Mozilla has fired Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira after cancer diagnosis : firefox

[-] aberrate_junior_beatnik@lemmy.world 140 points 3 months ago

It's truly wild how hard of a heel turn mozilla has taken. I'm going to cancel my recurring donations to them, and get off all of their products.

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[-] Quintus@lemmy.ml 108 points 3 months ago

It's almost like they are intentionally trying to get in trouble.

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 80 points 3 months ago

I feel like the CEO of Mozilla is paid by Google to be as fucking stupid as possible.

[-] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago

To be fair I believe being as fucking stupid as possible is a prerequisite of being a CEO of anything.

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[-] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 12 points 3 months ago

I hope discovery finds something obvious to this effect, or we're all going to have a bad time in the near future

[-] thawed_caveman@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

Fucking stop with this conspiracy theory already, i'm reading it for the third time this thread. As if CEOs can't make bad decisions and there has to be a "realll11" reason.

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 33 points 3 months ago

Honestly. Even my most cynical assumption was that Mozilla would subtly pressure him to leave the company, making life harder for him in ways that wouldn't be possible to legally prove.

I haven't seen anything this egregious since Elon Musk fired Halli.

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 72 points 3 months ago

Ok wtf is Moxilla doing? They know their company is built on good community perception, right?

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 22 points 3 months ago

They honestly have a monopoly in the sense that they are the only think not Chrome

[-] romp_2_door@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago

I mean they've been pedaling AI crap for a while without negative backlash.

Similarly they tried to ride the Blockchain train back in the crypto scam days and also didn't face any backlash.

They've publicly vouched to become an AI company and an advertising company without backlash.

I think most Firefox users don't care

[-] boonhet@lemm.ee 20 points 3 months ago

I think most Firefox users don’t care

Oh we care, but there's no alternative besides Chrome and Safari and those companies are even worse (Google definitely is, anyway, Apple is debatable)

Luckily there's still alternatives like Librewolf that unfortunately still use Mozilla's browser engine.

I do hope the Servo project will be ready to use in a production browser soon.

[-] harsh3466@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 months ago

Apple is definitely just as fucking terrible.

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[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 3 months ago

What they mean with AI features is also their offline website translation feature, which is something I've wanted for years. The alternative is online Google website translation.

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[-] TCB13@lemmy.world 65 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

No no, guys Mozilla are the good guys. They never did something nasty like bundling tons of spyware and 3rd party calls with Firefox nor adding unique IDs to every installation. Mozilla also acquired an ad analytics company recently for some reason.

[-] irreticent@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago

adding unique IDs to every installation.

I wasn't familiar with that so I did a quick search. For anyone else interested here is some info about it:

Each Firefox download has a unique identifier -ghacks, Mar. 2022

"Internet users who download the Firefox web browser from the official Mozilla website get a unique identifier attached to the installer that is submitted to Mozilla on install and first run."

[...]

"Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:"

Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla's HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).
Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.

"The downloaded installers do not have the unique identifier, as they are identical whenever they are downloaded."

In the comments section someone says:

"It seems that getting Firefox from GNU/Linux repos (Debian, etc.), doesn’t come with unique IDs."

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[-] Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago

Wtf happened in the last month? Everyone used to love and jerk off Mozilla and suddenly we hate them?

[-] TCB13@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago

Nothing, not everyone liked it, the only difference is that my comment would result in a shit show of downvotes last week while not people are starting to realize what Mozilla/Firefox really is. Mozilla was never the "all savior" pained them to be and it only took Wireshark and a couple of minutes to see it.

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[-] irreticent@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

bundling tons of spyware

I couldn't find any info about this with a quick search. Do you have any links to where I can read more about this?

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[-] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 62 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Jesus isn't rule number one of an employee suing you is to NOT FIRE THEM?

Seriously Monty Burns did this. Monty fucking burns. A cartoon villain

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[-] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 58 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I genuinely believe that the Mozilla board is secretly working for Google. They already get most of their funding from that search engine deal, is a backroom agreement to slowly run the organization into the ground in order to force the last holdouts over to Chrome that hard to believe?

[-] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 3 months ago

Don't ascribe intention where incompetence is enough.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 21 points 3 months ago

It's better to treat incompetence as maliciousness, than to treat maliciousness as incompetence.

