Mastodawn

jwz Jun 22, 2024

Mozilla's Original Sin.

Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a *company shipping products*, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web.

Those are different things and are very much in conflict. [...]
https://jwz.org/b/ykVr

Mozilla's Original Sin

Some will tell you that Mozilla's worst decision was to accept funding from Google, and that may have been the first domino, but I hold that implementing DRM is what doomed them, as it led to their culture of capitulation. It demonstrated that their decisions were the decisions of a company shipping products, not those of a non-profit devoted to preserving the open web. Those are different ...

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Florian Idelberger Jun 22, 2024

@jwz disagree. I know many ppl that would or could not use Firefox if they hadn’t and like this it’s a viable alternative. What do the gazilion Mozilla/netscape/firefox or chromium forks/alternatives do for the open web because they disable drm or replaced / removed other functionality? Not much.

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jwz Jun 22, 2024

@fl0_id "But some people would not have used Firefox" is exactly the argument for market share over principles that got us into this mess.

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Florian Idelberger Jun 22, 2024

@jwz not ‘some people’ but basically no one would have used it. I don’t disagree that it (engaging with market realities) is also a problem, but that does not mean that the opposite would have been better

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Lutin Discret

@jwz it's actually a problem of market share. Firefox had to implements DRM or it was doomed to death. If it had more market share, it could had refused to implements DRM and noone could have been against that. The long term strategy plan is to lose the DRM battle to win the war. When Firefox will be to 90% market-share, they will ditch DRM and everyone will STFU. Ditching DRM now is just becoming unusable and losing the war. Your plan is what will make Google win.

@fl0_id +1