Comment by sshine

6 days ago

This gets downvoted for being negative, but it was my immediate reaction when I saw "Mozilla": They're axing projects that don't align for strategic reasons that probably make sense, but is simultaneously very Googly.

Association with Mozilla is a cause for concern when considering the longevity of a project.

8 comments

sshine

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90s_dev  6 days ago

Sure, Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And Microsoft. Everyone does. Pruning is a healthy and expected part of running a business. So what? All software is temporary, given a long enough timeline, even gmail. It's a user's fault for expecting otherwise.

  • sshine  5 days ago

    > Mozilla does this. So does Google. And Apple. And Microsoft.

    Those are all companies you need to be wary with, because a strategic choice on their behalf may upend your life with a few days warning, or none at all.

    And the sad part is that Mozilla joined their ranks, not qualifying as a truly “public service company”.

    > All software is temporary, given a long enough timeline

    Sure, we must all perish one day. But what you describe is how commercial SaaSS gets pruned because it’s good for business, and I have two objections with that:

      1. That doesn’t make it good for users.
  2. It’s a different timeline for software than for services.

    My Linux toolchain doesn’t suddenly deprecate some core tool. Only commercial software services die like this; FOSS bit rots at the worst. And when some authority makes a brainfart, people fork.

    I was contacted today by the customer of an old employer post bankruptcy. They want to know how to deal with self-hosting the service their hardware depends on; this never got delivered. All software is temporary, I told him, meanwhile his very expensive hardware wouldn’t initialize properly on boot.