control to install the toolbar as well. Thanks god for the new IE that stops those ActiveX by default.

I tell you, they are becoming the next Alexa. They ARE a plague, just now.

Re:Not only that.

[sulfur]

Yes, they "force" on you google as the default engine and home page Well, you have to come up with a default engine, don't you? If they selected Live search, you would as well that they "force" you to use Microsoft search. Or is it better if they displayed annoying first-run wizard (like IE7 does) where you had to select default search provider? I'm personally better the way they have it now, and I'm sure I am not alone.

Re:Not only that.

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Regarding the malware/spyware-style installation process of Google Toolbar and Desktop, I've seen both Google Toolbar and Desktop riding the installation procedures of Roxio's video editing software, Sun's JVM security updates (a security update has NO business installing unrelated software), Maxtor's and Western Digital's harddrives, and on and on.

And it's gotten much worse, not just how pervasive this is, but because in the past I would only see Google Toolbar pre-checked, while Google Desktop would be unchecked by default. But in the past year, I've noticed that both Google Toolbar and Desktop are pre-checked. My mom keeps asking me why Google's crapware keeps getting installed on her computer and asking me to remove it over and over.

The Bigger Point

[kaos07]

I don't think the main issue is Google supporting Firefox, as people have already commented it's generally a plus to have a steady stream of income. The real issue here is in regards to the CEO's pay. Half a million dollars compared to $300,000 for R&D? Something's skewed there.

Re:The Bigger Point

[maxume]

They spent around $19 million in 2006. Some big chunk of that was paying people to work on Firefox. The $300,000 was money given to *outside* projects.

It's really hard to say if the CEOs pay was worth it. Really, really hard. If the foundation knew it wasn't, I bet they would find a different CEO. Apparently, they have less than perfect information yet still find the arrangement acceptable.

Re:The Bigger Point

[Dhalka226]

I don't see what the problem is with the CEO's pay, but everybody on Slashdot seems to have a problem with it.

To borrow a quote from West Wing, "presumably these people have skills that the market values at [$500,000]." It doesn't matter if Average Joe approves of what they make, and I suspect that a lot of it is simple jealousy that somebody is making so much more than they are when they're probably working harder, at least from their perspective.

If they had brought in $501,000 and were paying their CEO $500,000, then yeah, that would be an issue. But the developers don't seem to be starving. The CEO's salary isn't disproportionate to the income, and it's probably either at the level or less than he could make as CEO of other companies with comparable income streams. According to a post up the thread, they spent roughly $12,000,000 on software development in 2006.

Somebody else replied that the $300,000 R&D figure you mention was only pay to outside companies, but even if it were not I would question how much R&D a company making a web browser needs to be doing considering that their major job is to write code that adheres to already-made standards. Some UI stuff maybe, a bit of usability testing... even looking through the preferences area I can't see a lot that needed significant research.

*shrugs* They make what they make because that's what the market says, in the same way that you make whatever you make because that's what the market says. We just seem to get uppity whenever that number gets above $200,000 or so.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Ajehals]

Whatever works I suppose,

Personally I don't mind advertising too much, if I'm looking at a site that is helpful or one I like, then I certainly don't mind, the only times where I can actually say I find it intrusive is on sites that are there purely for ad revenue, usually with content scraped from other sites, and those I can detect almost entirely (using a manual process no less) by the fact that they are infested with advertising, so in a sense gratuitous and inappropriate advertising is a deterrent all on its own, sure I am giving whoever is responsible for those sites revenue on that one instance where I come across the site, but then that's it, surely advertisers must realise that sites like that are not generally going to generate revenue anyway.

So I guess you could say I do most of my ad-blocking mentally, with an added bonus of blacklisting useless sites at the same time.

As a side note, I find it quite interesting when you compare the web in general (and the advertising therein), second life (and the commercial mess that particular sim already is and appears to be aspiring to become) and real life (I spent a moderate period of my life in Hong Kong, a place where the adverts and neon certainly add to the atmosphere) and try and figure out which advertising actually works. I seem to find that I buy things that I hear about from others, much more than what I see advertised. maybe its time for people to be able to get cash for real life referrals for any type of product (you could fill out a form to say who recommended what when you pay for your shopping....). Advertising only really seems to work when the advertiser has a novel product, that is useful or attractive *and* it is not already well known.

Oh and cold calling (telephone or in person) and junk mail (whether email or real mail) never work, If I want a credit card, I'll talk to my bank and then shop around, if I want double glazing, I'll find someone to do it.

Funny, maybe I should take my own views into account when I organise my own advertising.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[zsouthboy]

Uh, wrong.

Rightclick on page with annoying flash ad -> Block Content..
Click the offending ad -> it disappears with "Content Blocked" across it
(Opera 9+)

Volunteers tend not to work on commercial products

[Futurepower(R)]

Volunteers tend not to work on commercially supported products, partly because those who are paid don't want to risk losing their income, or making their work harder, so they don't treat volunteers well.

Thunderbird?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an outsider, it seems to me that support for Thunderbird and calender (which was always weak) has dried up. Now that I know Mozilla Foundation is driven by Google the killing off of competition with Gmail seems a bit obvious.

Thoughts?

they're not limited to two evils

[Quadraginta]

Actually, maybe the problem is the theory that top-notch computing work can be done for free, without paying the people who do it, because they just love the fame. This was a reasonable proposition once upon a time, when programming up a Web browser was an amazing trick and could get you widely recognized, leading perhaps to an interesting (and well-paying) job. But is that true any more? Are top-quality programmers willing to work on Mozilla -- and by "work" I don't mean just program, but also manage the beast, do market research to see what the users want, fix bugs, yadda yadda -- for free, just for the glory of it? I'm thinking maybe not so much any more.

Which means Mozilla could consider a third evil and join the nasty capitalist system by figuring out exactly what value they are providing to their customers, and charging for it. Instead of trying to figure out for which rich aristrocrat (e.g. Google or MS) they want to be the bought mistress.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[tomhudson]

> "Which means Mozilla could consider a third evil and join the nasty capitalist system by figuring out exactly what value they are providing to their customers, and charging for it. Instead of trying to figure out for which rich aristrocrat (e.g. Google or MS) they want to be the bought mistress."

When the competition is giving their browser away for free, and its the default in the near-monopoly OS, charging for it isn't a realistic option.

Besides, better to be "owned" for $50 million a year, than p0wned by the competition, which is what would happen if they went to a pay-for model.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[daeg]

No, but having a supported browser is a model that I would love to have. If I could pay $30/seat/year for Mozilla and have technical support available, I'd pay it in a heartbeat. Our entire systems rely on quality browsers (internal use), which is currently limited to Firefox. . Sure, we can donate cash to the foundation, but that doesn't give us anything directly in return, and doesn't satisfy questions like "Why not use Internet Explorer? At least it has a huge corporation behind it...".

(Opera works, but users don't like Opera rendering. Safari works, but doesn't give enough control for our needs (about:config has a lot of useful options for the enterprise). Firefox is currently our only choice, obscure things like printer.save_print_settings which block users from accidentally changing printer margins.)

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[Rudolf]

No, but having a supported browser is a model that I would love to have. If I could pay $30/seat/year for Mozilla and have technical support available, I'd pay it in a heartbeat


Following the "support" links from mozilla.org, leads to this:
http://mozilla.infospaninc.com/mozilla%20-%20Mozilla%20Support.htm

Looks like the advertised model is per-incident. But, maybe you can negotiate with them for some sort of blanket support based on a per-seat fee.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Actually, maybe the problem is the theory that top-notch computing work can be done for free, without paying the people who do it, because they just love the fame.

Top notch programming can be done for free, but for large products that is the exception rather than the rule, even for open source applications. Most of the people who think large open source projects are done primarily by unpaid developers as a hobby, simply don't have any real experience in OSS development.

Which means Mozilla could consider a third evil and join the nasty capitalist system by figuring out exactly what value they are providing to their customers, and charging for it.

Most open source projects that work really well are capitalist endeavors. The difference is that the users of the software are also the developers, instead of having developers sell the software to users after marking up the price. Mozilla provides a functional and useful Web browser, with better security than IE. The company I work for has done a very small amount of work on Firefox, because we use Firefox and wanted a feature for our own use. We're users and developers. Other companies that have standardized on it hire developers to program and contribute some feature to the project. We do this because it makes our business money by improving our tools. I guess my main point is that most OSS projects are driven by capitalism, just with the "programming as a service" instead of "code as a product" model of capitalism.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[Achromatic1978]

How on earth does paying a third party firm 'support' Mozilla? You're just making another company money, money that (as far as I can see) they give precisely none of to the Mozilla Foundation.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[claygate]

It is like the gauge on a railway. If you have the same gauge then everyone can build and use whatever rail cars for whatever "stuff" they have to move. You code some functionality in house and that gets adopted by other people. Then when they layer on top of that, you can use their added functionality as well. It seems very hard to get that point across. Computers are still a novel enough idea that they are viewed as an entity to themselves rather than tools to simplify other tasks.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[JackieBrown]

"outsourced contact center solutions"
I don't want to give any money to this buisness model.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[martin-boundary]

Top notch programming can be done for free, but for large products that is the exception rather than the rule, even for open source applications. Most of the people who think large open source projects are done primarily by unpaid developers as a hobby, simply don't have any real experience in OSS development.

It is certainly true that any sufficiently large open source project will attract contributors of all sorts of backgrounds, including therefore paid developers. It's a big leap to conclude from this that paid developers are the lifeblood of large OSS development.

Most open source projects that work really well are capitalist endeavors.

That's more ideology than fact. The biggest open source project of them all is GNU, which fails your claim. It is true that medium sized OSS projects like Mozilla have a capitalist outlook and a nice revenue source. It remains to see how long that organization and its products will last. GNU has been around since 1984.

I guess my main point is that most OSS projects are driven by capitalism, just with the "programming as a service" instead of "code as a product" model of capitalism.

