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Firefox-the-embarassment-of-FOSS.md (4005B)

---
title: "Firefox: The Jewel^WEmbarassment of Open Source"
date: 2020-10-22
outputs: [html, gemtext]
---
Circa 2006, the consensus on Firefox was concisely stated by this classic xkcd:
[![A stick-figure comic. The title reads “Sometimes, when I first wake up, I am caught in the horrible grip of perspective.” The character, waking up, says “It may be a jewel of open source, but Firefox is just a browser. It shows webpages. What the hell is wrong with us?” The caption reads “Fortunately, this subsides quickly.”](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/perspective.png)](https://xkcd.com/198/)
This feeling didn't last. In 2016, I wrote
[In Memoriam - Mozilla](/2016/05/11/In-Memoriam-Mozilla.html), and in 2017,
[Firefox is on a slippery slope](/2017/12/16/Firefox-is-on-a-slippery-slope.html).
Well, I was right, and Firefox (and Mozilla) have only become worse since. The
fuck-up culture is so ingrained in Mozilla in 2020 that it's hard to see it ever
getting better again.
In the time since my last article on the subject, Mozilla has:
- Laid off 25% of its employees, mostly engineers, many of whom work on Firefox[^1]
- Raised executive pay 400% as their market share declined 85%[^2]
- Sent a record of all browsing traffic to CloudFlare by default[^3]
- Added advertisements to the new tab page on Firefox[^4]
- Used their brand to enter the saturated VPN grift market[^5]
- Built a walled garden for add-ons, then let the walls crash in[^6]
- Started, and killed, a dozen projects which were not Firefox[^7]
[^1]: [Mozilla cuts 250 jobs, says Firefox development will be affected](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/)
[^2]: [Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%](http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html)
[^3]: [Firefox continues push to bring DNS over HTTPS by default for US users](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/02/25/firefox-continues-push-to-bring-dns-over-https-by-default-for-us-users/)
[^4]: [A Privacy-Conscious Approach to Sponsored Content](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/04/30/a-privacy-conscious-approach-to-sponsored-content/)
[^5]: [Mozilla VPN](https://vpn.mozilla.org/)
[^6]: [Technical Details on the Recent Firefox Add-on Outage](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/05/technical-details-on-the-recent-firefox-add-on-outage/)
[^7]: [Killed by Mozilla](https://killedbymozilla.com/)
The most interesting things they've been involved in in the past few years are 
Rust and Servo, and they fired most or all of their engineers involved in both.
And, yesterday, [Mozilla published a statement][abject betrayal] siding with
Google on anti-trust, failing to disclose the fact that Google pays to keep their
lights on.
[abject betrayal]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/10/20/mozilla-reaction-to-u-s-v-google/
Is this the jewel of open source? No, not anymore. Firefox is the embarrassment
of open source, and it's the only thing standing between Google and an
all-encompassing monopoly over the web. Mozilla has divested from Firefox and
started funnelling what money is left out of their engineering payroll and into
their executive pockets. The web is dead, and its fetid corpse persists only
as the layer of goop that Google scrapes between its servers and your screen.
Anyone who still believes that Mozilla will save the web is a fool.
As I have [stated before][browser scope], the scope of web browsers has been
increasing at a reckless pace for *years*, to the point where it's literally
impossible to build a new web browser. We have no recourse left to preserve the
web. This is why I'm throwing my weight behind [Gemini][Gemini], a new protocol
which is *much simpler* than the web, and which you can implement yourself in a
weekend.
[browser scope]: /2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html
[Gemini]: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
Forget about the web, it's a lost cause. Let's move on.