Mozilla Lifeboat

https://mozillalifeboat.com

by gkoberger • 6 years ago

1518 307 6 years ago

mozillalifeboat.com

jszymborski• 6 years ago

Given how different their missions are, I'm surprised to see Facebook on this list.

Wowfunhappy2• 6 years ago

I was a bit surprised too, but presumably the priority right now is helping their former employees.

core-questions• 6 years ago

Eh, they need to hire, Mozillians need jobs, typically people who make what a Mozillian made will have a lifestyle that demands they find a new job pretty quickly, so they may not get to be that picky.

rorykoehler• 6 years ago

Capitalism 101.

metajack• 6 years ago

The CTO of FB is an ex-Mozillian. There are quite a few ex-Mozillians here, including myself. Despite Mozilla's public posture that FB is enemy #1, the internal technical culture is more similar than different.

blub• 6 years ago

They'll probably work with the same customers too, except instead of helping them fight Facebook tracking they will help Facebook track them better.

AshamedCaptain• 6 years ago

Enemy #1? I hear more about Facebook in the Firefox default startpage than _everywhere else I look_.

Today, in fact, there is a huge pseudo-advertisiment (at least in fr_FR) about "how I should not feel guilty about browsing Facebook [through Firefox]" , which almost made me puke.

As a person who doesn't care about Facebook whatsoever, I didn't get the impression that FB was enemy #1, but rather I assumed FB was paying them money like Google is...

I can actually see FB being happy to just give money away to Mozilla, just to influence them away from Google.

LunaSea• 6 years ago

What about the ethics culture?

xwdv• 6 years ago

A job is a job.

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Agree

I am critical of some fb practices, but if it was a choice between having a job and not having one, the decision is not hard

It's a big company, with multiple areas. Find a less contentious area and go for that

tw14232144• 6 years ago

This comment really demonstrates the divide between those with a casual working understanding of Mozilla due to peripheral awareness vs those who are or were once heavily involved with the project. (Side note: it's hard to read discussions about Mozilla on HN for this reason.)

Mozillians at Facebook is not new or novel. There was a time when it seemed like everyone was leaving Mozilla for Facebook. If someone collected the data, tallying every subsequent company worked at for every employee departed, it would be would be pretty unsurprising if the results showed Facebook as the biggest employer of former Mozillians.

speedgoose3• 6 years ago

I thought that people working at Mozilla were passionate about privacy, open-source, trust, and were working at Mozilla for the values.

But you say many of them would work to the company with opposite values.

jtsiskin2• 6 years ago

It’s easier to make change from the inside than out. I imagine more Mozillians probably means a stronger push towards E2E encryption, more data controls, stronger auditing, etc.

anoncake2• 6 years ago

Facebook is not a democracy. There can be no change from the inside.

627467• 6 years ago

I think this confirms that at least Mozilla PR team was very effective in their job

ayakura• 6 years ago

This is a nice gesture and it's good to see people reaching out to those who lost their jobs at Mozilla.

soulofmischief• 6 years ago

I hope a few of them go to Element. That's gotta be one of the worst UI/UX's I've ever seen in a chat app and it's 2020. I don't understand why we are perpetually going backwards.

signal11• 6 years ago

Thank you to the MDN and Servo teams for all their hard work.

I wish you well for the future and hope you find a new gig soon.

umanwizard• 6 years ago

How do you know which teams were laid off? I haven’t been able to find that information.

bytematic• 6 years ago

Mostly from tweets from (former) members

fgonzag• 6 years ago

An employee tweeted that the whole servo and security teams were axed.

Teckla• 6 years ago

Thank you to the MDN and Servo teams for all their hard work.

Gutting the Servo team makes me wonder if management is going to move the rendering engine from Gecko to Blink.

Perhaps the "Foxium" browser is "coming soon."

PenguinCoder3• 6 years ago

I'll go back to Lynx if that happens. We need FF and the Gecko engine.

usrusr• 6 years ago

Had the same thought and it felt terrible. Couldn't they at least try what almost all other advanced open source organisations seem to do? Branch out a consultancy in their field of expertise that maintains an incredibly famous piece of open source code on the side to show off?

dblohm7• 6 years ago

Gutting the Servo team makes me wonder if management is going to move the rendering engine from Gecko to Blink.

