Link to original post: https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/111932214690841585
Link to news link shown in the photo: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/mozilla-lays-off-60-people-wants-to-build-ai-into-firefox/
Cooperative ownership for all businesses too!
Firefox is developed in the open and accepts outside contributions already. The only thing this is adding is a paid membership.
Inb4 Google buys up 51% of memberships and “vote” to move Firefox to Chromium.
I don’t see much benefit of a fork being a member coop, since the product is already free. I could potentially see a worker coop - if this fork was intended to make a profit, and the people working on it are then incentivized to improve the product because they’ll personally benefit, then maybe we’d see more movement and innovation.
The fork is to preserve the core browser experience and provide security updates. If you hate AI jank bloating software, your best options for a browser is
Chromesuffering. Certainly, you can refuse updates on Firefox going forward if they commit to this path, but you’re a single missing patch away from being an easier target for bad actors to exploit your security vulnerabilitiesnothing stops forks from implementing the same security features…
The mass won’t even consider being part of a paid membership of a cooperative that’s only purpose is a web browser. That would be the way to drive them even more into Chrome or Safari.
i don’t think you need to be a paid member to use the finished product. membership is for having a say in what will be changed.
This has some serious “only landowners should be allowed to vote” vibes
I will say directly that this model of governance is incompatible with the tenets of free software.
I will say directly that this model of governance is incompatible with the tenets of free software.
Which of the four freedoms does it fall short of?
2, and by extension 3 and 4
Hell depending on what this capital class votes for even 1 might be out the window.
How?
because having some capital class dictate the project is entirely antithetical to having the choice to contribute, even the AI stuff is just being contributed by a few large companies who want it
because having some capital class dictate the project is entirely antithetical to having the choice to contribute
Why?
the AI stuff is just being contributed by a few large companies who want it
Contributing something because you want it is how free software works.