Eyes Above The Waves

One problem with that approach is branding. If there's a "Firefox that works" and a "Firefox that doesn't", ordinary users will get confused. If we take the Firefox brand off the browser that doesn't work, that might make sense.

I agree that branding would be the biggest challenge. I am guessing the technical challenges would be less than one person week of effort. I would think that Mozilla could just think of a new name (Freefox?, work with FSF on IceCat?) and put it in the product category like Thunderbird and Webmaker instead of on the front page.

"Sure it's a little unfair since Mozilla played a part in getting us where we are..." I'm not sure you're aware how critical Mozilla is to the structure of the software world right now. They didn't just play a part in getting us to where we are. Netscape made an explicit choice back in 1998 to mix pragmatism with idealism by open sourcing their browser while maintaining their commercial objectives. If they hadn't done that --- if they had gone the pure Free Software route, or remained purely commercial --- the project would have either died along with the company, or would have died in the wild. Ever since it's birth, this mix of pragmatism and idealism has been a part of Mozilla's DNA. It has survived because of it. It has set the agenda because of it. Yes, it sets the agenda --- Mozilla might seem to always come in second place, but it leads from behind, forcing others to adopt open source practices and engage in genuine innovation (rather than fad-based innovation) when they otherwise would have no reason to do so. This is because Mozilla is *both* a viable competitor (pragmatism) and has a compelling philosophy (idealism). Mozilla continuously proves that open source processes can make exceptional products for real people. If Mozilla died today, open source and the philosophy of openness would die with it. We are very lucky they exist.

I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of history to say how big of a roll Netscape/Mozilla played in promoting the current open source ecosystem, all I know is they played a part so I left it as that. I know Netscape weren't the only ones strategically using open source development at the time. "If Mozilla died today, open source and the philosophy of openness would die with it." That's just plain not true. They showed that successful consumer products can come from open source development and they took 25% of the browser market from Internet Explorer. But open source development existed long before them and will continue after they are gone. Mozilla is viable because of the online advertising industry and in particular their referrals to Google's search engine for which they are compensated for. Firefox is popular today partly because at some point Microsoft halted development on Internet Explorer and partly because Google promoted it (knowing it would benefit them). If Google hadn't came along when they did Firefox would probably have faded along with so many other promising projects.

"Mozilla is viable because of the online advertising industry..." That's very true, and I was going to mention it as support for the pragmatist/idealist approach that Mozilla has always had. " 'If Mozilla died ...' That's just plain not true." Right. Closer to what I mean is: if Mozilla died, open source would shrink into the shadows. Even still, I agree that this sounds radical, and is a claim that requires much more evidence than I can give. I'll give it a quick and feeble shot, though. Open source as a practice has existed since the dawn of software, but was largely restricted to academics and enthusiasts (or hardware-specific) until Stallman and GNU/Linux. Even with the extreme hype in the late 90s, open source had only managed to extend its reach into IT departments. Nonetheless, this inspired Netscape/Mozilla's efforts, which showed the world how to create open source software for a mainstream user (i.e. not academics, enthusiasts or developers). As a result of GNU and Mozilla, we now have user-friendly and popular open source offerings across a whole range of software categories. This includes ideologically-driven software such as GNU/Linux, Mozilla (Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey), LibreOffice, gcc, WordPress, VLC, Python, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, etc. It also includes strategy-driven software, like Chrome/Chromium, Android, Java and Safari/WebKit. While I don't have numbers, I think we can agree that of the ideologically-driven software that we have today, Mozilla Firefox obliterates all other such projects in terms of number of installations and active users. I'd also expect that, aside from GNU/Linux, it would dwarf the other ideologically-driven software in terms of the average amount of time users spend using the software. Even on GNU/Linux, either it or Chromium would account for the vast majority of most users' time --- which is why we have products like ChromeOS and FirefoxOS. Given the above, you'd have to agree that if Mozilla died, it would at the very least be a substantial setback to the open source movement --- more damaging than the loss of any other project, including GNU/Linux and Chromium (which is not ideologically-driven). I would argue that it's worse than that, though. Setting aside Chrome/Chromium for the time-being, the loss of Firefox by itself would allow companies to play lock-in games. In today's world, Google (in past worlds, Microsoft) can propose things like SPDY and P/NaCL, but can't get traction without Mozilla's support and input. In a Mozilla-free world, Google could propose, implement and make things the de facto standard without having to answer to anyone except their customers. Google wouldn't need to consult other companies because everyone understands those other companies to be commercially-driven entities who need to compete or die. How long do you think Google's support for open source would last in such a world? (For hints, see their openness with respect to search indexing, API access and their online software suites.) More importantly, how much of a role do you think open source as a whole would be able to play in such a world? Google's not the only threat that Mozilla protects the open source world from, but it's the biggest and most apparent. If we bring Chrome back into the equation in a Mozilla-free world, what would happen? Very likely, a new project would spring up around either Gecko or Chromium. If the former, the new project would face the same issues as Mozilla, needing to be competitive and pragmatic to maintain its influence. If the latter, it would either have to fork and separate (again facing the same issues as Mozilla), or stay with Chromium/Google. And that's unworkable if the reason for the fork is ideological --- remember that Google forked WebKit, which was all about control; similarly, WebKit forked KHTML, and one side ended up dying. I apologise because, as long as this reply is, it's way too brief to do the issues justice.

