Where have they announced that they're focusing on "agenda pushing"? Mozilla's "agenda" feels like a very tiny part of what they do, it's just that people talk about it endlessly.
Maybe that's a great example of the different ways you can look at the exact same thing. To me that's a privacy cause, and it's one I agree with. What percentage of Ring customers are aware they're providing the police with a direct feed of their front yard?
"Ring Reveals They Give Videos to Police Without User Consent or a Warrant"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/ring-reveals-they-give...
"Privacy cause" is an agenda they're pushing. An agenda I happen to agree with, but promoting that privacy agenda is not software development spending no matter how you look at it. You can't reasonably claim these are equivalent just because you like them both. Telling people that Ring is bad isn't software development, a "different way of looking at it" doesn't cut it.
There aren't only two pots of money in the Mozilla budget, one labeled "software development" and another "agendas", they do all kinds of things. An increase in "agendas" does not automatically mean a decrease in software development. Case in point: Mozilla used to have a "Mozilla Science Lab" from 2013-18[1]. When it was shut down there was presumably extra cash made available. Maybe it went to "agendas", maybe it didn't. And hey, maybe it couldn't: the foundation receives donations for specific projects, they're not able to just say "thanks for the money, we're actually going to spend it on something totally different". If they shut down a program they might well lose the funding associated with it and the whole thing would be a zero-sum exercise.
To interpret this as a binary choice between two activities is an oversimplification.
The claim was more specific than that: it was “reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead”.
Two factual statements:
1) the Mozilla Corporation laid off engineers
2) the Mozilla Foundation spent money pursuing “agendas”
I am suggesting that those two events are not necessarily connected to each other.
Just read their blog. Latest three: - EU's AI Act - Fakespot school supplies? - Making trustworthy chatbots to support women plagued by violence and abuse
The first one might make sense? Second one WTF? And third is disgusting (I know people effected and the LAST thing they want is some chatbot).
None of these are related strongly to Firefox. I quit donating to them years ago after it was obvious they have their priorities messed up.
How is hosting "responsible AI" competitions not something they're doing? Sounds like a huge waste and a distraction from what should be their core mission of protecting the web by making the best browser they possibly can. If they want to dip their toes into the AI space to stay trendy and relevant, they could at least do it in a way that constructively relates to creating a web browser. Their local translation extension is a good example of this, they did a great job with it. They could do more, like maybe experiment with AI-guided adblocking or something. But a competition to create responsible chatbots? How is that relevant to Firefox? Besides the winner of the competition being stupid, the whole competition was stupid. What did they even hope to accomplish with such a competition, to sway the development of commercial chatbots from the likes of OpenAI or Facebook? They gave out $100k to the top 3 winners and not one of them has anything to do with making a better browser. If I'm wrong, then please explain how any of this relates to making Firefox better. Don't copy-paste their vapid corporate rambling explanation to me, if you can't explain it in plain normal english then it's bullshit.
In your opinion. I disagree. They could spend a billion dollars on making the best browser the world has ever seen and it would still be used by next to no-one. People use the browser they're given, especially in the smartphone era we're in now. Android users use Chrome. iOS users use Safari, Mozilla isn't even allowed to make a real version of Firefox for iOS.
So they've clearly decided to expand their mission to protect the web. Ensuring AI is used ethically strikes me as relevant to the topic, a little too much like chasing buzzwords to my taste but it's clearly an area of current interest. And hey, maybe a few more people will learn about the Mozilla brand and consider converting to Firefox some day.
Seems like you're now conceding matheusmoreira's point you disputed before:
> They got one billion dollars and they're reducing software development spending to focus on agenda pushing instead.
And you haven't bothered to answer my question, so I'll put it to you again: How does rewarding the development of a chatbot to talk about sexual violence relate to furthering their mission to "protect the web"? It's nothing more than the predictable synthesis of AI hype and a popular social cause, it has nothing to do with the web at all. If the best you can come up with is people will hear about this chatbot and then maybe they'll use Firefox, then why don't you just admit the whole thing is a farce?
And as for it being an effective promotion of firefox and "clearly an area of current interest", then where, besides Mozilla's corporate blog, have you ever heard of this chatbot competition or any of the three winners? The winner of the competition is "Sanative AI", never mentioned on HN before this comment. Do a general web search for "Sanative AI" tell me if any of the results you find are likely to inform people of Firefox's existence and benefits. I feel confident in asserting that this competition has not brought a single new user to Firefox, and was not in earnest ever meant to.
I don't understand why everyone keeps talking about this as if it's an either/or.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/116.0/releasenotes/
Three releases so far this month! Look at that technical organization iterating on its core product!
There's definitely an agenda. It's one that's good for users IMHO though, as opposed to the agendas of the for-profit browser makers.