Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

&gt; While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run<p>Not focusing on Firefox is what brought it to its state today, so what should Mozilla do? Focus even less on Firefox and instead on ads, AI and begging. Insane.<p>EDIT: As an aside, it looks like Mozilla&#x27;s VC fund invested in the funding round[0] of one of the former board members[1] of mozilla.ai which is kinda weird.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;funding_round&#x2F;credo-ai-series-b--3b7e7c13" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;funding_round&#x2F;credo-ai-series-b--...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;introducing-mozilla-ai-investing-in-trustworthy-ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mozilla.org&#x2F;en&#x2F;mozilla&#x2F;introducing-mozilla-ai-i...</a>

This isn&#x27;t really &quot;growing&quot; Mozilla (they laid off 30% of their people a few months ago[0]); this is adding three people to their board of directors.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42054867">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=42054867</a> (<i>&quot;Mozilla Foundation lays off 30% staff, drops advocacy division (techcrunch.com)&quot;</i>)

The absolute last thing I want from Mozilla is advertising. Blocking ads with uBlock Origin is the entire reason I use Firefox today.<p>I don’t know how you can be this out of touch with your users.

I&#x27;m guessing the &quot;evolution&quot; of their leadership isn&#x27;t going to involve their CEO taking a cut to her seven million dollars salary?

I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity.<p>Then the people who wants to work on&#x2F;support Firefox can solely work on Firefox, and other people who wants to pursue whatever tech-of-the-day is (eg. crypto, VPN, AI) can push whatever agenda they want in their own org.<p>Instead of the current state where the other-agendas people are riding on Firefox&#x27;s brand name recognition while starving Firefox into oblivion.

I&#x27;ve noticed Mozilla bringing a lot more behind closed doors, from BugZilla to their restricted Jira.<p>Guess it is just a matter of time until Firefox is behind a walls too?

If you&#x27;re reading this and having the standard rage reaction to Baker&#x27;s salary and the squandering of Firefox, instead consider donating directly to Ladybird. The community can solve for this.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;donorbox.org&#x2F;ladybird" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;donorbox.org&#x2F;ladybird</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ladybird.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ladybird.org&#x2F;</a>

Donating to Mozilla is the same as burning money to keep warm. old orgs lose the people that made them and they become aimless inefficient monsters propped up by nepotism rather than competition.<p>Mozilla has constantly ignored the market and their users. Time for other orgs to take it up and time for Mozilla to not renew.

I wish Mozilla would get into revenue generating, web-maximalist products like an office suite alternative to Google Workspace and Microsoft. I think there are a fair number of people who want a significant brand behind these, but also an alternative to the mega-corp offerings.<p>ie, instead of Thunderbird (which I know isn&#x27;t developed by Mozilla anymore), create a hosted email platform with a PWA that can run and store data locally.<p>These types of products would have a virtuous relationship with Firefox.

I really hope the Ladybird browser project succeeds in the next few years, because it seems that Mozilla is digging Firefox&#x27; grave deeper with every step they take.

&quot;While Firefox remains the core of what we do&quot;<p>Um excuse me? Mozilla has been asleep at the wheel for years, letting Firefox languish while Mozilla plays squirrel with a dozen other things nobody knows or cares about. In fact, I guarantee you that outside of nerd culture, <i>nobody has any idea what Mozilla is</i>. But <i>maybe</i> they have heard of Firefox.<p>You should be shouting *Firefox Firefox Firefox!* from the rooftops with a massive new ad campaign aimed at growing marketshare rapidly. Then find creative ways to respectfully monetize your enthusiastic fanbase.<p>This seems like Software Business 101 to me, which is why I am continually mystified you seem unable to grasp these basics.

The CEO pay rises will continue until morale improves.

Let. Me. Pay. For. Firefox. I pay for other services online. I pay for VPN, for ElementaryOS, for Fastmail. Paying is fine. I pay, you give me a service that does not spy on me. It is not that hard.

I guess I am going to miss Firefox, at least it gave birth to Rust.

Genuinely disgusted to read any of that. All they can think of is ads, AI, and &quot;fundraising campaigns&quot; (which I presume will be more popup garbage)? This has pushed me to move to librewolf