I have left many coffee shops just after enter without ordering because they only have QR menu and no WiFi.
It feels insulting that I need to spend my limited Data package just to help you earn money.
Even when the waiter offer to show me the menu on his phone, it felt overcomplicated process and I cannot imagine a business delibrately making it that difficult to order without expecting profits to decrease.
Most tech startups spend years and sometimes decades in net losses while CEO get raises because revenue isn't the one and only performance and potential indicator.
I cannot find any benefit of the articles bashing Mozilla with hot claims - that aren't necessarily false but used in misleading contexts - other than Google, Microsoft and Apple.
I have used firefox for years because I believe in FOSS and privacy despite the shrinking market share and the poor addons market.
I am not going to leave Firefox after the recent and significant improvments in the weakness points for some conspiracy theories based on completely normal facts
Well that's the thing. Mozilla is not a private for profit corporation, the money isn't from investors, and the goal isn't to make a profit at the end of the day. Non profit CEOs always have a much smaller salary, and much smaller increases. That's just how it usually works because the money they have is supposed to go into fulfilling their objective, not make people rich. Why does Mozilla get a pass for this? It's so weird to see this defensiveness whenever the subject is brought up, because you can clearly like and support Mozilla and still disagree with a non profit paying 1% of what it earns to an underperforming ceo. That sum would be weird even if Mozilla was doing well.
I'm just using it because the alternative is even more hostile towards me. I don't care about the drama, I just want to use an adblocker on all my browsers' devices.
That said, FF mobile is still far from parity with its old version from 3 years ago when it did its big break, so it becomes hard to sympathize when a CEO salary doubles and I'm arguably getting a worse experience despite that.
People need to pay some inconvenience for the better cause of web usability, privacy, software freedom, etc..
Everybody knows that Linux started with low funding a tiny userbase that had to accept the inconvenience over the year to avoid the project death, now Linux is irreplaceable technology that we rely on more than most popular software, it wouldn't reach that point if users quickly got annoyed and gave up on freedom of software.
I can get behind this sentiment for something like haiku os. I actually make an annual contribution to because they’ve been clear about using it to pay developers/contributors.
The fact that the ceo of Mozilla gets paid handsomely doesn’t inconvenience me, but it makes it harder for me to justify donating to or supporting them like I would for haiku.
The analogy doesn't apply to Firefox though because it is very far from "low funding" as the CEO pay reflects. Not to mention, Firefox was good and was at one point irreplaceable before mismanagement ruined it and continues to ruin it.
The fact that Firefox usability and perfromance is improving, better addons support for android, unique useful features like containers and easy to configure network proxy/DoH/web protection levels, etc.. is already a big improvment.
How do people expect the market share to grow if the user isn't #1 priority.
Not disagreeing with your other points but keep in mind that "better addons support for android" was a self-inflicted problem and an arbitrary restriction. Addons worked to begin with if they weren't restricted to a small whitelist.
Firefox is in fact better in terms of privacy than rivals with higher market share, the home page of firefox addons store has uBlock Origin with "Recommended" label placed by Mozilla team.
It is important to recognize that the web is also used by grandma and grandpa who won't master any tech more recent than fax and installing uBlock origin by default will harm FF market share even more as usability will be impacted.
Safari works around that nicely - if you refresh a page it prompts you whether you want to reduce privacy protections (assuming you are refreshing because of something broken). Either way, the functionality can always be optional so people who are impacted can disable blocking.
> will harm FF market share even more as usability will be impacted.
The only people who currently use FF are those who also use uBlock Origin - if you don't there is really no point using it compared to Chrome.
Firefox marketshare will improve because there will finally be an actual selling point for it.
These numbers may not be representative as anyone who installs uBlock Origin is unlikely to leave telemetry enabled.
Either way my point stands - what's the selling point of using Firefox over Chrome for a non-technical user (who doesn't know what add-ons are and this won't install any)? uBlock Origin bundled by default would be an instant selling point.
Say "install this browser for instant ad-free browsing" and you've sold it to all non-technical users. Say "install this browser, dismiss 5 nag screens, navigate to the add-on store, find ublock origin, install it, tick 'enable in private browsing'" and your non-technical users would've ran away before you even finished that sentence.
What non-advertising revenue model would pay for both Firefox development, and timely repairs and improvements to advertising blocks? It’d have to be a recurring or subscription model — one-time payments aren’t viable for recurring updates — with no free option (like there is today), as otherwise no one would pay for it (just like today). Solve this and perhaps they’ll make you the next CEO.
> What non-advertising revenue model would pay for both Firefox development
The Enterprise pays a fortune for often dubious security products - the browser, being at the forefront of many security threats would be a great place to put some security features alongside things like centralized management, DLP, etc. Use that to subsidize the free version of the browser.
> timely repairs and improvements to advertising blocks
Volunteers that maintain uBlock Origin lists do that just fine already, but if they really wanted to fund it, they could just redirect the donations they currently piss away to the maintainers of filter lists and use that money for something useful.
> Solve this and perhaps they’ll make you the next CEO.
The reason this isn't "solved" isn't because it's some hard problem, it's because converting into a company making an actual paid product requires taking on risk, responsibility and actually doing something. Freeloading off the Google money while puffing hot air every so often about how much they care about privacy requires much less risk and effort, so why change anything?
> Use that to subsidize the free version of the browser.
Google and Microsoft, and to some extent Apple, already offer an enterprise-capable browser for $0; so I don’t agree that enterprise support is a viable funding model here. I can’t find any traces remaining of the Enterprise paid support plan that the Firefox team launched in 2019, so I suspect they reached the same conclusion and shut it down.
> use that money for something useful.
Such as?
> converting into a company making an actual paid product
To clarify, do you mean converting the Firefox browser into shareware/IAP, or free-trial/paywalled, or do you mean another product in the style of Pocket or Relay; or..?
> also suspect they’ve infiltrated or outright own the major VPNs
ExpressVPN, PIA, Cyberghost, Zenmate, Intigo, and other major VPN providers are owned by ex-undercover commando in Israeli military Teddy Sagi of Kape Technologies.
It is safe to assume Israel and US are actively using them as honeypots, especially they were mostly acquired - not built - by Kape.
It feels insulting that I need to spend my limited Data package just to help you earn money. Even when the waiter offer to show me the menu on his phone, it felt overcomplicated process and I cannot imagine a business delibrately making it that difficult to order without expecting profits to decrease.