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

Comments

• thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨23⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

  For me the requirements in a browser are:

  • Works without many issues
  • Has extensions (or built-in features) that do what NoScript, Ublock Origin, Dark Reader, CanvasBlocker, and Redirector do on LibreWolf
  • Relatively secure
  • Open source and free from corporate evil
  • Not annoying in any major ways

  When the required extensions get made for Falkon, I’m probably switching

  When they are in late beta or ready for use, I will try Servo-based browsers and Ladybird

  currently I use LibreWolf

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• ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Google puts up a major chunk of the funding Mozzia gets in a year. If you don't want them being the default choice in search or having your queries fed to their bots then start putting up the money to make their support no longer required.

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  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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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  • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ 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 ⁨44⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

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

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  • underisk@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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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  • antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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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  • Zombie@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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 ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

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  • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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 ⁨15⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ 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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    • db2@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Lets all go back to Gopher.

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  • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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

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    • ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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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• ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  servo.org/contributing/

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  • RiQuY@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Do we have a web browser that uses Servo engine yet?

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    • L_Acacia@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Most website do not run on servo

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    • Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Not even remotely close yet unfortunately.

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• FaceDeer@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It's funny seeing the sudden surge of "copyright is awesome!" On the Internet now that it's become a useful talking point to bludgeon the hated Abominable Intelligence with.

  Have any actual court cases established that Gemini is violating copyright, BTW? The major cases I've seen so far have been coming down on the "training AI is fair use" side of things, any copyright issues have largely been ancillary to that.

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  • yoasif@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Copyright isn't awesome, it is useful. The whole basis of open source is built on the concept of copyright (copyleft), so alignment with copyright isn't "sudden", it is fundamental.

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    • Grimy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Copyrights is mostly used by big companies to fuck with the competition so they can keep a strangle hold on the consumers.

      It’s a deeply flawed system not in any way to our advantage. Actually having the copyright laws strengthened so they apply to AI training would instantly kill the open source scene and make certain only a handful of companies can afford to put out models.

      Copyleft is built as a protection against big companies and how unfair the playing field is because of copyright laws. It’s like saying crime is a good thing because without it, we wouldn’t have a police force.

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  • ErmahgherdDavid@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Well Anthropic chose to settle their piracy lawsuit out of court which probably indicates that they thought there was a reasonable chance they could have lost the case. No legally binding precedents set yet though afaik.

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  • porcoesphino@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Why is this being downvoted so heavily?

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• palordrolap@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Sigh. At this rate I can see a day where I end up switching to WebKitGTK's MiniBrowser as my main rather than having it as a "secret" backup.

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• Dequei@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The first ( without the ) is making me go crazy haha

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  • Railcar8095@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

    God I’m happy to not be the only one. I read the thing the times trying to figure out where it was closing it

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  • BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    #Error

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• headset@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Oh no! Better delete that woke tranny Firefox and install Brave™ the Crypto AI browser.

  Am I doing Lemmy right?

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  • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No, that’s reddit.

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• cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  contrast with vivaldi explicitly taking a no ai stand in the browser.

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  • yoasif@fedia.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    But also not open source.

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    • original_reader@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      True. Still, afaik, they haven’t done anything shady.

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    • tux0r@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Some of it is.

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• nil@piefed.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Mozilla is over.

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  • watson@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The rot has set in. There’s no getting it out, now.

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    • tux0r@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The rot has set in in 2017.

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• flamiera@kbin.melroy.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Firefox Fanboys still: LEST IT NOT CHROME!

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