[liberationtech] Time to Switch to Discord & Mozilla Firefox?

[Tom Ritter]

[I work for Mozilla; but don't represent them of course]

On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 at 14:37, axel simon <axelsimon at axelsimon.net> wrote:
> Regarding Firefox vs. Chrome, Firefox has been the only browser (with any relevant market share) that isn't the product of a for profit company for a while. While Mozilla have made questionable descisions at time (and outright mistakes at others), that alone should be a strong argument to consider where one gets their browser from.

Our mis-steps are often and painful - at least a few every year. But
everyone's support - and constructive feedback - when we make them is
what helps keep the ship on course. And of course actual users
engaging with our browser and our service suite [0] keeps the ship
sailing.

[0] We are investing more in the suite of related services via a 'Join
Firefox campaign': https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/join-firefox/

If you have gripes about Firefox; want to raise an issue or ask after
the status of it - I can't promise I can make your desire happen but I
can at least listen and pass it along. And if you're inclined to try
to write a patch yourself I can try to mentor you or find you one.

> I recall reading a statement in an article around Chrome's release about 10 years ago by then-CEO Eric Schmidt explaining that at the end of the day, if you want to be able to really control and see what users are doing, you need your own browser. This was when people couldn't quite understand why Google would build its own browser when Firefox had manage to end the Internet Explorer dead lock and they had a good relationship.
> That passage really stayed with me (and if anyone were to find it, I'd be very greatful, I can't seem to do so).
>
> So yes, it's not that surprising that, when push comes to shove, the engineering teams working on Chrome have to bow to the business priorities of Google, the world's (more or less) biggest advertisement company.

A similar reason is why I joined Mozilla. I have lots of friends at
Google and Facebook and all they do all day is working to make the
internet a better place. But the mechanism that enables them to do so
often does not make the internet a better place.

-tom