A Sad Day for the Internet (Mozilla Layoffs)

[c_atlas]

Earlier today, Mozilla announced they're laying off 25% of their workforce (250 people). The announcement heralds the second round of layoffs in 2020, the first of which consisted of 70 employees in mid-January.

Mozilla, founded in 1998, has been a long-time vocal advocate for a free, open, and accessible internet. The non-profit has released free and open-source software such as the Thunderbird email client, Bugzilla (open-source bug reporting for a lot of projects you might use), the Rust programming language, and the entire Firefox Suite.

This most recent round of layoffs sets a disturbing precedent for the future of the web. Sources close to Mozilla report that a large number of the terminated employees were engineers working on projects that were set to secure Firefox's future as a competitive browser (Firefox has seen a steady decline in use in recent years). One such project is Servo, a modern browser engine designed to capitalize on Rust's strong memory safety and concurrency guarantees, resulting in faster and more reliable web rendering. Today, the entire Servo team has been let go, along with the Firefox Developer-Tools, and MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) teams.

Cutting these efforts is a considerable blow to the open internet. Without Firefox Developer tools, web developers will migrate to Google Chrome when testing their sites, which will likely degrade the web experience for Firefox users. Anyone who has used MDN can tell you how indispensable it is as a reference for veteran web developers and as a guide for those who aspire to contribute to the web.

Today, Firefox stands alone against a tide of Chromium-based browsers. If Mozilla lets Firefox die, we netizens will have no choice but to use a Chromium-based browser, effectively allowing Google to have complete control of the gateway to the world wide web. As people who value the freedom the internet has brought with it, this should serve as a reminder that freedom is not a given; it's earned by those who fight hard to protect it. We can't close our eyes; we have to pay attention because if we don't, the things we value most will be taken from us.

Mozilla's executive's salaries increased while Firefox's market share decreased. The management lost its vision. If you're contributing to open source, make sure you pay attention to what's happening, I have a feeling that this is only the beginning, and we'll look back at this as a pivotal moment in time.

[Carlton Banks]

That is indeed sad news.

Mozilla's executive's salaries increased while Firefox's market share decreased. The management lost its vision. If you're contributing to open source, make sure you pay attention to what's happening, I have a feeling that this is only the beginning, and we'll look back at this as a pivotal moment in time.

This part is most interesting, and it's not the least of the criticism concerning Mozilla's management. I certainly got tired of all the pointless "simplification" of the UI, but am less critical of e.g. the changes to the plug-in API, which Mozilla were also criticized for publicly.

It's hard to see what positive outcome us regular web users can encourage, if the problems are coming from the top down, then the solution is typically lateral. But using this does not mean I will be using Chrome, certainly not

[franky1]

many software companies are doing this.
the actual aim is to shave off the cream of the highest paid devs that been there too long. so they can re-hire new generation of fresh devs.

because sometimes after a few years the older generation of devs stop learning new skills and get set in their ways running out of idea's to innovate and instead start just making silly features for profit

google and apple learned this ages ago which is why you get more innovation by having alot of staff turn over, on temporary contracts then just hiring a single team and sticking with them for decades

this covid lockdown period where people were being paid to stay home and not work in many cases revealed how some companies can function without the dead weight. so they find the true efficiencies

what most software companies will be doing is re-hiring new staff or temporary contracters.to replace the dead weight

so all you guys getting paid to do nothing. while the business your contracted still functions. be careful they may be assessing that your dead weight too if they can function without you

[Vod]

the actual aim is to shave off the cream of the highest paid devs that been there too long. so they can re-hire new generation of fresh devs.

That's ageism, and is illegal, but it's also true.

As you age you will lose creativity and speed while you demand more compensation.  It makes perfect sense to hire contractors for a fixed term instead of a perm job.

I think in my 30 year IT career I maybe had three to four perm jobs - the rest were always contracts.

[roberthays]

It is very unfortunate but this happens a lot particularly with technology as people are always innovating and there are always better products on the horizon.