The author may be a right-wing fellow. Nonetheless, the data he exposes are taken from official Mozilla docs.
With FF being one of the last bastions of actual web-freedom on the internet, it wouldn’t surprise me for people to start digging for things in an effort to get rid of them once and for all. Especially with Google’s new attempt at web-DRM.
Not many browsers left that aren’t chromium/webkit based. Feels like it’s only a matter of time before Google succeeds where Microsoft failed back in the early 00’s…
Mozilla has been mismanaged for years. Their share of the browser market tanked while the current CEO earned millions.
Hell, when they were Netscape they lost to IE. IE became the default that it did because Netscape Navigator would take 5 minutes to boot up, and would load pages slower too.
Yes. Because Microsoft lost an entire gigantic anti-trust case over building the Browser into the OS.
Of course it loaded faster when MS poisoning the well of open web standards with embrace and extend.
And we have the records to prove this.
In a way I agree with you, but it’s kind of well known that Mozilla depends a lot on Google from earning money. So I’m not sure that if Google pushes the DRM project, Mozilla will bite the hand that feeds it.
But the good thing is that we will probably see that very soon :)
Uhm, aren’t all questions raised in that text completely on point?
I’m as far left as it gets but none of these expenses make any sense to me. The CEO pay is bonkers. Wtf are they doing? Why does the CEO deserve to basically collect the entirety of donations for… basically just extending a cash cow deal with Google?
I don’t give a damn if the author is on the right but so far this looks sus as fuck.
Firefox being as good and fast as it is probably more an accomplishment of individual teams inspite of company leadership and that should be called out.
Can’t sell yourself as the underdog if you’re got almost half a billion in assets.
The CEO didn’t get that money from the Mozilla Foundation though, but rather Reportable compensation from related organizations (W-2/1099-MISC/1099-NEC) which can be anything like parent companies or subsidiaries, etc. https://www.mlrpc.com/articles/decipher-form-990-sections-compensation-reporting/
Not sure if that makes it better, but the other compensation looks fairly alright to me.
Agreed. The only official Mozilla response to Google’s WebDRM that I’ve seen was on the git page where the Firefox engineer raised the concern. Mozilla’s Google liaison shot down the statement opposing WebDRM as “premature” since it is currently “only a proposal” (by a working group of Google engineers).
With FF being one of the last bastions of actual web-freedom on the internet
How cute people who sincerely believe the fairy tales Mozilla tells…
I read through it and I don’t know what the issue is?
There seems to be an issue with Mozilla supporting diversity and inclusion. Also he has an issue with them having enough money to run the business. I.e. not living paycheck to paycheck.
This article is nothing.
What organization? The one for 20k?
I followed the data because the writer was too lazy too or they didn’t because it goes against their bullshit theory that Mozilla is up to something.
He’s the mysterious 30k: https://tisch.nyu.edu/about/directory/itp/721403706
More problems with diversity and inclusion:
Mimi Onuoha is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work uses emerging technology to address cultural contradictions within technology
Less than one minute in reading and there’s already one big misrepresentation and one outright lie.
He tries to ‘clear’ the misconception that Mozilla develops software by showing the areas of focus of the foundation, making a point about how it should be software development and instead are some vague ideological goals.
But the foundation should be ideological. The browser is ideological and lots of the users use it because of ideology. There would be absolutely no issue with that even if the fact that is the corporation and not the foundation the one that focuses on software development weren’t true. Open the frontpage of any big open source project that works with a foundation (GNOME, Fedora, Linux) and you will see front and center the big focus on promotion of ideological values. And those are values focused on internet freedom, which are absolutely related to software.That’s what a foundation does. That’s the way things are. And yet open mozilla.org and the first thing you’ll see is the software it makes. So what’s really the accusation there?
Second point makes the previous accusation make even less sense. He proceeds to show financial balances about reduction in expenses that show that the biggest one is software development. So the reality shows that Mozilla is focused on software development. The accusation goes that precisely software development is the area with the biggest cuts. One could argue that doing more with less is a good thing, specially knowing how exactly the types like the author frequently use smaller projects like librefox or ungoogled chromium as an example of a smaller more focused project that firefox should be, but I won’t do that. Instead I will point out how his accusation of the biggest cuts to software development are and outright lie easily visible to anyone with eyes and basic arithmetic knowledge. While software development saw 41 million in cuts, administration and management costs went down almost 60 million. One would think that’s a good thing and exactly the kind of point he should be noticing given the accusation, but if the foundation is becoming leaner in the management side that would kind of render his whole text moot, so he ignores that.
I will keep reading and analyze each point on his own, but after this and knowing very well this kind of people I don’t think anyone could trust this analysis. I’m sure I’ll come across the author anonymously on 4chan attacking ‘pozzilla’ and their ‘trannyware’ (I’m sorry) or on twitter harassing women developers, and I’ll let him know my opinions.
I’m a Firefox fanboy, but a lot of these expenses do seem really odd.
Is there any organization with totally claear finances and nothing strange anywhere?
I haven’t seen one.
This analysis means nothing since it is only one daya point.
Like saying “you are worst human being because you are jaywalked yesterday”, there is no comparstion with other companies in smiliar business.
Those are Google and Microsoft. Are they really better than Mozilla
I think a more accurate metaphor would be “you are the worst human being because people gave you money to buy food and you spent it on luxury items”.
Also, while a lot of organizations have shady balance sheets, that’s not a good thing nor a reason for us to accept it.
Funny how this worthless fear mongering is appearing right as people start to protest chromium.