It's a natural trend cycle: things grow beautifully, they stagnate, their corruption load exceeds their productivity and they start declining, then they collapse in lieu of something new.
There's hope for revitalization, but only if it's caught early-on. I feel Mozilla doesn't have much time.
A cliche that may apply here is "follow the money". If your primary financiers are entities that prefer you to avoid competing with what that financier is producing, you're not looking at the interests of the userbase anymore.
Right, but is Mozilla leadership vampiracally extracting the last cash before the lights go out, are they desperately holding out for 00 to come up on the wheel, or are they just sat there with eyes screwed shut going "it's still 2008, it's still 2008"?
Well, not necessarily everywhere. In the lens of history, new countries with a new constitution don't have that problem. Over time, they create layers of new laws, then cruft when those laws make little sense to enforce, then they can crack down on the letter of that law when enforcement is socially acceptable.
Before I clicked the link, I was scared this was contextually something far scarier:
"After centuries of intellectual property legal disputes with the Catholic church and the Chaucer family estate, the British Library has finally been able to secure a win for public domain content freedom."
England’s suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century was drastic. One could not expect any privileges of Rome from Chaucer’s era to have survived that period of English history.
In fact, reading the Canterbury Tales is a strange experience. On one hand, with perennially popular topics like bawdy humor and fart jokes, Chaucer’s era feels close to modern readers across the seven-century gap. On the other hand, he describes an England deeply imbued with Catholic clerical orders and worship, and that makes the setting alien indeed.
> with perennially popular topics like bawdy humor and fart jokes
The Miller's Tale is my go-to for both showing people the joy of medieval literature, but also as a counterpoint for people reminiscing about the "good old days" and concerned with how lewd modern society is. Well, the Miller's Tale and Pompeian graffiti.
But I love telling people about "kissing full sweetly" is.
A huge part of this is tied to the "conscientiousness" aspect of the Big 5 personality.
For myself, I need 1.5-2 days of off-time, depending what I'm working on. I consider myself a constant grindstone-lover, and most of the people I work around seem to reflect your 3.5 number, but I've seen some people who probably need 5 days off a week.
No shame in any of it, though. Everyone's wired differently. The USA has a unique taboo about "enjoying life", and I blame its post-WWII militarized culture for the most of it.
I've had a hard time penetrating philosophy myself, and found out from PG's essays that he saw much of the same problems as me.
So, I wanted to summarize a little of everything that makes up reality, with the hope that people can feel more "ahh" instead of "huh?" as they read it.
To start with, I don't think anyone sincerely wants WWIII right now.
In the lens of history, wars were quite popular in Europe in the 19th century because it was the best way for the floundering aristocracy to maintain their wealth (i.e., invest in the war equipment, then invest in rebuilding afterward, and send the losing country the bill).
But, during the Great World War (the war to end all wars, as it was ironically touted), LOTS of favors were pulled in from many directions, and everyone attacked everyone. It was, strictly, a profit motive, for most parties involved.
Nowadays, the vehicle of the corporation has allowed tremendous wealth distribution without any violence, so it's both sustainable and (theoretically) more ethical.
Russia has a geographical interest in Ukraine more than anything else (since it's flat land all the way to Moscow from there), and Israel/Palestine are fighting a war that travels farther into the realm of the religious than most Western society can comprehend.
Sure, the USA could jump in and fight a war, but the 20th century always showed them weighing in when they expected they'd win (and failed at that expectation with Vietnam).
Further, there's usually plenty of bluster before anyone actually does anything. Threatening to nuke a neighbor generates FUD, but actually nuking them means you've obtained a glass crater when you invade them.
Mini-essay aside, I think we must be careful to avoid the propaganda that tells us to be afraid. We each individually have very little control over things either way, and this apocalyptic narrative was a commonplace staple of US/Soviet relations for about 40 years.
1. ALL information is biased: there's no way to remove that part entirely because human beings make everything news-related.
2. The motivations of the journalists determine what the news reveals or hides[0].
3. To that end, all mainstream journalism (excepting journalists directly funded by listeners) is about as accurate as an advertisement.
4. Consume with a general distrust, assume everyone else is doing the same (since most people are NOT indoctrinated into the mediafest), and go about the rest of your life.
5. If you ever start getting a bad case of anxiety or the shakes, go outside for a walk or strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.
I wrote an essay on the subject[1], but the gist of it is to learn the art of skepticism, on EVERYTHING.
There's hope for revitalization, but only if it's caught early-on. I feel Mozilla doesn't have much time.
A cliche that may apply here is "follow the money". If your primary financiers are entities that prefer you to avoid competing with what that financier is producing, you're not looking at the interests of the userbase anymore.