[PrayagS]

Ikr. They're up to some questionable decisions since long.

- Acquire companies like Pocket, Anonym in multi-million dollar deals and also the millions in bonuses that the CEO likes to enjoy.

- At the same time, no significant expenditure towards developing its core software. Firefox is still ridden with bugs. They even went as far as firing the people that used to work on Servo, Rust, WASM, etc.

I think it's clear to them that there's not enough money to be made with small tricks like Pocket, VPN, Relay, etc. Firefox is still the only profitable product and contributes ~90% to Mozilla's revenue. Much of it coming from Google which is the one thing that people have been asking them to be less dependent on.

And we shouldn't be surprised if they double down on making more money off of Google and also introduce ads. Acquiring Anonym, an ads company, implies that it might have already started.

[lukan]

"They even went as far as firing the people that used to work on Servo, Rust, WASM, etc."

And at the same time greatly raising compensation for the CEO, despite shrinking numbers.

[HeckFeck]

Servo had so much potential as the flagship Rust project, a fast and memory safe browser engine.

Such a loss to see it jettisoned and abandoned. Myopic decisions like these are filling the cloud of pessimism that now shrouds Mozilla.

[yencabulator]

FWIW Servo is seeing work as e.g. an Electron replacement. There is hope, even if one wishes the Mozilla Foundation CEO had used some $6M on developer salaries instead of pocketing it.

Full browser feature set is hard, but an app that bundles its own webview can choose to not trigger the edge cases, so that's a realistic path forward.

[Y_Y]

I see some nice parallels with Wikipedia. Makes me wonder if anyone's yet developed a theory of "foundation capture" where you find some marvellous free thing that is made for and by humanity at large and extract/redirect money from its market share/good will.

[yencabulator]

I think the pump-and-dump extraction of value from any brand works pretty similarly, whether a non-profit or regular business.

Lots of companies with centuries-long record of manufacturing previously durable goods have in the last decade or two switched to using e.g. inferior quality steel to increase profits. That'll destroy the brand, but in the meanwhile there's great profits to be had!

[Y_Y]

I guess for that we have to thank Aesop, the original corporate raider.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden...

[antihero]

Also they stopped developing Servo :(

[PrayagS]

As in Mozilla stopped developing officially? Because I have seen active development on GitHub and monthly updates on their blog.

[mkl]

Mozilla stopped in 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128865

The project limped along for a bit, then recently Igalia started putting resources into it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39269949

[komadori]

Yes, that's correct. It was later adopted by the Linux Foundation with some industry support: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/press-release/open-sou...

[lukan]

Yes, a while ago. But fortunately people continue. Just not with the billion dollar budget of Mozilla and with seemingly less traction. I have not heard of them in a while.

But I very much endorse both. And yes, in theory energy should be focused, but I rather have 2 smallish projects, but with potential, than one slightly bigger one, with fighting about direction all the time.