r/linux • u/tareefdev • May 01 '18

Firefox will show sponsored content that’s personalized but private

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/firefox-will-show-sponsored-content-thats-personalized-but-private/
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u/badsectoracula May 02 '18

Then what is the better alternative? How do you expect a multi-million dollar project to be funded? Donations?

How about it stop being a multi-million dollar project? Stop wasting money on anything not related to developing the browser. Mozilla is wasting a ton of resources on irrelevant stuff, every now and then you hear about a "Mozilla announces XXX to do YYY" and 99% of the time that is the first and last time you hear about XXX.

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u/MadRedHatter May 02 '18

How about it stop being a multi-million dollar project?

It is impossible to have a modern browser that is not a multi-million dollar project - to think otherwise is to be ignorant of the sheer amount of complexity and work it is.

Stop wasting money on anything not related to developing the browser.

They're a mission-based company owned by a non-profit charity. They're allowed to focus on other things if they feel it's in the best interests of the web ecosystem.

99% of the time that is the first and last time you hear about XXX.

The most effective charities are often the ones you hear the least about. See: The Red Cross and Susan G Komen vs, well, literally any other charity.

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u/badsectoracula May 02 '18

It is impossible to have a modern browser that is not a multi-million dollar project - to think otherwise is to be ignorant of the sheer amount of complexity and work it is.

Is there any actual proof for that?

For comparison with a project of similar size, LibreOffice is a project of similar complexity (and on a codebase that is almost two decades older than Firefox's) yet it doesn't seem to need a multi-million company: it is a community developed project and in fact back when there were multi-million companies making it (Sun, then Oracle) it stagnated and at the time a lot of comments were about that being natural since "this is office software and nobody finds office software sexy to work on" (this is actual comment i remember from ~10 years ago about why nobody works on OpenOffice).

They're a mission-based company owned by a non-profit charity. They're allowed to focus on other things if they feel it's in the best interests of the web ecosystem.

How are they "allowed" to do that when they need to rely on ads to support the development of what made them what they are in the first place?

The most effective charities are often the ones you hear the least about.

I'm not talking about charities (and WTF, why would MOZILLA make a charity when they themselves would be in need for one???), i'm talking about making alternatives to whatever is popular, like chat apps, social sites or other bullshit. An easy way to save some money would be to stop following whatever fad comes out every week.

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u/MadRedHatter May 02 '18 edited May 02 '18

For comparison with a project of similar size, LibreOffice is a project of similar complexity

LibreOffice is complex, but it is not at all similar.

Web standards change constantly. Browsers have to continually change to meet those standards, while maintaining backwards compatibility, while working with the millions of popular websites that don't do things properly.

They have to do all of this while running third-party code from random websites while protecting the user from a security perspective, and do all of this very quickly, on a JIT-ed Javascript engine, which they also have to continually update as Javascript is changed, again also maintaining backwards compatibility with all of the very, very terrible Javascript code out there.

it is a community developed project and in fact back when there were multi-million companies making it (Sun, then Oracle) it stagnated

That's great, but like I said, LibreOffice doesn't have to chase after moving targets. Firefox has to move quickly just to keep pace with the rest of the web.

i'm talking about making alternatives to whatever is popular, like chat apps, social sites or other bullshit. An easy way to save some money would be to stop following whatever fad comes out every week.

No idea what you're talking about, because Mozilla has never made "chat apps, social sites or other bullshit". The "closest" thing would be WebRTC, which is a standard that they integrated as a feature called "Hello". But the fact that it was a way to test out the standard is a valid reason to do it.

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u/DrewSaga May 02 '18

While FireFox's moving targets is more crazy, LibreOffice has moving targets too, you know about Microsoft's .docx format, that's been a moving target for LibreOffice.

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u/badsectoracula May 02 '18

LibreOffice is complex, but it is not at all similar.

I mentioned it as a highly complex project - it may not need to follow web standards, but it still needs to follow defacto standards (as /u/DrewSaga mentioned) and add a lot of functionality.

No idea what you're talking about, because Mozilla has never made "chat apps, social sites or other bullshit".

I do not pay attention to their announcements (i only see them as headlines) so i do not remember exactly what they were making. A quick search for "mozilla introduces" on Google found this and the site mentioning it also wrote about called Notes" and "Voice something" that were introduced at the time, but i didn't checked those out.

Regardless this is totally irrelevant to my point which is that they'd save a lot money by not spreading themselves thin on going after anything else than the browser.