Not happening.

aryonoco• 6 years ago

The Servo team, the Dev tools team and the security response team got cut. I hadn't put two and two together but this makes a lot of sense, if they are switching to Chromium, they would not need any of these.

As a gecko tester since the very first day Netscape was open sourced and Mozilla M1 was released, this hurts.

pythonaut_163• 6 years ago

That's the death of Firefox.

What would "Foxium" offer that Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, Chromium, or Chrome don't already offer?

I don't think your speculation is unfounded though.

Santosh83• 6 years ago

If this is true about MDN then it is more awful than we thought. MDN is one of the go to resources for anyone building anything on the Web. I hope the community can pick it up like the ArchWiki...

causality02• 6 years ago

It's very weird that Mozilla is laying off 25% of its workforce while at the same time spending oodles of cash on its Fix The Internet incubator. I'm not a business major; maybe this is normal.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

I don't know the details, but the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation have different budgets and legally have to spend the money on different things (since the Foundation is a non-profit). They can't just move money around like a normal company can.

Wowfunhappy2• 6 years ago

Well... can they fix that? Please? At least for the future so this doesn't happen again?

I'm not opposed to nonprofits creating systems to make sure donor money is handled appropriately, but it seems to me there's something seriously wrong with the current structure. In hard times, organizations generally need to focus on their core initiatives, not branch out even more!

maxerickson2• 6 years ago

The corporation can spend money on whatever the hell. That's why they set it up.

You can infer from the foundation tax returns that most of the assets are held by the corporation: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-2018-fo...

It's the assets held directly by the foundation that have implications for their tax status, and they only move assets to that status as necessary.

welfare• 6 years ago

As someone who's been involved in setting up a corporate incubator, this is a pretty common dilemma.

The way that we viewed it at my previous company was basically it's two different businesses, two different P&L's and two different sets of metrics and KPIs. You could see them as two different business units that can succeed or fail independently.

If one Business Unit is struggling, you can't just fill the holes by taking funds from another BU to fill the gap. You need to solve the inherent profitability problems in the struggling Business Unit in some other way, typically by selling more, increasing the price/mix or reducing the cost.

Don't know if this is how Mozilla reasons, but this was definitely the way we reasoned in the last two large corporations I worked for.

manquer• 6 years ago

That doesn’t work in a non profit contexts . Most non profit missions are well, not profitable in the first place.

While the Mozilla corporation is for profit entity , the goals of the foundation and reason Mozilla foundation /corporation exists is not to make or maximise profit .

Non profits generally run on the principles of sustainability I.e are they spending more than endowments or they drawing on the principal amount etc.

In Mozilla case drop in revenue/ donations resulting in cancelled projects is per se not abnormal , but which projects are shelved depends on how the mission is interpreted.

It is perfectly within the foundation remit to infuse capital into the corporation if they had more money and they also believed the work of the corporation is more important than some foundation projects to the overall foundation’s mission.

Just like NASA cancels other projects when one project like JWST goes a lot overbudget , with approvals from congress if required .

Clearly the foundation did not think corporation projects were worth saying over others , we can debate that , but they did and do have that choice

NoInputSignal• 6 years ago

I remember reading another comment on HN somewhere that broke down how project costs are different from employee costs. Something to do with employees being recurring expenses vs projects being somewhat fixed....I'm not going to do it justice. If I find the comment I'll link to it.

rebelwebmaster• 6 years ago

If revenue from Firefox isn't enough to pay the bills anymore, then not funding R&D is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

pbhjpbhj3• 6 years ago

'revenue' from Firefox was never enough. It's only really just struck me that of course Google funding them made a dependency and 1) made the company grow beyond its needs, and 2) made it not seek self-sufficiency.

If Google are stopping the money then FF is like a person with no money taken in by Google and hooked on drugs; once they're kicked out they can't fund the habit and reliance on Google has meant they've not had to find ways to fund themselves.

I realised Google held the cards, but hadn't twigged on how the excessive nature of the funding made Firefox/Mozilla weaker.

