Comment by karaterobot
1 year ago
I get what you're saying, but the reality is that it takes more than engineers to run a browser company. You'd have to find 100 engineers who can double as lawyers, designers, project managers, etc., and handle payroll, and HR, and after those 100 engineers end up doing the job of 300 other people, how much code are they writing? Your point about them appearing to waste money is taken, I'm just pointing out that it's not quite as bald-faced as that.
It doesn't take more than engineers to maintain an open-source browser, though. Why does it have to be a company at all? Remember Firefox? Firefox was literally just an act-of-love fork from some engineers from a dead acquisition by a dying dot-com era behemoth.
Put another way, does the Linux kernel or the Python language need to be run by a company, or will foundations does these jobs ok?
There are plenty of open source projects that are enormously successful without a single lawyer or project manager in sight.
Or you could literally outsource 90% of that and focus on what you actually should be, engineering and development of Firefox and other Mozilla products. These companies are bloated beyond belief and they have nothing to show for it, clearly it’s not working.