That's basically how you could describe what happened. Those competent people are using Mozilla's infrastructure and trademarks, but otherwise running on donations.
I'm not a Thunderbird user myself, and obviously everyone's experiences are different, but I've seen lots of people happy with Thunderbird's development. And just the fact that they've ensured that k9mail is still maintained seems like an objective win, even if it's now called Thunderbird. Exchange support is also something I've been hearing people wish for in non-Outlook email clients in general for ages.
calling it garbage seems kinda harsh, but I think they are moving more to using a javascript rendering method instead of xul. I remember reading about it a while back. I don't really like it either and one of the first updates from back then broke a lot of UI that had been working ok. I am not really sure what the problems are with working with xul though, but I think firefox moved off it a long time ago too. I feel like thunderbird's user base is more the type to want to use thunderbird because it runs like a local first desktop style app as an alternative to using a web interface to their email. At least that's what I like about it.
> they are moving more to using a javascript rendering method instead of xul
Yeah, that's what I said: garbage.
> I am not really sure what the problems are with working with xul though
I'm sure they'll yell "for teh securitah!" in a bunch of vague fearmongering, just like they did with firefox. But the #1 and #2 problems are that it's not shiny and new and the CADT brigade[1] only knows javascript.
> I think firefox moved off it a long time ago too
I wouldn't call it "a long time ago", but I guess that depends on your perspective.
And that's the moment when firefox became garbage - just another chrome-alike, except slower and more resource-hungry. It had been getting worse for a decade prior to that, but dropping xul and breaking a ton of my extensions and customisability was the (large) straw that broke the camel's back. Sound familiar yet?
> I feel like thunderbird's user base is more the type to want to use thunderbird because it runs like a local first desktop style app as an alternative to using a web interface to their email. At least that's what I like about it.
Exactly. Which is why moving their UI to a worse, javascript-powered, uncustomisable, web-alike trash UI is a bad thing. And a big part of why everything they've done in the last ~10 years has been garbage. And why I'll almost certainly be switching to something that isn't thunderbird next time I'm forced to upgrade it.
(forgive my tone, nothing against you, I just get emotional when morons take an excellent piece of software I've been using for decades and turn it into broken, unusable trash)
Here we go again. I don't love the CEO pay but it's like 1% of their annual revenue and typical for positions like that, and Mozilla constantly suffers from these kinds of double sided, quantum accusations. Depending on which random HN thread you're in, the accusation is that (a) they're running out of money and urgently need to innovate to grow their revenue streams but also (b) they've got so much money and their spending of it is simply more evidence of how wasteful they are. Which is it this time?
>and God knows what else.
They publish their financial reports. It's mostly.... the browser. They actually spend more in total and in inflation adjusted terms directly on the browser than ever in their history as a company. Unless they're just faking all those reports? Need more than vibes here.
There's something about this specific part that doesn't sit well with me.
It's like justifying a huge salary for the president of a charity because they receive millions a year in donations and revenue from charity shops... it's just wrong.
7 million (assuming that's the correct value) is a lot of money. Perhaps not as much as they'd make at Google, but a lot of money nonetheless. And Mozilla is supposed to be a non-profit, with a good mission, with a manifesto, in a David vs Goliath struggle... but the CEO still makes millions, even when cuts are being made those working on the main mission?
The bar for Mozilla is different because they present themselves as being different. Multi-million salaries is what you expect from regular companies, not from good non-profits, and I think that's why the CEO's salary always comes up in these discussions.
With all this said, I also agree with the point about some of the criticism. Nothing Mozilla does pleases everyone, there's always something. It's a hard position to be in.
> urgently need to innovate to grow their revenue streams
No, people are saying that Firefox needs to diversify their revenue streams because almost all of their revenue comes from their main competitor who (likely) only keeps Firefox alive to keep regulators from forcing them to divest their browser. The situation has gotten more dire since the regulators got fired last year.
You're basically restating the very argument I'm citing, but phrasing it like you're expressing a disagreement. Diversifying revenue and growing revenue are distinct but overlapping, and both charges are made against Mozilla. This represents one side of the quantum accusation, the other being that even their search revenue is excessive and unnecessary, they don't need to spend that much anyway. According to this perspective, the 1.2 billion they have on hand should be enough to finance, development in perpetuity.
Which side of the quantum accusation will be invoked in any given comment thread? Flip a coin and find out.