Unless FF were aware of how that might go and put half of their Google money into investments?

mathattack2• 6 years ago

Different people. Fire one side to fund the other. Many companies use COVID as an excuse to get rid of management mistakes too.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

Too bad it's not "mistakes in management" getting fixed instead

behnamoh• 6 years ago

As a company, you know you're doing something wrong when websites such as this pop up on HN. I hope Mozilla is able to turn back to its origins.

lmm• 6 years ago

What origins? Was Mozilla ever a focused, well-run organisation?

blihp• 6 years ago

Fixing the browser revenue is at best difficult (i.e. significantly increase market share, more hard work to do on the browser which will cost $$$ for labor) while the Fix The Internet initiative could result in a miracle that saves them. Management often opts for for the miracle.

jacquesm3• 6 years ago

Which then predictably doesn't happen and then we all get to buy Aeron chairs at a discount.

dependenttypes• 6 years ago

Or spends 2.5m just for its CEO yearly (not to mention the other executives). I guess it is easier to fire the servo/rust people who did actual work rather than any of the designers or the higher ups.

MaxBarraclough• 6 years ago

This also turned up in the other Mozilla-related thread 12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129926

dangus• 6 years ago

I encourage you to learn more about business! I have found that process to be interesting for someone on the technical side. More tech people need to consider it and respect it, in my opinion.

Basically, part of situation analysis is that you have to evaluate the future potential of your projects and where your investment dollars go. Businesses are always thinking of the future, and that includes non-profits.

The Boston Consulting Group matrix is one tool that might fit this scenario: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/st...

The scenario you describe might be analogous to this hypothetical example: let’s say Microsoft laid off its entire Microsoft Surface team, and simultaneously invested $10 billion into Microsoft Azure. You might think, what the heck, the Surface lineup are good products that seem to be profitable (I actually have no clue if they are).

But, perhaps the Surface product line is a dog. It’s a low-market share product in a low-growth market. Azure might be a star: it has a large portion of a fast-growing market, and deserves more investment.

Even though Mozilla is a non-profit, I think it’s clear that they are looking to diversify their income stream. The “fix the internet” incubator can probably come up with services in high-growth markets that are less costly to implement and more easily monetized than a web browser (and fit their organizational goal of improving the Internet).

lacker2• 6 years ago

The Fix The Internet incubator doesn't look like very much money is involved. A $2500 stipend for participants, a top prize of $25,000, not that much money. Whereas layoffs of 250 people will save maybe $50 - $100 million a year.

Of course, perhaps they will also cut future funding to this incubator, and it's just a different timing that they announce it.

causality02• 6 years ago

They're paying their devs 200-400 grand a year? Jesus.

alexbanks2• 6 years ago

Doing layoffs doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the cash to pay everyone, or even that you're not cashflow positive. Sometimes orgs do big layoffs amidst big hiring pushes, meaning they don't feel like their resources are allocated correctly. Sometimes layoffs are a part of bigger organizational restructuring (this is Mozilla), saying they want to emphasize certain parts of the business and downsize others. If layoffs weren't evenly distributed around the company (ie every org loses 5% vs. we just laid off all of x department), it can mean different things.

throw_m239339• 6 years ago

Doing layoffs doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the cash to pay everyone,

Sure but that's the case here.

riffic3• 6 years ago

fyi for the people involved in this: use of a mozilla trademark in a domain name is subject to the mozilla (tm) trademark policy:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/trademarks/policy/

I hope your project doesn't run afoul of this :)

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Eh they laid off a bunch of their lawyers so I should be good.

jacquesm3• 6 years ago

This comment may end up being 'priceless' in a way you won't appreciate but until then you have my vote.

Igelau2• 6 years ago

Which it should. I was confused because I really thought from the title that this was some new initiative from Mozilla. It's not affiliated; just trying to preserve the Old Boy Network.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

I'm genuinely sorry if it comes off that way way, and I'd love to make any changes you feel would make it more inclusive.

My goal was to create a public site trying to help newly-displaced former coworkers connect, not exclude anyone. Many of these people worked on making the web a better place for a decade. Mozilla's network is intentionally inclusive – the code is open source and can be contributed to by anyone who wants to get involved.

None of these companies are hiring exclusively Mozillians, so feel free to apply either way!

Dylan168073• 6 years ago

Define "subject to".

