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A New Chapter For Mozilla (blog.mozilla.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Another CEO for mozilla. Good or bad news?

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[–] 133 points 2 years ago* (33 children)

I think Mozilla could use a new CEO and I want to be optimistic. That said:

  • Red flag 1: They made someone from the BoD the new CEO. This rarely works out well
  • Red flag 2: The new CEOs CV is full of things that turned into menaces to the public and/or internet (airbnb, paypal, ebay)
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  • [–] 83 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Yep. Not a single non-profit or open-source related position in her CV

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  • [–] 57 points 2 years ago (24 children)

    I've known Mozilla being great wouldn't last forever, and there it is. Someone from those companies at the helm? Here comes the enshitification.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (19 children)

    Hard to say. You kind of want someone that was part of a successful product. And successful for-profit products are almost always menaces.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Yes, but hiring someone who's good at making for-profit "services" successful generally means you want your product to be for-profit.

    And as you say, successful for-profit companies are often menaces.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (17 children)

    Would you call any of those successful products 'good' tho? Yes they have made a lot of money but at the same time....2 of 3 are straight up evil. Ebay...eh. Could be worse. Thats the best I can say for them. Paypal has straight up stolen people's money on countless occasions and gotten away with it. Then there was that huge violin fiasco. Airbnb is flat out a part of destroying the housing market, they know this, they don't care.

    I get it, most big companies are 'menaces' like you say but...these are absolutely horrible companies responsible for true evil and, odds are, he's going to bring that energy to Mozilla.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I don't really disagree, but what do you want as an organization, someone that built a "good" product that nobody ever used and fell into obscurity? Or someone that built a product that attracted and retained millions of users that you might consider "bad"? And tbh, most of the "bad" from these products is just because of their size and monopoly, which would arguably be a good problem to have for Mozilla.

    Probably an easy choice if I was on the board.

    Also, not that it matters to our discussion but just as a minor correction, the new CEO is a woman.

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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Any bets on which horrible technology fad this one hitches Mozilla's horse to and spends all their money on?

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I bet it’s Automated Irrigation, also known as AI.

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    • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Enshitification incoming.

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    • [–] 29 points 2 years ago

    "Focus" and "streamline" are usually MBA buzzwords to describe layoffs. Hopefully not the case but sounds rough.

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    [–] 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Doubling down on our core products, like Firefox

    Expected them to double down on Google tracking, AI, and pocket while laying off Firefox engineers. Still do, but maybe slightly slower now.

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    • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    LibreWolf is a very decent Firefox fork. Open Source is great because bad CEOs can't really threaten the source code.

    Not saying this one is bad though — I have no idea. The last one was raking in $7 million/year which is less than ideal for an open source project.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    Open Source is great because bad CEOs can't really threaten the source code.

    Most of the time this is true, but for browser engines it's different because of their sheer size, complexity, need to adhere and collaborate with others to form web standards, need for security experts, day one vulnerability patches, etc.

    If Mozilla dies, LibreWolf can't just pick up the slack. They die too. Volunteers alone can't run a modern web engine, it takes hundreds of millions per year to upkeep.

    There's a reason why we're down to just Google, Apple, and Mozilla. Nobody wants to foot that bill unless they have a damn good reason for doing so.

    It's probably more expensive to maintain a browser engine than a full operating system at this point.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'll never understand why Microsoft dropped their engine. They can afford to develop it and it would've been a great advantage vs Google. I mean, it wouldn't have helped open source folk either way, but I just don't get why they dropped it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What makes it a great advantage vs Google?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Because they now have to go along with most things that Google says. They're reliant on Google now, they have to do what daddy tells them.

    Add to that, they've conceded any sway in setting web standards, granting Google more control to push the web in the direction that benefits Google and harms competition.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Perhaps we should take the clue and - if we also see clues of Mozilla enshittifying - switch globally to an easier internet that's also easier to program for. Something like Gemini (the post-Gopher thingy, not Google's latest fad) for example, where I take it maintaining a browser is nowhere near the same order of magnitude as complex.

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    • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Doubling down on our core products, like Firefox

    Well, I sure fucking hope so. When are we getting back XUL addons or something comparable, you know, the feature that made your browser stand out?

    (One can dream, right? Hahaha)

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The reason that Firefox sucked ass for so long in speed and features was because xul was an unbeatable burden to maintain. Also, firefoxs extensions are still the most powerful out of any browser

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    Indeed, they don't have to bring back the XUL. The power users would just appreciate...

    • new extension APIs that interact with the browser UI
    • bring back toolbar customization that was removed for no reason (we can't even move the extension button at this point...)
    • bring back compact mode and better themes (without requiring CSS and about:config tweaks)
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    [–] 24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    OK, apart from the management bullshit lingo of the article, has anyone an idea what is going to happen?

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 2 years ago

    This is how I read it also... Scroll-scroll... Bullshit statements, scroll, marketing, marketing, self congratulaty shit, marketing, scroll, scroll....

    Where does it say what they are going to actually do??

    Scroll, scroll, scroll, give up, post on Lemmy. :)

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    • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    Nothing concrete was said.

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    [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    “interim” CEO…

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