Hi folks and mods of the firefox community!
I think it’s hight time to address the controversies around mozilla and either debunk them or clarify that the sub is about the browser and distancing itself from the company, ideally with a pinned post or something.
My reason is that stuff about firefox maker mozilla starts popping up which takes away from the browser and it’s core ideas. For example ceo getting insane payraises while dumping employees. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker
I just think a community like this should give guidance on how to deal with this in a constructive manner.
Have a good one folks.
I'd rather keep this community about Firefox the product and what it (doesn't) brings to the table. That's what I am, personally, interested in.
It'd be great if we could keep all the other things such as controversies, allegations, rumours, gossips, ... contained in a "mozilla" community and tried our best to maintain the separation.
Fair enough. If the controversies, allegations, rumors and gossips are about firefox though it definitely is important.
For example the huge chunks of money firefox gets from their biggest competitor and the fact that the massive privacy eating moloch google is the default searchengine being against firefoxs core values. That’s just bad precedent.
If the controversies, allegations, rumors and gossips are about firefox though it definitely is important.
...
the huge chunks of money firefox gets from their biggest competitorI think we're confusing things here 🙂
Examples of topics relevant to Firefox
- [Hypothetical] Firefox collects user data w/o consent.
- [Hypothetical] Researchers found government backdoors X, Y and Z in Firefox code base.
- [Hypothetical] Firefox to disable Javascript by default.
Examples of topics NOT relevant to Firefox
- Mozilla's contract w/ Google
- Mozilla's political campaign
- Mozilla's CEO allegedly being a selfish a-hole
Finally let's not forget that Firefox is an open source project, the result of the collaboration of hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the past 2 decades. Despite Mozilla's important role, there's way more to Firefox and its potential future than the usual corporate gossip/controversies.
My humble 2 cents 🙂
That’s a very good explanation, thank you.
I think google being the default search engine of firefox is very much important to firefox imo but yes, the rest is mozilla, I agree.
Still, I‘d like to know if there should be some kind of q&a somewhere so that these things dont pop up randomly and spark anxiety/drama when they do.
Is that so hard to comprehend?
Well I for one care about the companies behind the products I use, even if it's only because it often affects the product.
I think egregious corporate problems ought to be a part of the dialogue here or anywhere Firefox users seek Firefox information.
As I'm in the process of leaving Chrome and migrating to Firefox, I'd like to know I'm not committing to a product without long-term prospects.
Firefox is the ONLY option we have against chromium supremacy.
Safari is laughable and serves only apple anyway.
Firefox is free, open source, has a foundation behind with a manifesto.
It is now the last bastion of a free web.
I think it gets boring, but I think the best response is to downvote it and move on. Pinning it draws attention to it.
It's the same concerns that get repeated over and over again, given how incredibly important Mozilla is and the good they do, giving undue weight to its flaws is unhelpful.
Ok, so do you know how the corpos react to actual concerns which they can’t bury under money? They adress them in writing and forever refer to it.
I don’t know why it is so hard for everyone to get that stuff doesn’t go away if you ignore it. It’s so easy to write „Mozilla ceo has done some questionable things but we as a community think that the brwoser is important regardless…“
Not to say you can't mention them, just avoid undue weight. Back on Reddit r/firefox turned in to a massive anti-Mozilla circlejerk which is the last thing we need when it's so important to encourage people to use Firefox.
Then go ahead and be there first. A formal q&a why these allegations exist, how true or untrue they are and why they are not important to firefox as a browser. It will also help people defend against this in public and will actually bring more people to firefox. What do you think scientology does? You think they don’t have a q&a for cruise stalking his ex wives and people suddenly dying when leaving the fold?
I think a q&a is overkill, Mozilla isn't controversial in the general public consciousness.
Ok, opinion noted. I agree that mozilla is not controversial in the eye of the public but I think that is why a q&a is a good idea. Other companies, products, etc also host q&as which are not considered controversial.
Moreover, my goal is to arm the average superuser (or even average user who feels so inclined) with useful answers to the most prevalent criticism. This is done best by keeping it short and simple. Some convoluted thread will not help there.
A pinned post seems much IMO, unless you mean a megathread or something to shunt non-firefox specific news into, like the current CEO's apparent obsession with siphoning off Mozilla's funds via pay raises (personally a big reason why I won't donate to mozilla right now).
Posts about Mozilla the company might be off topic in this community (e.g. more devs added to Thunderbird as a fictional example) but any actions by Mozilla that could/will affect Firefox would be very much relevant and on topic I think, like layoffs etc. In that sense, this mitchell baker stuff would be relevant.
Most of the common browser makers have some gripe that people dislike... Chrome because of Google being Google, Brave for either the CEO's personal stance or their crypto stuff, and Firefox for Mozilla's CEO. I feel that people should pick what works for them best, and to assess whether the company's activities affect how they feel about using the browser, rather than us trying to preemptively address it or defend it with a pinned post (again, unless that post is a megathread for general Mozilla news).
I personally use Firefox because... I like the browser, and I don't believe it is right for a for-profit company like Google to have a monopoly on the technologies we depend on to get on with our lives in today's digital and online world. The current state of Android (thanks to Google with their Play Services and their SafetyNet Attestation) and that WEI stuff is bad enough IMO.
I completely agree with all you just said. But its not only the CEO. It‘s also paying firefox a shitton of money per year, their not so transparent privacy policies (just check the videos on youtube that are critical to mozilla and firefox). I‘d like to have this stuff addressed so that people know if they actually can use firefox while being privacy focused.
Unfortunately Mozilla is a necessary evil, considering the alternative non chromium FOSS browsers from Gnome and KDE wouldn't have the influence to prevent Google and right now the French government from having their complete way with the internet
I heard the news about france recently. I wonder what people in france actually do while their government tries to sell them out.
But yes, I know we need every help we can get. I still think we should be honest and just discuss the issues and clear up stuff that is obscure.