My main point is that capitalism plays no role in this, it's an orthogonal issue. Anybody can change the code in an OSS project, for whatever reason, and it happens all the time. Why? Because that's what OSS is. It's great that you're paid to contribute (and thanks), but don't get carried away extrapolating your contribution into economic theories.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[QuantumG]

Meh, GNU is a whole lot of really small projects. Mozilla is a small number of medium sized projects. I think you're comparing apples and oranges.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[martin-boundary]

I think it's fair to compare Mozilla's choice to write a large integrated framework and big apps with GNU's choice of promoting many smaller independent projects. Those are different philosophies with different strenghts and weaknesses.

Needless to say, technically, it's been known for a long time that large, monolithic, centralized IT projects are relatively less efficient to program, harder to debug, more difficult to manage, more expensive, etc.

But it's still fair to compare that choice with other approaches which are closer to the "unix philosophy".

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It is certainly true that any sufficiently large open source project will attract contributors of all sorts of backgrounds, including therefore paid developers. It's a big leap to conclude from this that paid developers are the lifeblood of large OSS development.

It is my personal experience that this is the case. I've seen studies for both Linux and FreeBSD that showed the majority of code (by lines of code) was contributed by paid developers. One study of open source in general showed something like 46% of all code came from someone on the clock, being paid for that task. I'd be willing to bet that percentage is higher for large, complex projects and lower for smaller, simpler projects. For large projects, it is often the case that the paid programmers work on just that project full time (40+), whereas the average unpaid contributor donates just 6 hours. Obviously the paid developers are in a better place to intimately understand the code and have more experience with that code base.

That's more ideology than fact. The biggest open source project of them all is GNU, which fails your claim.

Sigh. GNU is certainly a capitalist endeavor. Do you really think IBM contributes all that coding effort out of some sort of misplaced idealism? Nonsense. They make money and Linux+GNU allows them to do it by selling hardware and services. They are a for profit company and to them GNU is simply a way to make money. The same goes for almost any major OSS project I can think of.

It is true that medium sized OSS projects like Mozilla have a capitalist outlook and a nice revenue source. It remains to see how long that organization and its products will last.

The Mozilla foundation is a nonprofit. It is not capitalist, but that doesn't mean capitalism does not drive the project it organizes. A lot of the resources, both financial and labor are motivated by capitalism. Google pays the foundation because it makes good business sense for them. My company has contributed code to Firefox, Linux, OpenBSD, Apache, and hundreds of other OSS projects. That code was written by paid employees, because it helps us make money. That is capitalism.

My main point is that capitalism plays no role in this, it's an orthogonal issue.

And I think your point is bunk. OSS is largely created by capitalist companies in order to make money. Just because no one is selling it, does nat make it any less capitalism than working as an accountant in a major firm. They are both indirect ways the company makes money.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[martin-boundary]

GNU is certainly a capitalist endeavor. Do you really think IBM contributes all that coding effort out of some sort of misplaced idealism? Nonsense. They make money and Linux+GNU allows them to do it by selling hardware and services. They are a for profit company and to them GNU is simply a way to make money. The same goes for almost any major OSS project I can think of.

Where to start? GNU is not IBM. IBM does sell services based on distributing Linux+GNU, but that's way downstream from code creation. It's true that IBM also contributes code to adapt Linux to its own hardware, but it's a mistake to think that makes IBM an essential code contributor to the project. Most Linux+GNU users do not run IBM hardware. It's true that IBM is a for profit company and it's false that GNU is simply a way to make money. It's not clear that "almost any major OSS project" means to others what it means to you.

The Mozilla foundation is a nonprofit. It is not capitalist, but that doesn't mean capitalism does not drive the project it organizes.

So which is it? It can't be both. Mozilla makes decisions based upon revenue from the labour of its employees, does it not?

My company has contributed code to Firefox, Linux, OpenBSD, Apache, and hundreds of other OSS projects. That code was written by paid employees, because it helps us make money. That is capitalism.

Thanks for the contributions. Would you say that your company's code is crucial to Linux, or any of those other projects? Or to put it differently, if your company's code was removed tomorrow, would those projects collapse with no direction and nothing to show?

OSS is largely created by capitalist companies in order to make money. Just because no one is selling it, does nat make it any less capitalism than working as an accountant in a major firm. They are both indirect ways the company makes money.

I believe you do not see the forest for the trees. It's also unclear to me how companies supposedly control the thousands of projects which have no legal company structure to begin with.

I was going to comment on your studies but I believe these are more fundamental issues.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[shlashdot]

wouldn't it make more sense to go to a pdf if you're printing something? vs dictating browser? sincerely curious.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[asa]

> Actually, maybe the problem is the theory that top-notch computing
> work can be done for free, without paying the people who do it,
> because they just love the fame.

It's not a theory. It's happening. It's happening with Mozilla and Firefox. Mozilla pays about 50 full-time software engineers to work on Firefox and the Mozilla platform that Firefox is built on top of. about 1,600 additional developers have contributed code to that project recently without pay from Mozilla, accounting for about 40% of the total work on the latest version of Firefox.

Now, I'm not saying all of them did it "because they love the fame." I've talked with a lot of these contributors about their motivations and very few (though not zero) are in it for "fame". Some are in it because they enjoy participating on a large-scale global software project that enjoys a user base upwards of 130 million. Some are doing it because they like the challenge of solving difficult software problems. Others are in it to get experience they can use to advance in their careers.Some are in it because they care deeply about the Internet or Internet users. A few I know are in it because it's required by their curriculum. I was a volunteer with Mozilla for more than a year because I enjoyed working with a community of passionate people.

Yes, there are definitely people doing top-notch software development at Mozilla for reasons other than a paycheck. The reasons are probably as varied as the people participating.

- A

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[daeg]

Our new systems do use PDF. They can still screw the margins up though, although it makes it less likely.

Re:they're not limited to two evils

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Where to start? GNU is not IBM.

No, they're just probably the single largest contributor to the GNU codebase.

So which is it? It can't be both. Mozilla makes decisions based upon revenue from the labour of its employees, does it not?

The Mozilla foundation is not capitalist and is a nonprofit. Theoretically they make decisions based upon what does the most good for their cause. The software development lead by the Mozilla foundation, however, is a largely capitalist venture funded and staffed in order to make a profit for a variety of companies, like Google.

Would you say that your company's code is crucial to Linux, or any of those other projects? Or to put it differently, if your company's code was removed tomorrow, would those projects collapse with no direction and nothing to show?

No, but our company is only a few hundred employees so our contribution is proportionally small. However, if you removed all the code contributed by employees paid to work on it by commercial entities like our company, the project would slow to a crawl. That's the point of using OSS in your business model, your expenditure on tools that contribute to (but are not themselves your core value as a company) is a shared expense with all the other project contributors. No one company outputs all the expense or faces all the risk, thus it can be a very efficient and effective way to cut costs.

Here's a quote regarding Linux development from this summer: "In his presentation at OSCON, "Current State of the Linux Kernel," Greg Kroah-Hartman made the point that... roughly 18% of contributions come from this group[Unknown Individuals], and 13% come from another group called "Amateurs." But, a member of the audience pointed out that this means the work of nearly 70% of contributors is being sponsored by industry. " Imagine if 70% of the Linux contributors, including Linus stopped working tomorrow. Would you foresee Linux continuing to be as rapidly developed and a contender?

It's also unclear to me how companies supposedly control the thousands of projects which have no legal company structure to begin with.

But they don't control the projects, they drive the projects. They help determine the direction of projects by the people they hire to work on them and the types of improvements they contribute. If you want a really good example, look at most embedded Linux distributions or look at OpenOffice.

OSS is big business, for profit and has been that way largely since its inception. Sure their are a lot of hobbyists who contribute code and a lot of users who contribute QA work, but by and large as projects become bigger and more complex, hobbyists are less effective and groups of full time coders are a necessity.

Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[Futurepower(R)]

That seems right to me.

Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting Thunderbird development apparently because the organization got no money for it, and Google wants you to use web mail, so that you will see the ads.

Mozilla Foundation gave no adequate explanation for killing its support of Thunderbird.

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[beoba]

If Google wanted to force users to go with webmail, why are they now supporting IMAP?

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use IMap with gmail, you're still handing your data over to google.

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[roca]

So by "killing Thunderbird" you mean "set up a new subsidiary corporation to develop Thunderbird with $3M to get started"?

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[MightyYar]

Um, no? The ads in gmail appear off to the side in the web interface. You can use the IMAP interface from your favorite email program, and neither the incoming or outgoing emails will contain any ads at all.

I'm pretty sure that Google just uses gmail to try to entice people to create an account on their servers. Then maybe they will come back for search, calendar, documents, etc. And since they already have an account, there is little of that "I'd try it, but I really don't want to enter all of my info into ANOTHER web site."

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[rubenerd]

I was under the impression they dropped Thunderbird support because they're developing the next release of Eudora as open source.

Believe me, I hate Eudora and use Thunderbird every day, but I can see why they wouldn't want to support two email clients. Then again, they are still developing a Java client and it's not as if they have don't have any spare cash as this article seems to imply.

I think they just want to let everyone know that they're not responsible for Gundam. At least the email sent to Gundam. Google already has a lucrative deal with them to use their web based email apps. Damned ZAFT.

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[bunratty]

They didn't drop Thunderbird support at all. They set up a new corporation to develop Thunderbird and other email/communication technologies and set them up with US $3 million. All this talk about dropping Thunderbird is just the same sensationalism we see in many Mozilla stories.

Re:Google wanted Thunderbird killed?

[napolj2]

Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting Thunderbird development apparently because the organization got no money for it

Not true. I got the impression it was more of pragmatic decision: FF is the application that is making the big impact on the web. With its ~15% and growing market share, it is causing web designers to write standards-compliant sites. This in turn makes life easier for Opera, Safari/KHTML, and any other standards-compliant browser without the market share to get designers to care if their sites are compatible with it. The success of Firefox allows Mozilla to effectively push for new web standards and so enable the next generation of web applications (like the new <video> tag). Remember that MS only restarted work on IE because it started losing market share, largely to FF. It only makes sense for an organization to focus its resources on where they make the most difference.

FF has generated lots of excitement from users and developers, resulting in lots of extensions and web apps being written for it; the same hasn't happened with Thunderbird (TB). It could be that TB, as it exists now, isn't the right solution for managing email. The new TB org is talking about creating a unified framework for all communication, managing IM with email with social networking sites together. That might be a better approach.

