Mastodawn

https://www.yahoo.com/video/mozilla-foundation-mark-surman-rethinking-120004066.html

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

… Perhaps the best way to understand Mozilla is in the words of their president on their new VC arm:

“We see a lot of startups who want to tackle things like privacy, trustworthy AI, and alternatives to Twitter… alternatives are not going to emerge unless there’s founders and companies who build them. And the founders are not going to build them unless there’s money aligned with their vision … So I think we need to still be about commerce and creating wealth”

2/3

Yahooist Teil der Yahoo Markenfamilie

#Mozilla #fediverse #SiliconValley #ventureCapital #BigTech

Aral Balkan Dec 21, 2022

… Or, in what a previous head of public policy at Mozilla told me while we were chatting before our talks at a data protection conference:

“Aral, we’re just another Silicon Valley tech company, I don’t understand why you’re holding us to a such a higher standard.”

When I finally managed to pick my jaw off the floor the only retort I could manage was: “But that’s not what you tell people.”

3/3

@aral @bugaevc Which sounds like it‘s bad. But it‘s not. If you want to make software that works sustainable and reaches people all over the world you need to earn many dollars and you need to pay people on a very high level.

For me the point rather is: If you earn as much money as #Mozilla how comes they are making products that bad? Companies way smaller have created good browsers (and mail clients, regarding Thunderbird), so Mozilla really looks somewhat inefficient and money-consuming…

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc Can you name a browser made by a small company that is not based on Chromium, Firefox or WebKit and that is actually good? 😅 I'm not saying there is none but I don't know one. Working on a browser would be my personal nightmare btw, it's endlessly complex 🙈

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmniWeb

@sepia @aral @bugaevc There is OmniGroup who once made OmniWeb, there still is iCab f.e. Of course it‘s way more complex these days, but still these companies also were way smaller.

http://icab.de

OmniWeb - Wikipedia

SEPIA Open Assistant

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc I don't think its fair to compare a browser that hasn't been updated for 10 years with anything good today. Icab is based on WebKit since v4 according to Wikipedia (and Safari on v6?). Both are likely not battletested by millions of devs. Maybe we should clarify what a "good" browser is first. For me it is a browser that supports modern web standards, is fast, efficient and has few bugs. By this standard Safari barely makes the cut btw 😆

@sepia @aral @bugaevc That was not my point. My point is that ppl have greated good software (at that time) with waaay less money and resources. Even if it’s more complex today, Mozilla seems to eat billions of dollars for medium quality products. That was not a technical, but an economical argument.

Philosophically spoken: If tech really is that complicated that it eats dollar sums in sizes of gross national products, we maybe should drop it at all or redo it (see #Gemini).

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc Well, my point is that it is easy to build a nice tech demo that can impress people but it is infinitely more complicated to build and ship a final product that can compete with the state of the art. Now your point is valid to say we should maybe lower the standard then and save billions of dollars. It is the battle of features vs reliability. Personally I'd love to see a feature freez for Android for the next 3 years for example 😅

@lazarus @aral @bugaevc btw I don't think Firefox is a "medium quality product", in my opinion it is the only Chrome competitor out there. We can discuss Safari as well but I'm a bit biased there because I constantly curse about it 🙈

@sepia @aral @bugaevc yes, of course it‘s good it‘s there. and it‘s good there is a business model to pay it. that‘s not the point to complain about imho.