[emestifs]

The Firefox paradox:

People b***h about Firefox's (lack of) market share, Mozilla doing stupid things (fair criticism), Firefox not having X (extension support on Mobile, moving from legacy extensions to standard manifest format)

Then people will still bring up this baggage even when something good happens, will refuse to move away from the browser monoculture/monopoly, s**t on Firefox devs

FFS, something good happened. No other browser has this. Yet people will find a way to lessen it. For what? What benefit?

[secretforest]

FF gets crapped on all the time, BUT... it's still the best mainstream browser out there IMHO. I've been using FF since day one, when it was code named Phoenix. As the spiritual successor to Netscape Navigator, I have super fond memories of using NN, as it was the only decent browser we could install on the Sun Sparc workstations we had in college before I could afford my own computer. I still toy around with SeaMonkey once or twice a year for the memories.

Sadly, the browser world has almost become something of a mono culture with the majority of offerings using Chromium as their base. I liked Opera for years. Original engine. Tabbed. Now Vivaldi is the Opera successor, but sadly uses Chromium as the base. Vivaldi have said they are not going to allow the changes to affect them.

Again, sadly, I doubt that in the near term, anyone will try and offer up a new browser. Even Edge is nothing more than Chromium with MS's tech-nasty Kabuki makeup and overly-complicated proprietary plumbing. Is it too much to ask for a browser that just browses the web without all the garbage tie-ins? Tabs, ad blocking that I control, not add-ins. Like a Pi-hole, where I can add lists. I realize some browsers do this, but the tie-ins, notes, skins, email, political activism, it's all too much.

[dblohm7]

Former Firefox dev for both desktop and Android here: I can definitely confirm that being constantly shit on wore me down a lot.

[emestifs]

Thank you and everyone else working on the Firefox browser and adjacent projects for your hard work. Don't let the noise of the internet lessen what you and the team have done and continue to do.

[coldpie]

I'm sorry that happened. I wish there was some way to solve the "one jerk outweighs a thousand happy users" problem. I still vividly remember one guy being an asshole about my work on the Wine bug tracker a decade ago, regardless of how many happy users I know there were.

[wolverine876]

> I wish there was some way to solve the "one jerk outweighs a thousand happy users" problem.

We could downvote all that stuff to oblivion. Instead, comments like it are voted to the top comment on almost every page.

[account42]

Or instead Mozilla could actually listen to user feedback. People don't "shit" on Firefox for no reason.

[dblohm7]

Yeah, but shitting on devs for stuff they have nothing to do with is just a lousy thing to do.

[pcwalton]

It's human nature, unfortunately. Reality television producers have known this for ages: the episodes that feature people who come off as irredeemable jerks always garner the highest ratings.

[wolverine876]

> It's human nature, unfortunately.

If that ever really meant something, it has been so overused in the last few years that it's impossible to pick out any needles of serious use from the general default trendy grain silos of despair.

I'm not trying to get all of humanity to give up sex. I believe we can do better, here on HN, in this one regard. I am that insanely optimistic!

[bloopernova]

I am very thankful for Firefox. It keeps the web sane for me, and I very much appreciate everyone who contributed to it.

Thank you for your work!

[MiddleEndian]

Gotta say, I fucking love Firefox. Be proud of your work.

[dblohm7]

I am, and thank you!

[dandanua]

Haters gonna hate

[wolverine876]

Sorry. You did good things for everyone and deserve much better, but I hope you give yourself the recognition. Thanks for everything.

HN should have an annual Appreciation Day, with no enshittification of threads.

[MaxBarraclough]

> s*t on Firefox devs

The nerd rage is targeted at Mozilla's dishonest and incompetent managers, no? The actual dev work is top notch.

[coldpie]

> dishonest and incompetent managers

Even if it is, that kind of language doesn't help. These are all people you're talking about, trying their best to do a job they care about. Nothing gets better by your being a jerk.

[Ridj48dhsnsh]

> trying their best to do a job they care about

I would not take that as a given for Mozilla's upper management. Many of their decisions seem to ignore what users want in deference to Google or other motivations.

[wolverine876]

Comments like yours are exactly the problem. Do you have any real knowledge anyway? Have you worked there? It's just spreading toxic sludge.

[asadotzler]

You're just making shit up. I was with the Mozilla project for 25 years, with Netscape and then the Mozilla companies for 23 years. I was involved in reviews of the very first Google and Mozilla contract in the fall of 2004. Google has no say in the Mozilla product experience. None. There are some things Mozilla is disallowed from doing to Google Search results that Firefox displays, but that's basically it. That you want to imagine nefarious backroom deals that never existed and use those imaginings to shit on Mozilla is deeply insulting, and you should know that you and people like you have done more to dispirit and demoralize Mozilla than any competition ever did.

[account42]

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Wether there is a formalized contract or not Mozilla makes choicses in the interest of Google over (especially power) users all the time. And in general its absurd to think that taking money (not to mention almost your entire funding) from someone isn't going to make you biased towards that person. As has been pointed out many times in discussions about this, you don't need any explicit deals for conflicts of interest to emerge. Having the wealth of Mozilla's leadership depend on Google's good graces is going to encourage them to make decisions that will keep Google happy.

Attacking users users that bring up grievances is not going to help your case here.

> There are some things Mozilla is disallowed from doing to Google Search results that Firefox displays, but that's basically it.

What exactly are those things? Is that why Firefox does not come with ad blocking by default?

[pseudalopex]

> Wether there is a formalized contract or not Mozilla makes choicses in the interest of Google over (especially power) users all the time.

What choices did they make in Google's interest?

[MaxBarraclough]

There's a difference between criticism and harassment. Dishonest and incompetent aren't just mean words chosen at random, I used them for a reason.

Power users aren't happy that Firefox has been doing nothing but trailing Chrome for years, actively making the browser worse for power users by weakening extensions, baking ads into the browser, wilfully refusing to permit opt-out of telemetry, and lying about revenue-sharing with Pocket. [0][1][2][3][4][5][6]

Mozilla gave its CEO a raise of over $1m/year, from a starting point that was already over $1m/year, at a time when Firefox was losing usage share, while laying off engineers. Mozilla did all this while congratulating itself for putting people before profits! [7][8][9][10]

I still use Firefox as my primary desktop browser, and I really want to like Mozilla, but here we are.

(As an aside, I see Pocket is finally going to be made Free and Open Source Software, which is good news. [11])

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36841567

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144137

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754740

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616740

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925

[6] https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/mozilla-looks-to-its-next-...

[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24569464

[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30723971

[9] https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker#Negative_salary...

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_(service)

[throwawaymoz28]

I worked at Mozilla as an engineer for 6 years and this was not how it came across to me; there was, in fact, quite a lot of hostility towards engineers specifically.

I would also note that "managers" runs quite a wide gamut and my experience with engineering managers at Mozilla was generally positive; upper management was not so great.

[emestifs]

No, people go after the devs too. I was specific about distinguishing Firefox and Mozilla in my post. Firefox in too often caught in the political/flame crossfire.

[account42]

Devs that implement user-hostile changes like reduced UI configurability, sure.

[toyg]

> For what? What benefit?

Trolling used to be an amateur sport, but these days it's largely a professional endeavour. Astroturfing is an everyday occurrence on any decently-sized social media site, including this very one.

[dmix]

"Why even try"