The policy explains when they give permission, but nothing it says has any effect on which situations need permission.

riffic3• 6 years ago

I'm not a lawyer, so I can't, won't, and don't need to answer that. However, people have had their pet projects shut down for way less obvious things than this.

hijp• 6 years ago

Does anyone know how the 3d effect in the header was achieved?

jaywalk• 6 years ago

It's all just CSS animations.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

It's surprisingly simple! I designed an SVG quick in Sketch, and did it in a way where I can shift things left to right. Then a few CSS animations just move things left to right. When rotated, it looks like it's rocking!

Here's the initial SVG: https://p195.p4.n0.cdn.getcloudapp.com/items/OAuqBqvx/boat.s...

Everything else was just CSS

zekrioca• 6 years ago

where I can shift things left to right.

What does it mean that the image can be shifted from left to right? Just out of curiosity, because I thought at some examples such as a circle, but maybe not some complex shape?

varbhat• 6 years ago

This is good effort.

SideQuestion: Given that most of MDN were laid off, Would MDN continue? It was good imo.

tw14232144• 6 years ago

The content still exists and the best work is/was contributed by volunteers.

pknerd• 6 years ago

Before MDN goes down, someone should archive the entire MDN.

tibbon2• 6 years ago

I'd venture a guess the Internet Archive's got that one in it's sights if needed (and probably already has copies)

minerjoe• 6 years ago

https://kapeli.com/mdn_offline

AdmiralAsshat• 6 years ago

Can't open the link in Firefox, ironically. SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER error on the cert.

bdcravens• 6 years ago

I hope the formerly Mozilla employees all find roles quickly, but I suspect that well more than 250 employees have been laid off since the beginning of the pandemic. Is there a particular reason why these layoffs need exceptional response?

niix• 6 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. In addition, there have been a ton of tech/startup related layoffs, its odd that this one is getting so much attention and support from the community.

Edit: Perhaps I'm a bit bitter, as I was laid off because of the pandemic after 4+ years at my previous employer, and left on my own to figure things out. I imagine the experience was the same for others in a similar situation.

dylan6042• 6 years ago

tech/startup culture loves the "making the world a better place" is such a crock, but i believe that Mozilla actually does. i do have more sympathy from a Mozilla layoff than somewhere like FB/Twitter/Uber/etc.

tikhonj• 6 years ago

I think there's two parts here:

1. These layoffs specifically get a lot of time on HN because people have strong feelings about Firefox, Mozilla's mission and the teams in particular (ie Servo, MDN).

2. Specific efforts like this site are a function of Mozilla's alumni community, which is a function of Mozilla/Firefox's culture. (Or, maybe, past culture?)

So it isn't so much that the engineers laid off from Mozilla need more help than anyone else, but that the environment around Mozilla naturally creates help and attention for them.

ndesaulniers• 6 years ago

Specifically, "once a Mozillian, always a Mozillian."

inetknght• 6 years ago

I don't work in HR so I don't know the answers. But if I had to guess, I'd guess it'd be related to the WARN act [0] which talks about mass layoffs and how they must be handled.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...

einpoklum• 6 years ago

Mozilla is laying off 250 people and planning a ‘new focus’ on making money

Well, they seem to have lost the focus of making an extensible browser (and mail client etc.)

But then, this decline was somewhat noticeable a decade ago alreadt, IMHO.

Normille• 6 years ago

This is what I'm seeing:

/app/views/index.pug:40:173 38| .add-company 39| h3 #MozillaLifeboat > 40| p Mozilla has done two rounds of layoffs (#[a(href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-...] and #[a(href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-...) second]). Mozilla has one of the most vibrant alumni networks, and Lifeboat helps connect Mozillians looking for jobs with people hiring. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------^ 41| h3 Other Resources 42| p A great place to find more people hiring and looking is the #[a(href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23mozillalifeboat") #mozillalifeboat] hashtag on Twitter. 43| h3 Add Your Company Unexpected token `tag` expected `text`, `interpolated-code`, `code`, `:`, `slash`, `newline` or `eos`

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

It's fixed now! Try refreshing.

PenguinCoder3• 6 years ago

Not fixed :(

      /app/views/index.pug:84:1 82| footer An unofficial directory by ex-Mozillian #[a(href="https://gkoberger.com") Gregory Koberger] 83| > 84| --------^ The end of the string reached with no closing bracket ) found.

dgellow2• 6 years ago

This animated SVG is dope! Really cute, seems to be done only with SVGs and CSS animations as far as I can tell.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Yup, had to get it out quick so I went simple! Just a single SVG that I shift elements back and forth on, and rotated so it looks like it's floating!

