When did Firefox Sync start using accounts.firefox.com for their login site? One assumes they’ve owned it since at least then, if not before. https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amozilla-firefox%2Ffirefox... says 2014? So probably earlier than that, though I don't know for sure when.
It was always getfirefox.com for many years. Was someone simply squatting on the firefox.com domain and asking some exorbitant price from Mozilla to relinquish it?
Whoever you sold it to would have to have a valid Firefox trademark in a different field like the original owner did, or Firefox would be to snag it via a trademark lawsuit.
Or you could sell it to a malware site, who would lose it fairly quickly but might be able to make some cash in the meantime. I can't imagine they'd earn much though. The old firefox.com didn't have Google juice until after the transition.
The only value in the firefox.com domain is the ability to shake down Mozilla for a sum less than the cost of filing a trademark lawsuit. Which is significant, but not extremely so.
But Firefox is a for profit company worth millions? Why would you just donate it like that to a corporation? For the longest time I thought Mozilla was a non profit org but it doesn’t seem to be the case and they have millions in the bank? I would sell it for a fair price for both parties.
Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit entity wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation. That's why they can keep lots of cash on hand and reinvest it into the business.
It's my experience that people who look for a way to profit off of every situation they encounter are usually both wealthier than me and also generally quite miserable, lonely folks. Also ironically, they usually are only as wealthy as they are due to generosity given to them earlier in life they would never give to others.
Seems more like speculating than observing. Unless you can elaborate on what proof you have that each of the individuals you've "observed" (which doesn't include GP) were lonely and had handouts.
In this day and age anyone going against profit motive is commendable. the default is "fuck people over but not care because you're abstracted away from them". It's the tragedy of our times. Big respect for anyone who's willing to fight it.
many times it is rationalized as "fuck people over because even if I don't, someone else will, so I might as well be the one to profit". An attitude that scales well from individuals to big corporations.
>I would have rented or sold it to the highest bidder.
Do you also steal from the library? Mozilla isn't some big bad corporation.
Personally, I'd be a little wary of pissing off the hackers who are fans of that browser using my meatspace name, but hey, you do you. Maybe when you're done you can stroll on down to the local motorcycle bar and kick over some Harleys and see how far that takes you in life.
Dear lord, I certainly wouldn't want to be some kind of shadowy open source egregore making people unsafe offline... I don't think there's some kind of squad of Stallman level open source types who would Batman you away. That's a ridiculous idea and I'm sorry I made you think that!
The only time anything close to busting kneecaps came during an internshipc I had at Firefox in the bay area years ago after a nearby homeless man declaring that he "loved firefox because firefox "doesn't murder the homelss". (You learn all sorts of things when you speak to the users!)
Me being me, I joking asked "Does Chrome murder the homeless?" (The Chrome team had recently moved into the same office building and begun poaching people while throwing pity parties on Twitter if no one showed up at their office because they made a stupid cake.)
Anyways, long story short there were some very fucked up Chrometerns that summer, and apparently there was a literal rumble when one of them instinctively ran towards Sutter Gutter when someone tried to beat them up for no reason. So it's just after last call, bunch of firefox shirts stumble out and... well I'm pretty sure we're past the statue of limitations, but a chrometern got his ass kicked, badly, and transferred down to Mountain View because they were very suddenly aware that homeless people are... people. They talk. And when you try to beat one of them up and get run off... now you're suddenly aware there's quite a lot of homelessness in San Francisco and maybe you were walking home safely because up until that point, you hadn't been an asshole to people.
Anyways, no, there is no Firefox gang, just a collection of people who happen to use a particular web browser. (And no, I don't work for Firefox)
Am I the only one with deja vu? I distinctly remember a story, shortly after Firefox's initial launch, of a firefox.com domain owner gifting it to Mozilla. Maybe it was getfirefox.com and I'm just getting old and confused.
I hear that they don’t embed tracking metadata in those builds on the FTP, but I haven’t confirmed that.
The normal download page embeds a unique tracking alphanumeric string in your build that is reported to the organization on a regular basis when the telemetry phones home unless you disable this manually and clear the values.
I believe it was getfirefox.com, which I remember primarily from adding banners to websites I ran back in the day. I forgot who previously owned firefox.com but I recall them adding a link to getfirefox.com on it back in the day.
Finally! No more "You know, you should really get Firefox, it's super easy. First you need to go to this other website though. Yes, I know, I know. Just trust me, okay?"
It includes older people because Mozilla had previous work before Firefox, so they heard that name first. I've never heard anyone my age (27) or younger call it that, including non-technical people who somehow still have a nostalgic and/or ideological affinity for Firefox.
When the Mozilla foundation took over the Netscape codebase, it was initially called Mozilla, or Mozilla Browser. There was also a Mozilla email client that came from Netscape Communicator.
Then they made a trimmed-down version of the browser with only essential features. That was initially called Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox. They did the same with the email client and called it Thunderbird. These existed alongside Mozilla Browser for a while until it was discontinued.
Yeah, again, probably because tech-literate (not tech-illiterate) people are more likely to know the history of the organization beyond when they started using the software. My point was pretty much that the know-nothing user learning about the software today/recently knows it's called Firefox and might never have heard of Mozilla. The branding is clear about Firefox and the Mozilla name is essentially background knowledge.
I know you're making a joke, but I enjoyed having Safari installed when Apple made it for Windows too, and would still want to download it today if it was available. You can't, though.
hahaha, indeed. but i always can't remember mozilla (i don't even know i spelled it right), the other is really to remember, and automatically you know google has a chrome browser, etc.
I mean, doesn't everybody just google the thing they want and click the first result? I don't think I've heard of people just guessing "<some brand name>.com" since back in the days before the browser address bar doubled as a search bar.
See
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279788