Ask HN: Should the Mozilla Foundation be forked?

22 points

a year ago

The recent ToS issues with the Mozilla Foundation [1] isn't the first time its continuing viability as an organization have come into question. Issues like its massive executive salaries [2], its dependence on Google funding [3], continued focus on things like bundled software (!!!) that isn't a web browser (eg Mozilla VPN), and the fact that Firefox is one of the last competing web browser engines to Chromium/Blink - all of that has me wondering if we can continue to trust Mozilla continuing to develop and maintain the Firefox browser.

It's easy for us as devs to say "if you don't like it, fork it" for software code, but the code isn't the problem here. The organization managing and turning the code into a software product is the problem. And we can't necessarily fork that - something totally new would have to be built to manage the Firefox code.

So how do you all feel about this? Is it time to find Firefox (or a successor brand for the codebase) a new home? Is it time for the 3rd iteration of Netscape to happen?

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/28/mozilla-responds-to-backlash-over-new-terms-saying-its-not-using-peoples-data-for-ai/ [2] https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Mozilla#Excessive_Executive_Pay_Critiques [3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/25/doj_google_collateral_damage_opinion/_opinion/

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