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Firefox Fail: Layoffs Kill Mozilla's Push Beyond the Browser (cnet.com)
So much for Mozilla's quest to bring Firefox to new and different places. From a report on CNET: The nonprofit organization told employees Thursday that it is eliminating the team tasked with bringing Firefox to connected devices. The cuts affect about 50 people. Ari Jaaksi, the senior vice president in charge of the effort, is leaving, and Bertrand Neveux, director of the group's software, has told coworkers he will depart too. Mozilla had about 1,000 employees at the end of 2016. The layoffs greatly curtail the nonprofit organization's ability to make Firefox relevant again. Once a dominant choice for internet browsing, it has long been overshadowed by Google's Chrome. Mozilla tried to take the web technology powering Firefox to other devices, but struggled to get acceptance. Its shrinking influence comes at a time when more people are browsing the internet on their phones -- an area where Firefox is particularly weak.
Mozilla is run by the most retarded people I have ever seen.
1.Why do they even have a thousand employees? What the hell are they doing? They are supposed to be making a web browser, not engaging in political advocacy. You don't need a thousand people to maintain a web browser.
2.Every few years, Mozilla completely changes the interface and dumbs it down for no particular reason other than to be hip because their software designers are a bunch of yuppies. And it usually involves removing functionality in the process.
3.Driving away Brendan Eich was asinine and once again demonstrates the lack of tolerance of the left and the fact that SJWs have infested Mozilla. Brendan Eich is a technical genius and he is responsible for many of the core technologies of the web (e.g. Javascript) and you are going to drive him away over some insignificant issue because, god forbid, someone has a political opinion different than your own?
3.Later this year, Firefox will remove support for extensions. In their place will be a WebExtensions API which is only marginally more powerful than what Chrome can do. Many existing addons will never work under the restrictions that system places because WebExtensions offers no way to do low level customization. Several developers of prominent addons have already announced that they will stop development as a result.
For the love of God, people, stop using Chrome, Chromium, and all other Chrome derivatives! Google, erm, "Alphabet", has too much influence so as it is. Chrome is nothing but their way of leveraging influence on web standards. We let a company get a monopoly on the web browser before and it was a unmitigated disaster. We cannot let it happen again. Google might be Microsoft but it would be just as bad for the web in its own way. And all talk about "but but but Chromium is free... blah blah blah" is non-sense. Without the backing of Google, Chromium development would freeze up and the browser would die a slow security hole death.
Are you kidding? This is the man who invented Javascript we're talking about. He shouldn't be allowed within twenty miles of a computer again.
They are not wrong. It shows their focus is not on software/tech but on feelings. Running a business is not about feelings. It is about getting shit done and showing responsibility for your promises to your customers. Once you decided to go down that route you have immediately alienated at least 50% of your potential. Your customers are thinking 'hey what about the 50 things you promised me and you just chased of one of your best talent?'
They showed they are willing to go after one of the founders of the company just to make a point over something that looked rather petty from the outside. Lets just say it is not on the top of my list of places to try to go and work. I can get that sort of abuse from somewhere else and no in a public forum. You are not going to attract anyone who has even an inkling that you may go after them for something else petty. Think back on everything you have ever put on the net, worked for, or people you have associated with. Consider it fair game to these people. They will and do take things out of context. They can even leave it in context if they do not like what you are doing. You will attract other people who want to fight social causes. That can work at a job like this. However, getting software written rarely has anything to do with social justice.
I have written many thousands of lines of code. At *no* point in my career did I think 'how will this affect the LBGTQ community?'. It just does not come up. Yet mozilla as a business decided it needed to come up. It was a distraction and a detriment to anyone who has been bullied before in life. They see the people doing that to the top guys and they are little peons they are not going to opt in for that sort of abuse. Also any that are in the company, those who feel they are next will leave. They may not even speak up. But they are afraid to. You, in the end game, will end up with an echo chamber of people making grandiose promises and no way to execute because they are too distracted by petty things and have chased off anyone who decents to your opinion.
You think the 'alt-right' is something to be mocked. Maybe it is. I see it as a bunch of people who are tired of their opinions being silenced and with no other way to get things done than to shut up and vote. They are enjoying the hell out of the epic meltdown going on. Why? Because for the past few years they have been gaslighted and told they are irrelevant by a bunch of whiny narcissists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Reading the summary and I'm like "What??" Firefox is the best browser by far. More customizable, better looking, better features. There's no comparison with any other browsers. Chrome's extensions suck. Opera and Vivaldi are ok but somewhat rough on the edges and also their extensions suck. You can use Chrome extensions (which suck anyhow) with Opera and Vivalidi but it's a cludge and they might not work well and are not stable.
As for mobile, it's basically the same thing although Firefox stands out even farther than any other browser, except perhaps Dolphin which is not nearly as trustworthy an organization as Mozilla. One thing that really sickens me about mobile Chrome is the baked-in Big Search search engines and inability to add DuckDuckGo. That alone was enough for me to immediately abandon using it and to not take it seriously as a browser. Google is not nearly as trustworthy/honest as Mozilla.
Yes Chrome's performance can be better but when you start using a lot of extensions and put it under resource load it is just as unstable/crappy as anything else. No browser is absolutely perfect.
Yes Firefox seems to have gone through a period of performance issues when under resource load (yes I often have 100+ tabs open) but seems to be improving as of the very latest releases.
I don't know what the summary is about but it really doesn't seem objective. Firefox is clearly the best browser.