Also, the work on TB was largely orthogonal to work on FF, upon which the Mozilla Corp. had come to focus on, so it made sense spin it off into a separate organization; this gives TB more independence and control over itself. I don't know why this wasn't mentioned more, but Mozilla gave the new TB organization $3 million in seed money--more than the Mozilla Foundation itself started out with--and says it may give more later if the organization can't find alternative revenue sources.

See this FAQ for more info on the split. For more information on what is actually going on in the new mail organization, read this blog post. Basically, they are now trying to hire developers and figure out the best plan to move ahead.

A while ago, people also got angry at Mozilla for no longer supporting the App Suite. Well, Suite supporters continued work on it through their own community project called SeaMonkey (with the Mozilla Corp. still hosting the project). They've since completed significant code rewrites that many thought would be impossible, and are getting ready for an ambitious v2.0 release. The Suite is being better taken care of than before, and that's without any funding.

and Google wants you to use web mail, so that you will see the ads.

Google had no say in the matter. See this blog post for a debunking of a CNET article similar to the one mentioned by the poster. If Google were to stop supporting FF, I imagine Mozilla could just as easily make a similar deal with another search engine. Even if Mozilla lost all revenue sources, its reserves of $70 million (at the end of 2006) means it could operate as is for a while; that gives it independence. With the millions likely to keep coming in for some time to come, I wonder if they might set up some kind of endowment.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[sznupi]

Opera probably doesn't offer ads simply because people would block it, and people here doesn't mean Google at all...

Besides, Google basically ignores Opera (and Webkit) in their web apps...we don't have much better situation now than creating webpages for IE only.
Now people create for IE and Firefox (most of you don't see the problem of course...). I wonder when we'll have webpages that simply follow standards...

Money for Google well Spent

[RobBebop]

With operating revenues in the billions, Google is getting a huge benefit for a very small outlay with the money flowing into the Mozilla Foundation. These days, it is less common to have a hotlink lingering around for your search engine of choice because they are so ubiquitous that they are expected to just "be there".

And if you run Firefox, the default search engine at the top corner of the screen is none-other-than Google. It is a beautiful interface that has been embraced by users (me and you), the vendor (Google), and the merchant (Mozilla). A rare win-win-win for all. You and I get easy access to search online for anything with the click of a button. Google gets a way to funnel us into their site so they can show us their advertisements. Mozilla gets money to pay their engineers to improve a world class software application.

Given this information, it is silly to think that Google would terminate their beneficial relationship with Mozilla because it would significantly hurt them where it matters most (getting users to their site).

Re:Firefox 2.0.0.9 is WORSE.

[RattFink]

Check your version of Flash. Some versions had some sleep problems that caused the lockup you describe after restore.

and what exactly..

[QuantumG]

is wrong with that?

Bullshit!

[MCSEBear]

There is no way that the head of an open source project should be taking half a mil in compensation. Donate the freaking money to other open source projects that have done important work for the open source community.

I'm sure the Samba and Apache crews can use a little of the love. Hell, the people who created Adblock are the reason I use Firefox... Give them some of the damn cash! Which other open source projects do you think have done the community a lot of good and deserve some of the bank?

Re:Bullshit!

[BenoitRen]

Wladimir Palant, the driving force behind Adblock and Adblock Plus, doesn't want to get any cash for it.

Re:Bullshit!

[MCSEBear]

Force the money on him anyway! (kidding) Do all the other creators of top ten extensions feel the same way? How about sharing the love with the folks at Samba, Apache, Et al.

Re:Bullshit!

[Rakishi]

There is no way that the head of an open source project should be taking half a mil in compensation. No, it's the CEO (and I think other posts?) of a non-profit corporation (and a for-profit one I think as well) that is making half a million. The company that person works for happens to work on a number of open source projects but that it irrelevant really. It is in the end just that, a company, one that has $60 million in revenue to deal with.

A good CEO for a for-profit company can easily make millions or tens of millions. Those for non-profits can easily make hundreds of thousands and Mozilla isn't exactly a tiny non-profit.

They're paying the CEO what is essentially a fair wage for the position and even then the person being paid it is sacrificing massive amount of potential money just by working for Mozilla (instead of a for-profit).

Re:Bullshit!

[rmerry72]

Hell, the people who created Adblock are the reason I use Firefox... Give them some of the damn cash!

If its so important to you why don't you give them some of your cash. The CEO should be paid just like all other staff. Being an open-source foundation doesn't require that all those involved in the project should work voluntarily. Its none of your business what the CEO gets paid since you're not a shareholder.

Re:Bullshit!

[acm]

There is no way that the head of an open source project should be taking half a mil in compensation.

It kinda pisses me off that a couple years ago as a starving college student I donated money to the Mozilla Foundation. If I knew their CEO would one day be raking in that kind of cash I would have donated to a more worthy cause. Not that there aren't other non-profit directors raking it in (I'm looking at you, Red Cross).

Re:Bullshit!

[eraserewind]

I don't get this attitude.
They are already giving you all their worthwhile assets.
Now you want their cash flow too?

> Hell, the people who created Adblock are the reason I use Firefox... Give them some of the damn cash!

No, Firefox is the reason you can use AdBlock.

Re:Bullshit!

[MCSEBear]

Actually, every time I do a search in the Firefox search box I (along with a few million others) am giving Mozilla way, way more money than they actually need. Since this money is coming mostly from users who believe in the open source community, I'm pissed that the money does not go back out to support the open source community.

I suppose that since I do not like the way they are keeping huge piles of bank for themselves, I can just stop using their search box and click a link to go to the google page myself as a form of protest. I assume that going to the web page and searching myself doesn't generate revenue for Mozilla/Firefox like using the built in search box does.

Let's face it, Mozilla doesn't need a six figure CEO to coordinate a small group of programmers.

Mozilla expenses for 2006 were $19,776,193. Expenditures remain highly focused in two key areas: people and infrastructure. By the end of 2006 Mozilla was funding approximately 90 people working full or part-time on Mozilla around the world.
You need a six figure CEO to manage 90 freaking people? BULLSHIT!!!

I was truly confused when John Lilly (the CEO in question) started talking smack when Apple released a free web browser for windows. When you coordinate an open source group that gives away free software, why should you be threatened by anybody else giving away a free software? Well, I can think of half a million reasons for it now!

Re:Bullshit!

[MCSEBear]

My Bad! John is the COO of Mozilla, not the CEO. I guess they need to be sure they toss the big bucks around to a whole herd of suits and not get it out there to the open source coders who actually make a difference in a all those other open source projects we use and love. Heck, it's just like Microsoft. Somebody throw a chair!

Re:Bullshit!

[asa]

I'm probably naively misjudging, but I'm going to assume you're not trolling and reply.

> Actually, every time I do a search in the Firefox search box
> I (along with a few million others)

Actually, that would be "along with about 130 to 140 million others".

> am giving Mozilla way, way more money than they actually need.

If you define need as very short term, then you could possibly have a point. I don't, and the rest of the people making Mozilla and Firefox don't think about things only in the short term. Mozilla's mission to promote choice and innovation on the Internet and to advocate for people using the web, is a long-term mission that still has not demonstrated sustainability beyond a few short years.

> Since this money is coming mostly from users who believe in
> the open source community,

I'd wager that the percentage of Firefox's 130+ million users who even know what open source is falls somewhere south of 10%. Those who "believe in the open source community" are far from making up double digit percentages, much less a majority. That doesn't change the fact that our mission is dependent on the support and participation of a large community of contributors, but our mission is much larger than open source and cannot be considered anything of a success if it's limited to those "who believe in the open source community."

> I'm pissed that the money does not go back out to support the
> open source community.

From the way you phrase this, it sounds like you're suggesting that the Mozilla project is not "open source community". I take issue with this. Mozilla is one of the most important communities in the entire open source ecosystem and I think it's completely reasonable that the money that Mozilla generates go first and foremost into forwarding Mozilla's mission. Beyond that, we're building a grants program for other projects with strong alignment that's already giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars. But a grants program requires a lot of work, work that we think is important to do but that we don't have all of the right people for today. We're working on it. You can throw stones at slashdot or you can help us make things better.

> I suppose that since I do not like the way they are keeping huge
> piles of bank for themselves, I can just stop using their search
> box

You could do better than that. You could work with your favorite OSS programs developing and writing grant proposals. You could work with OSS projects to help them develop revenue streams. You could contribute in so many positive ways that going out of your way to remove resources from an open source project seems misguided. That is, unless I was being far too generous in assuming you weren't just a troll.

>You need a six figure CEO to manage 90 freaking people? BULLSHIT!!!

Actually, we're not 90 people. We're thousands of people working to further the Mozilla Mission. The overwhelming majority of Mozilla's full-time staff are organizing and managing a much larger area than simply their direct reports or their code modules. If you want to make comparisons with more traditional organizations, I'd wager that Mozilla is operating much more like a company of about 1000 employees than a company of 100.

If you think there exists a competent CEO who could lead Mozilla effectively for less than a six figure salary, you're living on a different planet. If you think there's a CEO that would lead any non-profit company with 10s of millions in annual revenue, for less than six figures, you're living in a fantasy land.

If you really care about open source software, you'll seek out positive ways to contribute and bashing a project that's delivered open source software to the desktops of more people than any other project in the history of OSS will fall way down on your list of priorities.

-A

Re:Bullshit!

[MCSEBear]

Nope... I tried Firefox and didn't see enough reason to switch. Then a colleague showed me Adblock and NoScript. I wanted the functionality they offered badly enough to switch to Firefox. I would happily try any other browser as long as it included the functionality of those two add ins.

Re:Bullshit!

[Ash-Fox]

I wanted the functionality they offered badly enough to switch to Firefox. I would happily try any other browser as long as it included the functionality of those two add ins.

My killer feature that keeps me on Firefox on every platform is Google browser sync

Re:Bullshit!

[Rakishi]

Most large non-profits pay their CEOs good money because good CEOs cost money (even then these CEOs are taking a large pay cut compared to for profit companies). Otherwise they'd have shitty CEOs who would run them into the ground. Or CEOs who would rob them blind then move to some country they can't get extradited out of.

