- > Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.
> The nonprofit, also the parent of Firefox, is investing in artificial intelligence startups that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.
Why?, they want to go bankrupt?, do they like burning money?
I would understand investing in AI Tech... Brilliant if they use Mozilla contributors.
I would understand but investing in other startups... with due diligence and something that might make a difference
> that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.
what... why... what the hell... that's governments job, not mozillas...
- I would rather Mozilla spend their money focusing on reducing Firefox's enormous memory usage or maintaining Thunderbird.
They could build interesting protocols into Firefox like IPFS or ENS, or develop alternatives. $1.4 billion can accomplish a lot -- if you stay in your lane and don't yeet it into a capital intensive field with uncertain returns like AI.
by this_user
3 subcomments
- How about building a "rebel alliance" to take on Chrome instead?
- > Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report.
$1.4 billion would be a very good start for an endowment which one day could maybe fund, a browser?
- >Creating a rebel alliance to fight the Empire
>Receive most of their funding from the Empire
It's a trap!
- Firefox has no PWA installation hook. Please focus on what matters...
- I just want to keep using Firefox, but it is getting really hard.
Thanks for starting Rust, I guess, at least it was directly related to improving Firefox.
by guizadillas
1 subcomments
- You had ONE JOB Mozilla, ONE JOB
- Changing the Firefox icon to a womp rat in a gun sight is not going to make more people want to use the browser; but fixing, enhancing the browser’s capabilities will.
by GuestFAUniverse
0 subcomment
- How about training a LLM by distributing workloads to the gazillion of bored gamers via GPU-enabled BOINC jobs? -- not just folding@home
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOINC_client%E2%80%93server_te...
The estimated are in the 10-100 Petaflop range. Should be good enough for training.
- So much negativity about Firefox in these threads. Could they be doing better? Absolutely, but without them we’d have almost no browser choice today.
Even if you don’t care too much about FF itself, they also own the Gecko engine on top of which other browsers are built.
Personally I’ve been using Zen for the past year and it’s been a pretty good experience. I should add a disclaimer that I’m not a frontend dev, so can’t speak to dev tooling.
by lanyard-textile
0 subcomment
- >“It’s that spirit that a bunch of people are banding together to create something good in the world and take on this thing that threatens us,” Surman told CNBC in an interview. “It’s super corny, but people totally get it.”
If you have to explain why you chose the name, it might not be a good name :/
- Mozilla you have one job. Make the browser. That's it, that's all you need to do!
by pseudalopex
0 subcomment
- Did the article not link or name the report? Or did I miss it?
They meant State of Mozilla 2025 seemingly.[1]
[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/
by omnicognate
0 subcomment
- It's like watching the standards-based web commit suicide.
- I think "reserves" and "extremely risky investment fund" are supposed to be different things?
Then again, given Mozilla Foundation's stellar record of taking on massive corporations and crushing them, and given that they themselves not owe their very financial existence not even a little bit solely to donations from a certain mega-corporation, maybe it's not that risky - more an assured success.
by Jugglewhoa
1 subcomments
- Firefox has burned enough goodwill with me over the years. Them putting ads in the URL bar was the last straw and I switched to LibreWolf. Haven't looked back since, its basically a drop in replacement and works with all my previous container/add on workflows. May need to mess with fonts, but that's it.
by DeepYogurt
0 subcomment
- Please just don't
- Even Apple conceded that building it from scratch is prohibitively expensive. Mozilla would do better to use that money for the browser, but then again, Mozilla has never known how to operate. It's a mere miracle fluke that they're not bankrupt.
by some_furry
1 subcomments
- How about building a better AI-free browser first, Mozilla?
Is that too much to ask for?
by tomashubelbauer
0 subcomment
- I'm just glad I was there for Mozilla's peak. Hopefully I'll get to experience Ladybird's next.
by sparcpile
2 subcomments
- The sooner the AI bubble pops and takes all of these companies out, the better the world will be.
- I have zero trust in Mozilla with their ability in the marketplace currently. I held out using their products while they stagnated for nearly a decade because I value the privacy they once provided.
Mozilla has failed to compete in the browser landscape and it feels icky most of the stuff they have attempted to do, which didn't even yield them any money.
Great work, you robbed the bank and you're still poor and everyone hates you.
- Yeah I already basically daily drive Brave after using FF for years, sadly :(
by semiquaver
0 subcomment
- And like I everything they’ve ever done in the last 20 years it will fail.
- Mozilla can seemingly focus on anything except Firefox.
This is almost like GRRM trying hard not to focus on Winds of Winter.
- They are controlled opposition, for goodness sake!
by bossyTeacher
0 subcomment
- Mozilla has great ideas but just because YOU have a great idea it does not mean that you are the best entity to implement it. Mozilla is going to bankrupt itself by spending an excessive proportion of its money on moonshots. They would have way more impact if they redirected all that money into a great browser AND educating normies about privacy. Like way bigger impact.
Right now, Mozilla keeps fighting wars it cannot win.
- No, just don't.
Given the Mozilla track records and bias, looks like they need another woke LLM that is woker and DEI-er (is that even a word?) than the existing major models.
I'd rather they focus on finally bringing Firefox back where it belongs, instead of spending resources on useless identity wars.
- cringe
by mystraline
0 subcomment
- And this is why I will NOT:
donate to this sham foundation
Buy their Thunderbird pro mailservice
Or shovel money in any of their other hair-brained schemes.
by renewiltord
0 subcomment
- Haha this seems doomed because the community reflexively hates this technology.
- Anthropic is the rebel alliance. Or more like the Free French, who refused to collaborate. But having billions to train is table stakes now. No cheeky upstart is ever going to beat physics like that.
- Ah, so that's why firefox bugs are open for 10+ years and there's no one to work on these.. screw them.
by mikkupikku
1 subcomments
- Wowz just like Star Wars! Heckin updoots xD
Sorry, I can't take Mozilla seriously when they're doing anything other than Firefox or Thunderbird. Enough of this crap. Dressing it up with juvenile capeshit references doesn't help.
by self_awareness
0 subcomment
- Mozilla isn't even able to run an established browser, and they want to create new tech? Please.
- By the way, if anyone is looking to switch from Firefox, Floorp is also heavily invested in AI.
- For fk sake!
by PlatoIsADisease
2 subcomments
- Conspiracy theory time? Conspiracy theory time.
I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'.
Okay, before this is marked as crazy talk: Historically this has happened, this isnt a new invention. A company needs to survive, not be ethical. Using third parties give plausible deniability.
I look at the atrocious state of LibreOffice, and I'm pretty sure someone from Microsoft is screwing things up. Might just be a little bit of friction and fake concern over a useful change. Maybe they even find someone who already does this and fund it as a full time job.
I look at Firefox, and I wonder if Google somehow is significantly influencing things there. Google keeps Firefox alive to prevent anti-trust. But they make sure funding is diverted from browser to wasteful projects.
When I worked for a fortune 20 company, we had a major, irrational push away from python into Microsoft Power Automate. Other people were convinced either our director was a Microsoft plant, or was getting some sort of kickback.
Here is my question:
What is the business called where people do this? Like if these companies paid a third party, what is this categorized as? (For instance, paying for reddit upvotes and comments is called 'Reputation Management')
- [dead]
by GenericDev
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by tokyobreakfast
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
- [flagged]
- Ah yes, go fight some of the companies with the highest ever investment numbers. Anything else than focusing on that one browser that is a cornerstone of the free web
- the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
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