Maintaining a web browser in the 2020s is an expensive thing to do. You need full time employees who specialise in all the systems that make up a browser, and can’t leave security-critical parts like ensuring the integrity of the JavaScript sandbox to volunteer hobbyists. It’s far from the only thing Mozilla spend money on, so if they need to mage cost savings, it won’t necessarily stop them being able to maintain Firefox, but another organisation picking it up if they do stop isn’t likely.
You are not totally wrong, but I think if you were totally right, the internet as a world-changing technology would have never come to be in the first place. An internet operated by a single company is basically just a cable service. I think right now there certainly is apathy in the public consciousness towards the value add of keeping the internet decentralized, because it is taken for granted. But I think this is temporary, human society has always been reactionary in that way, we let things back slide, until it gets bad, and we only do something about it when we feel the pain.
When the internet was becoming a world-changing technology, there weren’t thirty years of websites to keep working and malware to protect from, web standards were far simpler, and a much higher proportion of users were enthusiasts who were excited by anything they could get and didn’t mind if things were rough around the edges. Similarly, two brothers could make the world’s first aircraft that flew under its own power, and yet with the combined might of everyone working for Boeing, people are worried about airliner doors falling off and an eight-day space trip has become an eight-month one. Mature technologies need a lot more effort to build and maintain than emerging ones.
I appreciate what you’re saying, and you’re not wrong about the level of effort. But I take exception to the implication that, somehow, paid developers are better developers than OSS or hobbyist ones.
Getting paid for something doesn’t make you good, or diligent. It doesn’t even make you competent.
But it does mean you can spend forty hours a week or thereabouts putting effort into a particular goal and maintaining the knowledge, skills and experience to keep doing it to a high standard without having to sink time and effort into something else in order to get paid enough to live on.
Maintaining a web browser in the 2020s is an expensive thing to do. You need full time employees who specialise in all the systems that make up a browser, and can’t leave security-critical parts like ensuring the integrity of the JavaScript sandbox to volunteer hobbyists. It’s far from the only thing Mozilla spend money on, so if they need to mage cost savings, it won’t necessarily stop them being able to maintain Firefox, but another organisation picking it up if they do stop isn’t likely.
You are not totally wrong, but I think if you were totally right, the internet as a world-changing technology would have never come to be in the first place. An internet operated by a single company is basically just a cable service. I think right now there certainly is apathy in the public consciousness towards the value add of keeping the internet decentralized, because it is taken for granted. But I think this is temporary, human society has always been reactionary in that way, we let things back slide, until it gets bad, and we only do something about it when we feel the pain.
When the internet was becoming a world-changing technology, there weren’t thirty years of websites to keep working and malware to protect from, web standards were far simpler, and a much higher proportion of users were enthusiasts who were excited by anything they could get and didn’t mind if things were rough around the edges. Similarly, two brothers could make the world’s first aircraft that flew under its own power, and yet with the combined might of everyone working for Boeing, people are worried about airliner doors falling off and an eight-day space trip has become an eight-month one. Mature technologies need a lot more effort to build and maintain than emerging ones.
I appreciate what you’re saying, and you’re not wrong about the level of effort. But I take exception to the implication that, somehow, paid developers are better developers than OSS or hobbyist ones.
Getting paid for something doesn’t make you good, or diligent. It doesn’t even make you competent.
But it does mean you can spend forty hours a week or thereabouts putting effort into a particular goal and maintaining the knowledge, skills and experience to keep doing it to a high standard without having to sink time and effort into something else in order to get paid enough to live on.