Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

General News
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Firefox is a great FOSS alternative to Chrome. The actual organization maintaining it, however, has fallen into disgrace.

After making questionable decisions like firing its Rust development team, operating an unnecessary VPN service, and purchasing an advertising company, Mozilla is only barely surviving with Google’s assistance.

Instead of jumping into the LLM bubble or figuring out obscure methods to bolster profits, Mozilla should realize that it is a non-profit foundation first, not a company.

But pointing at what we’d like to see is attempting to treat the symptoms and not the disease. Is there a way to encourage Mozilla to be an organized, focused, professional business, with eyes keenly set on a clearly defined goal? Perhaps that’s the wrong question. Perhaps that shouldn’t be the goal at all. For all that the Linux business is huge, no company develops the kernel. They all cooperate on it. The Linux Foundation funds it, but doesn’t really guide it.

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation – one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi. He has been accurately cataloging Mozilla’s failings for years. In 2022, he called it out for accepting cryptocurrency donations (or Dunning-Krugerrands, as he calls them). In 2023, he attacked Mozilla’s first AI move as well as its executive remuneration. In early 2024, he criticized its formation of an investment arm. In mid-2024, he pointed out its “Original Sin” of adopting digital rights management. And in late 2024, its move to selling ads.

Zawinski has repeatedly said:

Now hear me out, but What If…? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

  1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
  2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
  3. There is no 3.

Perhaps this is the only viable resolution.

Mozilla, for all its many failings, has invented a lot of amazing tech, from Rust to Servo to the leading budget phone OS. It shouldn’t be trying to capitalize on this stuff. Maybe encourage it to have semi-independent spinoffs, such as Thunderbird, and as KaiOS ought to be, and as Rust could have been.

But Zawinski has the only clear vision and solution we’ve seen yet. Perhaps he’s right, and Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine.

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I read this article, and from my observation it wasn’t great quality, in that it conflates a bunch of things and seems to be an excuse to link to previous articles, probably for SEO purposes.

Literally nobody but a very small niche care about waterfox or pale moon, as those browsers literally are worser versions of Firefox. (older slower, less secure).

I do however agree somewhat in that Mozilla has tried a lot of things over the years which have ended up being dropped. I actually think the VPN idea could have been something good if integrated with containers for split tunneling on a client device.

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I still thought the article was interesting, as well as some the links it referenced to.

NO AD BLOCKER

You might think Mozilla would, say, buy and integrate an ad-blocker.

It astounds me that Mozilla has never integrated its own ad blocker. This is the reason why, even though Firefox remains my default browser because of containers, my default recommendation to anyone is to use Brave.

I wonder if Mozilla’s partnership with Google has a clause that prevents them from developing and integrating their own ad blocker.

SERVICING ADVERTISERS BY “RESPECTING” PRIVACY

But no. Instead, Mozilla goes and buys an ad firm and then removes its promise not to sell your data.

I now have a better understanding of the criticism around FF investing in private ads thanks to a quote from a Jamie Zawinski article that is referenced:

They’ve decided who their customers are, and it’s not you, it’s people who build and invest in surveillance advertising networks. But in a “respectful” way.

I can certainly understand why it feels like a betrayal when an established privacy company invests in developing “privacy-respecting ad technology”. As far as I’m concerned, it absolutely is a betrayal.

That being said, do we want privacy-respecting ads? If yes, isn’t it better if the technology is developed by a trustworthy privacy company?

It’s a complicated question.

I certainly think there is a difference between Firefox, Proton, or Tuta developing a privacy-respecting ad network, which, to me, is a betrayal, vs. a new company with no established reputation doing the same.

Also, suppose Mozilla or any other company was successful at building a profitable privacy-friendly ad network.

Why would advertisers choose the privacy respecting option instead of the privacy invasive one?

It’s my understanding that there is little to no evidence showing that collecting tons of data for personal advertising is as profitable as collecting little to none. Supposing it’s true, I think advertisers would still prefer the invasive option.

BETTER SOLUTION: BAN SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM

The better way is to have a more radical approach and follow privacy advocate Carissa Véliz’s recommendation in her book Privacy is Power (2021). We should ban the surveillance economy. It should be made illegal.

The surveillance economy has gone too far. It has abused our personal data in too many ways, too many times. And the quantity and sensitivity of the data being traded makes this grand experiment too dangerous to be continued. We have to put a stop to the trade in personal data.