What do they do with all that money? According to wikipedia, they had about 750 employees. That's a lot of employees for the amount of useful products they have.
How did you come to the conclusion that 750 people is a lot to build a web browser? The Chrome-adjacent teams at Google are about 4,000 people, and that doesn't even include all the people at Google providing infrastructure (e.g. servers, workplace, HR, legal etc.).
Comparing Firefox to Chromium-based browsers doesn't make much sense since these browsers don't develop their own web engine.
How did you come to the conclusion that it's not? Google being bloated is not a good justification for why Mozilla should be bloated too. Someone in the comment below suggested that Ladybird was built by about 10 people. Call me naive, but I don't think you'd need 75x number of people to work on a browser that's already established for over 2 decades.
Wait why is that fine? The whole point was that ladybird is yet to enter alpha which is the very reason why it's not the correct benchmark. And you said the Chrome comparison isn't the correct one but... didn't follow it up with an actual reason.
I meant it's fine for others to want to move faster and hire more people (like Google). just replying to your sentence. it's fine for others to want things different...
About ladybird, I think it is quite a good benchmark:
- they have accomplished a task many thought impossible in the modern world
- they accomplished it while having a handful of people
- they had a fraction of resources compared to both google and Mozilla. only about a year ago they had few hundred of thousands as support money to get them started.
The engine may not be finished yet. may not be as performant as the other two. but they did a 3rd engine. and given 10% of the budget Mozilla has, they would progress much more. Ladybird Team has shown how everything about Mozilla is mismanaged and simply broken.
Mozilla tried to kill Thunderbird in 2020. They've been talking about not sponsoring it all since 2015.
They might have the money, but they don't really seem to want anything to do with the project.
Mozilla doesn't have the willpower or vision to do anything with anything.
I like those two comments giving context on what has happened 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46118243 (parent and child comment).
Don't be so harsh on them. (\s) They show lots of willpower and some sort of vision when talking about AI in Firefox.
Don't forget telemetry! The makers of the "privacy-focused browser" were super strong-willed about that, too.
It is important that they know exactly how many users are permanently switching to Chrome.
omg best thing I've read all day. Thanks for the good long out-loud laugh <3
Good! I hope they do "kill it off" so that someone who isn't totally incompetent can fork it and take it over.
That's basically how you could describe what happened. Those competent people are using Mozilla's infrastructure and trademarks, but otherwise running on donations.
Then how come everything they've done in the last 10 years has been garbage?
I'm not a Thunderbird user myself, and obviously everyone's experiences are different, but I've seen lots of people happy with Thunderbird's development. And just the fact that they've ensured that k9mail is still maintained seems like an objective win, even if it's now called Thunderbird. Exchange support is also something I've been hearing people wish for in non-Outlook email clients in general for ages.
calling it garbage seems kinda harsh, but I think they are moving more to using a javascript rendering method instead of xul. I remember reading about it a while back. I don't really like it either and one of the first updates from back then broke a lot of UI that had been working ok. I am not really sure what the problems are with working with xul though, but I think firefox moved off it a long time ago too. I feel like thunderbird's user base is more the type to want to use thunderbird because it runs like a local first desktop style app as an alternative to using a web interface to their email. At least that's what I like about it.
And that's the moment when firefox became garbage - just another chrome-alike, except slower and more resource-hungry. It had been getting worse for a decade prior to that, but dropping xul and breaking a ton of my extensions and customisability was the (large) straw that broke the camel's back. Sound familiar yet?
Exactly. Which is why moving their UI to a worse, javascript-powered, uncustomisable, web-alike trash UI is a bad thing. And a big part of why everything they've done in the last ~10 years has been garbage. And why I'll almost certainly be switching to something that isn't thunderbird next time I'm forced to upgrade it.(forgive my tone, nothing against you, I just get emotional when morons take an excellent piece of software I've been using for decades and turn it into broken, unusable trash)
[1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
That's apparently mostly from Google to be the default search engine in Firefox. Diversifying their income streams is a good move.
The MZLA company that makes Thunderbird is also working on improving self-funding by launching a Thunderbird-branded webmail service.
Mozilla is so sad. They have a lot of money and they could fund the development of both Firefox and Thunderbird.
Yet, they decide to waste almost $7 million per year to pay a CEO and God knows what else.
