Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director [LWN.net]

The Mozilla Foundation has announced that its new executive director will be Nabiha Syed.

Syed is known for her mission-driven leadership, focused on increasing transparency into the most powerful institutions in society. She comes to Mozilla after leading The Markup, an award-winning publication that challenges technology to serve the public good, from its launch through its successful acquisition in 2024.

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Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 7:00 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (32 responses)

The internet needs users to come back to Firefox. A free software browser is one of the absolute most important packages for people to be in control of their use of technology. It would be great to hear from Syed about plans to achieve this.

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 7:51 UTC (Thu) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (2 responses)

As a Firefox user, I wish Mozilla would come back to Firefox, too.

K3n.

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 15:55 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

I wish the people who built this browser would come back and do it again, but I wouldn't wish the task *upon* them.

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 17, 2024 20:14 UTC (Fri) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]

Exactly. Each new release seems to have something user-hostile built into it. The latest one is the addition of yet another unwanted bit of telemetry by default. Long gone are the days in which such invasive features were pushed by consent only, when they were at all.

And the mandatory walled garden of signing by their own App Store, without even the ability to adjust the configuration to turn it off or to add user signing keys. And so you have the predictable corporate demands, enforced by Mozilla, to take down useful apps like Bypass Paywalls Clean.

And the half-baked browser changeover on Android which basically removed the ability to install any but a small collection of add-ons and also removed the about:config screen so one couldn't disable the privacy violations. (I run the Iceraven fork to let me install .xpi files and make other changes on Android).

And the massive millions per year flowing to Mitchell Baker presiding over this whole mess.

Yes, it may be better than the alternatives (which is why I still run derivatives) but lets not pretend it's good.

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 11:41 UTC (Thu) by blyxyas (guest, #171533) [Link] (28 responses)

The internet is made for Chrome / Chromium based browsers. While Firefox is not perfect, the fact that >70% of the market share is dominated by Chromium-based browsers doesn't help developers make their websites Gecko-friendly.

It's quite sad hearing people say that "I'd love to use Firefox, but using the internet with it is a miserable experience".

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 11:56 UTC (Thu) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link]

I think firefox is back where it was in the IE days, in the sense that it's only known by a few nerds and nobody in the general population has any idea that it exists and what it is.

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 16, 2024 12:06 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (25 responses)

That is sad. However, I use Firefox at home and Chrome at work and I don't find the experiences to be significantly different. I suppose there are some sites that don't work well in Firefox and I just don't happen to use them.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 14:54 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (24 responses)

I use Firefox on my desktop and my phone and have yet to encounter a site that fails to work with it. Where are all these broken sites?

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 15:13 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link] (8 responses)

One example is Slack. Their "huddle" feature (which is basically audio or video chat) rejects Firefox as an unsupported browser, you have to use either Chrome/Chromium or their native client (which I suspect is just Chrome/Chromium disguised as a normal application).

I've also had to switch to Chromium for video chat in Teams, but lately I've been able to use it in Firefox just fine.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 15:18 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

One of the processes started as part of the "native" Slack client on my laptop is chrome_crashpad_handler - this strongly supports your suspicion that it's just a disguised browser.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 16:01 UTC (Thu) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

> their native client (which I suspect is just Chrome/Chromium disguised as a normal application)

Yes, it's an Electron app, like Visual Studio Code, Atom and many others.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:28 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Hmm, OK. I use Slack in Firefox, but didn't know about the "huddle" feature. I wonder if it does work in Firefox but they don't want to officially support it, or if it uses Chrome-specific APIs?

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:45 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

From past experiences, it'll be because it uses WebRTC, and neither Firefox nor Chrome are bug-free in their WebRTC implementations, plus Firefox (by default, at least) has a different set of codecs to Chrome. I therefore suspect that Slack engineers just assume that your WebRTC implementation has Chrome's set of codecs and Chrome's set of bugs, and refuses to work in Firefox because Firefox isn't going to be bug-for-bug identical to Chrome.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 18:16 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

OK, I see. That's too bad. I use the really excellent Galene videoconferencing software, which does use WebRTC and it works fine in both Firefox and Chrome. So that's just laziness on the part of Slack.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 20:50 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

I wonder if spoofing the User Agent would just magically make Huddle work in Firefox?

