• underline960@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    It’s no longer the fault of long-term CEO Mitchell Baker, she of the six-million-bucks salary. She took the cash and left in February 2024. After the February 2024 layoffs that went with the “open source AI” announcement, in November, new boss Laura Chambers laid off another third of the staff, but somehow found the money to hire new executives.

    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. The Reg noted it in 2007, and it made more the next year. We were dubious when Firefox turned five.

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

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      This is the exact block I came to quote.

      The rest of the article is good too, though.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I dunno, Firefox of 3.0 times was the shit. It itself was the browser that should be, more welcoming to customization than Windows of the time was to porn winlockers. They also had XULRunner for alternative ideas. Gecko was the FOSS browser engine that various alternative “nice” MacOS and Linux browsers used.

      Though between 2004 and 2008 only four years passed. Less than between Windows 2000 and Vista (let’s ignore XP as a more glossy consumer version of 2000).

      • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        let’s ignore XP as a more glossy consumer version of 2000

        That feels like a dangerous argument;

        • 2000 = NT 5.0
        • XP = NT 5.1
        • XP x64 = NT 5.2
        • Vista = NT 6.0
        • 7 = NT 6.1
        • 8 = NT 6.2
        • 8.1 = NT 6.3
        • 10 = NT 6.4 (Later NT 10.0 then 1507 for July 2015 when they made the switch to ‘agile’.)

        Unless you are prepared to argue that everything since has just been an updated version of Vista.

        • mholiv@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Hot take. Under semantic versioning everything after vista has been in essence a new version of vista.

          Going from NT 5.x to 6.x was a major jump.

          The reason why Vista had no/terrible drivers was because they went from an insecure one driver bug crashed the whole system model to more secure isolated drivers that don’t crash the whole system model. Developers had to learn how to write new drivers and none of the XP drivers worked.

          They went from a single user OS with a multi user skin on top, to a full role based access control user system.

          They went from global admin/non-admin permissions to scoped UAC permissions for apps.

          Remember on Vista when apps constantly had that “asking for permissions” popup? That was the apps not using the 6.x UAC APIs.

          Given the underlying architectural situation everything since Vista has been vista with polish added (or removed depending on how you look at it)

          Things will go beyond vista when a new major release with new mandatory APIs shows up.

          • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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            7 hours ago

            Under semantic versioning everything after vista has been in essence a new version of vista.

            okay but using that logic everything running linux kernel v5 is the same… fedora, ubuntu, rhel are in essence just a reskin of slackware

            an OS is not semantically versioned as a whole because an OS is more than just the kernel

            • mholiv@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              I mean they are all literally the same operating system yah! They all use the same kernel APIs.

              The logical conclusion is that from an operating system they are all basicly the same.

              The main difference is the user space. The package management and defaults.

              Look at Debian GNU/kFreeBSD it’s a whole different operating system with the Debian user space. It’s cool stuff and really highlights the difference between operating system and user space.

              • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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                5 hours ago

                an operating system is far more than just the kernel

                there are few people who would say that android is the same operating system as ubuntu

                • mholiv@lemmy.world
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                  5 hours ago

                  But it literally is the same. The only difference is the user space. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD shows this. Different operating system same user space.

                  Take a look at Wikipedia for more info.

                  An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources.

                  • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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                    5 hours ago

                    an operating system is comprised of the kernel, as well as system libraries and system utilities… user space is irrelevant to the classification of what is and isn’t an operating system: the concept of user space doesn’t even exist in some operating systems

                    the concept of a kernel isn’t even useful to define operating systems… look at things like ROS for example

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          It’s just a versions list. And I’m mostly joking. Rather that the “feel” of using Windows between 2000 and XP didn’t seem to change much. (I prefer 2000)

        • cmhe@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          What might be a valid argument in 5.x might not be an argument for 6.x.

          But IMO, Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11 have more in common with vista than vista has with XP.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      All firefox really needed to be once google took over everything, was to be a viable alternative and find a way to metabolize all this cash in a way that doesn’t damage google’s own cash machine or threaten it’s actual dominance.

      For google the pitance they give firefox is a very cheap insurance policy against against anti-trust legislation. Just like Intel with AMD, this shows how toothless the liberal anti-trust legislation are, even if they were really being enforced, they cannot handle a token 2nd player. It cannot handle controlled opposition if it’s credible and believable. So an actual thriving ecosystem doesn’t need to exist, we just get duopolies instead of monopolies but in practices we get ducked up the cloaca just the same.