• jet@hackertalks.com
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    6 months ago

    The one thing Mozilla needs to focus on for internet freedom and independence is the one thing they never never never ever will talk about… The browser

    That 500m in annual google money is too precious to actually innovate the browser with.

    At this point Mozilla is just a political arm of Google.

    AI will solve walled gardens and decentralize the internet? Wishful thinking.

    • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 months ago

      This is about the Mozilla Foundation, not the Mozilla Corporation.

      The distinction matters. The way they are organized, they can’t really overlap functions without jeopardizing the non-profit status of the Foundation. The Corporation is a for-profit company, it gets money from Google and it makes the browser.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        6 months ago

        The foundation owns the corporation so leadership decisions can flow through. Leadership matters, and what the new executive director says is the focus is a indicator.

        • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          Leadership decisions do not “flow through”, they are similar to the board in a traditional corporation. They legally cannot have operational decision making or be involved in the same work, that is a foundational aspect of “non-profit owning a for-profit”. It could just as easily be a for-profit soap company.

          The focus of the Foundation is drastically different than Firefox. That’s one of the reasons Firefox was spun off so it could thrive in an environment that was built around it.

          • jet@hackertalks.com
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            6 months ago

            If they can have no control of the underlying corporation why bother owning it? Why not just put it on the free market then?

            Obviously owning it does give some level of control, boards of directors can have opinions, the principal investors can set directives

            • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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              6 months ago

              Because it’s for fundraising, and they maintain very generic vibe setting, and they know Elon Musk won’t buy it.

              The Foundation literally cannot focus on the browser, so what’s your continuing problem here?

              • jet@hackertalks.com
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                6 months ago

                That the Mozilla organization as a whole, including the foundation, has lost track of what is actually good for a free and open internet. And it makes me sad

                • Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org
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                  6 months ago

                  What is good is not letting unethical corporations and only unethical corporations develop cutting edge technologies because me Firefox user and me not like anything ever change.

                  Cat’s out of the bag, nothing ever goes back the way it was, you just get to live in the new world.

                  • jet@hackertalks.com
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                    6 months ago

                    Agreed the world is forever moving forward. Mozilla is being left behind.

                    To close the loop on this whole discussion, the Mozilla foundations executive director hire was posted to a Firefox community, Firefox being owned by the Mozilla corporation. Clearly there is cross concern between these organizations, otherwise the post would not have been made here, you wouldn’t have read it, and you wouldn’t have been able to respond to it.

    • toastal
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      6 months ago

      OMG. Ctrl+F for Firefox with no results in the article… but there’s a link to a Pikachu image from Google image search results.