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 4:38 UTC (Fri) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link] (1 responses)

EU has this new digital markets act, that might forbid such discrimination.

Even though Slack seems to have an unhealthy market share of the IM market, I guess they are to far too small to be classified as a gatekeeper and subject to tighter regulation.

Chrome and Google might qualify more easily, but I don't remember reading anything that this particular market domination would be addressed.

(Haven't studied the topic in any detail, so might and guess...)

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 8:51 UTC (Fri) by fishface60 (subscriber, #88700) [Link]

It's not market share, it's that the DMA's scope was limited to consumer messaging and Slack describes itself as business messaging.

This also led to Apple trying to assert that a large enough fraction of iMessage users are using it for business messaging that it doesn't meet the criteria for being a gatekeeping consumer messaging app.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 16:05 UTC (Thu) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (14 responses)

At work we need to use Office365 hosted domain. Authentication with yubikey only works with Chrome (or Firefox with a modified user agent). A great way to ignore Firefox users.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:27 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (13 responses)

OK, but if it works with a modified user-agent, then that's malice on the part of the web site, not a Firefox deficiency.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 16, 2024 17:51 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (9 responses)

But if Firefox was widely used then excluding it would be an absurd move.

Firefox has been losing users every year for 15 years now. It would be great to hear that Mozilla Foundation will make a priority of fixing this.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 2:57 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (7 responses)

"Gain market share" has always been a priority.

> But if Firefox was widely used then excluding it would be an absurd move.

Unfortunately the browser market doesn't really work that way. It's easy to tell users on platforms other than iOS "just use Chrome" and would be even if Firefox had (e.g.) 20% market share. Mozilla has always struggled with the problem that unlike their competitors they have no leverage to force their browser on anybody.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 9:55 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (6 responses)

> "Gain market share" has always been a priority.

I don't see it. Market share has fallen every year for 15 years, from 31% to 2%, and I haven't noticed a reaction. What am I missing?

> (...) unlike their competitors they have no leverage to force their browser on anybody

I don't understand this defeatism. Firefox's situation also gives it advantages. When something is difficult and important, you try lots of things, do analysis, make strategies, adjust strategies based on success rates. I'm not at all convinced that failure will just have to be accepted.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 11:09 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (3 responses)

> I don't see it. Market share has fallen every year for 15 years, from 31% to 2%, and I haven't noticed a reaction. What am I missing?

You may not have noticed it but Mozilla has done an incredible amount of work to keep up with the table stakes (performance, security, Web features, extension ecosystem, platform integration, devtools, etc) and also try to carve out some sustainable differentiation from Chrome (privacy, tracking protection, etc). Mistakes were made along the way, but disinterest in market share was never one of them.

You make it sound like gaining market share is just a matter of willpower. That's not how it works.

> Firefox's situation also gives it advantages. When something is difficult and important, you try lots of things, do analysis, make strategies, adjust strategies based on success rates.

Indeed! And none of that is any guarantee of success.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 23:07 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

> You make it sound like gaining market share is just a
> matter of willpower. That's not how it works.

No, I've worked on very difficult projects. Legislation etc. where the other side had money, market positions, political friends. I know what it looks like when people are working on an important, difficult problem. No one shrugs their shoulders and says, "the other side has leverage to force their browser on [everyone]".

I don't see work happening that's anywhere near the level deserved by the issue of Firefox's disappearing market share. This is something multiple entities could be working on.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 18, 2024 14:05 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't see work happening that's anywhere near the level deserved by the issue of Firefox's disappearing market share. This is something multiple entities could be working on.

The fundamental problems are that, (1) there as not been a meaningful "market" for web browsers for 25 years due to platform bundling, making all browsers loss-leaders that have to be sustained by other revenue sources, and (2) not controlling any end-user computing platform or hyper-popular web destinations, Mozilla does not have any "stickiness" to meaningfully change that, much less actually push for new functionality.

The final blow was when Microsoft ditched their in-house browser engine in favor of a Chrome reskin, replacing its many "Google tendrils" with even more "Microsoft tendrils".