Re:Bullshit!

[Gerv]

Thank you very much for donating. There was a period, before Firefox got popular, where we were really unsure how we were going to survive. Donations like yours did, and still do, reassure us that people believe in what we are doing.

But I don't understand the sour grapes about Mitchell's pay packet. If you know of an as-good or better CEO (with the same amount of industry and Mozilla experience and community support) who will work for less money, name them. Otherwise, the worker is worth the wages.

Gerv

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[pokerdad]

Note that none of the add-ons for Opera allow blocking of ads.

Unless, of course, you count the many built in settings that together provide all the functionality of an ad-blocker even if they aren't labelled as such.

I am sorry but ...

[ThirdPrize]

with that amount of money you could BUY the teams responsible for Open Office, Gimp and any other OS software projects you wanted. Then they might just start making some advances on M$ territory.

Every time this comes up...

[Kjella]

...the answer is simple, if push comes to shove you can always fork it. For the foreseeable future, there's no reason google would want anything else but for Firefox to succeed. Firefox are the standardizers, the commoditizers forcing Internet Explorer to follow that lets google provide services without dealing with ActiveX, MSHTML and crippled old IE browsers. It's the only market share for a default search engine they can buy (except Macs), since Microsoft would never sell IE's default engine spot. And I think you'll find that crippling a specific feature in a browser that's trying to be a) very extensible and b) open-source, is like trying to make water not wet. Roughly 98% of the time, having a corporate backer helps development because of the investment they make. Take Sun and OpenOffice... ok, it might not be great but I'd rather that that "Hey guys, we're pulling out and wlll only release StarOffice from now on... you're on your own."

Re:Every time this comes up...

[afidel]

Firefox are the standardizers, the commoditizers forcing Internet Explorer to follow that lets google provide services without dealing with ActiveX, MSHTML and crippled old IE browsers.

Funny but this AJAX thing that powers many of Googles sites was originally powered by an ActiveX control.

Re:Every time this comes up...

[MightyYar]

Funny but this AJAX thing that powers many of Googles sites was originally powered by an ActiveX control. Are you sure about that? The first time I heard the term "Ajax" it couldn't have been before 2005, and Google maps also came out in 2005 - and it worked on Mozilla browsers from the get-go. Was there a Google site that only worked with IE?

Re:Every time this comes up...

[Kalriath]

Indeed. Microsoft actually INVENTED the concept (granted they only hacked it together because they wanted it for Outlook Web Access).

It's official. The Exchange team invented Web 2.0! (Netcraft confirms it)

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[Fweeky]

Or configure Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> JavaScript Options -> User JavaScript files (or the appropriate opera:config page I hopefully just linked to; opera:config#UserPrefs|UserJavaScriptFile), and drop hide-objects.js in the folder you configured; flash will then be blocked until you double-click to load them.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

Yeah, because if you want to do something difficult, going the standards way works

Every decent webdeveloper knows there are lots of differences between Opera, WebKit and Gecko (leaving IE out here on purpose). Going 100% standard is not going to fix that. Not saying people shouldn't follow standard, they should, but it's not a one-stop solution. Browsers should support the standards as well, which is difficult, because even though the standards are _well_-defined, they are not _perfectly_-defined.

I for one, as a webdeveloper, test everything in at least Opera 9, Safari 3, FF1.5, FF2, IE6 and IE7. Only very minor issues with Opera and WebKit are being overlooked (some small things just cannot be fixed without insane JS based solutions). Seriously, how many browsers must I cope with as developer? Where is the line? I personally think everything should just work on anything, but such is not reality, now matter how much effort you put into it.

No, but I'd like more individual donations

[siddesu]

That is why I donate to various software projects -- not much, but about as much as I would pay for an OS if I had to buy one -- that gives me more right to have an opinion on what they are doing.

If you (and I mean the general slashdot reader, not the GP) want to have more input on the decision-making process when necessary, participate in the funidng. Any software project will treat you better if you show more commitment than just downloading and using the software, and many sources of funding make the power of any one large donor smaller. Besides, it will be a better use of the slashdot community than just slashdotting websites.

Not to mention that when you have more of a stake, you can request and get things like more transparent reporting on funding and business models.

Re:No, but I'd like more individual donations

[JackieBrown]

Better product?

Re:No, but I'd like more individual donations

[siddesu]

what people donate is their choice. to me it is worth that much, besides TANSTAAFL.

what i recomment is giving, not "giving as much as google does", or "giving at least XXXX". people who write the software donate their time. if i use it, and it does me good, i could chip in a bit. that way, i get to be a stakeholder, and i value this ability for the software i use.

plus, if the good folks are rewarded, they may reward me in turn.

Re:No, but I'd like more individual donations

[caferace]

I've given to the Mozilla project since 2002 through Paypal at $10 per month up until a few months ago, when I knew they finally were well-funded. In the past, they *really* needed small contributors like myself. Now, what they need is what they have needed all along, just like every other OSS project. Good contributors to the codebase.

Re:Community support

[ThirdPrize]

It is a bit like the managers at large charities that make sh!t loads of money. It is probably right for the job they do but it just seems so wrong.

Re:Firefox 2.0.0.9 is WORSE.

[bunratty]

Sorry, I don't see anyone else complaining of the same problem. It must be quite rare. If you're one of the very few people that experience it, you'll need to give lots details so the problem can be found and fixed. You can start by finding the regression window if it's recently become worse. Include that information in your bug report.

Conflict of interest between Firefox/Google

[cortana]

lwn.net had a story about this a while back. Worth reading at http://lwn.net/Articles/256904/. One of the comments in particular:

Actually, I really think he has a point. Not only does Google have enough employees working on Firefox to ram through whatever change they desire, they also control enough members of the self-appointed WHAT-WG "HTML 5" group to do whatever they want there as well. So an idea can be "standardized" instantly solely by Google employees, then implemented, reviewed, super-reviewed, and committed entirely by Google employees.

This is not theoretical, it already happened with the "ping" attribute in HTML 5, which benefits nobody except advertising companies (read: Google).

Re:Conflict of interest between Firefox/Google

[roca]

If you don't like what WHATWG is doing, join in and fix it.

The "ping" feature is a poor example. Sites can already do what "ping" does, just slower and in a way that's more difficult for users to disable.

Firefox & Google Money

[MTO_B.]

I think people should read this article, by Asa Dotzler, a coordinator for several Mozilla projects.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2007/10/firefox_finance.html

For the same reason that Microsoft...

[patio11]

... has a free webmail service, despite having a vested interest in desktop applications and not a whole lot of interest in cross-platform compabibility. "Better to own 100% of the customers 100% of the time than let someone else muscle in on our territory by offering a key feature which we do not."

Re:For the same reason that Microsoft...

[petermgreen]

I always thought that the reason MS bought hotmail was to jumpstart the passport network by making sure a lot of people already had accounts.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[kennygraham]

Or use firefox and get the filterset-g extension, and it takes care of everything for you, including automatic updates to the ad server list. Blocks ads, flash or not. And doesn't block the flash that you want.

Google Pullout

[WebmasterNeal]

So what would happen if Google pulled out from the Mozilla deal. Would FireFox be as useful as it it now? It seems a bit dangerous to have 90% of your income coming from a single source.

Re:Google Pullout

[Gerv]

Firefox would be just as useful as it is now, and some other company would pay to receive the search traffic of 130 million users.

Gerv

they also hire 90 people

[QuantumG]

to work on open source.. that's pretty damn good.

what else would you expect?

[smithcl8]

Let's see....I'm a giant company that makes all of my money off of the Web. I can make more money by utilizing an application that costs me nothing to make. I strike a deal in which the "company" that makes that app gets money every time someone uses their app to go to my site. I haven't spent a dime, and the only money I will spend will be from the profits I make from their app.

Isn't this the way it's supposed to work? If the app in question was developed privately, would that then be okay?

Companies make deals all the time. If Google had struck the deal with Microsoft, would that be better? In IE 7, there is a slick little search bar that can be set to Google, too. I bet Google sends even more money to Microsoft for their search bar, since there are so many more users of IE. Is that better?

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[kennygraham]

So if I switch to opera, i have to manually block each thing I don't want every time I go to a new site? Sorry, I'll stick with adblock + filtersetg. If opera had it, i'd switch in an instant, just because i like their rendering engine better.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Dan Schulz]

Actually there is an AdBlocker.css file available for Opera users. You can download it here: http://members.chello.nl/b.kroonspecker/opera/styles/user/AdBlocker.css

No, they shouldn't

[Rix]

For the very concerns raised by this article. They should be moving the money they get from google into investment vehicles that will give them cash flow in perpetuity. Only *after* they've guaranteed their continued existence should they consider making donations.

$500,000 (including benefits) is dirt cheap for a CEO. If anything, it suggests they should consider hiring someone higher calibre.

Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[mveloso]

Revenues: $66,840,850
Expenses: $19,776,193

Expenses breakdown:

Program Services: $ 540,384
Software Development: $11,775,516
Sales and Marketing: $ 4,836,238
General & Admin: $ 2,624,055

"Profit" (or, change in net assets, since it's a non-profit): $27,893,735

Damn, it's good to be free. You'd think that the foundation would donate its money to fund other OSS projects, but as software people have discovered, the first priority of a foundation is to ensure the existence (and a lucrative existence at that) of its staff.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[adamkennedy]

Speaking to some of the Mozilla Fountain guys at Linux.Conf.Au, it was fairly clear that they struggle with the Google money, because they don't consider it reliable income.

Their attitude seemed to be that whatever was done with the money, they couldn't run things on the assumption that it would continue indefinitely.

I would not be in the least surprised if that profit is going into income-generating accounts, so that they can use the cash pile to diversify their income away from the Google money.

That way, if Google ever bails, and not suitable replacement income can be found, they'll still have the passive income from all the money in the investment accounts to continue operating things with.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Kalriath]

I'm curious. If that's the financial state of Mozilla Foundation, what's Mozilla Corporation's figures like? I assume a lot (potentially even more than that).

