The web without Firefox is a web not worth having. Metrics: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activityhttps://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/m...
What can Mozilla do about it? In my opinion, they sunk their own ship two years ago by either completely axing, or substantially reducing, some of their most important teams:
Servo
Wasmtime
Rust
MDN
DevTools
The video’s suggestion --developing an in-browser financial tool similar to Patreon so that they can cut themselves off from Google’s annual 400 million dollar check-- is a good one. But people have been screaming at Mozilla for a decade now to sever themselves from Google. It’s not going to happen. And it’s understandable why the YouTuber in the video, Gardiner Bryant, does not understand why it will not happen: he explicitly calls himself a “capitalist but not a corporatist” in this very video, and so he misses the obvious contradiction at the heart of Mozilla.
That contradiction is that Mozilla’s leadership holds the same class interests as Google’s leadership. We’re talking about a leadership that views a 500k USD annual salary as a “financial burden.” At the end of the day, the people leading Firefox are every bit as capitalist as their surveillance capitalist peers at the FAANGs of Silicon Valley. At the end of the day, they have more in common than they do in difference. In this predicable story, Firefox is the “good-natured, good-hearted, capitalism-with-a-human-face” liberal fox in the mix of a land full of brutal surveillance capitalist wolves. How truly poetic then that they chose a fox for their mascot.
If Firefox is not only to “live,” but to thrive as a counter-weight to the hegemony of the surveillance capitalists, then its workers need to seize the means of production. They must sever themselves entirely from their leadership, form a collective socialist co-op, move away from high cost of living areas like San Francisco (or California or even any city in the US), work entirely remotely across the globe (believe it or not, there is talent to be found outside the valley), and focus entirely on developing a browser that works for the workers of the world, with no concern given for the thoughts or feelings of their capitalist adversaries in industry. Their only boss can be the workers of the world. Their only revenue can come from those workers.
Ultimately, Mozilla is a textbook example of how you cannot serve two bosses. When push comes to shove, the interests of the capitalist ruling class supercede the interests of the workers/users. And so long as they want to have their cake and eat it too, that quo will not change.
What can Mozilla do about it? In my opinion, they sunk their own ship two years ago by either completely axing, or substantially reducing, some of their most important teams:
The video’s suggestion --developing an in-browser financial tool similar to Patreon so that they can cut themselves off from Google’s annual 400 million dollar check-- is a good one. But people have been screaming at Mozilla for a decade now to sever themselves from Google. It’s not going to happen. And it’s understandable why the YouTuber in the video, Gardiner Bryant, does not understand why it will not happen: he explicitly calls himself a “capitalist but not a corporatist” in this very video, and so he misses the obvious contradiction at the heart of Mozilla.
That contradiction is that Mozilla’s leadership holds the same class interests as Google’s leadership. We’re talking about a leadership that views a 500k USD annual salary as a “financial burden.” At the end of the day, the people leading Firefox are every bit as capitalist as their surveillance capitalist peers at the FAANGs of Silicon Valley. At the end of the day, they have more in common than they do in difference. In this predicable story, Firefox is the “good-natured, good-hearted, capitalism-with-a-human-face” liberal fox in the mix of a land full of brutal surveillance capitalist wolves. How truly poetic then that they chose a fox for their mascot.
If Firefox is not only to “live,” but to thrive as a counter-weight to the hegemony of the surveillance capitalists, then its workers need to seize the means of production. They must sever themselves entirely from their leadership, form a collective socialist co-op, move away from high cost of living areas like San Francisco (or California or even any city in the US), work entirely remotely across the globe (believe it or not, there is talent to be found outside the valley), and focus entirely on developing a browser that works for the workers of the world, with no concern given for the thoughts or feelings of their capitalist adversaries in industry. Their only boss can be the workers of the world. Their only revenue can come from those workers.
Ultimately, Mozilla is a textbook example of how you cannot serve two bosses. When push comes to shove, the interests of the capitalist ruling class supercede the interests of the workers/users. And so long as they want to have their cake and eat it too, that quo will not change.
Doesn’t Mozilla have this controversy where their CEO is paid a large salary despite them being a non-profit?
And significantly increased her paycheck right before canning a bunch of developers.