The benefit of the doubt should only apply in the absence of a longstanding pattern of behavior to the contrary.

IMO Mozilla has run out of goodwill.

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[-] servobobo@feddit.nl 17 points 3 months ago

It's in Google's interest to keep Firefox/Mozilla alive to skirt antitrust laws, so any backdoor deal would be more making Chrome alternatives not look too attractive while keeping them on life support.

[-] romp_2_door@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

I don't think they're working for Google but I'm convinced that they're trying to setup their own advertising business

Trying to get some of that sweet ad revenue money

but Google controls so much of everything that of course they're indirectly funded by Google, so it may look like they're working for Google

In this Tecnofeudalist reality that we live in, we all indirectly work for our feudal lords Google / Meta / Amazon. We are granted their grace and allowed to exist in their server space and use their internet cables. In return we have to work the land and give our data as a tribute.

[-] hperrin@lemmy.world 54 points 3 months ago

I just canceled my MDN Plus subscription. Man, Mozilla has been so disappointing recently. I have to wonder if Google infiltrated them or something.

[-] orcrist@lemm.ee 16 points 3 months ago

It doesn't really matter if they've been infiltrated, because they're so dependent on Google's cash. The money corrupts, even if there are no specific moles.

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[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 50 points 3 months ago

Are they TRYING to speedrun losing their credibility?

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 50 points 3 months ago

EEO court here we come

[-] DynamoSunshirtSandals@possumpat.io 45 points 3 months ago

If Mozilla really starts to go downhill, what are the chances we get a Linux kernel-style community fork that we can rely on instead? Curious why that hasn't happened before -- perhaps because Mozilla has always toed the line of not-quite-awful enough?

I just hope we can keep an alternative browser engine alive. Would be nice if some rich person would just set up a funding model that can pay a few devs to keep it going indefinitely without ads or spyware.

[-] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 28 points 3 months ago

Because developing and maintaining an entire browser is a huge task. That's why we don't see much competition in browsers (I mean independent browsers). Also Mozilla isn't doing that bad, the browser is still really good. It's not the technical side that is a problem, its mostly marketing and the image of Mozilla.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 points 3 months ago

Librewolf is kind of like that. It pulls a lot from Tor

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[-] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago

Prolonged, multi-level fuckery with dozens of witnesses - and that's just with what they did to this one guy.

[-] cm0002@lemmy.world 19 points 3 months ago

Yet another thing to add to my growing pile of reasons that Mozilla is enshittifying. I wonder what tomorrow's reasons will be?

Slight sidetrack, I thought Mastodon was federated with Lemmy? Or is it just Boost that can't handle Mastodon links?

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago

You can read Lemmy threads in Mastodon clients (although it is messy and gross), but not vice versa. I couldn't tell you the reason why.

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[-] doctortran@lemm.ee 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Teixeira worked for nearly 14 years at Microsoft in areas including developer tools and technologies, before serving as Facebook’s director of program management and design, and Twitter’s vice president of product.

According to the suit, Teixeira joined Mozilla in August 2022 with the understanding that he would ultimately be positioned to succeed Baker as Mozilla CEO.

[...]

Teixeira, 52, was diagnosed in October 2023 with ocular melanoma, a rare but treatable form of cancer. He took an approved 90-day medical leave through early February under the Family Medical Leave Act, the suit says.

Shortly before Teixeira returned, in early February, Baker stepped down as CEO, returning to the role of executive chairman. Chambers, a Mozilla board member, was named to serve as CEO for the remainder of the year.

So he's basically fine, he just missed his chance to become CEO.

https://www.geekwire.com/2024/mozillas-product-chief-sues-the-firefox-maker-alleging-discrimination-after-cancer-diagnosis/

[-] LWD@lemm.ee 50 points 3 months ago

You missed this paragraph, which is curious.

After he returned, the suit says, Teixeira was asked to carry out and falsely take responsibility for a decision to make job cuts that were planned in his absence. He questioned the need for the layoffs and raised concerns about the potential to disproportionately impact women and people of color, the suit says.

Mozilla was trying to use him as a scapegoat, putting profits ahead of people.

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[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago

Remember: Mozilla killed mozilla the app long before it killed Mozilla the company.