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[jjohnson]

If this is true, it's an extremely smart thing for them to do.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[asa]

I'm curious. If that's the financial state of Mozilla Foundation, what's Mozilla Corporation's figures like? I assume a lot (potentially even more than that).

This covers both the Foundation and the Corporation.

- A

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[sciurus0]

You'd think they at least spend some money on getting Thunderbird and Sunbird/Lightning up to par with Outlook.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[VGPowerlord]

Mozilla Corporation doesn't care; they've already made plan to give Thunderbird the boot.

I'm not sure how the Mozilla Foundation feels about Thunderbird, though.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[napolj2]

Revenues: $66,840,850
Expenses: $19,776,193

"Profit" (or, change in net assets, since it's a non-profit): $27,893,735

According to Mitchell Baker (Mozilla CEO), salaries accounted for 70% of their expenses in 2006, so that's around $14 million. Net assets increased "only" by around $22 million (lower than the $28 million you calculated, perhaps because the Mozilla Corporation has to pay taxes).

Damn, it's good to be free. You'd think that the foundation would donate its money to fund other OSS projects, but as software people have discovered, the first priority of a foundation is to ensure the existence (and a lucrative existence at that) of its staff.

According to the numbers above, Mozilla employees could raise their salaries to 250% of what they now receive and still break even, but they chose not to. They could have made way more money by selling shares in the Mozilla Corp., instead of having it be fully owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, but they didn't.

See this summary of Mozilla grants for 2006. Near the end:

It's too early to tell how much we'll spend in total, but I suspect we'll easily double the amount spent in 2006. As we move into 2008 we'll also be funding projects in more areas.

I get the impression they've gone slow at first to "test the waters" and find the best way to spend their money. They're even looking for help in giving away more:

The other constant is the importance of having people who can help us put together a funding program in particular areas, as Aaron Leventhal has done for Mozilla accessibility. To repeat what I wrote last year:

We're looking for more people like Aaron to whom we can successfully delegate responsibility for suggesting and overseeing grants in their area(s) of expertise. If you're one of those people I'm interested in hearing from you.

They've been funding lots of accessibility work, whereas many for-profits ignore disabled users entirely. They've sponsored conferences on using the internet for the public good. They also sponsor projects that are not part of FF and its revenue stream: work on Linux desktop accessibility, Creative Commons and the Participatory Culture Foundation, buying commercial javascript code and releasing it as open source, Apache and OpenSSL, and just now Perl 6.

Mozilla is working right alongside Opera, Apple, and others to advance web standards in the WHATWG and W3C. Mozilla funds work on web standards (test cases, conformance checkers, etc.), works hard to implement these standards, and even tries to bring useful features of their own platform (such as XBL and the XUL box model) into web standards so the whole web can benefit--even if it means diminishing any comparative advantage of FF over other browsers. Mozilla is working to keep the web platform viable and open in light of competition from Silverlight, Apollo, and others.

Having followed Mozilla very closely for the past several years, I can tell you that these people are not in it for the money; they are religiously devoted to the idea of advancing the Open Web for the pub

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Kelson]

Mozilla Corporation doesn't care; they've already made plan to give Thunderbird the boot.

I'm not sure how the Mozilla Foundation feels about Thunderbird, though.

Well, they're creating a subsidiary and giving it $3m to start, so they clearly have some interest in it.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Kalriath]

Ah, then this actually changes the whole interpretation dramatically. People here are talking about these figures as if they apply to a non-profit organisation, forgetting that Mozilla Corporation is a profit taking registered corporation and as such any talk about how they shouldn't be making profit is kind of moot - the non-profit doesn't make money. The tax-paying profit-taking corporation does.

Just so I can clear it up in my head, the Google contract pays Mozilla Corporation which funds Mozilla Foundation, right?

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Raenex]

Having followed Mozilla very closely for the past several years, I can tell you that these people are not in it for the money; they are religiously devoted to the idea of advancing the Open Web for the public good. Could you explain, then, why they created the for-profit corporation?

They could have made way more money by selling shares in the Mozilla Corp., instead of having it be fully owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, but they didn't. I don't even understand how a non-profit can own a for-profit. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[napolj2]

Could you explain, then, why they created the for-profit corporation?

Basically, by law non-profits are restricted in the kind of activities they can perform, particularly in generating revenue. Every time Mozilla wanted to work on some project with a corporation (like the arrangements with their default search engines or the creation of customized partner builds for eBay and others), they had to consult lawyers to find out if it was legal. By performing most of their activities under a corporation, all this legal uncertainty, expense, and restrictions could be avoided. The downside to this was that they had to start paying taxes, but that can be considered a good thing in that it supports society.

I don't even understand how a non-profit can own a for-profit. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

IANAL, but I don't think it's much different than how a university might own an endowment, which consists of stock in various for-profit corporations. What makes something a non-profit is not what it owns but what it uses its assets for (generating revenue vs. furthering some public good).

The key part of Mozilla's arrangement is that the Foundation is the sole shareholder of the Corporation; the employees don't get any shares to sell off in some kind of IPO (though they'd make a ton of money doing so). This allows it to generate revenue easily through the Corporation, but requires that this revenue must then be used for non-profit purposes (i.e. supporting the project and the internet). The whole thing is kind of an "organizational hack", but it works.

I haven't personally observed any real changes in their overall mission since this change; it was mostly a change on paper. The increase in revenue, though, has been very fruitful to the project. They started with just 10 employees; now they're past 100. They have a whole QA team and are creating several automated test frameworks and test suites (much of the code had gone without tests since the start of the Mozilla project). The whole build and release process is being automated, resulted in much faster releases of security fixes. And so on.

See this blog post by Mitchell Baker and this official FAQ on the reorganization for more details.

Oh, and they just came out with their 2007 grant figures for those interested.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Raenex]

Every time Mozilla wanted to work on some project with a corporation (like the arrangements with their default search engines or the creation of customized partner builds for eBay and others), they had to consult lawyers to find out if it was legal. Oversight for a non-profit is a good thing. But besides that, I don't see how using the Mozilla Corporation as a proxy is any different from working with a 3rd party corporation. Either way a business deal is going on with a corporation.

The key part of Mozilla's arrangement is that the Foundation is the sole shareholder of the Corporation; the employees don't get any shares to sell off in some kind of IPO (though they'd make a ton of money doing so). This allows it to generate revenue easily through the Corporation, but requires that this revenue must then be used for non-profit purposes (i.e. supporting the project and the internet). How is this requirement enforced? If the for-profit wanted to spend $10 million as salaried compensation for its top brass, what would prevent them from doing so? They wouldn't even have to report it publically, since they aren't a public corporation.

The increase in revenue, though, has been very fruitful to the project. Didn't they already have this revenue before the for-profit? Didn't they already spend money on developers, QA, etc?

From what I can tell, the Mozilla Foundation grew Firefox with goodwill, donations, and other community support under the heading of a non-profit. They then received a $50+ million yearly windfall from Google. They transferred this windfall from a non-profit to a for-profit in a shell game in which they have complete freedom to do with the money as they wish, with no accountability to the public, and the community is expected to believe that everything will be on the up-and-up.

It's happened before with non-profits, and that's why I have no faith in them. Color me jaded.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[napolj2]

Every time Mozilla wanted to work on some project with a corporation (like the arrangements with their default search engines or the creation of customized partner builds for eBay and others), they had to consult lawyers to find out if it was legal.

Oversight for a non-profit is a good thing.

The lawyers were there to help navigate ambiguous federal laws. They weren't there to advise on being true to the morals and "spirit" of open source, nor would they be qualified to do so. Still, Mozilla's financial statements (both the Foundation's and the Corp's) are audited and available online.

But besides that, I don't see how using the Mozilla Corporation as a proxy is any different from working with a 3rd party corporation. Either way a business deal is going on with a corporation.

Apart from the legal issues, there really isn't any difference. What exactly is the problem with doing business with a corporation? What business deals have they done that you object to?

The key part of Mozilla's arrangement is that the Foundation is the sole shareholder of the Corporation; the employees don't get any shares to sell off in some kind of IPO (though they'd make a ton of money doing so). This allows it to generate revenue easily through the Corporation, but requires that this revenue must then be used for non-profit purposes (i.e. supporting the project and the internet).

How is this requirement enforced? If the for-profit wanted to spend $10 million as salaried compensation for its top brass, what would prevent them from doing so? They wouldn't even have to report it publically, since they aren't a public corporation.

I don't know what non-profit and tax law requires, but I'd believe the Foundation would be restricted in the use of its assets (which includes the Corp.) in the same way as for any other non-profit. The salaries of the Corp.'s officers are reported in their tax statement, available online. The Foundation's Board of Trustees certainly wouldn't approve of any money-making scams, and neither would the Mozilla community, whose support and help the Foundation & Corp. depend on. That's a much more effective safeguard than tax law.

But tell me, if this was their plan all along, why haven't they done something like this already? There's more than enough available funds to more than double their salaries, instead of hiring more developers and funding more projects.

Didn't they already have this revenue before the for-profit? Didn't they already spend money on developers, QA, etc?

Yes, but not as much. That's the point. Don't you think a ten-fold increase in staff size is significant? They now have whole teams devoted to many areas rather than a single person. Even some bugs from 1999 are getting fixed.

From what I can tell, the Mozilla Foundation grew Firefox with goodwill, donations, and other community support under the heading of a non-profit. They then received a $50+ million yearly windfall from Google. They transferred this windfall from a non-profit to a for-profit in a shell game in which they have complete freedom to do with the money as they wish, with no accountability to the public, and the community is expected to believe that everything will be on the up-and-up.

First, the part about being free to do whatever they want with the money and not be accountable is false, as I've said. And in fairness, the Mozilla Corp. does do the majority of the work on Firefox, not to mention hosting all the project infrastructure and lots of community projects.

It's interesting that the Mozilla community isn't making the big accusations of corruption and control by Google; it's those outside-looking-in that are. The Mozilla community has complained of putting too much focus on Firefox and not more on Thunderbird and, much more importantly, XUL Runner, and of poor communication at times, but not of c

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[Raenex]

I re-arranged and consolidated my reply to make it as coherent and succint as possible.