Here we go again. I don't love the CEO pay but it's like 1% of their annual revenue and typical for positions like that, and Mozilla constantly suffers from these kinds of double sided, quantum accusations. Depending on which random HN thread you're in, the accusation is that (a) they're running out of money and urgently need to innovate to grow their revenue streams but also (b) they've got so much money and their spending of it is simply more evidence of how wasteful they are. Which is it this time?
>and God knows what else.
They publish their financial reports. It's mostly.... the browser. They actually spend more in total and in inflation adjusted terms directly on the browser than ever in their history as a company. Unless they're just faking all those reports? Need more than vibes here.
> ... it's like 1% of their annual revenue ...
There's something about this specific part that doesn't sit well with me.
It's like justifying a huge salary for the president of a charity because they receive millions a year in donations and revenue from charity shops... it's just wrong.
7 million (assuming that's the correct value) is a lot of money. Perhaps not as much as they'd make at Google, but a lot of money nonetheless. And Mozilla is supposed to be a non-profit, with a good mission, with a manifesto, in a David vs Goliath struggle... but the CEO still makes millions, even when cuts are being made those working on the main mission?
The bar for Mozilla is different because they present themselves as being different. Multi-million salaries is what you expect from regular companies, not from good non-profits, and I think that's why the CEO's salary always comes up in these discussions.
With all this said, I also agree with the point about some of the criticism. Nothing Mozilla does pleases everyone, there's always something. It's a hard position to be in.
> urgently need to innovate to grow their revenue streams
No, people are saying that Firefox needs to diversify their revenue streams because almost all of their revenue comes from their main competitor who (likely) only keeps Firefox alive to keep regulators from forcing them to divest their browser. The situation has gotten more dire since the regulators got fired last year.
You're basically restating the very argument I'm citing, but phrasing it like you're expressing a disagreement. Diversifying revenue and growing revenue are distinct but overlapping, and both charges are made against Mozilla. This represents one side of the quantum accusation, the other being that even their search revenue is excessive and unnecessary, they don't need to spend that much anyway. According to this perspective, the 1.2 billion they have on hand should be enough to finance, development in perpetuity.
Which side of the quantum accusation will be invoked in any given comment thread? Flip a coin and find out.
>and typical for positions like that
That's the problem. CEOs get paid so much more than everyone else while typically not providing value commensurate with their pay.
like all Big Tech
Except this "big tech" larper is supposedly fully owned by a nonprofit.
What do they do with all that money? According to wikipedia, they had about 750 employees. That's a lot of employees for the amount of useful products they have.
How did you come to the conclusion that 750 people is a lot to build a web browser? The Chrome-adjacent teams at Google are about 4,000 people, and that doesn't even include all the people at Google providing infrastructure (e.g. servers, workplace, HR, legal etc.).
Comparing Firefox to Chromium-based browsers doesn't make much sense since these browsers don't develop their own web engine.
How did you come to the conclusion that it's not? Google being bloated is not a good justification for why Mozilla should be bloated too. Someone in the comment below suggested that Ladybird was built by about 10 people. Call me naive, but I don't think you'd need 75x number of people to work on a browser that's already established for over 2 decades.
take the reference of ladybird.
in a couple of years they built the engine from scratch. it's going to soon enter Alpha. how many people from ladybird built that engine? about 10?
all while everyone has said that modern web makes this task impossible
> it's going to soon enter Alpha
Perhaps other browser makers want to move faster than Ladybird.
that's fine.
point is that Mozilla is wasting money and having 4000 people working on chrome may not be the correct benchmark.
Wait why is that fine? The whole point was that ladybird is yet to enter alpha which is the very reason why it's not the correct benchmark. And you said the Chrome comparison isn't the correct one but... didn't follow it up with an actual reason.
I meant it's fine for others to want to move faster and hire more people (like Google). just replying to your sentence. it's fine for others to want things different...
About ladybird, I think it is quite a good benchmark:
- they have accomplished a task many thought impossible in the modern world
- they accomplished it while having a handful of people
- they had a fraction of resources compared to both google and Mozilla. only about a year ago they had few hundred of thousands as support money to get them started.
The engine may not be finished yet. may not be as performant as the other two. but they did a 3rd engine. and given 10% of the budget Mozilla has, they would progress much more. Ladybird Team has shown how everything about Mozilla is mismanaged and simply broken.
They need a lot of money to pay their useless execs, so 700 million must be barely enough to keep things running
They publish their 990s so you can look this stuff up if you're actually curious. It's mostly the browser.