Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.
Mozilla is cooked.
jwz: Mozilla has 1.4 BILLION dollars that they are spending on some AI bullshit.
That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon. Mozilla is cooked.jwz.org
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Christof Damian 💙💛
in reply to jwz • • •Meanwhile the AI companies are burning the planet to build browsers from scratch as a benchmark.
cursor.com/blog/scaling-agents
This is how we all lose.
Scaling long-running autonomous coding
Wilson Lin (Cursor)Charlie Stross
in reply to jwz • • •Oblomov
in reply to Charlie Stross • • •Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Oblomov • • •@oblomov @cstross Consider that Mozilla being cooked has a few decades of history.
Back around 2007ish, I was working with a few folk who either came from or later went to Mozilla. Anyhow, some of them were involved with the XHTML 2.0 spec.
Which was finished.
But then got ditched.
Because Googleites insisted a "living spec" was the right thing, which can only be implemented by whoever throws the most money at it, and we now have HTML5 and a browser engine monopoly.
And Mozilla?
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •Mozillans didn't like it, but Mozilla also considered a unified web more important than open standards, where the definition of "open" includes practically open to implementors.
So fuck you very much for two decades running, Mozilla.
Oblomov
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •IIRC the WHATWG was set up before Google had its own browser (I think it was Mozilla + Opera + Apple at the time?) and it almost made sense, although there was no reason to ditch XHTML 2.0 altogether. What really drives me mad is that EVEN IF one could consider the XEvent and XForms interface to be suboptimal for the kind of “dynamic” web that was being pushed (possibly by Google behind the scenes) that was really no reason to throw away the whole of XHTML 2.
Oblomov
in reply to Oblomov • • •@jens @cstross
There are still so many features that had been introduced there (client-side includes with fallback, “everything is a link”, etc) that are still sorely missing 8-(
I wonder if there was also a growing dislike for XML in general behind this choice? (hurr durr namespace confusing). It's ironic that we have to thank MS for pushing for the little support of XML in browsers we still have (and they are now working on removing 8-/).
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Oblomov • • •Oblomov
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Oblomov • • •XHTML™ 2.0 publication history
W3CJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross WHATWG started in 2004, with Mozilla, Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Apple forked KHTML into WebKit in 2005.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross The line is straight when you know the route it took, seemingly coincidental otherwise.
But as the HipCrime Vocab defines "coincidence": you weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on.
And, err, though I'm in danger of exhausting my quote quota, the proof is in the proverbial pudding.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross As you will note by some research, in April 2005, so before the publication of WebKit, there was already discontent in the KHTML community in how Apple was developing WebKit as a fork.
How can that be? They complied with the letter, but not the spirit of the GPL. web.archive.org/web/2005042823…
So, when will KHTML merge all the WebCore changes? | www.kdedevelopers.org
web.archive.orgOblomov
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross @lisamelton At any rate, Dave Hyatt was a former Mozilla dev who switched to Apple and started Safari, and so this entire thing.
He was also representing Apple at WHATWG from what I understand.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross @lisamelton And then we know how much Google pays Apple yearly since, well... neither 2004, the WHATWG start, nor 2008, the Chrome start, but... did you guess when?
2005.
businessinsider.com/google-app…
It's all coincidence until it isn't.
Google's enclosure of the web has over two decades of history, back when their motto was still "Don't be Evil".
Google paid Apple an eye-watering $20 billion in 2022
Ana Altchek (Business Insider)Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross The WHATWG position paper is from 2004: w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/…
The working draft cited there edited by Google. Full authors at the bottom:
whatwg.org/specs/web-forms/cur…
XHTML 2.0 specs have been sitting in decision limbo since 2002, when it was finished: w3.org/2007/03/XHTML2-WG-chart…
Web Forms 2.0
whatwg.orgJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross The last bit of glue, which I can only give you second hand from personal acquaintances I shall not out here, is the frustration in XHTML WG about Google and Apple blocking adoption with ever more spurious reasons.
There's probably an archive of minutes somewhere.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross The public archive of XHTML starts in 2007, but the private part requires membership.
lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/p…
public-xhtml2@w3.org Mail Archives
lists.w3.orgJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross I mean, there's also that Mozilla Corporation was launched in 2005, and crypto turd Marc Andreessen decided that was a good moment to heap praise on the new CEO content.time.com/time/specials…
Tumultous times, which weren't all dark. Firefox started making waves after this.
So here's another thing to contemplate.
The 2005 TIME 100 - TIME
TIME.comJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross Consider as well that after this it's only three years that Jonathan Zittrain wrote "The Future of the Internet", which you should read if you haven't.
futureoftheinternet.org/
The central theme is contrasting "generative systems" to "tethered appliances".
The first describes incomplete things with an unspecific purpose, such as the PC, early Internet or Web.
The second describes single purpose things tethered to this one function, and a corporate support infrastructure
:: Future of the Internet – And how to stop it.
futureoftheinternet.orgJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross The point of this comparison is in the book's tagline "and how to stop it".