What exactly is the problem with doing business with a corporation? [...] I don't know what non-profit and tax law requires, but I'd believe the Foundation would be restricted in the use of its assets (which includes the Corp.) in the same way as for any other non-profit. My point is that it's claimed that the Corporation gives them freedom from legal issues when dealing with corporations, yet they still have to deal with the Corporation as a corporation. What have they gained? How is it claimed that they both have freedom as a corporation and proper restrictions at the same time?

Don't you think a ten-fold increase in staff size is significant? Why couldn't this ten-fold increase have been done under the Foundation?

The salaries of the Corp.'s officers are reported in their tax statement, available online. I could only find the tax statement for the Foundation. Presumably the Corporation filed a separate tax document. Does Mitchell Baker pull a salary from both?

The Foundation's Board of Trustees certainly wouldn't approve of any money-making scams Seems that there is some overlap between the boards.

But tell me, if this was their plan all along, why haven't they done something like this already? What is their rush? Why cause an uproar when they can take their time and cover their tracks?

It's interesting that the Mozilla community isn't making the big accusations of corruption and control by Google [...] One community member even suggested Mozilla was being too pure and should try to get rich! I'm not surprised. I often see this attitude from the community towards it's benefactors.

Understandable, but this sounds like a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude. Accusing a person or organization of being corrupt because they could be corrupt is FUD. I think the $50+ million from Google followed by creating a for-profit corporation to handle that revenue justifies the skepticism.

Re:Mozilla.org financials, 2006

[napolj2]

I could only find the tax statement for the Foundation. Presumably the Corporation filed a separate tax document. Does Mitchell Baker pull a salary from both? The Foundation's tax statement is for the "Foundations and Subsidary". The subsidary is the Corp.

The Foundation's Board of Trustees certainly wouldn't approve of any money-making scams Seems that there is some overlap between the boards. ?

One community member even suggested Mozilla was being too pure and should try to get rich! I'm not surprised. I often see this attitude from the community towards it's benefactors.

If you read the replies, both in the comments and in the follow-up blog posts, pretty much everyone disagreed with this guy. Open source communities put ideals first. Also, in one of the follow-ups, he mentions that someone wrote to him explaining that, legally, a non-profit can't use its assets (i.e. the Corp) for-profit purposes. The Moz Corp is that its entirely owned by the Foundation, just like a piece of furniture, and thus the non-profit Foundation makes calls the shots.

I've answered your other questions already; reread what I wrote. If you have more detailed legal questions, just email the Foundation directly. I guess in the end we'll just have to wait and see what they do with their money; that's the only way to know for sure.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[kkiller]

I don't mind advertising, but until Adobe and Mozilla fix flash transparencies, AdBlock Plus is staying installed. Some news sites are unreadable without it.

They cannot kill it

[graf0z]

Mozilla Foundation stopped supporting Thunderbird development apparently because the organization got no money for it, and Google wants you to use web mail, so that you will see the ads.

So let's fork it! Oh, already done

Isn't FOSS great?

Re:They cannot kill it

[angrykeyboarder]

"Icedove" only exists because of the Debian Anal-Retentive um.. I mean Free Software Guidelines.

Thanfully, more sane Linux distributions (e.g. Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu...) still ship Mozilla products with the names and logos people (especially newbies) have come to expect.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Achromatic1978]

What I loved was this quote from the "reassurances given to the community":

Mozilla Foundation spending in 2006 seems low, especially the $80,000 in grants. Can you say more?

We planned 2006 spending on a conservative basis to make sure the Foundation remained sustainable amid the growth and change of becoming a much larger project. This meant we planned to spend income but not the basic principal of the Foundation in 2006 and perhaps 2007 ... the total spent on grants and grant-related expenditures was approximately $285,000 in 2006.

"We got $70M in the bank and we felt it'd further the goals of the organization to spend ZERO POINT FOUR per cent of our reserves on projects! That's fiscally conservative, people. At this rate, with interest, we have enough to keep the foundation going on current balances until some time in the late 22nd century!"

"Well, uhh, until we factor in the fact that we pay our CEO twice of what we actually spend on projects. And then there's that $100,000 pay raise - that raise alone actually is more than we gave in grants. But even then, we could still keep going until the end of the century! What's your problem?"

Re:Support of non MS

[Blakey Rat]

Google are (is?) supporting Mozilla because Google gets money for selling ads in their search results, and Mozilla uses Google as the default search engine. My guess is that Google is paying Mozilla less than half of what they're making from the deal.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[RudeIota]

Note that none of the add-ons for Opera allow blocking of ads.

This reaks of 'conspiracy theorism'. As noted above, Opera comes with ad-blocking integrated. I think that shoots down this theory.

I do, however, agree with the premise. Corruption is rampant and accepting money from advertising can certainly mean corruption by advertising.

Advertising supported irony

[SSpade]

It's ironic that Firefox (and the rest of Mozilla) is supported primarily by dollars derived from advertising-supported content, while most of the discussions of the features Firefox has revolve around it's functionality for depriving dollars from much of the other advertising-supported content their users want to look at.

Re:Advertising supported irony

[jesser]

Do you consider trying to block popup ads and spyware installation to be "depriving dollars" from "advertising-supported content"? Or are you confusing Firefox with AdBlock?

Re:Advertising supported irony

[Tuoqui]

You are forgetting... Google doesnt really CARE if you dont look at the ads (They're a bonus though). What they want is you to be using their search engine because people pay big $$$ to be listed in the top 10 or 20 or whatever on the first page of a search. Its basically the same as advertising excpet the user is actually actively searching for the information.

Re:Still alternatives like camino, opera, and safa

[QuantumG]

Not only is Camino based on the Mozilla code base, it is also developed by people who are paid by the Mozilla foundation.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[sznupi]

Most don't even try, that's the issue...

Re:Support of non MS

[Achromatic1978]

Thats very optimistic of you. I thought the reason was more to sink their fingers into more minds for advertising and data mining. They're not protecting us from big bad MS, MS is just not actively helping Google's plans.

Lets not go creating altruistic motives that if they even exist are likely ancillary.

Does it really matter?

[thomas.prebble]

We've been in Microsoft's vice for years now and it has put the software industry back by as much as 3 years. Their monopoly must be defeated and if it takes Google's money to do this then so be it. At least they are embracing open source unlike Bill Gates of Borg.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Linker3000]

I checked out Moodpulse:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/2.0.54 Server at www.moodpulse.com Port 80

Was it supposed to do that?

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[dracae]

There is flash you want?

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody actualy read the faqs for software they use? It explicitly says NOT to use filterset-g with ABP RIGHT IN THEIR OWN DOCUMENTATION - FILTERSET-G IS NOT OPTIMIZED FOR ABP! Just use Easylist+EasyElement and if your paranoid the ABP Tracking Filter and you have the best ad-blocking system on the planet.

NYT: Will Success or Google Money, Spoil Firefox?

[newscloud]

Will Success, or That Google Money, Spoil Firefox?

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Rakishi]

No, they spent $11 million on development. Then again it's much easier to ignore the truth, take quotes out of focus and spread FUD right?

Filterset.G is deprecated with Adblock Plus

[amake]

From Adblock Plus FAQs:

...it is recommended not to use Filterset.G with Adblock Plus. There are several reasons for this: ...

In short, the Filterset.G extension duplicates functionality already in the Adblock Plus extension, it's slow, and it's harder to use. The filter subscriptions supplied by Adblock Plus are the recommended alternative.

Re:Filterset.G is deprecated with Adblock Plus

[kennygraham]

I've personally had a better (read: flawless) experience with adblock (not adblock plus) combined with filterset.g.

And I'm truely shocked that they think their service is superior to a 3rd party equivalent. What next, Mozilla saying firefox is better than opera? ;)

Re:Still alternatives like camino, opera, and safa

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Safari? The browser whose web-search box is the most limited of any modern browser because it's locked into Google? (Safari not only locks in Google as the default/primary search provider, but Safari's search box doesn't allow for secondary search providers at all either.)

What I don't understand...

[symbolic]

...is what warrants paying one person $500K per year while handing out substantially less to the OS community to actually produce something of value.

Re:What I don't understand...

[colfer]

A ship pilot on the SF Bay makes $490,000. So it's not related, but it's pretty astounding these days what some people make compared to anybody I know.

Oh, and he may have ruined the Bay for the next decade, with that oil spill last week. http://www.pressdemocrat.com/EarlyEdition/article_view.cfm?recordID=7938&publishdate=11/10/2007

and the danger is...

[m2943]

what exactly? Has Google been demanding that the Firefox developers do something that doesn't make sense?

Sure, if Firefox can find another source of funding as good as Google, that's great. But to have no strings attached funding is useful even if there is only a single source.

The question I'd ask is whether Google is actually getting their money's worth; I don't find Firefox all that great. But, I suppose, Google also has to stick to what they can get, for the time being.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[PopeRatzo]

so in a sense gratuitous and inappropriate advertising is a deterrent all on its own

You betcha. But it's going to take a bit of education before we create a situation where consumers are enlightened enough to make this deterrent really effective.

We've reached a point where advertising is causing some serious social problems. For example, the marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to consumers has increased the cost of medicines and has given us entire lines of less effective drugs that come to market just because the pharmas know they can push it on unsuspecting consumers who get suckered by the ads. Perfectly fine and effective drugs are overlooked because the patents have run out and forever-growing profits must be maintained. My next-door neighbor, who's a physician, says that a majority of his patients come to his office asking for a specific drug because they saw an advertisement. Sometimes, even after he's explained to his patient that there's a more effective or just as effective generic, the patient insists on the more costly, well-advertised drug. He's had patients leave and go to other doctors when he's refused to prescribe some pill with a good commercial.

We really need to have a little pushback when it comes to marketing. It would be more effective than you may think in slowing down the complete takeover of our lives by corporate power.

