this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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357
Mozilla exits the fediverse and will shutter its Mastodon server in December | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 day ago by TehBamski@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] yaMatt@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago

I think this kind of a good thing.

Those of us with long enough memories will remember a long tail of Mozilla building stuff and abandoning them, quite like Google.

The two that genuinely hurt me were:

  • Firefox OS - honestly great. I still have my Firefox OS phone sitting around in a box somewhere.
  • Mozilla Persona - an authentication service, was great and still better than the existing alternatives

But the reason I think this it is a good thing, is that they're focusing on their core product. For me Firefox is superior in many ways to Chrome, Ad blocking is an immediate example of that. They need to keep Firefox being successful.

Another reason I think this is a good thing is that there must be new people coming to Mozilla and Firefox who don't know the history. And it's great that there are new people like that.

[–] doctortran@lemm.ee 92 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The hell is with all these comments?

Mozilla is far from perfect but god damn the degree of hatred and mirth some people have is entirely disproportionate to anything they've actually done, and completely irrespective of the good they actually do.

It's got the same energy as leftist purity testing, where there is no "net good", only perfection and villains to be spat on.

[–] umbraroze@lemmy.world 7 points 15 hours ago

I'm, like, yeah, some of the stuff Mozilla has done has been worrying, but I've seen far worse happen to some other open source projects and their corporate branches.

I'm not worried about Mozilla projects' future. If LibreOffice survived corporate calcification, I see no reason why Mozilla projects wouldn't, if the push comes to a shove. But the thing is, in my opinion, push hasn't come to a shove yet. There's red flags at best, which is a cause for concern, but that's it.

[–] Rogers@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It almost seems like there's anti Mozilla campaign going on. It's normal to see some critique but all of a sudden there is a huge Mozilla hate push. Call me crazy but it feels organized

[–] IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 14 hours ago

I've felt this for a while.

When dirty tricks are at play, it's best to resist.

Don't get me wrong, they've made some bad decisions, but the world is a darker place without them.

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago

Google really wants to make sure you can't escape their ad-riddled bullshit when they get rid of Manifest v2

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 8 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

There is, I just saw a post trying to demonize Mozilla simply because they had a few job listings for AI and Ad managers and the take away in the post itself was like "I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads", like are you serious??? A few job listings is enough to paint the entire future of the company lol

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 1 points 14 hours ago

This was my takeaway also. As if Chromium and all It’s derivatives are just going to not use daddy Alphabet’s ai tech.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago

It's absolutely bonkers.

There's so many people here that fight against their own interests by letting perfect be the enemy of good.

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The enshittification warning signs are going off everywhere, Mozilla is being corrupted before our very eyes. Now is not the time to hand wave it away.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately with Google's antitrust lawsuits, it's quite likely Mozilla will lose the majority of their funding in the near future, since their biggest source of revenue is Google paying them to be default.

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

Yea, that's not helping keep anything off the enshittification train that's for sure. Desperation is dangerous.

Oh the irony lol

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 147 points 1 day ago (5 children)

270 active users isn’t much for a masto instance.

Given that Mozilla is a small company, and small company’s really can’t afford to lose focus for the major roadmap initiatives, I’m going to bet that this was someone’s hackathon project.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 113 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Mozilla is so small it only pays its CEO 10 million a year.

[–] thefartographer@lemm.ee 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How do they even afford to eat???

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

Probably the $500 million or so that Google pays them every year

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

They probably shop at Aldi.

[–] thehatfox@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don’t think Mozilla running a Mastodon server is losing focus. The ethos of Mozilla and the Fediverse have a lot of overlap, and Mozilla should desire to have a foot in it.

An official Mastodon server is also a useful platform for marketing and outreach. In contrast an organisation claiming to be all about privacy and open source retreating from a social media platform that embodies those is not a good look.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

The ethos of Mozilla

That's the thing that changed.

