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Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

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MaxBarraclough

> just stop shooting yourself in the foot

It's just non-stop with Mozilla, isn't it?

They have the curious pairing of technical excellence, and a long history of awful non-technical decision-making.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14754740

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616740

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10680925

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144137

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262031

* http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html

* https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1185193

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Firefox is my last holdout for a decent graphical browser. After that it will be lynx. I am not looking forward to the endless debates with vendors to get an API gateway that supports simple forms so I can use lynx. Maybe there is a reputable company that has already done this so I can use them as a reference standard. Amazon maybe? I bet Amazon has an API with a full parity web front-end into their store.

[Edit] Just edited this message with lynx.

At some point someone [1] should just fork Firefox and work on it independently.

---

[1]: (not me, I'm horrible at maintaining projects, though I would help)

GNU IceCat is pretty much that, not a fork exactly but a sanitized version of the latest Firefox. The project looks dead though. Last stable release was in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat

Waterfox [1] is another one. Each of the forks has pros and cons. Most of the forks seem to have very few developers supporting them.

[1] - https://www.waterfox.net/

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Mozilla has no respect for its users. This is a continuing pattern as you've very clearly demonstrated.

It's been that way since the very beginning. The folks behind Mozilla always assume they know more about what the users ought to do, than the users themselves. You would maybe think that this arrogant position would have diminished a bit over the last 20 years, but apparently it has not.

The Mozilla manifesto [1] principle 8:

> Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Every change is decided in private. By the time anyone outside Mozilla becomes aware of them it's too late to provide any input. Discussion of such decisions is forbidden on bugzilla, and the forums are ignored.

The only way to provide meaningful feedback is to quit Firefox. But I don't want to use Chrome. sigh

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

I'm more annoyed by Mozilla hiding functions used mainly by powerusers so they can be accessed only using about:config (for instance relatively recently layout.css.text-decoration-skip-ink.enabled) and then completely scrapping the functionality, because people don't use it (duh). Now they want to do same with compact mode. I dread when they completely disable usage of userChrome.css.

They completely ignore the fact that Firefox got big because technical users were installing it on computers of their less technically literate relatives. Now they changed the Firefox to be carbon copy of Chrome so powerusers no longer have any reason to use it, let alone install it for other people. My reason to keep using it is at this point only desire to avoid Chrome monoculture.

Which is a shame because the technical is entirely subordinate to and for the sake of the non-technical ultimately.

Kick the technical and keep the bureaucrats. What could go wrong?

Were you around in 2014?

Yes. Thank you for your work all those years.

bring back Brendan Eich?

Ughhh those sponsored links ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26262031 ) are only just new. I can't believe they are pulling that.

Glad it can be turned off but I bet it won't sync to all my other systems.

Why did you include the Mozilla Foundation as an awful decision?

Which link are you referring to?

Sorry for the late reply, but it was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391659

The main comments were people complaining about the foundation but I see you may have been pointing out the pocket recommendations.

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