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Mozilla shutting down Solo AI website creator

31 points · 65 comments · nedrylandJP

  1. devmor · · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t understand why Mozilla keeps doing these odd projects. They maintain the only real alternative browser stack to Chrome and rather than keep it up to date and triage bugs, so many resources keep flowing into random AI hype crapware that no one asked for.
    1. cubefox · · focus · HN ↗
      They need new revenue sources. Their current Google deal was declared illegal by an antitrust ruling.
      1. ryandrake · · focus · HN ↗
        This may be a silly question, but why does an open source project need revenue? Or employees? Couldn't Mozilla's few core projects run on volunteers?
        1. post-it · · focus · HN ↗
          Because there aren't enough volunteers willing to put enough time in.
          1. swiftcoder · · focus · HN ↗
            You may be right, but I'm not sure we actually have strong evidence for that. Mozilla has run like a bigtech firm for so long that it's not really clear whether the open-source portion thereof could survive without.

            $500 million in annual revenue and $6 million CEO compensation packages are well in excess of what other similar-scope projects get by on. Mozilla accounts for somewhere between 30-50% of all funding in open-source - if you sum up the Linux foundation, the Wikimedia foundation, the Apache foundation, KDE e.V, the Gnome foundation... it's still less than Mozilla

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