Mastodawn

So, uh, yeah...

It was the best place I ever worked, along with some of the smartest, kindest people who I will miss dearly, but there comes a time when you have to leave.

Leaving Mozilla

> On burn-out and bull-headedness

Mozilla was at about 15% of the desktop market when they jettisoned the extensions that gave their browser super powers the other big browsers didn't have. They did this over the objections of tens of thousands of their users.

Two years later and their desktop usage had dropped to about 5%.

In marketing, you never turn yourself into a commodity, but that is exactly what they did.

It's the total tone-deafness of their "leadership" that is disturbing.

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Fabrice Desré Jun 15

@number6 @jrconlin Do you seriously think that the switch from xul/xpcom extensions to web extensions is the reason of the market slip? (ignoring that the xpcom/xul model was a security nightmare).

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j-r conlin

@fabrice @number6

Because Mozilla has traditionally been very transparent about what it does, it can make people believe that they have insight into all the decisions and outcomes.

I do not fault folk for thinking that way (it's human nature, see information bias), but I do encourage folk to remember that we only see a small percentage of anything, and it's important to remember that we all have strong opinions.