Comment on Mozilla’s Betrayal of Open Source: Google’s Gemini AI is Overwriting Volunteer Work on Support Mozilla

ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not really conductive as long as most funds are siphoned by the C-suite ranks. Get rid of the C-fat first, maybe even turn Mozilla into a co-op, then have the People fund it.

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• Zombie@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Their support isn’t required though, it’s desired.

  Mozilla have millions of $, they are actively investing in various money making schemes (sorry, financial investment vehicles) well outwith the original scope of Mozilla.

  They take the money because they want the money, they could refuse it any time they want. But they won’t, because they don’t want to. They’re not a poor FOSS project with an independent developer that needs donations to survive, stop treating them like they are.

  Mozilla has created some brilliant software, but they’re leaving their original mission behind, burning goodwill with many people around the world, and setting themselves up to be shunned by the open source community the second a viable alternative pops up.

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  • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I just hope the alternatove doesn’t take too long to materialize

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    • tux0r@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Everyone is invited to help the NetSurf project.

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    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Librewolf is my stopgap atm. We’ll see that the future holds.

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    • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I didn’t hear anything bad about Servo.org

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      • HereIAm@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You wouldn’t hear anything bad about it because the project, as far as I can tell, us like 4 months old. It’s far too young for any daily use and to see what the project matures into.

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• antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  start putting up the money to make their support no longer required

  There’s no way individual donations from ordinary people could match Google’s. They’re also likely to be less reliable.

  Mozilla doesn’t even ask for donations from users a whole lot, and the money they receive mostly doesn’t go into development of the browser:

  These funds directly support advocacy campaigns (i.e. asking big tech companies to protect your privacy), research and publications like the *Privacy Not Included buyer’s guide and Internet Health Report, and covers a portion of our annual MozFest gathering.

  www.mozillafoundation.org/en/donate/help/#frequen…

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  • froh42@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    There’s no way individual donations from ordinary people could match Google’s. They’re also likely to be less reliable.

    Thank god. I do really believe all the Google money is actively stifling innovation at Mozilla. The only thing they can’t do is building a better browser than chrome is, for fear of becoming a viable alternative again.

    So they use the money for some CEO pay. and weird projects while Firefox further falls from popularity.

    I hope for the day Firefox’s market share has dropped to a level tha Google just won’t pay any money anymore for the default search engine deal.

    That day - and not one day before - innovation will resume.

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• underisk@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Voting with your wallet doesn’t work when you are the product. They don’t care about your money when google’s will dwarf any amount individuals could hope to raise, even collectively. Nothing prevents them from just taking both your money and google’s and changing absolutely nothing.

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  • froh42@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I did. I rage-signed up for a monthly contribution to the Servo project the last time I read about something Mozilla did.

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• tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s too late to give (life) support. Web browsers are a dying ecosystem as it’s too complex to create competition. Why not abandon them and instead support software that does a seperatable part of what modern browsers do?

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  • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    HTML is old and weird and its browsers have a bad ecosystem. The way to go would be to ignore xkcd 927 and make a new standard and a pilot browser for it. The hard part would be getting people to use it.

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  • Invertedouroboros@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I don’t necessarily disagree on the complexity point, but I don’t think breaking up the functionality of a web browser fixes the issue.

    Web browsers are one of those basic tools everyone who uses a computer relies upon. Breaking that up would not only lead to user frustration, I think it’d introduce brand new territories bad actors like Google could monopolize. Now that unified “web browsers” exist it’s incredibly difficult to ask users to stop using them. It turns from “download this program” to “download these four or five separate programs and follow this guide to learn how to daisy chain them together into a browser equivalent.”. That’s a reasonable ask for some people. Hell, it’s a reasonable ask for me frankly. But your average user isn’t going to have the time nor the patience to attempt to make that solution work.

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    • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Hopefully interoperability of seperate apps as ‘part of a web browser experince’ can be improved to help all users. However, the less technologically inclinded will have to step up and do something if they want to avoid growing frustrations from an endlessly, enshitifying browser experience.

      Having a “do one thing” software design doesn’t avoid all issues of anti-competition practices, nor does it prevent anti-features. For that I’d look towards software freedom licenses (as opposed to proprietary software).

      We already have software that does some seprate parts of web browsers and comes with the OS; video players, text readers and protocol specific apps. The question is, are advanced users using alternatives like Gemini protocal? Hopefully activity will lead to others entering the new communities.

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  • db2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lets all go back to Gopher.

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    • Rooty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I am 100% ready to replace my browser with a blend of Usenet/RSS subscriptions, maybe sprinkle some Gemini (not the G*gle AI) atop of it. Fuck it, I might even get a library card for shits and giggles.

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      • Invertedouroboros@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Man I collect library cards. At this point I’m a member of three different library systems. No joke, libraries are amazing and one of the best resources we’ve got left in this country. Go get a card man!

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• Tim_Bisley@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I thought Mozilla lost the google funding in the monopoly ruling?

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  • ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Looks like it'd still a thing

    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/09/google-antitrust-ruling-firefox-search-deal

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• OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  What’s the amount they get donated or funded? So we know how much to raise yearly.

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  • djvdKu@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Something around $500M and $600M yearly. And it’s around 90% of all Mozilla revenue

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    • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      That’s a lot of donations!

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