STRML2• 6 years ago

This is honestly really impressive on such a short deadline! Looks really great.

ghostbrainalpha• 6 years ago

Do you mind estimating exactly how quickly something like that could be produced? Great job!

Rapzid• 6 years ago

Curious what tool/tools you used for that if any.

renewiltord3• 6 years ago

So it's not actually 3-D, you shift, scale, and rotate the 2-D elements so it appears 3-D? Or are you rotating it along Z in some way. It's a really good effect. That's some skill!

dgellow2• 6 years ago

I know what I will spend my evening on, I never thought that would be that simple :)

rurp• 6 years ago

The 'M' in Mozilla slowly drifting away is a great touch as well :)

tus88• 6 years ago

Heh I was going to make a joke about it being related to the recent layoffs.

wodenokoto• 6 years ago

Some funny guy added Mitchell Baker (CEO of Mozilla), with a text a long the lines of "Working to grow Firefox".

baddash• 6 years ago

This reminds me of a scenario described by Alfie Kohn in "No Contest: The Case Against Competition". If I recall correctly, he describes how people looking for jobs actually are more successful if they work for mutual success within the context of a network like this one. It makes me curious: are there other job-searching networks that exist where people can work for each others' benefit? Is there a general one for any job-seeker?

dbcurtis• 6 years ago

Is there a general one for any job-seeker?

Use your network. Make sure your friends know you are looking. Especially friends that are also looking. I've had conversations like this with old friends: "Hey, I'm looking for something new. Do you guys need an EE?" them: "No, sorry. Sure could use an ME, though, do you know anyone?" Give intros for friends, and they will give intros for you.

therusskiy• 6 years ago

it's cool and all, why the site though? There are plenty of similar websites for people searching for work

l1ghthouse• 6 years ago

"For Mozilla folks looking for a landing spot, Safari and WebKit teams have a number of openings. DM if interested in any of the below: - HTTP stack - Web dev tools - 3D/AR/VR - Mac app - iOS app - Web Extensions - Any web platform area (layout, web APIs, ...) "

https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1293252487021916161

hashtagmarkup• 6 years ago

Offering a Safari job to someone from Mozilla probably hurts them more then getting fired.

andybak• 6 years ago

Is there any support for XR on the open web in that team?

Genuinely interested if some of the spirit of Mozilla could be preserved in that transition.

sp332• 6 years ago

Yup! https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1293268688762572800

scarface748• 6 years ago

Looking at the Twitter responses, I don’t know why people assume that every single Mozilla employee would put “being part of the open web and contributing to open source” above people’s crazy obsession with having a job and being able to afford food and shelter.

chrisseaton4• 6 years ago

Right - most people just want to feed their kids first and worry about other things later.

I think the idea that most Mozilla employees were working there for morals rather than being able to buy their children shoes is doubtful.

Aeolun• 6 years ago

I guess everyone expects their job to provide food and shelter, so it would be a bit hard to advertise with that as if it were a positive.

tambourine_man4• 6 years ago

Modern web browsers are among the most complex piece of software out there.

If you’re qualified to write that kind of code, basic needs are surely well taken care of and are the least of your concerns.

To put it simply, these people will not have a hard time finding high paying jobs. And since they are able to choose, “being part of the open web” makes a lot of sense.

nathcd• 6 years ago

Seeing this list makes me wonder: is Mozilla the only major software development nonprofit? (Feel free to interpret "major" however you want if you answer the question.) Regardless of one's feelings about Mozilla, the layoffs are really disheartening.

And - sorry for the spicy take - I'm bummed to see Facebook and Amazon on this list. It would be nice to see other nonprofits on the list, but it's doubly disappointing to not see any and to also see the worst of tech's forprofits here. To go from Mozilla to Facebook would be quite the swing. (Of course, if people need jobs and Facebook/Amazon are what are most immediately available to them, I can't blame them. But I certainly hope that many that are looking for a new job are in a position to be picky.)

tw14232144• 6 years ago

It perpetuates misunderstandings to have them repeated so often, or repeated in a way that's sure to lead to misunderstanding. Mozilla Foundation is technically a "non-profit", but the company that develops Firefox is not. The non-profit does not fund any of the software development. Corporate revenue from the commercial business partnerships is what funds that, and it's able to cover 100% of it and then some.

haukilup• 6 years ago

It seems to be a for-profit commercial company that is fully owned by the non-profit. IANAL, so I don't know the complexities involved with the setup.

