Comment by shiroiushi

Comment by shiroiushi 8 days ago

24 replies

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Yes, definitely. It would have been easy back then to build an endowment if they hadn't blown money on so much BS and prepared for a future where they wouldn't have all that money coming in. I think it's too late for them now, and I don't see how they can possibly trim things down into a lean, efficient organization, especially not in the US. That's why I think someone in a cheaper country needs to fork the thing and take over Firefox development. This will probably have to wait until Mozilla is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy though.

neilv 8 days ago

Why haven't some EU and/or Latin American countries funded a Web browser in a meaningful way, in an effort to be less under the thumb of US tech companies?

They could fork Firefox or Chromium, poach some current developers, hire some more, and assert a strong presence on standards.

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  • I_AM_A_SMURF 8 days ago

    Microsoft gave up on building a Web Browser engine and you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build. They requires a lot of (very expensive) niche technical talent. Not to mention the need to keep up with the rate of Google's improvements to Chrome/Blink. We're at a point where Chrome has a 10 year head start to any other engine other than Firefox, building a general purpose new engine from scratch is basically off the table, and hard forking Chrome/Blink is also off the table (because why would you toss the ~1bn$ Google puts into chrome every year?). We're in a world of a single browser engine, no way to go back for the foreseeable future.

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    • shiroiushi 8 days ago

      >you think a government can?

      Do I think a government can fund a group of developers to fork some existing code and run with it? Yes, I do. Radical concept, I know...

      Reply View 5 replies
      • alternatex 8 days ago

        I think you severely underestimate the size and complexity of something like Chromium. Not every project is fork and work material.

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      • I_AM_A_SMURF 7 days ago

        A government funding a 1 billion dollars a year software project? That would never fly in any country.

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        • shiroiushi 7 days ago

          There's no way you need $1B/year to properly fund the ongoing development and maintenance of an existing web browser. The Ladybird team is making an all-new browser from scratch for almost nothing. Just because Mozilla is wasting so much money doesn't mean you actually need that much to do the same job.

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    • marto1 7 days ago

      > you think a government can? Browser engines are really hard to build.

      As opposed to CERN being easy to build!? I'd say is totally doable, but it doesn't promise filling anyone's pockets at the moment so traction is hard. Who knows, maybe in the future..

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      • I_AM_A_SMURF 7 days ago

        Easily doable, let me guess you never worked on a browser engine?

        Reply View 1 reply
        • shiroiushi 7 days ago

          I haven't, but the Ladybird browser devs are doing so at this moment, and they don't seem to need billions of dollars.

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  • shiroiushi 8 days ago

    >Why haven't some EU and/or Latin American countries funded a Web browser in a meaningful way, in an effort to be less under the thumb of US tech companies?

    As with many things, it's just like Dark Helmet said in Spaceballs: "Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

    Not to say that the US (or Mozilla or Google) is evil and the EU and LATAM are good (LATAM in particular is a really screwed up place, with a few exceptions that aren't as broken like Chile), but while the US obviously has its problems and does really stupid stuff (see the current election), other places do incredibly stupid stuff too (see Germany disarming, shutting down all its nuclear power and trying to make itself dependent on Russian fossil fuel energy). Honestly, I think the main reason the US is still doing as well as it is (see the strength of the USD) is because everyone else is so busy shooting themselves in the foot with a shotgun.

    So yes, I totally agree: theoretically it should be pretty simple to just fork Firefox (or Chromium, though I think the former is a much better choice so we don't the whole web dependent on a single browser engine, if for no other reason), poach some current devs, hire some new ones locally, and then become the new "open standard". But good luck getting some national government (or even a group of them, like with the EU) having some vision and backing such a move.

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    • emmelaich 8 days ago

      Not sure that'd even work. The best developers would get paid a lot more by working for a for-profit company, probably US-based. It's just too tempting.

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      • neilv 8 days ago

        IME, the best developers tend to be genuinely passionate about principles.

        They aren't necessarily working for Mozilla now, because they can see right through a lot of obviously bad moves Mozilla has made, and ridiculously overpaid executives.

        "Go where the biggest paycheck is" is people who care more about career than mission. Why would you even want those people, unless you can't get the mission ones.

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      • shiroiushi 8 days ago

        Maybe, but if you actually want to poach people, you have to make large pay offers to get them to jump ship. So instead of just paying the prevailing rate for SWEs in $country, they need to actually look at how much those devs are making in the US and match that. Sure, it'll be expensive, but if it's only a handful of key people, it doesn't matter.

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      • aphantastic 8 days ago

        Trick is to start some sort of commune in Colombia and attract talent with the local amenities. Nice private community full of 10-15 software engineers, private chefs, security, etc would be less than $1-2k/month per person. Maybe turn it into a vacation spot: “tired of your work? Take 6 month sabbatical to come party in LATAM while making meaningful software. Work hard/play hard - apply by linking to the most meaningful PR you have contributed to an FOSS project.”

        Honestly not a bad plan.

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  • 123yawaworht456 7 days ago

    a EU funded/developed browser would have a built-in blacklist. malinformation is the greatest threat to so-called democracies

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    • shiroiushi 7 days ago

      A built-in blacklist is fine. It's trivially easy to download some source code and delete a blacklist and recompile.

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tcfhgj 8 days ago

not that easy if your money source is your competitor... conflict of interest

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  • shiroiushi 8 days ago

    Google being the source of their money did not, in any way, prevent Mozilla from spending their money more wisely and putting some into an endowment.

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