Tendrils that are *overwhelmingly popular*, I might add -- After all, who doesn't want all their history and bookmarks and notifications synchronized between multiple systems? Who doesn't want to be able to watch Netflix or Disney+ content? Or have harmful/malicious content automatically blocked? And now a new wave of mothership-tied AI-driven features is landing in the commercial browsers, and it's yet another front that Mozilla has to fight uphill battles on... just to maintain (not even gain!) their paltry market share.

The fact of the matter is that users overwhelmingly want these large integrated platforms. The ones that don't, ie the supposed "faithful", were never more than a rounding error on top of a rounding error [1], continually decrying all of Mozilla's attempts to frantically keep up with their competitors (and occasionally try to get ahead with hail marys)

[1] Windows remains the overwhelmingly primary platform, and even on Linux, far more use Chrome[-ish] than Firefox[-ish], and of those, even fewer have ad/tracker blockers set up, and even fewer aren't perpetually signed into $mothership that is actively pushing $other_browser.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 18, 2024 15:02 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Another thing that Firefox did poorly is alienating its existing user (e.g. me) by constantly changing the UI. And making some irrational decisions, like not making its full plugin store available on mobile FF (why???).

In contrast, Chrome's UI has barely changed during its almost 15 years of existence.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 11:16 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Also I don't want to sound defeatist. I am a die-hard Firefox user and Mozilla-forever supporter. I think Firefox is still a great product. I actively encourage people to use it. I don't contribute directly to Firefox anymore but I do a lot of work on rr, a debugging tool Mozilla's developers use a lot. I hope and pray Mozilla will find a good strategy and exploit whatever opportunities appear in the market.

One thing that won't help Mozilla is people telling them "hey, have you tried NOT losing market share?"

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 16:37 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> What am I missing?

If you're using Windows, it's bloody hard to avoid Edge / Bing.

If you're using Android / ChromeOS, it's bloody hard to avoid Chrome.

If you're sufficiently pissed off with those two, it's still a faff to go to the trouble of downloading and installing FireFox. That's assuming you aren't (like I currently am) on a locked-down corporate laptop, where permission to install is strictly on a "I need it to do my job" - which in my case will be met with "you're having a giraffe, mate", because the primary purpose of the browser is to interact with the Google Cloud (gmail, BQ, Google Office et al).

Cheers,
Wol

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 19, 2024 15:04 UTC (Sun) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link]

Yeah we'd all like that. But for those people saying they wish the Foundation would prioritise it, it'd be great to hear some good ideas on how they could realistically promote Firefox against the juggernaut of Google pushing Chrome on google.com Microsoft pushing Edge in Windows.

The browsers are roughly feature-comparable, and people seem to want to log in to to sync their bookmarks etc. It's really hard to write a killer browser feature that only Mozilla could do and which Google could not quickly replicate in Chrome to keep their market share.

I feel the only things that Google could not/would not add to Chrome are features related to freedom (which 95% of the population doesn't care about and wouldn't switch to Firefox for), or something to do with ad-blocking, which is already done by extensions.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 8:38 UTC (Fri) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link] (2 responses)

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Most sites that discriminate against a certain browser (or user-agent), do it because they lack the knowledge and/or manpower to make the site work properly with that browser, not because of some political agenda. During the early years of the world-wide web, "optimized for internet explorer" usually meant "this site only works with internet explorer, because it is the only browser capable of interpreting this pile of crap (aka HTML soup)".

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 11:19 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

> because they lack the knowledge and/or manpower to make the site work properly with that browser

In many cases the site actually does work properly with minority browsers, but the site developers want to save resources by not even doing the testing to verify that it does work properly. And since they're not doing that testing, they don't know if the site works or not, so they warn users away from those browsers.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 14:57 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Then regulations should say that *blocking* minority browsers is called "discrimination", preferably under one of the disability acts (if I need a word-based browser to read to me, I should be able to use the browser that suits me, not them!).

Some form of pop-up (along the lines of that cookie thing) that says "you are using an unsupported browser" is fine, if objectionable.

Cheers,
Wol

Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

Posted May 20, 2024 0:53 UTC (Mon) by timrichardson (subscriber, #72836) [Link]

Is a often a miserable experience? It's my main browser and the issues with Firefox are rare. I find the containers feature gives back vastly more than occasional Firefox-not-well-supported problems.