It's more complicated than trying to say that the "Mozilla that people think of" is not a non-profit. The Mozilla that I think of seems to be a combination of both.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u4• 6 years ago

They are not, but they are perhaps the most consumer visible (because web is eating everything). For less "sexy" non-porfits, there's Apache Software Foundation ("where software goes to die"), and of course Free Software Foundation (gcc, nano, etc.).

kgraves3• 6 years ago

There's Linux Foundation isn't there? Seems to be growing strong.

pabs32• 6 years ago

The LF is a trade association (501c6) rather than non-profit/charity (501c3).

Arathorn4• 6 years ago

Element (the company from the Matrix.org core team) is super interested in providing refuge to Mozilla folks - we share the same goals of building the open web, albeit with a focus on open communication. (We'd put ourselves on the mozillalifeboat.com page, but I somehow doubt our Mozilla alumni uses FB... :D)

Particular areas that may be of interest include developer documentation (making https://matrix.org/docs/spec and https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc not suck), Safety engineering (subjective decentralised reputation, anti-abuse and anti-spam), Rust (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-rust-sdk is in the ascendant), and even possibly VR (we are on a mission to ensure Matrix is the comms protocol of the multiverse) - although Safety & Spec (and generally hacking on Element and Matrix itself) are the most important domains right now. https://element.io/careers has more details.

athriren• 6 years ago

The links on that page for the names appear go to github, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, so I think as long as the alumni use some online service that can serve as identity you would be able to post on the website itself. Obviously that is at your prerogative, just wanted to indicate it is not only Facebook.

jernejzen• 6 years ago

Man, I’d really love to see Matrix to become a standard. I’d love to use it as a major goto chat/communication tool but i get frustrated with UX. Pls pls, don’t screw it.

Arathorn4• 6 years ago

We're doing our best to improve UX (it should be noticeably improved over the last year, unless we're kidding ourselves) - and we're doing our best not to screw it up :) But we need help! (hence looking for more folk to hire!)

IlIlI• 6 years ago

Yep ux is a huge problem for getting even tech-savvy people onto element. Would love to see it become a viable alternative to discord but its still far off.

doublerabbit• 6 years ago

I've been trying to get people to join "element" but it just makes the whole chat sound awkward "Hey, want to join me on element? compared to "hey, want to join me on riot". Element just doesn't have the same ring and sounds less exciting and dull.

It's not even listed in search engines, especially DDG, so I then have to give them the URL which adds to the awkwardness. It was a bad move in my opinion. Sure sure, the old name had an conversational stance but it at least it had a flow. riot.im still sounds much better then element.io

Anyway, with that aside. Thank you guys for creating something that works. It needs some polishing but I had my first voice call and to my surprised it just worked for both of us.

I still get a few confused moments with the UX from my mother like where's the enter button, and why do I need to enter so many passwords but other than that it is a charm.

nerdponx• 6 years ago

Not just the UX. It's dog slow. I've never had a good experience using it, no matter how much I want to like it.

pantalaimon• 6 years ago

Man, I’d really love to see Matrix to become a standard.

I thought the same about XMPP 15 years ago.

I think chat protocols are much like languages, it's almost inherent that in communication between people different standards and different communities form.

Different groups of people use different messengers to (often unknowingly) express an identity.

I've giving up on the hope that there will be one universal language / protocol to unite everyone.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Feel free to email me and I can send you the form :) I just didn't have a better way to verify ex-Mozillians than the FB group!

kgraves3• 6 years ago

Arathorn, just curious who chose the name 'Element'? Do you think it's too late to change it?

Did you do user research studies on the name, if so what was the results from those studies?

Arathorn4• 6 years ago

Arathorn, just curious who chose the name 'Element'?

I did, alongside a few others from the team.

Do you think it's too late to change it?

Yup :)

Did you do user research studies on the name

Yup.

if so what was the results from those studies?

Broadly positive.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Hey all, I built this last night as a resource for connecting Mozilla Alumni during this rough time. Mozilla laid off some truly amazing people this past year.... many of whom I worked with 10 years ago when I was there.

