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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla must put the advocacy bits aside and focus on the core product. Perhaps the problem with a non-technical CEO is that the advocacy and new shiny stuff is given as much importance as the invisible (and insanely complex) work that makes a browser fast and safe.

A total failure of strategy here - if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves. Instead they axe the future of Firefox.

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I'm not sure. I think advocacy is a core part of its USP -- Mozilla is privacy-friendly, and that's an important point, especially as all internet users, even average consumers, are being constantly hit over the head by how data-hungry these huge corporations are.

It's an uphill battle, sure, and there are a lot of things to overcome, but I'm not so sure I'd blame the leadership on this entirely.

I'd blame the market...for now.

Mozilla has so many privacy issues so that calling it privacy-friendly is misleading:

https://brmlab.cz/project/spyzilla

I'm flagging this comment because some of the advice in the link makes the browser much less secure. Don't disable OCSP checking!

Mozilla is doomed when it's held to such an impossible standard (such as being "spyzilla" for supporting TLS PKI).

All this poo-pooing on Mozilla doing anything less than paranoid-extreme makes people leave for other browsers, which aren't any better, and often are way worse for privacy.

> Mozilla is doomed when it's held to such an impossible standard (such as being "spyzilla" for supporting TLS PKI).

While some of these points are a bit extreme, most of them are pretty basic and could be avoided by simple maxim:

Don't call home and do not do communication with third parties unless opt-in or explicitly requested by user.

> All this poo-pooing on Mozilla doing anything less than paranoid-extreme makes people leave for other browsers

Well, i still use Firefox as lesser of two evils, but i do not see why i should say to everyone how wonderful it is.

> which aren't any better, and often are way worse for privacy.

BTW, is there any neutral comparison of Firefox vs Chromium w.r.t. privacy?

>- if the leadership couldn't find other revenue sources and partnerships in 5 years they have to fire themselves.

Like the CEO who left at the start of 2020?

You have to wonder what the firing of Eich was really about. Hard to believe Eich would've done the same thing.

Eich wasn't fired.

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