[Stranger43]

I think a fundamental lack of understanding/humility is the core of this conflict along with Mozilla's long and storied history of creating controversies/problems out of thin air.

The Mozilla leadership seems to have a unfortunate tendency to emulate the behaviors of the tech companies that their core Firefox project is often seen as an alternative too.

Firefox is a good browser but is prevented from capitalizing on the skepticism the consumers feel toward the tech sector by Mozilla using the exact same language and dark UI pattern to promote things like pocket that the user-base never asked for, and jump on to the lets enforce the use of AI everywhere that's driving discontent within the proprietary ecosystems, and this is yet another example of this class of behavior from the Mozilla leadership.

[lopis]

It's the mismstch of expectations that causes good communities to create drama. If this was Google, no one would care, as one expects Google to just do what is best for the business. But with companies like Mozilla we expect a bit better. But the truth is they are barely better and the leadership plays by the same rulebook.

[small_scombrus]

People did used to have decent expectations for Google back when they at least pretended to care about the "Do no evil" tagline

[matt89]

Indeed but it feels like a lifetime ago. I miss those days where I would look up to google and their products, as something new, cool and "not-evil".

[hitarpetar]

it's always been marketing

[neilv]

Maybe. But if the founders were at all pre-gold-rush Internet people, sentiments like "don't be evil" seemed (in my impression at the time) more the genuine norm than the exception.

[hinkley]

It's pretty clear they've been full evil for a while. It's documented at least back to 2011 but the rest of us didn't clue in for a while after.

[saalweachter]

"Don't be evil."

"Do no harm" is the doctor thing.

[lopis]

Google burned all that goodwill to fuel their growth. It worked great for them. But now they have none left.

[Stranger43]

But why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate the desperation and authoritarianism of a potentially stagnant tech sector.

I don't think it's malevolence from the mozilla leadership team but more that if you hang around people who have bet their lifesaving on the success of cloud based LLMs, being cautious and making their use "optional" might begin to sound like a really controversial position even if that's actually what the users/community want from Mozilla.

Firefox market share have been declining and it's not easy to point to any obvious technical problem, so the reason for the decline is likely that the Mozilla corporation keep messing up the narrative by acting like just another Silicon Valley tech firm.

[toyg]

> why does it have to be the case that the leadership of an opensource project have to emulate [...] tech sector.

Because they live in the same places. They go to the same restaurants, they have the same conversations, they have personal friends at FAANG... they live and breath the same ideas, the same opinions, the same perspectives. They are in a bubble, and think "their" org should partake in the same behaviours as all the other companies out there - if anything, because it will be useful for their CVs when they inevitably look for a new job next month or next year. I don't blame them, it's inevitable human behaviour.

Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US.

[johnnyanmac]

>Maybe Mozilla should relocate the bulk of their leadership outside the US.

They don't even have to leave the state. Just don't be stuck in that same stagnant SV bubble and bring in people with genuine ideas and initiative.

[johnnyanmac]

The people running the show are not the people who started and enforce the idea of an open source initiative, that's why. If most of the current administration got ousted tomorrow you'd see them pop up as senior executives in the very companies Mozilla theoretically decries.

Wolves see the community sheep build and then move in under wool coating. Doesn't mean they still are not in fact a wolf.

[Aerolfos]

>The Mozilla leadership seems to have a unfortunate tendency to emulate the behaviors of the tech companies that their core Firefox project is often seen as an alternative too.

But of course, they need "competitive" salaries so they can hire "great talent" from the tech sector so that the company doesn't fall behind or something.

[Seattle3503]

How would you develop Firefox?

[Aerolfos]

I'm sure people will come out of the woodwork to tell me just how wrong this is, but say various Linux projects or the kernel seem to have better (better, not perfect) governance structures.

Not being obsessed with rapacious growth, not chasing trends and features that look good on delivery metrics but instead building a stable product would go a long way.

And frankly, for descriptions on what the product should be, standards to implement (or not), and overall strategy for a project that tries to do its best for tech as a whole - Mozillas own writeups are spot-on! They just don't seem to act in accordance with the "vibe" and ideals that blog posts etc. talk about.

[nativeit]

You certainly have a style. Much better: how would you run Mozilla/develop Firefox?

Any answer that’s not fully bulletproof immediately rules any other opinions you may hold illegitimate.

/s

[xg15]

There is still the conspiracy theory that Mozilla is mostly a sock puppet by Google by now, mostly kept alive so Google can say that Chrome is not a monopoly.

Behavior like this doesn't do a lot to dispel that theory.

[small_scombrus]

I'm always surprised that stuff like the AI integration isn't done as a pre-installed extension.

If it's Mozilla signed then you could give it extra permissions so it still works the same, but then people who it offends can remove it.