Don't think for a second that there's not lobbyists trying to get adblocking software defined as malware so there can be a law passed against it. With the ready availability of consumer information, and sites like Gizmodo hawking new products, consumers no longer need advertising at all, I would suggest. It's intrusive, it's damaging, and given that we've just had 24 straight month of a negative saving rate in this country, and with consumer credit finally getting a little less free and easy (thank God), it's hurting us in a very real way.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[daggre]

Compared to the alternative, where Mozilla goes away because of lack of revenue, I think it's fine that they get money from Google advertising. Google has just done a hell of a good job making money off advertising, that's really it. If some of that money goes to help an effort to create a better, open source browser, that's a great thing for everyone. I'm not a Microsoft basher in general, but I do think that Firefox has done a better job being standards compliant than any other browser, an area in which Microsoft has not been held to by lack of competition in the last few years. I can't even tell you how bad /. looks on IE7 because the text overlaps half the time. MS will come up to speed in IE only if there's a reason for them to invest the time in it. Firefox provides that reason. Google pays for Firefox, fine by me. Just remember that it's in Google's best interest to run on ALL browsers from MS Smartphone and the iPhone to Firefox, Safari and IE. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Google has NO strategic advantage by "their" browser becoming dominant, they just need to make sure that Microsoft doesn't shut them out of their own revenue sources, and if IE were the only Windows compatible browser that would be a very realistic possibility. As it is, Firefox keeps things honest (and sorry, there are NO other browsers out there on Windows that have a chance against either Firefox or IE).

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[kennygraham]

There is flash you want?

Yup. Games and videos, mainly. The only time I've had flash annoy me is when it's ads.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[kennygraham]

I've read the faq, but filterset-g works great for me. I've never had a false positive or negative that I can remember. Why should I blindly follow the faq? If I were complaining about it not working well, I'd see your point, but I'm not.

Slow News Day

[cadeon]

Seriously, folks. This is non-news.

If Google were to do something stupid ( force ads | pull funding ) there would be a GPL Firefox port without the Google entanglements up within *minutes* - and that's assuming that Mozilla themselves wouldn't choose to just give Google the finger and keep things how they want it.

The *worst thing* that can happen here is Mozilla losing a significant amount of funding and being returned to mozilla.org of old. That's not a problem, because it was old, unfunded mozilla, that gave the world Firefox to begin with. Stop freaking out. The beauty of open source software is that it's separate from the corporate bullshit that can so easily kill good projects.

Re:Slow News Day

[aquarajustin]

My firewall is bricked. About 100 users are going to be very angry at me tomorrow. This is Google's Fault.

I see where the problem is!

[Vexorian]

So, I guess the danger is that google could force firefox into all of us and begin to charge us... wait. firefox is open source and not even "MS-open source", so we can always fork it even if we got dependant on it! (For a browser which does not try to add propietary extensions that sure sounded hard...

Ok, so that wasn't the problem so what the problem really is? I SEE! We should give the money to other open source projects! Yes, why should all money go to mozilla? It is unfair! ... Now that I think of it, this was money earned by firefox, then I see absolutely no reason to give this money to apache or mysql... sorry guys but that just doesn't make sense...

Ok, I can't think of any other creative reason to think there is actually any problem with this, I guess just in case we could go to opera! ... Err, wait! It is closed source, so opera is a browser that can actually lock us in! Not only that, but it is probably meant for that, and that's the reason they get money from the WII deal! Oh no, then using opera just in case is not an answer...

Then go Safari! ... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...

Then go any other open source browser! I'll just stick to firefox because: a) I like the plugins I use, b) I see absolutely no problem with this.

We could just calm down, an true-FLOSS project getting money absolutely from donations and zero charges to users, or would you prefer mozilla not to get any money? And just let firefox die?

Re:I see where the problem is!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Then go Safari! ... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...

???

Apple hates Linux? From what evidence do you infer that? Apple doesn't even compete (financially) with Linux directly, although they do compete with products based upon Linux. I have a hard time thinking of a company that "hates" Linux. The closest I can come to other than MS, is Wind River who has to compete with it in the embedded space, but last I heard even they were looking to offer a Linux based RTOS.

Re:I see where the problem is!

[msandler]

The real problem seems to be people object to Google's Scientific Approach to using Math,Semantics,General Semantics in creating a generic tool for every one ! If Firefox does not improve technically no amount of money will keep it afloat ! I never care what any one earns, but I never confuse effort with results! I wish the Google Engineers would rework FireFox!

Re:I see where the problem is!

[Vexorian]

They wouldn't push so hard not to ever have Linux support on their ipods or even release specs, you know...

Re:I see where the problem is!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

They wouldn't push so hard not to ever have Linux support on their ipods or even release specs, you know...

Apple hasn't done anything to make it easier for Linux users to use iPods, but I've never heard of them actively doing anything to stop it either. Maybe you have a persecution complex? From the evidence I see, Apple is indifferent to Linux.

How much on OS X development?

[Danathar]

What I'd like to know is how much they are allocating to OS X versions of Firefox? It crashes SO often it's pathetic. I have to force quit the darn thing more often than not, and I get the spinning beachball of death every time I download something for like 10 seconds before I can select the OK button on the dialog.

Why is the OS X version so much more unstable than the LINUX/WINDOWS version? (which BTW seem more buggy in 2.x than 1.x)

Re:How much on OS X development?

[Drakon86]

Or, more precisely, in one certain instance of OS X. I've been using Firefox on my MacBook ever since I got it, and it works quite okay for me.

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[HBI]

You bring up a good point but I don't think you are thinking about it much. Why are people willing to pay for Google's ads?

I have not bought a single thing from them over the last 7 years I was aware of same. Not because of some activist desire to deprive them of results, but just because I am not likely to buy something because of an advertisement, however well constructed.

Can these ads possibly be worth what people are paying for them?

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

lol wut is youtube?

Actually it would make me feel better

[melted]

The latest release (October one) of Live Search doesn't suck nearly as much as it used to. For all intents and purposes it's equivalent to Google now and has a substantially larger index to boot. I like the looks, too. It's about time Google saw more competition, be it through Yahoo, Microsoft or Ask. When search engines compete everyone wins. Believe me, you don't want to end up with entrenched Microsoft-style search monopoly on your hands.

Re:Support of non MS

[VGPowerlord]

Just a heads up: The usage of is or are depends on which English variant you're using.

The Queen's English treats corporations as a group. Therefore, it would be "Google are supporting Mozilla..."

American English treats corporations as a single entity. So, it would be "Google is supporting Mozilla..."

The President's English has no concept of the word "are." An example would be "Is our children learning?"

waiting for webkit

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm waiting for someone to write a very-very-slim wrapper around webkit.dll (see webkit.org) to get us an open, native, fast, compact browser for windows. it's almost feature-complete, but for some reason the only attempts at wrapping it have been ridiculously bloated (win32 safari) or really ridiculously bloated (some swift browser that relied on .net).

Re:Still alternatives like camino, opera, and safa

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Safari? The browser whose web-search box is the most limited of any modern browser because it's locked into Google?

You can change the search by editing the XML preference file, or you can install the plug-in "AcidSearch" which will let you select multiple search providers from the GUI.

I wonder if anyone has bothered adding additional search options as a feature request on Apple's Web site? I imagine a few people want this option, but probably not too many.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"There is flash you want?"

YouTube and a few games I play.

Re:Firefox 2.0.0.9 is WORSE.

[Lost Engineer]

So I was just reading your post when I noticed my laptop behaving sluggishly. I opened the task manager to find that firefox (latest release of course) is taking 60% CPU usage. Pretty impressive on a dual core box.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[drsquare]

There is flash you want?

How else are you going to access youporn, pornotube, redtube, pornhub etc?

Re:Firefox 2.0.0.9 is WORSE.

[Lost Engineer]

I found it inadvertently, ironically, merely by browsing this thread. See my other post if you care to. I'm not going to file a bug report because I don't know how to reproduce it. My instructions would be: use firefox for a while and notice when your PC grinds to a halt. Honestly it's not that hard to experience, but I (for one) can't make it reproduce at will. If I could, I would stop doing whatever it is that causes it to hog a whole core of your CPU.

It is quite possible that it's flash related. It shows up as usage by the firefox process, but that's expected for a plugin. How to tell?

Also, ff freezes frequently, on both Linux and Windows I found out recently, when browsing scottrade. I may file a bug on this one, because it's pretty easy to reproduce. Of course, you have to have an account and I'm not giving you mine...

selective ad blocking profits google

[Scrameustache]

It's ironic that Firefox (and the rest of Mozilla) is supported primarily by dollars derived from advertising-supported content, while most of the discussions of the features Firefox has revolve around it's functionality for depriving dollars from much of the other advertising-supported content their users want to look at. Not too ironic. Whenever there is a conversation about annoying ads, the one exception mentioned is google's text ads.

They're excluding the competition, why wouldn't they like that?
And they're proving you don't have to be annoying to make ads, why wouldn't we like that?

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[jlarocco]

Yeah, mods are on crack or something. If you use the user stylesheets, you can even block Google's search result ads in Opera. No add ons required.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I said "Just use Internet Explorer, and all the pages will show up correctly," I'd be modded down "-1 Troll" before the page finished submitting.

Yet when somebody says something similar but recommends Firefox, they're "+4 Informative".

Firefox sucks. It leaks memory like a sieve, it's a memory hog, it's slow, it requires tons of plugins to do mundane stuff that's built into every other browser, and it's less standards compliant than Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. At this point in time, you can be sure that if somebody isn't using Firefox, it's because they've realized it sucks and they don't want to. So shut up already. You're not going to make anybody switch, and you're bothering people.

And don't get me started on how creepy it is to voluntarily let some other group of people control what content you see.

Sold out

[CarpetShark]

I didn't know this. I thought search engines were selected on some combination of technical merit and status quo. If they're really placing search engines in mozilla because they're being paid to do so, then that's one more reason I'm looking forward to webkit in kde.

Re:Sold out

[asa]

We built the search feature into Mozilla in 1999. Google has been an option in that feature since its inception. That was 5 years before there was any revenue associated with it. We made Google the default in 2002 or 2003 to replace the silly "Netscape" default which was simply a Netscape branded Google. This was years before there was any revenue associated with it.

We made these decisions because it was the right thing for users, not because it was a revenue opportunity. If we ever have to decide between doing what's right for users and a revenue opportunity, we'll put the users first every time. The nice thing about the current situation is that it's both the right thing for users and a revenue opportunity.