The data economy has to go because it is at odds with free, equal, stable, and liberal democracies. We can wait for a truly massive data disaster before we start to protect privacy – anything from a monumental leak of biometric data (consider that, unlike passwords, our faces are not something we can change) to the misuse of personal data for the purposes of genocide – or we can reform the data economy now, before it’s too late.

She makes many recommendations in the chapter 5: Pulling the Plug, which include banning personalized advertising, banning personal data trading, and banning default data collection. There are many more, and she goes into great detail in making her case, which is why I highly recommend her book.

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THE STATE OF FIREFOX & MOZILLA:

Mozilla’s leadership is directionless and flailing because it’s never had to do, or be, anything else. It’s never needed to know how to make a profit, because it never had to make a profit. […]

Money is the problem. Not too little, but too much. Where there’s wealth, there’s a natural human desire to make more wealth. Ever since Firefox 1.0 in 2004, Firefox has never had to compete. It’s been attached like a mosquito to an artery to the Google cash firehose.

[…]

It’s no wonder it has no real direction or vision or clue: it never needed them. It’s role-playing being a business.

Harsh, but unfortunately it’s true.

No web designer is building on Firefox first any more. We’re lucky if they even test on it.

This is absolutely devastating. A few years ago, I had an issue with my bank’s website, and when I complained to customer service, they just told me to use Chrome, and I was not happy. I didn’t listen to them and gave them an earful about why their website should work on all major browsers, including Firefox.

One observer has been spectating and commentating on Mozilla since before it was a foundation – one of its original co-developers, Jamie Zawinksi. He has been accurately cataloging Mozilla’s failings for years. In 2022, he called it out for accepting cryptocurrency donations (or Dunning-Krugerrands, as he calls them).

Outside the anonymous feature of Monero, I have never understood the excitement around crypto, especially with a certain vocal subset of the privacy community. Everybody that promotes cryptocurrencies as an opportunity for investment and financial profit feels like a scammer. I am grateful to skeptical detractors.

NO MENTION OF POCKET?

I am very surprised there was no mention of Pocket.

As someone who was a long time user of Pocket, predating its purchase by Mozilla in 2017, I was extremely disappointed when they announced in May that they were shutting it down.

Lack of support for Pocket in Firefox forks is one of the major reasons I could never switch to them as my main browser or even as a secondary browser. I felt it was unfair that I could continue to have Pocket in Brave, but not in Waterfox.

I know a lot of Firefox fans hate Pocket, but it was very useful for people like me. I will admit that they hadn’t done anything innovative with it in a long time and that other competitors like Raindrop are kicking their ass in terms of features, UI, and UX.

That is not a good enough reason to shut it down, though. Especially since there are no end-to-end encrypted bookmarking apps/services. As a privacy company, Mozilla could have worked on that. Now the vacuum is clear for someone to take that space, if someone ever takes that space. I hope so. I’m using Raindrop for now.

WHY NOT BUILD A E2EE SKYPE ALTERNATIVE (HERE ME OUT)

Many people are going to say it already exists with messaging apps like Signal and video conferencing apps like Jitsi and Brave Talk. That’s not entirely true.

First, Jitsi and Brave Talk are still very buggy from my experience. And like Signal, they require the person you’re calling to be on an app. But even if Jitsi and Signal didn’t have any issues, there is still a specific demand to be filled that Skype has left vacant. And it’s the ability to make calls to landlines and cellphones from the internet for cheap.

International calls are cheaper.

Most people here might not care about it, but when you have connections all over the world, which includes friends and family, you can’t rely exclusively on Signal, WhatsApp or FaceTime. Some people, like my grand-ma, don’t have those apps/devices, or don’t know how to use them. Sometimes it’s easier to make a direct call to a landline or cellphone, and it’s much cheaper to do it from the internet than from your cellphone network.

But this isn’t just about friends and family. It’s also about businesses and saving money on calls for customer service.

I have ordered from the online stores of various countries I have never lived in or even visited (e.g.: Amazon). As a result, I have regularly found myself in the situation where I had to call their customer service because of an issue. If I’m in Australia, calling Amazon US from Skype was cheap. Cheaper than calling them directly from my phone network. Same when it’s the other way around because international calls to business numbers from the internet are much cheaper.

Local calls are cheaper too (in many countries)

In some countries, calls to local common businesses (bank, movie theater, store, etc…) are not covered by monthly phone plans because those businesses have premium rate numbers. Calling them is very expensive. I’ve had my phone bill rise to $100+ a month because of calls I made to local businesses I use.

