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Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago. Mozilla will also shut down Hubs, the 3D virtual world it launched back in 2018, and scale back its investment in its mozilla.social Mastodon instance. The layoffs will affect roughly 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported the layoffs.

Yo, wtf. Their VPN, Relay and Monitor are basically the only Mozilla services I'd use and pay for. To me this sounds like this is the wrong direction. What do you guys think?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This is management speak for... our shit isn't working, we're trying to diversify our revenue but so far just wasted heaps of money. We're going to cut everything to extend the curve but this marks the start of our death spiral.

This is a bit left field but... my big idea is that mozilla should become a payment gateway for donating to other opensource projects. They can skim a few percent off everything. Great alignment with Mozilla's values & history. All open source projects will end up promoting mozilla. Mozilla has the right brand and user-base to leverage.

Suppose my new tab page showed me a bit of an overview about some opensource project, the people involved, and the people who use the project, and suggested a donation of $1. I would genuinely like that. After a few small donations they could suggest I charge my account with $50 which I can then donate to whatever projects in the coming months as the mid takes me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Holdup! I genuinely like this idea! On first startup it could ask for it, whether you would like to see this or not.

What they could do as well, is host their on git (forgejo is the name i think) and this donation built in. Basically what github is doing but without microsoft.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That one's good enough to suggest to them!

Can see why they'd maybe be wary of getting into appraising open source projects if taking payments, but maybe something they could collaborate on with EFF & others. Maybe also that "alternative to" project, which doesn't currently focus on open source stuff but naturally covers quite a lot of it.