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Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 2 days ago by noodlejetski@lemm.ee to c/firefox@fedia.io

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The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Firefox browser maker Mozilla, has laid off 30% of its employees as the organization says it faces a “relentless onslaught of change.”

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[-] kbal@fedia.io 46 points 2 days ago

Ailing company? Cut it to pieces, that'll probably fix it. I'd like the idea better if I could believe there's a chance in hell they'd choose the right 30%.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 38 points 2 days ago

Sorry, but no. The people making the cutting decisions are not going to cut their own jobs; and they are always part of the problem. It's why companies only get more shitty over time.

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 2 days ago

the advocacy is the reason why i continued to support mozilla/firefox.

this is horrible. :(

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I'm sort of hoping the folks they laid off weren't actually the advocacy folks, and they're just additionally doing the restructure and moving the advocacy folks into the other departments.

But yeah, I don't fucking know what to think of it. I do have a base-level of trust that they'd make a sensible decision in some dimension. But I'd really like to know more where they're headed now...

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 hours ago

that would 100% be the right move but i worry

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 9 points 1 day ago

Is that the place where they fire people while increasing the CEO salary or is this something else, the Mozilla setup is so confusing.

[-] BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca 21 points 2 days ago

RIP Mozilla Foundation 🪦

[-] lnxtx@feddit.nl 4 points 2 days ago

Not dead yet 🙏

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago

That's sad.

[-] horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Does anyone have a non chromium browser that still works on the modern internet they can suggest?

Open source and linux required for me but any suggestions are welcome.

I've been tooling around with palemoon but I'm definitely interested in any different architecture that's not Mullvad.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

None that will continue to exist, if Mozilla falls apart...

[-] ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

WebKit wise, I think otter releases have stalled, epiphany and konquerer are plausible options though?

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 9 points 2 days ago

Kind of expected when Google was declared a monopoly in the courts.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 day ago

Google has the deal with the Mozilla Corporation, whereas this is the Mozilla Foundation. It should have relatively little influence, if any...

[-] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

Good catch - you're right.

[+] halfapage@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

[deleted]

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 day ago

We're talking something like 500 full-time devs currently working on Firefox vs. a handful of unpaid volunteers working on the forks.

So, they might survive, but they won't make a ton of progress. And security vulnerabilities would become increasingly difficult to keep fixing.

[-] vikingtons@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

I've daydreamed about the Linux foundation or sovereign tech ~~fund~~ agency taking ownership of Firefox away from Mozilla.

Maybe they could maintain a fork of it instead, I'm not sure. At this point I think it's become a necessary measure. Firefox is quite far back in terms of security features that it's actually becoming kind of silly. I still use it, carefully. I feel less inclined to recommend it to less savvy users in its current state.

[-] MrMcGasion@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Linux Foundation Europe has taken over the rust-based Servo engine that Mozilla started several years ago. It's not ready to replace any other browser yet, but progress has been picking up speed quite a bit the last few months. Could end up being better than a Linux Foundation Firefox fork simply due to the advantage of being a newer codebase with (hopefully) less baggage than Gecko and the added bonus of rust's memory safety.

[-] vikingtons@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

In was thinking about TLF with servo in mind, though I wasn't aware much progress has been made. Great to hear!

[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

As long as people work on forks, they survive. I think the more interesting question is about standardization and feature support in general: if FF and its forks are no longer a real force in the browser world, how will this shape what websites support and code for (i.e. making things slowly lose compatibility with firefox and its forks without major development).

[-] yoasif@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago

They likely need a monetization model in order to pay developers.

this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024

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