It took three years of Safari to recognize and document the direction of the web as part of a larger, repeating trend. Apologies to @pluralistic , but "enshittification" is in a sense "just" a much-needed focal point for the same pattern.
Yes, that book launched the same year as Chrome. Prescient? Or pattern recognition.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross If you're up for it, also read Ben Tarnoff's Internet for the People.
versobooks.com/products/2674-i…
It reads like an almost straight up sequel to Zittrain, except the future that could've been prevented wasn't. So now the focus is on damage control.
Published 2022, 15 years later.
The history of how today's Web developed is traceable, and the patterns of how things coincide and work out can be recognized and traced.
Internet for the People
VersoJens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross Just to connect some more personal anecdotes here. I joined a video startup in 2006, quality-wise leagues ahead of YouTube. Folded, TL;DR, in 2008.
Anything I do related to @interpeer started then. I had enough reasons to not *do* much about it until the 2020s. But I can also draw a line in how my reasoning evolved all the way back to those years, and before, and so forth.
I cannot begin to describe the mixture of emotions I feel about not starting sooner.
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@oblomov @cstross Long rant.
I feel burned out by all this, and so I'm contemplative.
Lisa Melton
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@jens I hired David Hyatt onto the Safari team. He did not start the project. I did, at the behest of Scott Forstall.
Dave didn't join the project until about 9 months after work began. He was quite dubious about KHTML and KJS in the beginning, but he learned to love them.
BTW, I lured Dave to join by "accidentally" letting him know that Marklar (our Intel port) really existed. 😂
@oblomov @cstross @jwz
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Lisa Melton • • •@lisamelton Ooh, that is new to me indeed!
It's kind of hard to piece things together from public announcements. Apologies if I get these things wrong!
@oblomov @cstross @jwz
Lisa Melton
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@jens No worries. That's why I'm here. 😊 Thanks for tagging me on the thread.
@oblomov @cstross @jwz
Lisa Melton
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@jens That is incorrect. We forked KHTML and KJS in 2001 shortly after I arrived at Apple. We didn't make it known that we had forked it until Safari was released publicly as a beta in early 2003. After that we released periodic tarballs of our changes. Internally we had called them WebCore and JavaScriptCore and referred to both as WebKit. I'm the person who christened it as such. 2005 is when we put WebKit on a public repository and invited participation.
@oblomov @cstross @jwz
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Lisa Melton • • •Albin Larsson
in reply to jwz • • •according to Mozilla they will spend $130 million on AI bullshit. The $1.4 billion number is their total reserves.
stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/
State of Mozilla 2025
stateof.mozilla.orgThe Orange Theme
in reply to jwz • • •C.S.Strowbridge
in reply to jwz • • •So... I assume people have already researched alternative browsers.
Any recommendations.
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
in reply to jwz • • •H4Heights 🇪🇺🇵🇸🇺🇦🇨🇦
in reply to jwz • • •Gary "grim" Kramlich
in reply to jwz • • •fuzzyfuzzyfungus
in reply to jwz • • •Jim Jones
in reply to jwz • • •It feels like someone needs to pull a Firefox on the Mozilla Foundation like Firefox did on the original Mozilla browser when it had lost its way.
Take the core technology of Firefox & fork a non-AI browser that is focused on the web. That's what a large swath of people want. Then let the downloads do the talking.
Firefox "won" because a lot of people were using it. Web developers loved it.
Make a browser that people fall in love with because it works and is fast & reliable without AI.
Jim Jones
in reply to jwz • • •Wolf480pl
in reply to jwz • • •Ignacio
in reply to jwz • • •As much as I dislike the Chromium hegemony, I've since switched to Vivaldi because of Mozilla's tone deaf approach to enabling this AI shit storm bubble.
There are some amazing Firefox forks, but how much hope can we really have for them if Mozilla is handling their financial setup this poorly?
USB Type-Steve
in reply to jwz • • •Mike Smale
in reply to jwz • • •тёплый ветер тихо воет
in reply to jwz • • •LΞX/NØVΛ 🇪🇺
in reply to jwz • • •said it for year.
they trow money in AI, yet help of the security people i know won't use anything related to firefox, due to a lack of sandbox security, and of course of the chromisation of firefox (why use a cheap copy when you can use the original).
Poujol 𝖱𝗈𝗌𝗍 ✅
in reply to jwz • • •WTF that ammount is insane.
And their goal is nonsense.
Face Thumb
in reply to jwz • • •Alex Russell
in reply to jwz • • •BohwaZ
in reply to jwz • • •MegatronicThronBanks
in reply to jwz • • •sb arms & legs
in reply to jwz • • •Flowermob
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in reply to jwz • • •BoloMKXXVIII
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in reply to jwz • • •I_give_u_worms
in reply to jwz • • •pallas
in reply to jwz • • •jwz
in reply to jwz • • •jwz (@jwz@mastodon.social)
jwz (Mastodon)skedarwarrior
in reply to jwz • • •Why is this tagged brand necrophilia?
Weird ass stuff man
Kenner
in reply to jwz • • •Stephen Foskett
in reply to jwz • • •