[teruakohatu]

I don't understand why Mozilla cannot see that MDN should be part of their core mission. I can understand spinning off Thunderbird and Sunbird, but this really seems a big step in the wrong direction.

Today their Mission webpage[1] states :

"Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all."

According to the Wayback Machine, 8 years ago that page[2] said:

"Our mission is to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet."

Surely documenting open standards and educating developers is part of both the current mission just as much as the almost decade old mission?

Along with the "Internet Society" (.org) I can't think any of any other organizations that are, in my opinion, so misguided as they are critically important to the future of the free internet.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120331122341/https://www.mozil...

[musicale]

MDN is awesome; it's the Mozilla "product" that I use most often (though I do use Firefox as a secondary browser and Firefox focus as a junk content blocker) and I definitely include it in the "best of Mozilla" category.

[clusterfish]

Because apparently MDN web docs can exist just fine without Mozilla being the primary funding source?

Web platform docs are surely important, but maintaining MDN is just a matter of funding at this point. If these new funding sources work just as well, what exactly is the problem?

Like it or not, Mozilla's continued existence hinges on Firefox's market share bringing in search engine deals. With their market share falling, the only things they can afford to spend their money on are 1) making their browser more competitive, and 2) building alternative revenue sources.

MDN docs maintenance is neither. It's certainly an asset to end users, but it's a cost center for Mozilla. It's good that other companies are stepping up to fund this. Somebody has to pay for our nice things.

[jimmont]

Can you explain what makes this seem to be out of sync with this mission focus as you've emphasized? My read of this is their interest in expanding the existing effort somehow, focused initially on MDN. Separate from this doc effort I've wondered why Mozilla hasn't emphasized business opportunities around communications like VPN services, etc until recently as it overlaps with their mission, expertise and appears to be a legitimate business opportunity at scale. It's not my area of knowledge, only a speculation from some observation.

[wegs]

I kinda feel like there ought to be some coherent effort to archive all this documentation, beyond archive.org (perhaps in collaboration with?).

Good developer docs have source code, and are often interactive (you can play with code in a sandbox). Much of that stuff is either on personal web sites and blogs (often with unknown licensing) or behind corporate paywalls.

There ought to be a place this stuff goes, and is forever archived, searchable, and usable.

I'd actually extend that beyond software too. Educational materials. Service manuals for my car or vacuum cleaner. There's lots of stuff which ought to live forever for the benefit of humanity. And perhaps software itself. I ought to be able to pull up Netscape 2.0 or Flash and run it in a sandbox.

Archive.org is designed to archive everything on the web. I'm thinking something thoughtful and deliberate where people (even paying for it) stick content into a permanent archive. If I'm running a startup, and I'd like to give you a guarantee of long-term support, I stick my support materials there, and they can outlast me.

Hmmm... That was a bit rambling and not too crisp, but perhaps someone can think of ways to make it crisp?

[bobajeff]

I suspect this is part of Mozilla pulling what Netscape did at the end of their life.

Spinning off all their valuable products so they'll remain after their gone.