[sam_goody]

Actually, Apple has many developers on this team, and Firefox is an open source project.

If we could create an feeling that companies that claim to be developer friendly make sure that FF is also compatible, it would be a huge win for all involved.

[mook]

Firefox is an open source project, but pushing large changes upstream is difficult (and this is true of pretty much any project). Even if Apple had the patches, Mozilla might not take them.

[olyjohn]

Maybe they could... I dunno... work with Mozilla and see if they were interested in taking the changes?

It's not like they have to build this whole thing out, then hope and pray that Mozilla accepts the changes.

[015a]

While at first glance it would be strange to expect Apple to make these changes; I don't feel its unreasonable from any perspective. Apple should hold a long-term interest in keeping the web diverse; Safari will never reasonably hold a majority/plurality marketshare, so their second highest priority from a revenue/ux perspective should be "sticking to the standards" and helping toward ensuring web developers don't take on a "Chrome and nothing else" stance.

Granted, its also understandable that Apple officially working on Firefox would be "article on The Verge" level of news and even an armchair commentator would be able to connect the dots from what they're working on to predicting Facetime was coming to web. Though, isn't that what Jobs originally promised? Open source protocol and such?

At the end of the day, I'm sick and tired of the prevailing hyper-endstage-capitalist excuse of "they won't make a billion dollars from doing this, so not only will they not do it, but they SHOULDN'T". Its everywhere on HN, and its actual brain worms. Corporate decisions shouldn't only be analyzed through this lens; there's a far broader humanistic lens that codifies a higher standard that we absolutely can reasonably hold all companies to; not from a legal sense (HackerNews isn't a court and your votes are not a jury decision, some armchair commentators need to be reminded), not even from a general population public relations sense; but from a viewpoint that Ethics is not a democracy, there are some ethical positions that won't make money, aren't required by law, and aren't even popular, but are nonetheless crucially important to avoiding a Blade Runner-eque corpo-cyberpunk future (or, with some very legitimate issues, species extinction or at least achieving and maintaining a high standard of living for most of our species).

The sibling argument of Firefox's CEO making a ton of money being reprehensible is... I mean, jeeze, they make awesome software, open source, freedom respecting, privacy respecting, and manage to pay their leadership & employees well? Isn't that the dream? That should be the goal; not be derided. There's a middleground between hyper-endstage-brain-worm-capitalism and "all software is developed by starving monks in a monastery". I understand its hard to believe this, because it isn't an extreme; its easy to let gravity drag your ethical viewpoint to an extreme on the left or right in this age of outrageous social media, but neither extreme on any ethical dimension is conductive to a positive future for humanity.

[EveYoung]

Doesn't Safari has the biggest marketshare on mobile (at least in the US)? So I don't think any major site could simply ignore that.

[015a]

A significant number of websites ignore Safari on mobile; not because its Safari, but because its mobile. Not necessarily with a big banner that says "Please use a desktop", but rather a half-assed layout.

Within the US, Safari and Chrome mobile have roughly equivalent marketshare, recently with an edge to Safari. Globally, Chrome mobile is significantly larger than Safari mobile.

None of that actually matters though; Firefox, Safari, and Edge all deploy advanced analytics blocking features which distort their marketshare. In many instances, these blockers self-report their browser as Chrome, as a "blend in with the crowd" strategy.

[acqq]

When it was reasonable for Apple to do so, Apple distributed Safari for Windows. I don't remember now anymore exactly, it could have been even before Chrome on Windows existed? "Apple's Steve Jobs first announced Windows PC support in Safari 3.0 at Macworld Expo in 2007."

"Google Chrome first release: 2008-09-02." "We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others" (1)

If there's ever a reason for Apple to be more involved in a Windows browser, that's still an option.

But implementing some functionality in a third browser on Windows... why should they? The two which already have the feature are already by the competing companies.

1) https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browse...

[paulcarroty]

> and Firefox is an open source project

check Mozilla CEO salary and stop finding excuses in open source.

[kerng]

What correlation does CEO salary and open source have?

Maybe the comment thinks about "not for profit" org - but even then it seems normal to pay people a competitive salary.

[iakov]

There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has.

I think it's normal to pay competitive salary too, but the salary should reflect one's impact on the company. Looking at the current state of Firefox, I can't imagine why their CEO is compensated as they are.

[atatatat]

> There is an interesting inverse correlation of Mozilla CEO salary and amount of users Firefox has.

The amt of politics required to be dealt with == big compensation.

[9dev]

Firefox isn’t, and never was, Mozilla’s revenue source.

[orestarod]

What is their revenue source? And what is the reason cash flows from that revenue source if not Firefox? If Firefox did not exist, Mozilla would have no reason to be considered by anyone about anything.

[olliej]

What? The primary revenue source of Mozilla is Firefox due to the search engine revenue they get

[9dev]

Exactly: They could equally well just skin Chromium and keep on setting Google as the default search engine. That's exactly my point-- Firefox isn't the revenue source, auxiliary services around it are.

[burnte]

The salary of their CEO has absolutely no bearing on it being open source. None. Look at Tim Apple's salary, and yet Darwin, Webkit, CUPS, and other projects are open source.