Jer WarrenJul 30, 2023
A big thanks to everyone who engaged with my recent post that looked like I was just shitting on a beloved browser. You all helped me clarify my argument somewhat, and that new slightly clearer argument is as follows:

(tl;dr: Google is the only company capable of paying to develop a cross-platform browser + rendering engine combo, and in fact pays entirely for both of the ones that exist)

Edit: here's a little poll to gauge what you've thought about my little tirades on the future of the web
Jer Warren (@nyquildotorg)

I could never in good conscience tell people to donate to Mozilla, but I will suggest that if you disagree with me that you put your money where your mouth is. And you can [do that via this link](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/) 📊

Firefish Social
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
Google adding "DRM" to Chromium is really bad. But the fundamental reason why that is bad cannot be addressed by telling your friends to switch to [the one non-Chromium browser].

That fundamental reason is:

90% of all Mozilla funding comes directly from Google in exchange for sending users into Google's ad surveillance machine. To the tune of $450,000,000 USD per year.

Google is the only company that can afford to build a cross-platform browser engine + browser combo, and they've been effectively affording two of them for decades.

(More)
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
Mozilla can't afford to compete with Google in the browser space now, while Google is paying Mozilla more money every year than they're actually spending on Firefox.

The only way more users "switching to Firefox" can increase Mozilla's revenue is if Mozilla does more selling the eyeballs of their users than they already do. And doing that is literally the entire reason Chromium is bad in the first place.

Therefore, unless you're telling your friends to also support Mozilla financially, telling them to switch to it will just cause more eyeball selling.
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
Yes, a larger market share of Firefox users would be good for the health of the web. Developers would test in it more, so fewer pages would be broken.

But that does nothing to ensure that Firefox can even exist any longer. If your objective is saving the web from Google, getting your friends' eyeballs into Mozilla's eyeball-selling machine may offset some of the money that Google's massive yearly payment brings in. But it can never ever match it without becoming exactly the same problem you have with Chromium now.
Show threadJer Warren
In summary. "Just use Firefox" will do nothing.

"Pay for Firefox" may well do something. But you don't see Mozilla even offering that 🤷

Yes, you could donate to Mozilla. Have been able to for several decades. But have you ever? How many of the people you've told to "just use Firefox" have?

More people using Firefox does not mean more people donating to Firefox.
Jul 30, 2023 at 8:05pmWeb
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
I think the biggest challenge in getting Firefox to fund itself has actually been the complicated combination of "non-profit foundation" and "corporation that builds software" setup they've been using.

It clearly doesn't work. Maybe separating those things would have better results.
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
There was a time when I loved Mozilla, and did donate to them. But over the last twenty years they have conclusively proved that they're incapable of managing the kind of money it takes to maintain an engine and browser that uses it.

I don't think I really need to explain that part to people, but to start with, increasing the CEO's salary (to $3 million per year), while laying people off for financial reasons, is pretty gross.

But so is building and throwing away:

An entire mobile phone operating system, multiple niche-use browsers like Firefox VR & Firefox Lite (Firefox Focus still exists meaning two actively developed Android browsers), several extension systems (requiring developers to rebuild extensions), several theming systems, a password manager, a file sharing tool, a note taking tool, a code editor, a Electron-style system that wrapped webpages as "native apps", a video chat system and I'm really fucking tired of typing now but you get the idea.
Show threadJer WarrenJul 31, 2023
I could never in good conscience tell people to donate to Mozilla, but I will suggest that if you disagree with me that you put your money where your mouth is. And you can do that via this link
You have made me think
Fuck you, you're wrong
I'm donating at least $5 a month to prove it
Just show the results
Poll ends at .
Donate now | Donate to Mozilla

We are proudly non-profit, non-corporate and non-compromised. Thousands of people like you help us stand up for a healthy internet for all. We rely on donations to carry out our mission to keep the Web open and free. Will you give today?

Donate to Mozilla
Show threadMattJul 30, 2023
@nyquildotorg While I'm following the argument, I don't actually believe that the development of Firefox has anything to do with why it has lower market share than Chrome.

I think the problem is that Firefox went up against Google more than anything that Firefox has or hasn't done.

Chrome got its market share in a few ways:

1. It was advertised incessantly on Google Search, the most visited website in the world.
2. To the vast, vast majority of people, Google is a good and trusted company.
3. It's the default browser on Android, and most people never switch from default.

While it was also a good browser on release on top of that, branding and advertisement power generally always wins in these situations, not the quality of the product. The product quality helps, but it's usually not the major reason market share grows, otherwise loads of better FOSS projects would have way higher market share than they currently do.

To add onto this, Google owns YouTube, the second most visited website in the world, and it's been well known that Chrome is the best way to browse that as Firefox had worse performance on it, at least for a little while (whether this was Firefox's fault or not, I don't know). In the event that WEI fully gets pushed through and realised, no amount of market share for Firefox is going to make people stay on Firefox, they will absolutely not give up access to YouTube considering what it offers.

Lastly, a lot of important websites don't work on Firefox. You can spoof UA, but how many people know how to do this in the big picture? Most people will just use something else instead.

I should probably thread these things, the 4,000 character limit of Firefish is addictive.
Show threadMattJul 30, 2023
@nyquildotorg Actually why did I write this, I see you're mostly talking about the funding aspect of Mozilla making Gecko, and without Google they're toast, which is probably true at this point.

I think I made a few assumptions because conversations around this usually turn around to "why is Mozilla trying to make money when they could just work on Firefox and this is why they don't have market share!!" and well, this is why, exactly like you say.
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
@mattswift it's a very complicated issue and easy to slip into overgeneralizations or apply what's bad about one part of it to other parts. You made some very good points, so I'm glad you posted.
Show threadMattJul 30, 2023
@nyquildotorg It's a weird predicament they're in, making a browser engine isn't easy, but being a FOSS project is not exactly known to pay the bills unless you commercialise in some way.

However I'd suspect that if they were to commercialise Firefox itself, it would lose a lot of respect from those that still use it, so what is Mozilla to do?

I'm aware they don't take donations for Firefox directly, but I don't think that would solve the issues either - browsers are expensive!
Show threadJer WarrenJul 30, 2023
@mattswift 99.99999% of Firefox users are just costing Mozilla money. If they made a commercial option, heavily talked about as being the only way to combat a closed web, they would get more people paying. Maybe not 50% more, but more people would pay under that system than people who donate under the current system 🤷

My whole point is that if the only way to lesson the dependency on dirty surveillance capital money is to do the exact same shit, how are they even fighting against it?