And this is just about the "defaults" in Firefox. If you don't like Google, switch it to Yahoo. If you don't like Yahoo, you can add any one of more than 13,000 additional search services to the Firefox search toolbar with just a click or two at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/

- A

Re:Sold out

[CarpetShark]

And this is just about the "defaults" in Firefox. If you don't like Google, switch it to Yahoo.

That's no argument. The "default" has a lot of power, and can easily be used for bad things. In this case though, point taken :)

Re:Sold out

[CarpetShark]

:) Exactly so.

Re:Firefox doesn't delete Google's cookies!

[Tuoqui]

If you do click those two options though it will still delete Google cookies

Re:Firefox 2.0.0.9 is WORSE.

[ajs318]

It is quite possible that it's flash related. It shows up as usage by the firefox process, but that's expected for a plugin. How to tell?

Use chmod -x on your flashplayer.so file (most probably somewhere under $HOME/.mozilla/). This will prevent it from starting. If Firefox behaves itself, then you know it must have been Flash that was doing it.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[pairo]

There's an addon in firefox that lets you enable flash on a per file basis. (I would say movie, but there is non movie flash crap)
Personally, I think it's better for a browser to have plugins to do this kind of stuff, than having it built in. Gives you more flexibility.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[somersault]

And don't get me started on how creepy it is to voluntarily let some other group of people control what content you see. Yep, just thinking of all those millions of people watching pre-programmed TV channels is so creepy :|

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[angrykeyboarder]

Does anybody actualy read the faqs for software they use? It explicitly says NOT to use filterset-g with ABP RIGHT IN THEIR OWN DOCUMENTATION - FILTERSET-G IS NOT OPTIMIZED FOR ABP! Just use Easylist+EasyElement and if your paranoid the ABP Tracking Filter and you have the best ad-blocking system on the planet.

Dude, lay off the caffeine or pop a Xanax or two.

He was talking about Adblock and not Adblock plus. They are two seperate applications.

Filterset G works just fine with Adblock.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[angrykeyboarder]

Yes, thankfully Windows Media Video and RealVideo have fallen out of favor. Flash is much more efficient means of delivery of streaming video (and audio).

Real or Windows Media formats are a PITA in Linux. Flash works beautifully.

Several years ago I hated flash, because 90% of the time I came across it it was advertising or unnecessary "splash" pages on corporate websites.

That is still around, but it's primary use in recent years has become for the delivery of streaming media.

I block Flash everywhere except for sites with Flash video/audio that I like (e.g. YouTube, CNN, TheFreeDictionary).

Times have changed (thankfully)

Re:Volunteers tend not to work on commercial produ

[LingNoi]

Got any proof of that or are you just spreading BS?

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[SethraLavode]

Hardly comparable. With television, someone decides what content to show you, and you make a decision if you want to watch it. With the auto-updating ad-block filtersets, someone decides what content you never get to see, and you don't get to review what you never get to see or make any meaningful decisions.

I hope so!

[EddyPearson]

I hope Firefox has become Google's bitch, I hope Google fires the project's current management team and replaces them with a competant one.

I hope they can get rid of the bugs that have plagued Firefox since its creation, I hope they can turn the brower back from this bloated peice of shit that I've only fired up only to offer this reply some irony, to the shining example of speed, usability and standards that we all KNEW it was going to turn into.

Firefox as it stands is slow, bloated, apallingly buggy (I'm sorry, but it is) and has lost everything that set it apart from MSIE back when we actually cared. Ever left Firefox open on Slashdot for a few hours? Just check out that efficient use of memory.

People need to stop thinking that becuase hardware is cheap, that they can produce badly optimized software, simply becuase of how cheap CPU cycles are.

The original Doom development team would hate the current state of affairs, they didn't have memory a plenty, and spare CPU for every operation, and they produced a fast and durable 3d engine which ran on pretty much any x86 hardware with a tiny CPU and a few megs of RAM. Software can be bloody quick, it's all a matter of weather the devs can be bothered.

Want my advice? Destroy the UI, smash down all the XUL shite, kill the hideous inner platform effect that's slowing forming, take Geko (the engine) and start from scratch.

Get rid of the SAME memory leak which has been present since the VERY FIRST release, take the browser that somewhere went off at a tangent, and build it into what people were expecting when Firefox 1 first hit the net.

I have brand new, fast hardware, and I don't see why my browser should run at the same speed as it did 6 years ago on Windows 95 with MSIE. I personally use K-Meleon, it uses the Geko engine, and the UI wasn't build by people who simply lost sight of what a browser is there for, its a brilliant bit of software.

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

http://www.fridays.com/index.htm

Venting because I was pissed that I had to wait to load a freaking flash page (with music) in order to look at a menu.

Sorry, impossible...

[SharpFang]

Do you really believe Google (ad-supported company) would agree redirect money paid for redirects to their site (source of ad revenue) to a group of people writing Adblock (extension that causes ads aren't displayed)?

"Pay them? We'd better pay some goons to kill them!"
"Remember! Do No Evil!"
"Darn!"

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[somersault]

I make a decision which website to browse, and on TV someone decides what content I never get to see too. It's actually even more comparable than I had at first thought. And on a browser you get to choose if you want to use an ad/script blocker.

Thank you.

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for that.

I tried it with Opera 9.24, the latest version, and it still displays animated ads at Morningstar.com (big stock, bonds and mutual funds web site), but is far better than before.

I wish browsers just worked, instead of making the user become an expert in configuration.

The main developers have already left.

[Futurepower(R)]

The $3 million won't last long. The main developers have already left.

Where does firefox store its Flash files?

[Futurepower(R)]

Thanks for the information. Do you happen to know where Firefox stores its Flash files?

The Flash installer from Adobe is buggy, I notice.

So...

[Z00L00K]

The money has to come from somewhere... Right now it's Google, and since Google are competing with Microsoft they need to make a statement of not being dependent on IE. If Google had been into IE much more they would have been having less goodwill and being more in the leashes of Microsoft.

In this case it's the end-users that are the winners because there is more than one browser available. (Not that I'm disregarding Opera or Safari, they have an important part to play too.)

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[beckerist]

woah!
*runs to write these down*

Re:Google has influenced Opera, also.

[Gerv]

It's actually hard work to spend money.

No, really.

OK, so we could just hand out large chunks of cash to anyone who came asking for it, with no oversight and no follow-up. If we'd done that, we'd probably have been able to spend quite a lot more. Would that have made you happier?

What we actually did was solicit and carefully vet proposals, draw up consulting contracts where appropriate, monitor progress and make staged payments. Amongst all the other things we do to keep the show on the road.

Gerv

Re:Opera allows those ugly Flash ads.

[PMBjornerud]

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Should Linux dists fork Firefox to collect money?

[nektra]

Why not fork Firefox to collect money from Google instead of Mozilla Corporation? I have posted the same question to LinkedIn Q&A: Do you think that distributions like Ubuntu, RedHat and SUSE, and even projects like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD must reinforce their business models to earn what they deserve?

Anti-phishing features

[Kelson]

There is also an anti-phishing feature that is sort of spyware, but it is disabled by default.

I know that "everyone else is doing it" isn't an excuse, but it's worth considering that IE and Opera now have the same type of feature, though they approach it slightly differently. There are basically 3 modes:

• Don't check unless asked; when asked, check against an online list (Fx, IE, Opera)
• Check every page against an online list (Fx, IE, Opera)
• Check every page against a local list, and update that list periodically (Fx only)

Opera 9 defaults to checking against the online list every time. IE 7 defaults to checking only on demand, but really encourages you to turn it on when you first run it. Firefox 2 defaults to checking against the local list -- sort of a compromise position, as it solves the privacy issue of telling someone every page you visit, at the expense of data lag on the list.

Explain: why iTunes needed to activate ipod touch

[jotaeleemeese]

All previous iPods didn't need this.

Now the player is unusable unless you can make it call the mother ship via one of the Official OSes.

If that is not a jibe against Linux then nothing one can show you will convince you otherwise (after all the other 2 major OSes in the desktop are fully supported out of the box).

Re:Explain: why iTunes needed to activate ipod tou

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Explain: why iTunes needed to activate ipod touch

Probably they're trying to use a differential pricing scheme for different countries, would be my guess. Alternately, they could be including it just to get statistics back on where their users are and since they modeled the iPod touch on the same platform as the iPhone it was just as easy to have it included to acquire that intelligence.

If that is not a jibe against Linux then nothing one can show you will convince you otherwise (after all the other 2 major OSes in the desktop are fully supported out of the box).

Windows is supported because without it their market is completely gone. OS X is supported, because Apple is using this to push OS X and make money and because OS X makes up an non-trivial portion of the market (8% in the US, concentrated among home users with disposable income). What, exactly is their incentive to port iTunes to Linux? It is between .5% and 3% of the market worldwide, with probably a much smaller share of the home market. It would be nice, but I doubt it would be profitable for Apple.

Sorry, but it just doesn't pay, yet, for Apple to consider desktop Linux at all when making business decisions. Hopefully that will change some day, but that day has not yet come.

Leaders are EXPENSIVE

[anomaly]

You can complain all you want about the gross inequities of leaders being paid ridiculous money when the "working man" is getting screwed - the problem is that good leaders are VERY hard to find.

I've seen complaints about the peter principle above this thread. It's true. Most people in leadership are poor at it, and don't even understand what they need to do to get better at it.

For an organization to find a strong leader who understands their corporate goals and culture - particularly those of an odd beast like an open source community combined with a corporation - it's virtually impossible!

Quite simply, you have to pay the leader what the market demands for the skills.

When you've got a team of amazing individuals, you need an amazing leader to help them work toward a common set of goals. Look at the LA Lakers between 1999 and 2000. What was the primary difference? They brought in Phil Jackson to lead their brilliant individual performers, and look at the result - a championship! Was Jackson worth the pay? I don't know, but I can't help but wonder why they couldn't win the championship before he arrived and did win after he arrived.

Think you are (or someone you know is) a priceless technology stud? Without someone to identify the "why" and the "for whom" of that person's work, along with coordinating the performance of others, those mad ski11z are worth much less.