Servo will forever be a testament to Mozilla's absolute failure as an organization. Finally there was a renewed interest in Firefox as a technology and their dipshit CEO fired them all "because covid" while taking their largest ever bonus.
I hope that it can become something more than that, but I'll always remember it.
Technology doesn't matter if it doesn't convert users. Perhaps the improvements were too small given the level of investment necessary and given the bleak outlook, they decided they couldn't keep it up. I am happier knowing Mozilla will live to see another day than see it die off.
As far as pay goes, the Mozilla board ultimately is in charge of setting that. I'm not sure it makes sense to blame the CEO for taking the compensation they were promised. The fact it is correlated with layoffs just speaks to the large incentives those in charge throw at the CEO to perform layoffs when necessary.
The technology is what matters to users. Mozilla only matters in that they develop and publish the software that users care about.
If the software is forked and development is continued as an open source project under the auspices of another organization, that works just as well for users. Conversely, if the software dies but the Mozilla Corporation survives as the world's leading manufacturer of paperclips, that's of no value to the software's users.
the Mozilla Board is a living proof that the following keywords in absolutely any leadership position are a death sentence: Stanford, Harvard, McKinsey. The Mozilla board are sycophanths that prop eachother up in the various boards they are each a part of to leech off as much as they can before jumping ship to another.
> Technology doesn't matter if it doesn't convert users
Browsers have primarily won on the merits of their implementation. It is how Chrome was primarily marketed, for example.
> Perhaps the improvements were too small given the level of investment necessary and given the bleak outlook, they decided they couldn't keep it up.
That doesn't seem likely. The project had significant potential for core technology metrics - performance, security, stability.
> I'm not sure it makes sense to blame the CEO for taking the compensation they were promised.
The CEO is the one who asked for the increase in pay. This is publicly documented. In fact, she gets paid more than the sum total of all Mozilla donations, meaning that corporate sponsorship pays for the browser and user donations pay for her salary.
The CEO is also in a perfectly fine position to reduce pay in a time of uncertainty. Any board would approve that (for reference, I was a CEO of a small [8 figures] tech company).
The CEOs pay had been rising significantly well before the layoffs, nothing to do with the board pushing for layoffs.
I think you underestimate how much power a CEO has, the board is not in charge of all decision making.
Who cares if their CEO did not invent JavaScript, she donated to politically correct causes, shook the right hands, and virtue signaled at the right time. As far as Mozilla is concerned, they got the leader they deserved.
It's not so much this Woke Right view that everyone deserves 0 consequences in every environment, and lefties have 0 consequences, but the inverse.
Bad idea to fight gay marriage when you run a company, not very respectful or inclusive and causes a lot of headaches for board, HR, and legal.
Nobody really cares about the new CEO as long as they don't do that. The CEO that replaced Brendan wasn't a she, you're trying to connect events 6 years after Brendan to Brendan.
I hope that it can become something more than that, but I'll always remember it.