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TechRepublic: Mozilla 'Is Desperately Needed to Save the Web' (techrepublic.com)

"I can't remember the last time I cared about Mozilla," writes Matt Asay at TechRepublic. "I also can't remember a time when we needed it more." An anonymous reader quotes TechRepublic: Mozilla's Firefox is almost a rounding error in desktop market share, and nonexistent in mobile browser market share. It offers a few other services, like Pocket, but largely gets ignored... This is a mistake. Our world is increasingly mediated by the internet, and that internet has just a few gatekeepers, collecting tolls as we browse. As Python guru Matt Harrison put it, "Vendors control the default browser which 99.9% of people use." Those vendors are happy to sell us access to information. Nothing about it is free. You are most definitely the product.

On mobile, where the majority of the world's content is now consumed, Google and Facebook own eight of the top 10 apps, with apps devouring 87% of our time spent on smartphones and tablets, according to new comScore data. For that remaining 13% of time spent on the mobile web, Google and Apple offer the two dominant browsers... the majority of our time online is now mediated by just a few megacorporations, and for the most part their top incentive is to borrow our privacy just long enough to target an ad at us. Then there's Mozilla, an organization whose mantra is "Internet for people, not profit." That feels like a necessary voice to add to today's internet oligopoly, but it's not one we're hearing... We clearly need an organization standing up for web freedom, as expecting Google to do that is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. Google does many great things, but its clear incentive is to sell ads. We are Google's product, as the saying goes.

The article applauds the Mozilla-sponsored Rust programming language as promising, "but not to save the web from the all-consuming embrace of Facebook and Google, especially as they wall off the experience in apps... "If I sound like I don't know what to propose Mozilla should do, it's because I don't. I simply feel strongly that the role Mozilla played in the early browser wars needs to be resurrected to save the web today."

2 of 317 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I remember early Netscape 1.x etc. by Dog-Cow · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You are an asshole. Pure and unadulterated asshole. No-one gives a shit if you are compelled by any examples.

  2. updated to latest Firefox- even worse shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I use firefox in a true stress environment- loads of tabs on an old two core system. 4GB of RAM. In truth nothing a competent programmer couldn't handle. But here's the thing...

    Version by version Firefox gets notable worse doing the SAME thing. Memory management (the main issue) actually decreases in quality- how is that even possible. Tab handling gets worse. Threading- well that's an utter joke. Mozilla STILL can't understand the basics of Windows GUI API coding- and still fails to give the window 'frame' and non-page content its own worker thread.

    It gets worse. Mozilla is depreciating the system that allows Firefox mods- the only reason to use Firefox. Most good addons are now effectively banned.

    On my monster system Firefox's faults are mostly hidden by the power of that computer- tho it still clearly runs like a very bad joke. And 'Rust' is a SJW programming language that makes things exponentially worse. You see REAL engineering is HARD and needs 'dangerous' tools that only true experts ever master. But the answer is never to blunt the edge of the scalpel so the surgeon won't cut herself. Think about it!

    Mozilla is a massive, mega rich corporation that can afford to employ the best. But it chooses to be a SJW horror that employs the 'correct' - so Firefox is a bad joke of a project only getting by cos you can now bang a cheap 6-core CPU into your system with 16GB of RAM. And dribblers are trained to praise barely functioning code that jsut about runs if your system is super powerful- telling the critics that they are at fault for not 'upgrading' their system.

    SJW engineering is not engineering at all. Today, you are supposed to be impressed by an app running (barely) in a browser frame that would have worked faster (as a pure application) on a computer FIFTEEEN years ago. SJW types tell you it is "good" that your system wastes 99.99% of its processing power running insanely inefficient code just so said code might be written by a clueless person with the 'right' physical form. And funny how the same SJW types never worry about the astonishing waste of electrical energy that such dreadful code requires.

    Assembler, C and C++ "save the Earth"- as I hope every true coder here understands. The 50 layers of abstraction that drive the average browser app use hundreds of times more power. But then the SJW movement has always been built on pure hypocrisy.