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by anon3_ 3948 days ago
It Mozilla on an upswing or a decline since the Brendan Eich / Firefox OS stuff happened?

They're kind of shifting more from technology into politics. I heard they were cutting employees and divisions a lot.

I know former employees have to sign a waiver not to talk about their layoff, but why hasn't Mozilla's layoffs gotten any press, but startups do?

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mozilla-Reviews-E19129.htm gives a clue.
1 comments
frozenport 3948 days ago
FF users have almost halved over the last 2 years, despite what feels like solid technology - I wonder what the folks at Opera Software think?

http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/07/firefox-...

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cryptoz 3948 days ago
> FF users have almost halved over the last 2 years,

That's not what your linked chart shows. First, the chart is a % market share, not raw user counts. Second, ~18% down to ~13% isn't really "almost half" anyway.

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anon3_ 3948 days ago
Yeah but significant still. 27.7% of their pie disappeared.

Recent versions of Firefox have introduced third party plugins (like pocket).

After the Eich thing, they lost the "hacker" cred and their talent was pretty easy much poached. Further, the concept of merit - overlooking the political in lieu of skill / talent - is no longer a core value of the organization. [1]

Recruiters were all over linkedin and taking away the best talent left and right.

[1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6688

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lern_too_spel 3948 days ago
That explains it. The reason you think Mozilla is shifting from technology into politics is that you've been reading ESR's lunatic ravings.
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angersock 3948 days ago
You don't have to read any of the political culture ranting of ESR (and you probably shouldn't unless you're masochistic) to have seen that Eich was railroaded and screwed and witch-hunted pretty hard.

It seems very reasonable to interpret that whole situation as Mozilla acknowledging the importance of politics over technical leadership--fair or not, when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.

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anon3_ 3948 days ago
> when you broadcast your realpolitik that hard, you're gonna lose people.

Hacker culture may not necessarily be aligned with Eich's personal views / situations. But crucial underlying concept is ignoring nebulous things like that. So taking action / reforms based off the premise feels like a Chesteron's fence [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

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