I don't remember if it was here or in Linux Addicts, I wrote about zombie projects, they are the ones that continue consuming resources but do not contribute anything relevant. The Mozilla Foundation must be eliminated so that Firefox and Thunderbird do not follow the same path as OpenOffice.
Since Brendan Eich was forced to resign as president of the Foundation for supporting the "wrong" political stance, Mozilla followed a path of failed projects and political activism that paved the way for Google Chrome's near-monopoly.
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For years, Linux users had to resign themselves to an office suite that was, at best, 5 years behind its proprietary alternatives. Its successor LibreOffice quickly made up for lost time. What changed? Sun, the project's sponsor, disappeared and the developers created a new entity, The Document Foundation.
For a few years now we have been covering the slow decline of the Mozilla Foundation, a decline that had its last milestone a few days ago when It was learned that they were going to end the year as they started it: by laying off people, in this case 30% of the staff.
Of course, the entity behind Firefox and Thunderbird tells it differently. For its global communications manager:
We’re reorganizing teams to increase agility and impact as we move toward a more open and equitable technical future.
Beyond the narrative, in practice the division of Defens has already been closed.(In charge of ensuring privacy, inclusion, digital literacy and the dissemination of a healthy Internet) The Internet Health Report unit, which is in charge of scholarships and those that organized award ceremonies and MosFest events, are also missing.
Why the Mozilla Foundation should disappear
While it's true that the entire industry is in crisis, not all organizations have laid off and shelved projects at the level of Mozilla. Nor do its products suffer the decline that the Firefox browser is experiencing. Added to this are two worrying factors. On the one hand, it is likely that as a result of the antitrust trial that Google lost, it will have to stop funding one of its competitors. On the other hand, the president of the Foundation, Mitchell Baker, was a fervent defender of banning Donald Trump on social networks and involved Mozilla in her way of thinking.
It's not just political preferences. In the past Mitchell was criticized for increasing her salary while reducing staff. She also embarked on projects that fell through or generated resentment among users, such as the inclusion of advertising.
With 2,65% of the market, a lost leadership and the possibility of losing 80% of its funding, the only alternative to Chrome's browser engine is at risk. We urgently need another entity, made up of developers, professional administrators and users. (And not by political activists) take control of Firefox and Thunderbird. If this is not possible, then forks can be created. This Foundation can be financed by user contributions, the sale of additional services such as VPNs, or advertising that users voluntarily agree to view.
It took us a lot of effort to shake off Internet Explorer, only to fall under the even worse yoke of Chrome. What we need are alternatives that, while respecting standards, compete to provide a better service. But, a necessary condition for that is that the Mozilla Foundation must disappear.
Today, Chrome leads the pack with 56%, Safari with 18% and Microsoft Edge with 5,25%. Chrome and Edge use the same rendering engine, as do the minority-owned Opera, Vivaldi and Brave. Remember that Microsoft was forced to switch to Chrome's engine because Google boycotted its browser on YouTube and other popular services.
Although the Chromium engine is open source, Google has a strong influence on its development. However, it remains to be seen how the judge decides that the company must comply with the antitrust ruling.