1. We don't hear about "media players" because people just expect video to work on the Web. Which it won't in Firefox, if Firefox doesn't support H.264, especially as Flash dies off. 2. Google has a lot of bad ideas we're not copying, like PNaCl and Dart and WebP. (FWIW WebP's not bad-bad, but not good enough to be worth doing.) Instead we building better alternatives like asm.js and mozjpeg and ES6 and Daala. 3. It's great when users care about our mission but the great majority of our users never did care, never have had to care for us to succeed in our mission, and shouldn't have to care. There are many important issues in the world and we can't expect everyone to care about all of them.

Nope, it "emphasizes" only that while Google provides a convenient blogging platform, Mozilla does not. The huge mistake is inside the concept of "user". Back to "Phoenix" days, I was working as CTO in a small Web company and I struggled to force developers in making Web sites compliant with "standards" instead of just testing them on Internet Explorer. Not only "users" but first developers DID NOT CARE of the Web, since it was less work to adopt the most common approach. Fortunately among "users" there was a minority who could make a difference and evangelize the rest, forcing them to keep their mind and work "open". Nowadays the situation is more or less the same but Mozilla changed. Instead of pushing AGAINST the flow, people working at Mozilla are the first supporters of their competitors (the "me too" thing). The problem doesn't come from "the user", it comes from inside Mozilla. Mozilla doesn't believe in its own "mission".

I've been contributing to Mozilla continuously since the year 2000, both as a volunteer and on staff. Circumstances have changed but our commitments have not. I find it irritating when people claim to know my mind and minds of my co-workers better than I do.

I guess what is in your mind is a bit less important compared to what Mozilla produces, also known as "facts". What Mozilla is doing is to look at what it thinks are "competitors", Apple, Google, Microsoft and then say "we must do the same things to retain market share", which is just a step before "we are losing market share because our products are inferior". Now, in the same moment Mozilla thinks Google's Chrome is better than Firefox because Chrome is better in giving people what people want, in the same moment Mozilla assumes that "the user" doesn't care of anything but having the same look and the same features as Chrome, Mozilla is accepting to be nice but irrelevant. Yes, I expect the average Mozilla's employee to think "I should be working at Google" but at the end what affects me is I must find reasons to use Firefox (the copy) instead of Chrome (the real deal). If I am one of those "users" who don't care of anything, then I don't have reasons to prefer Firefox. And when I am told by Mozilla that actually there aren't reasons and even if there were I would be to stupid to care of them, well...

Your second and third paragraphs are all claims about what people at Mozilla think.

By the way, same with FirefoxOS. Everybody is using smartphones, Mozilla must carve its slice off the cake but doesn't believe it can do any better than "competitors", then here come the cheap phones for developing countries, with the noble mission of giving them a chance of getting on Facebook to reduce the "digital divide". The "user" doesn't care of the Open Web, you must give people what people want to stay on the business, then in this case your only option is price. FirefoxOS sucks, nobody ad Mozilla would use it instead of iOS or Android but if the phone is cheap enough, Mozilla gets its market share and everybody is happy.

I think Firefox OS competing on price is pretty much a bad strategy. Kitkat can also run on lower end devices now. I honestly don't see anything stopping Google from optimizing it for $20 phones. But Firefox OS also competes on regional integration and OEM friendliness. That also may not be enough in the long run but they have gotten a few people like Philips. Ultimately the best hope for Firefox OS is that Google blesses it with their apps and services. This could happen as already they have a Youtube app and they already seem to want to combine Chrome with Android (see Project Hera) and are already emphasizing the Android platform in favor of their services so they can reach iOS users (see Chromecast). None of that is truly surprising since Google is at it's heart a web company. Still if Mozilla wants to have any leverage to influence the Web they have to have marketshare. Surprisingly, their best bet seems to be Firefox for Android. I think if Mozilla really wants to guide the web of the future they may have to work on a new separate mobile browser of the likes of Javelin, Coast, and Link Bubble. I don't know if they can do that using Gecko since it seems harder to work with as far as embedding is concerned (I'd love to be proven wrong). So they may be better off going with Webkit, Blink or creating a new fork of Webkit so that they can move quickly without being hindered by the design choices of Gecko. They have to get as many users to get their browser app as possible if want to be able to have influence in mobile.