As for why there's a red panda in the boat... despite the logo distinctly picturing a fox on fire, a "firefox" is actually the name for a red panda!

agrippanux• 6 years ago

I really like the boat/panda; how did you create that SVG? Source code says it was generated by Sketchapp, which I am not too familiar with.

Overall great job, its super slick.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Hey! The initial SVG was made in Sketch (looks like this: https://p195.p4.n0.cdn.getcloudapp.com/items/OAuqBqvx/boat.s...), and I animated it with CSS.

Normally, I'd use a combo of Sketch (for making the assets) and GSAP (for animating)!

ab8• 6 years ago

I second that. Great job!

aetherspawn• 6 years ago

The animated boat is immensely cute. I have a lot of respect that you cooked this up in one night, it humbles me.

Props to even come up with the idea.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Between us, 80% of the reason I started this was a cute little red panda in a boat seemed fun to draw!

prepend• 6 years ago

Thanks for making this, I had the horrifying idea that Mozilla had their engineers make this prior to the layoffs.

tibbon2• 6 years ago

How to list a good organization and role there? The button for having one added goes to a 404'd Facebook page

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

It's not a 404, just an internal alumni post. The goal is to keep it alumni-only, but if you have an alumni at your company you can email me (email in profile)!

rahul_201• 6 years ago

For Mozilla folks looking for remote job, she is offering a paid job board service for free

https://twitter.com/abinaya_rl/status/1293237589202178048

trynumber9• 6 years ago

Why was this one approved? https://i.imgur.com/knkH44b.png

I really doubt Assmunchio is a real name...

jjcon• 6 years ago

“my family built this country by the way”

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

There wasn't an approval process initially because I didn't expect this to be so public/popular, but I've switched and now there's an approval process!

JabavuAdams• 6 years ago

Does anyone else not click the upvote button when the article has 314, 666, or 1337 upvotes?

tmsh• 6 years ago

Dope website and inspiring personal website: https://gkoberger.com/

Now I gotta work on my personal website.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Thanks :)

brianzelip2• 6 years ago

Hmmm

Try this on a computer! This site is way more interactive on a bigger screen… so check it out next time you're on your desktop!

ulmas• 6 years ago

In Chrome: Menu > check "Desktop Site"

baby-yoda• 6 years ago

site gives me some nostalgia of the family room in microsoft bob :)

colmvp• 6 years ago

Some of these are weird.

What PartnerStack is hiring for: Infra devs, Python devs, JS devs, Product, Marketing

Yet on their actual Lever.co jobs page the only technical role is a Senior Infrastructure Engineer?

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

That's the reason I added an alumni contact! Careers pages often are a lagging indicator of what jobs are available, which is where the value of a good network comes in.

staplers• 6 years ago

This whole thing reeks of nepotism and this comment reinforces that.

localhost3000• 6 years ago

I’m the EM on the Docs Product team at Stripe. We own the infra and user experience for Stripe Docs. If any MDN or dev tools folks are reading and interested in Stripe, please reach out: ianm@stripe.com

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u4• 6 years ago

I know it's almost a meme at this point, but maybe Apple should buy Mozilla (or financially support them in some way)? The enemy of my enemy is my friend sort of way. Surely Apple don't want to cede more control over web standards to Google? They both promote valuing user privacy, so it's not like they don't have some common ground.

If Apple really wants to stick it to Google, they could make an iOS App Store policy exception for Firefox / Gecko engine. Heck, that alone may be enough to buoy Mozilla, w/o paying a cent.

seabrookmx• 6 years ago

How would that help Mozilla financially?

I'd guess most of the FF iOS users don't even realize it's not Gecko under the hood, and don't even know/care what Gecko is.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u4• 6 years ago

Users don't care about browser engines, but they may care about better ad blocking, and YouTube playback in the background (w/o paying for Premium). A "true" iOS FF port could do both, and more. Hopefully this would increase FF's market share, and give Mozilla better bargaining powers.

giancarlostoro2• 6 years ago

Other buyouts I have been thinking about is Microsoft buying Canonical. Although Canonical buying out Firefox sounds interesting as well but Canonical seems to have gone through a similarish phase where they shut off certain projects.

