Aral Balkan
Mozilla fires 60 people to “focus on bringing ‘trustworthy AI into Firefox.’”
Fuck you, Mozilla. No one is asking for AI in Firefox. Sadly, you’re the best we can hope for under capitalism. So if we want something better, we should look into alternative models.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/
Aral Balkan
@tchauhan Oh don’t worry, it’s Trustworthy AI™
Tushar Chauhan
@aral This is so scary. We don't need AI anywhere near a browser.
Jay Baker
@aral Ah, fuck it. Oops sorry I meant fork it - I'm using a fork of Firefox called Floorp. (So actually maybe it should be "Floorp it"?)
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
vv221
GrumpSec Spottycat
@aral @fincham OK, what browser do we use now? Not mozilla firefox, not any of the chromium browsers.. Safari isn't cross platform.. (also Apple)
Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
vv221
phiofx
@mmphosis @aral i wouldnt mind if the browser was deeply integrated with my #linux desktop but last time I check #konqueror did not impress...
mmphosis
@aral There are currently only 3 major web browser engines:
blink: Google #chromium, Google Chrome, Falkon, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, ungoogled-chromium, Microsoft Edge, …
#webkit Apple Safari, Konqueror (webkit is a fork of discontinued KHTML), GNOME Web (Epiphany), Midori, qutebrowser, surf, …
gecko: Mozilla #Firefox, SeaMonkey, GNU IceCat, Waterfox
goana: is a fork of gecko
If AI shows up in newer versions of Firefox, I will be going into about:config and turning it off.
LibWeb: #Ladybird
Aral Balkan
@fh0 Good on ‘ya, mate.
fh0
@aral I understand the article as they fire 60 people because of "Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and its Online Footprint Scrubber."
Aral Balkan
@oktavimark Fire.
Mark Oktavia
Aral Balkan
@fell @mozilla That CEO is gone. But we don’t know how much the new one makes so 🤷♂️
Felix Urbasik
@aral If @mozilla just focused on making a good browser, I would even pay for it. But that greedy CEO needs to go first.
Aral Balkan
@wernerprise Forking is easy. Maintaining a fork, not so much.
WERNERPRISE° — Thomas Werner
Thank you, Aral, for making us aware.
Time for a new fork, it seems.
Aral Balkan
@wernerprise I am programming savvy and I’d need at least a couple of million euros a year budget to maintain one properly.
WERNERPRISE° — Thomas Werner
Yes, I know. I used a FF fork until it became outdated.
Unfortunately, I am not as programming-savvy as I would like to be, otherwise I’d seriously consider setting up my own fork.
Aral Balkan
@wernerprise (What I wouldn’t need is the half a billion dollars a year Mozilla gets from Google.)
Aral Balkan
@dalfen Yep.
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊
@aral Trustworthy AI — what an oxymoron
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊
Absolutely, and they jumped on this boat very early— establishing their Mozilla AI Corp last March.
And that McKinsey article where the Mozilla Foundation’s president says* that “trustworthy AI” can “pay off in company profit and customer value” was from Dec 2022.
*as summarized by the article’s author
(I’m still digging for more specifics btw)
LAUREN
@dalfen @aral That's where you hear the voices, not of devs or anyone with principles, but of the people who want to make a dime. VC will ruin everything. It is no longer the "Angel Investor" scenario it once was. AI is hot and there is money to be churned.
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊
Oh my-
“The Mozilla Foundation’s president explains that creating trustworthy AI products not only is ethically urgent but can also pay off in company profit and customer value.”
LAUREN
Welp, thank you. Nowhere but downhill from here. They are profit focused now.
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊
Yes— this is another for-profit branch of the non-profit parent company
ˈdälfən™🐬 💥 🌊
@noondlyt
I started tracing the company structure and funding.
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/22/mozilla-launches-a-new-startup-focused-on-trustworthy-ai/
LAUREN
@aral @dalfen I am guessing some very serious VC money has come in the back door
Passenger
I remember when Microstrategy, a then-respected analytics company that made one of the best data visualisation packages at the time, decided to go all-in on bitcoin. When the fad collapsed, it almost wiped them out, and very few analytics people take Microstrategy seriously any more.
Large companies like IBM or Facebook can get away with going in on bad tech. IBM bet heavily on blockchain and Facebook bet heavily on metaverse. Both survived the experience. Likewise, Microsoft will probably survive their bet on LLMs. Mozilla might not.
This is a problem because the world might not have needed Microstrategy, IMHO it does need Mozilla. Allowing Tableau to dominate doesn't harm the web itself; allowing Chrome to dominate does.
LAUREN
@passenger @dalfen @aral I agree. And this is so disappointing.
HistoPol (#HP) 🥥 🌴
💯 %😢
Aral Balkan
@passenger @dalfen @noondlyt The world doesn’t need Mozilla. The world needs an organisation that actually does what Mozilla says it does.
Aral Balkan
@zbrando @passenger @dalfen @noondlyt In other words, a non-profit.
zbrando
@aral @passenger @dalfen @noondlyt A non profit without the for profit part should work. Maybe something similar as the Wikipedia structure?
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