Is Mozilla in trouble?

Recently Mozilla had to lay off 70 people. Well this leaves me concerned for the future of Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/mozilla-lays-off-70-people-as-non-search-revenue-fails-to-materialize/   How about the rest of you are you worried about Mozilla? Or am I concerned over nothing?

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:21 PM.
Moved from Web Browsing to Gen Chat - Hamluis.

Sad news but I think Thunderbird was separated from Mozilla in some way a couple of years back but I can't be certain.

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2017/05/thunderbirds-future-home/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird

It looks like Mozilla still develops Thunderbird.

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:19 PM.

I try to not be too reactionary about that layoff news but it is something to keep an eye on. If you look at Statcounter's site, Firefox has a less than 1% market share for mobile devices and around 9% market share for desktops:

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldwide

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Keep in mind that's still 1% of billions and billions of users so by comparison it's not a promising reflection but it still involves a lot of active users (... and statcounter.com is by no means a definitive source, there are plenty of alternative sites that also use different metrics to compile their data). But the trend is worrisome considering desktop usage is relatively flat while mobile usage is still growing.

The saddest part is the Internet is already devolving back into a curated entity, as Chromium is becoming the next IE. It was only a few years ago when Microsoft dominated over the Internet using IE (with its Trident web engine and ActiveX) and we learned nothing from that time as we now cater to Blink-based web development over established common standards. Chromium itself may be open-source but it's still under a lot of Google oversight, the lesson we're ignoring it has never been a good idea to allow one corporation have so much control.

Amen.

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:16 PM.

Well I just found this from Reddit its a couple of years old though.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-T5G35SBB/instant

The entry to barrier has always been low for certain Internet products, one being internet browsers.

The entry to barrier has always been low for certain Internet products, one being internet browsers.

So what your saying is there's no need for concern about Mozilla's future?

Edited by SuperSapien64, 29 January 2020 - 02:19 PM.

Web browsers are pretty complicated, there's a lot going on in the background when you just click on a link to a web site -- the home page itself has to get loaded up, and for almost every web site a bunch of other text, scripts, graphics have to be pulled in, most from other online servers, and all that gets rendered into the page you see on the display. And that's all done in a second or two. Stating a web browser is a trivial piece of software is simplifying a complex task.

You can support them as have Give to Thunderbird

Edited by pcpunk, 30 January 2020 - 12:15 PM.

I've supported Firefox in the past.

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:17 PM.

Good for you, if I remember correctly you use Thunderbird also? if so then they seem to be a separate entity now, so use that Link unless you find a new one.  

Thanks yes I do use Thunderbird and I'll probably donate to them as well sometime.

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:18 PM.

Thunderbirds new home

Awesome that's fantastic news.   

Edited by hamluis, 14 August 2020 - 07:18 PM.