Instead of trying to get Google money, I actually wish they would offer a monthly/annual/lifetime membership as the cost of not enshittifying to stay in business. And then severing ties with Google as a company.

A lot of tech companies are holding onto unsustainable business models from 10 years ago to make their products at a loss or "free," and it's forcing them into AI, oligarchy, or being beholden to oligarchs. End users paying a fair price to own the products they use is a better alternative than this because it puts the power back in our hands as opposed to tech bros and shareholders.

Much like electricity, lazy boards seek the path of least resistence. What's easier, building a world-class browser and properly marketing it and maintaining profitability, or just setting your default search engine to "Google.com" and cashing the massive check?

At this point, there's very few people even left at Mozilla that could even reverse the trend. Go back and look at their past few years. Other than some minor activity to Firefox, almost all their initiatives are little side missions that last for a few years and then are sunset.

Stuck like Pocket, Mozilla Social, Firefox Send, Firefox OS, etc. The list goes on and on. They invest heavily in some flash in the pan initiative and then ax it off a few years later.

Like the cheap bastards people are they refuse to pay what software costs and here we are. People well not pay for stuff, or expect a one time fee for lifetime support. Software was better when we had released every x years and we just bought that. Want support and new features but new version.

The userbase does want to give them money though. I constantly hear people say that they want to donate to Firefox, but Mozilla doesn't let them do that.

Also, I never said that Patreon would give them more money. It would be less money, but it would be more effective, as they could finally ditch the worthless exectutives that keep draining Mozilla's resources.

The userbase does want to give them money though

1. Citation requested
2. Good for the massive waves of people who want to give Mozilla money. They already can https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/?form=donate-header

It would be less money, but it would be more effective

Oh yeah. I LOVE when my boss tells me that I am going to get paid less but I will be more effective because of it. Oh, wait, no I don't.

Honestly? it sounds like you don't care about reality and just care about things being ideologically pure for you with the expectation that it will all work out. So... maybe try to educate yourself on any of all this before trying to have a discussion about it?

Citation requested

Do some searching here, on reddit, etc. You'll find it.

Good for the massive waves of people who want to give Mozilla money. They already can https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/?form=donate-header

That's not what I said. I said that they wanted to donate to Firefox, not Mozilla. I find it very telling that Mozilla doesn't let them do that, but insteads forces people to donate to the org, that overpays it's executives.

Oh yeah. I LOVE when my boss tells me that I am going to get paid less but I will be more effective because of it. Oh, wait, no I don't.

Who said that the people who are actually working on Firefox would get paid less? I certainly didn't. I clearly said that the useless executives would get paid less

Honestly? it sounds like you don't care about reality and just care about things being ideologically pure for you with the expectation that it will all work out. So... maybe try to educate yourself on any of all this before trying to have a discussion about it?

I have. But you clearly didn't read what I posted. If you aren't going to address the things that I wrote, why comment?

Apologies but I have a hard time addressing a lack of evidence and vague "Okay, we fire all the managers and get rid of most of the funding sources and everything will be better" nonsense. And the REAL problem is that... Thunderbird exists?

None of this is new or unique. Hell, the frigging Linux Kernel has a LOT of corporate sponsorship simply because users don't actually show up to pay

And I have a hard time addressing people who refuse to research, and keep arguing against things that I never said.

... do you often find people who research and argue your points to you for you?

where is this AI bloat exactly? I use Firefox every day and see no difference

There is none, this is all AI=bad knee-jerk reaction. From what I can tell, so far Firefox has 3 ML-based systems implemented:

• Site / text translation - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
• Tab grouping suggestions - fully local, small model, requires manual action from user
• Image alt text generation (when adding images to a PDF) - fully local, small model, looks like it's enabled by default but can be turned off directly in the modal that appears when adding alt text

All of these models are small enough to be quickly run locally on mobile devices with minimal wait time. The CPU spikes appear to be a bug in the inference module implementation - not an intended behavior.

Firefox also provides UI for connecting to cloud-based chatbots on a sidebar, but they need to be manually enabled to be used. The sidebar is also customizable so anyone who doesn't want this button there can just remove it. There's also a setting in about:config that removes it harder.

I actually really like the way Mozilla is introducing these features. I recently had to visit another country's post office site and having the ability to just instantly translate it directly on my device is great.

You can literally do it through the menu. Go to settings, hit labs or search "ai" and untick it

Because they keep betraying their supposed values for short-term gains.

Correction: power users, such as the type on Lemmy, trend towards hating ai. That is by no means “all users” by any stretch of the term.

What is the gain? What is a single gain you think they have milked from their users?