One other thing that would interest me is Mozilla buying out Fastmail but I am not too sure that would drive the sort of revenue Mozilla needs. There are a few mergers out there that could occur. I mostly mention this one cause it Mozilla had an email service I would pay for it. Especially if its pay only. I want someone who isnt crawling my emails beyond spam detection to manage my email situation.

Heck whats stopping GitHub from buying out Mozilla with its new fatter wallet?

pythonaut_163• 6 years ago

Interesting though with Github. Maintaining the MDN docs certainly aligns well with Github's mission.

Hard to see MS/Github maintaining a browser after Microsoft just adopted Chromium for Edge, but it would be cool to see Firefox given the VS Code treatment. Github had Atom which is where Electron came from, then VS Code is an evolution on top of Electron. Would be nice if Edge was built on Firefox instead of Chromium.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

This is how we got into this mess in the first place. Google was the "good guy", up against Microsoft and Apple, and funded Mozilla. After all, Google didn't care about web standards or building a browser! They were a search engine.

So Mozilla became dependent on Google, and here we are.

RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u4• 6 years ago

If Mozilla could stand alone and compete with the other big players, that'd be best. If they couldn't, then forming alliances with others, even former "enemies", would be 2nd best, and work towards independence.

Even Apple took MS money back in the day: seems to have worked out for Apple.

Dahoon• 6 years ago

It is privacy Vs "privacy". Not really comparable. One works actively to help people have privacy, one is using the word to sell devices. An Apple owned FF would be a FF I would leave after many many years.

KerrickStaley• 6 years ago

Small correction: MongoDB is not an open-source product; it's a source-available product.

sciurus4• 6 years ago

FYI the official talent directory is now online at https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org/ and I expect people will be adding themselves to it over the coming days.

mvn9• 6 years ago

So they have implemented that to copy https://mozillalifeboat.com/? That's sad. There is no reason to take away attention from mozillalifeboat.com.

Just because something is hosted by mozilla doesn't make it better. Instead of copying VPNs, Bookmark directories and such, they should focus on the browser and offer the other services as some form of cooperation.

But maybe I am wrong and uniting everything under the mozilla brand is the way to go.

dlgeek• 6 years ago

They announced theirs in the internal layoff letter, so that was planned even before the layoffs were public.

timmit• 6 years ago

i feel like Mozilla is truly a place to care about their employees

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Well, I don't know if I'd say that, especially recently... but the employees (current and former) do care about each other!

invalidmonk• 6 years ago

We would be thrilled to get a chance to talk to some of the Moz alumns. At Audius, we're building a digital music streaming protocol on the pillars of openness & transparency. We're hiring for distributed systems & full-stack product engineering roles. https://audius.org/careers

wqsz7xn• 6 years ago

Unrelated but what is this website made with? Looks really great.

gkoberger22• 6 years ago

Thanks! Made it quick from scratch with Express/Stylus. The database is Airtable. The animations are SVGs with some CSS.

pacomerh• 6 years ago

Is there a chance maybe Mozilla had this plan even from before the pandemic and now it's the perfect time to justify it?.

hajile• 6 years ago

The pandemic certainly doesn't mean fewer people browsing the web.

Literally cutting everything important to their browser -- future improvements, dev support, and security. That's not the kind of move you make unless you're about to be cutting a project.

markstos• 6 years ago

It's nice to know there are plenty of connections that employees at this high profile tech company can use to get a job at other tech companies.

Are there other sites springing up to help the other 10 million unemployed and recently laid off people in the US who didn't work at high profile tech firms?

gkanai• 6 years ago

Props to Gregory for building this.

Giving up on Firefox OS too early was a such a terrible mistake- look at the success of KaiOS in emerging markets. That should have been Mozilla's success.

Mozilla needs to find someone other than Mitchell to lead the organization. I realize how difficult that is, but she is clearly not the right CEO, even if she was the founder. The organization needs someone new at the helm.

(I was at Mozilla for 10 years- left on my own accord in 2016.)

dralley• 6 years ago

For any recruiters: https://talentdirectory.mozilla.org

holtkam2• 6 years ago

Commenting to help keep this at the top of HN

pabs32• 6 years ago

Some links for folks interested in working on open source projects:

https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

known• 6 years ago

How does Mozilla make money ?

Mozilla Lifeboat

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