“It’s just business”
-Sociopaths
It’s amazing the inhumanity that little thought terminating cliche validates. Basically “Just following orders” for capitalists.
The reality is hurting others for money as the motivation makes hurting others worse not better. I might hurt someone to save my child’s life from certain death in some odd hypothetical, or to avenge my child’s death in another, but hurting people… for money? That’s as monstrous a reason as doing it for fun.
It’s like we’re taking crazy pills. “Oh, they were cruel and hurt that person? Let’s get them! Ohhhh they did it for private profit, well that’s ok then nevermind!”
The Money God demands its sacrifice.
Give anyone an ounce of power and they turn into heartless corrupt garbage cunts… 💔
Sounds like Mozilla is done for (whether or not they win the suit) and it’s just a matter of time before Firefox ceases to exist. You can’t tell me this level of political corporate bullshit doesn’t scream that they’re intent on destroying the company as fast as they can.
I’m withholding judgment until we get more details. I remember reading good things about Teixeira from people who worked with him, so putting aside this doozy of a case, hopefully his health and family will be alright.
Nothing of worth to comment on the case, but something in the article caught me off guard:
Firefox, […] is the company’s only profitable product.
Is Pocket seriously not profitable? I keep seeing contradicting claims about it. Thinking I’ll need to learn how to read financial reports to get an actual answer.
Edit: the audited financial statements 2020–2023 show continuous growth in subscription and advertising revenue, which is where Pocket is bundled alongside VPN, Monitor, etc.
That doesn’t tell me anything about their individual operational expenses and whether any are profitable, though. Understandably, the organization might not have such a clear distinction between their expenses, or even if they do, they might not need to publish that… So how does one know if Pocket (in this instance) is profitable or not?
If anyone out there who has made claims regarding the profitability of products such as Pocket can point me the way to finding this kind of information, I’d be immensely grateful.
Fuck I’m reevaluating my life choices in terms of browsers. I assumed the situation of firefox is what it is because mozilla is morally superior and doesn’t compromise. It now seems like it’s not morally superior at all, so the reason for the current situation of firefox must be just sheer incompetence.
Dammit.
“Mr Teixeira had ethical concerns regarding the layoffs because they were primarily motivated by a desire to increase profit margins at Mozilla, which was already operating at a profit,” the complaint claims. “Mr Teixeira viewed this as antithetical to Mozilla’s values as espoused on their website: ‘We’re backed by a non-profit, which means we prioritize the interests of people first, not corporate profits.’”
Wow.
You can probably still use Firefox. It’s FOSS. The same contributors and devs work on it like always.
And in the end it may fork and become something else, when enough people are fed up with the corpobro bs. But still better than Chrome.
Mozilla is the primary developer of the Gecko web engine which Firefox uses. Open source or no, web engines are complicated things to develop and maintain. Even Microsoft gave up and just started using Chromium.
Would it continue to work without a significant organization dedicated to maintaining it? Sure, probably, for awhile. Would it continue to be safe to use for things like finances? No.
Is there any point to switching web browsers to one that is based on the same engine? Not really, no, the browser application is basically just a wrapper for the engine… a skin, a theme, like having an SUV shell vs a pickup shell on the same frame and drivetrain.
Could be one of those C-suite power plays:
Texeira is managing their one profitable product profitably and looks destined to be CEO.
The old CEO Baker suddenly resigns, and appoints Chambers as (permanent) successor CEO.
Chambers and/or Baker is in tight with the head of HR Chehak, and gets her to declare that Texeira is physically unfit for his job as Chief Product Officer or any other job at Mozilla.
Chambers and/or Baker get their wish for Chambers to become CEO;
Demonstrably competent exec Texeira is essentially out of a job;
Great success!
Sounds like some MBA bros and broettes infected the company. I’ll stick with it now but it’s easy as fuck to change browsers these days
it’s easy as fuck to change browsers these days
Is it? Switch to what, exactly?
Just remember… when you have a business degree, you are qualified to run any business. That’s what a business degree is for.
Hire as many glorified bean counters as you can to run your business…into the ground.
As bad as this is if true (and it’s abhorrent), is google really any better with how they continuously treat their employees and their produc–er… customers?
Nope, google sucks at everything. Plenty of other browsers though that are based on chromium and hopefully not as shit as chrome. I’d need to do some research.
But supporting chromium is supporting chrome, which supports google. Not directly, of course, and certainly better than direct chrome, but the underlying methodology is identical. The ff management that caused this to happen should be blacklisted (I’d even support them imprisoned over this). However, knocking ff completely out (including any browser built on it) is not good, imo, as it strengthens Google’s chrome’s/chromium’s hold on the browser market, creating a true browser monopoly. Right now, chromium is open source, but if google becomes a true browser monopoly, how long do you think chromium’s FOSS status will hold? I’m going to venture, not very long. I just never thought I’d have to choose between evil and more evil when selecting my browser…
It’s kinda like supporting them but as long as the browser isn’t force feeding me ads, stealing my data, or trying to get rid of ad blockers, I’ll live with it. Definitely don’t want to get rid of Firefox but I’m having a hard time understanding why shit like this article is happening at a non profit.
I agree. If ff becomes for-profit or starts actively treating the browser as for-profit, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes just as bad as google. Worse, even, since they were once actually good and their turn to the dark side will be perceived as an ultimate betrayal.
Whoa, that is fucked up. They had no empathy for the guy, and the dude was one step away from CEO. Wtf is going on over there? They’ve been making sketchy decisions lately.
Well that’s a fucked up story. Christ.
As always, all it takes is one egotistical jackass (Laura Chambers in this case) to sink a ship.
I want a restart. I want every company started before last year to be shut down, every CEO to be fired and put on a “do not hire” list.
I know the world would collapse, but…
I don’t have anything for that.
You’d be surprised. The world may just be fine. Might take a few months of uncertainty but there should be a lot of stock of necessities.
Why would they do that? Are they looking for someone to say “Oh, no. I can’t sir :(”?
Bad management.
Ah pulling a Steve jobs I see.
That’s why I say it’s silly to stick with a company because of some hypothetical moral stance or some higher ethical goal. They always end up disappointing you.
Its the only browser that has issues with some websites and web apps. That’s not a badge of honour. Use what works. There will be a time and place where correct decisions will have to be made, Firefox is not it.