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 65 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Mozilla is a small company

I'm surprised that people consider a ~2000-person company that revenues about a half billion a year to be "small". Mozilla is a profit-driven corporation, far separated from the vision of the hobbyist coders who founded it decades ago. The only reason they're shutting down their Mastodon server is because it's not making them money, not because they lack the resources to support it.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 18 hours ago

This take is silly. Spinning up a mastodon instance would have never made them money at any point. If it was all about money, the instance would never have been made to begin with.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

They have about 750 employees.

(According to Wikipedia)

[–] Chozo@fedia.io 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Mozilla Foundation (the non-profit) and Mozilla Corporation (the for-profit) are two different entities under the Mozilla umbrella, so their staffing may be reported differently depending where you look and how they're counting it.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The foundation is about 80 folks on payroll, although OSS projects have about 1000 contributors popping in and out.

There is also the “MZLA Technologies” subsidiary, which I think has some dedicated headcount under it as well. Although, there isn’t a lot of public info about that company.

[–] greywolf0x1@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 hours ago

the “MZLA Technologies” subsidiary

isn't that where ThunderBird is?

[–] rozlav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Still, 750 is totally not a small company, also they manage and host matrix/element, that are way more edgy in terms of technology, takes a LOT of time only for maintenance if you have bigs rooms :

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix

Choices are not neutrals and I don't know what I would do at their seats, but I think it's a bit sad that mozilla invest more into matrix/element instead political opinion makers like these social network xitter alternatives, fediverse & all <3

Maybe I don't know shit and maybe Mastodon is also a heavy mess to selfhost !

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Maybe I should’ve said “midsize.”

My point is that they’re not a company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. And, as someone that usually likes to work at companies that are about size, you can run out of engineers pretty quickly if you’re not focused and or working on stuff that is wickedly complex. And Mozilla is definitely doing the latter.

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[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think official instances should be fairly small, no? They shouldn’t allow users from outside Mozilla onto their instance. The point is that they federate and can interact with a wider audience from an official source.

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 4 points 18 hours ago

Yeah, I believe the official instance of EU and ACM are both quite small. It is a great way to verify people's identity just from their ID.

[–] Galexio@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago

But muh free service!

I'm sad it's gone but I'm not gonna pretend like it's the end of the world.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 21 points 1 day ago

Didn't even know they had one

[–] skymtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 35 points 1 day ago (5 children)

The fate of Mozilla is sad, I know one day they will announce a move to chromium. It might be after a buyout but they will switch chromium and than die

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 2 points 18 hours ago

I don't think google will allow them to move to chromium. They need gecko to avoid anti-trust law suites.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 58 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If they switch to Chromium they lose their half a billion per year from Google to be the token “look we’re not a monopoly here’s competition” browser.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago

Technically I think that's still "put us first on the search bar" money. You're giving the real under-the-table explanation.

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

The fate of Mozilla is sad, I know one day they will announce a move to chromium.

why the fuck would they kill the thing that makes them money? Do you even understand what you are implying here??

[–] ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even if they did so, isn't Firefox entirely open source? At least their work could be forked (though I agree if they don't have the resources, hardly anyone else could make it)

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Sure, but is Google gonna pay them or you hoping they will do that work for free? A browser doesn't seem like a hobby project to me.

[–] IcyToes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

They can also use Yahoo or Bing as default for money.

The other option is diversify your revenue. Which is likely where the ad stuff comes in. If they can do that in a privacy respecting way with a facility to opt out, I have no objections. The loss of the biggest open source chromium alternative is massive and unthinkable.

For all the flaws of Mozilla, no one has forked, done better and put it out of business. It's easier to run it behind a keyboard with zero responsibility.

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[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bring back Netscape!

[–] skymtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I just want something rust based

[–] seaQueue@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Have you tried putting your cast iron in the dishwasher?

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't bother. Just leave it on the sink with some water.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 day ago

Yes, officer, these two right here.

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] rotkehle@feddit.org 12 points 1 day ago

I really hope servo takes off.

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