It’s not just because the numbers are premium. It’s because most every day big businesses use them, and hence you have to call them frequently. But it’s also because call queues are long. Especially for large businesses.

It was very common for me to wait 15 min to half an hour to speak to someone at my local bank when I called in the morning. This is where Skype came in handy because it was much cheaper to wait on those longer calls.

Mozilla or another privacy company should consider filling the gap that Skype left because many people like me definitely need this.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

But Zawinski has the only clear vision and solution we’ve seen yet. Perhaps he’s right, and Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine.

I’m not exactly sure what the author is trying to get at here.

Is he saying that Mozilla should not operate any business because they suck at it?

It sure sounds like that. I don’t get it. Mozilla already has a nonprofit, and I believe it was their legal set-up from the start. Moreover, there are other companies like Proton that changed their legal status to nonprofit, but they still clearly operate a business and are incentivized to do so, but under strict guidelines that respect privacy. So I’m not quite sure what the argument is here.

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I think the core argument is: just stop creating things nobody needs in the search for profitability, just to only dump it in the future.

Proton was always about creating an alternative productivity ecosystem (and selling it). Mozilla started off with Firefox, which admittedly does not make a lot of money.

I guess the best example of this would be the Wikimedia Foundation. Should they create a VPN service or purchase an ad-tech company to bolster the funding of Wikipedia? Relying on donations and grants is tricky, but it is more than doable with strategic fundraising campaigns (and an army of relentless volunteers).

Mozilla has done amazing things by innovating beyond internet browser development. They unfortunately are just not good at finding a permanent business model for their non-browser related works at all. Perhaps they need a better fundraising or grant-writing team, not more products.

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I see. Thanks for explaining. The Wikimedia Foundation is actually a better analogy. I really don’t want Mozilla to go the way of Yahoo and the many bags they fumbled.

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Mozilla?
I don’t think so. It is headed in the direction of AI, as you know.

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When do we need “privacy-enhancing” versions of things that we don’t need?

A privacy-respecting LLM (or “chatgpt wrapper”) is still vulnerable to data retention mandates unless you self-host it.

A privacy respecting ad is great if adopted universally, that is until you realize most companies and adtech firms prefer targeted advertising and accurate user profiles.

Mozilla needs some soul searching.

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IMO privacy respecting ads are too inaccurate to be used by advertisers. Every ad company tries exactly the opposite, to make it as likely as possible that people will click on the ads.

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A few years ago I mailed a donation to the Mozilla Foundation. In the comments of the check, I added the text “Firefox Mobile” in the hopes that the money would be used to support Firefox Mobile on Android.

The check was returned to me from the Mozilla Foundation with a letter explaining that donations could not be earmarked for specific products, or something similar.

Admittedly, I am unclear on the separation between Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation, but if a twenty year Firefox user’s donation won’t be used on Firefox, why am I donating to them?

The whole experience was distasteful and made me wonder if my donations were being used to fund a scam. I love Firefox and continue to use it, but I question how they are going to fund its development without selling us out to ad-tech.

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Probably doing something similar.

TBH, I wouldn’t want FF to fall so deep. After all, it’s another Chrome (although not Google) competitor. And that’s what I like at it.

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Wikimedia is a terrible example. They have been lying to build up ridiculously ginormous shares of wealth that they just sit on while the Internet Archive ACTUALLY struggles to survive. Do a few internet searches on Wikimedia Foundation fundraising dishonesty if you don’t believe me. The Wikimedia Foundation’s donation raising practices put all other nonprofit FOSS projects in jeopardy because of this.

Edit: here’s a 2022 article on Slate that goes very softly in downplaying the ongoing frustration of the majority of frequent/core volunteers (volunteers to various Wikipedia and related projects - Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc) about the way the Wikimedia Foundation nonprofit words fundraising banners that imply WM doesn’t have vast deep financial reserves.

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That’s standard practice for non profits to not allocate specific donations like that. But yeah, they haven’t shown that Firefox is their focus, so I wouldn’t donate either.

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Is there no way to donate to Firefox development without supporting Mozilla Foundation’s questionable use of the funds, squandering the funds on executive salaries, etcetera?

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Dishonest fundraising practices or not they still are doing quite well compared to Mozilla’s quasi nonprofit/corporate business strategy

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Thanks, I will look into it.

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