[latexr]

Finally! All these years everyone has been complaining about this or that missing feature or lingering bug in Firefox, or how Mozilla has been hostile to users and pulling stupid stunts which only waste money and alienate even their most passionate fans, but by far the number one grievance everyone had was how Firefox was missing a mascot. At last I can make my mother switch to Firefox. I’m messaging all my friends right now, this is exactly what Firefox needed. Mozilla is finally back on track, focusing on the right things. It gives me tremendous hope for the continued bright future of Firefox.

[noir_lord]

Indeed if those graphic designers hadn't been wasting time drawing a cute fox they'd have been waist deep in 15 year old code fixing bugs.

Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.

[latexr]

> Indeed if those graphic designers hadn't been wasting time drawing a cute fox they'd have been waste deep in 15 year old code fixing bugs.

That’s not the criticism I’m making.

> Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.

Of course they can. But they should also prioritise—allocating money and resources appropriately—and Mozilla has for far too long not prioritised Firefox itself. That’s the issue. If people felt Mozilla were a good steward of Firefox, they wouldn’t mind most of the tangential stuff they do. The issue is that Mozilla has a history of getting distracted with irrelevant side projects that go nowhere and are summarily abandoned (meaning they were a waste) while Firefox doesn’t get as much attention as it could and should.

One sentiment I often see on HN is “I would like to donate to Firefox but Mozilla only lets you donate to the organisation as a whole, and I don’t like the other things they’re doing”. Unlike every other major browser, Firefox is the main product of its parent company. It should be the best at what it’s for, yet far too often I see people saying they use Firefox not because they prefer it but because it’s not from Microsoft/Google/Apple.

[miroljub]

> Orgs can do multiple things at the same time.

In principle this is true. In the concrete case of Firefox, they have proven they focus more on side quests than on making a quality browser.

I lost any hope they'll go for technical excellence instead of virtue signaling and branding after the Brendan Eich disaster. They feel now like a Microsoft, Google, Apple, or any other big corp.

I used Firefox since it was called Firebird and finally gave up and switched to another (non big corp) browser and couldn't be happier.

[fragmede]

How is that virtue signaling? I thought Brandon didn't get the job?

[greatgib]

Maybe the point is that if they were so useless that they could waste time doing that, we could have fired(/not hired) them and instead hired a developer to improve the product...

And at the same time, the dev already paid by Mozilla that could have been fixing the product, was busy updating the source code to update the mascot...

[1718627440]

I always thought Mozilla Firefox does have a mascot, which is well "the FireFox".

[slowmovintarget]

Why is that sarcastic comments like this are always predicated on the idea that its the software engineers doing these marketing activities, and not... you know, a separate marketing team?

Personally, I do want them to increase their installed user base. I'd rather the Mozilla org spend money on marketing Firefox instead of political activism. If this works even a little bit, then great.

[Ezhik]

This but unironically.