Like how their tab containers system is a (not pre-installed) extension

[a13n]

ehh this reads a bit like the hn comments complaining about sites that don’t work with js disabled

like what percent of firefox users do you think actually care about this?

[lancebeet]

Given the abysmal market share of Firefox today I think a large percentage of the remaining users do actually care.

[johnnyanmac]

No one care about this story at large. It's a pretty bad argument to make among the population that does care. Every HN user can leave Firefox and it'd still be running.

Fortunately, history has shown you don't need a majority of users decrying something to get noticed.

[ThatMedicIsASpy]

enough to move to zen after 20+ years

[small_scombrus]

I'm sure it's a very small amount, but as well as making me personally happy*, (I feel) it would play into their image as the good guy.

"Do you want the most minimal stripped down version of FireFox? Well you can have it!"

*and after all, isn't that what's really important /s

[myaccountonhn]

I think it's in the organization as well. They had really good outreach programs and educational content (though I think that's now gutted) that talked about tech ethics, but their product just follows the same bad behavior.

[ErigmolCt]

Mozilla has a real pattern of shooting itself in the foot

[xnx]

I wonder what the Apache Foundation could do with the immense budget of Mozilla.

[badgersnake]

> Firefox is a good browser

Increasingly it isn’t. It’s crashing 2 or 3 times a day for me now, and video conferencing is barely usable.

[ngruhn]

Hasn't crashed for me once and I use it daily.

[aendruk]

I use Firefox exclusively. Crashes:

  Report ID                                Date Submitted
  bp-5587943e-af6f-47c2-a76c-085760251104  2025-11-03T16:18-08:00
  bp-a96400f2-ce05-46df-a842-d7c960251102  2025-11-01T17:18-07:00
  bp-917e4083-c1d6-492a-b730-61dd70251028  2025-10-28T10:59-07:00
  bp-6556dab8-37ed-4a6e-9aab-965c70251021  2025-10-21T09:46-07:00
  bp-b706c918-4851-4006-95ff-a97a70251008  2025-10-07T21:07-07:00
  bp-769d1eee-2154-4336-a448-7343e0251001  2025-10-01T11:12-07:00
  bp-e8720d2c-bd70-4e20-ac97-7b81f0250926  2025-09-26T10:31-07:00
  bp-086eb3f5-0507-4a0c-8482-b4d890250916  2025-09-16T11:36-07:00
  bp-2aeacd1a-2bd3-4bdb-a748-a3d080250827  2025-08-27T11:10-07:00
  bp-5528185d-592b-486a-922e-e52bc0250821  2025-08-21T14:23-07:00
  bp-1e06d027-b690-45b4-b507-d11e70250815  2025-08-15T15:59-07:00
  bp-d0ecb20a-9a39-459d-b3bf-446df0250807  2025-08-06T20:21-07:00
  bp-208cc026-e144-46e7-a891-aaddb0250804  2025-08-04T08:50-07:00

[trenchpilgrim]

Been crashing for me and friends for about a week now, mostly on youtube

[tremon]

Blame Youtube for that. It is very much in Google's interest to have Youtube misbehave on non-Google browsers.

[ghssds]

No website should be able to crash a good web browser. It's totally a Firefox failure.

[numpad0]

Is that tab crashes or whole browser crash? YouTube on Firefox appear to trigger memory leaks of some sort. I get routine tab crashes for that reason too, but not as much browser crashes.

[trenchpilgrim]

Tab crashes sometimes, other times my browser gets slow and I restart the whole thing

[notanastronaut]

Google has been caught red-handed causing deliberate issues for non-Chrome browsers. Try changing the browser-agent and see if you still have issues.

[trenchpilgrim]

Firefox and Chrome use the same agent.

[ACCount37]

That's on YouTube. It doesn't work well on anything now, and hasn't for a long, long while.

[surajrmal]

Works well on chrome and android. I've never had issues

[notanastronaut]

I've completely avoided Chrome/Edge in the browser wars. I went from Netscape to IE to Firefox and stayed there. I was using it before and after its notorious changes to WebExtensions API breaking many plugins in 2017.

I don't have any crashing issues with it.

I even remember the great "speed test" wars where pages like Lifehacker were measuring how long pages took to load and declared this or that browser the winner for that year.

That being said, the direction their privacy policy is going is concerning and giving me reason to eye alternatives. But from a technical standpoint it's solid on my end.

[nativeit]

It’s my primary browser on every device, I use Windows, Linux, and Apple devices daily. I can’t remember the last time it crashed (if ever). I also use a ton of extensions, some of which are a little sketchy (devlopment-wise, nothing morally questionable). Still, no technical issues at all. The behavior of Mozilla, on the other hand, I take plenty of issue with.

Edit: correcting autocorrect.