Note: I edited this post on July 6, 2015 to add content about Firefox Hello. This post was originally published July 4, 2015

Note: This post serves solely as a rant and provides no constructive criticism.

Mozilla, one of the last open-source web companies has made many questionable decisions in the recent past. I’m going to skip over many of the minor whoopsies Mozilla has made in the past few years (very many), and focus on the big, big mistakes.

Let’s go on a rant, shall we?

The Resignation of Brendan Eich

In 2013, Brendan Eich was appointed CEO of Mozilla. However, only a few days later, a vigilante blogger discovered some of Eich’s atrocious political views. Eich’s beliefs were so outrageous and awful that they spurned thousands of people to take arms and boycott Eich’s plot to turn Mozilla into a Fourth Reich powerered by JavaJewScript .

The extremes belief that got that Mein Fuhrer Adolf Eich fired? He opposed gay marriage. At the time, he held (what was) the popular belief that even Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton held.

There are far worse things that people can do besides disagreeing with gay marriage. The community surrounding Mozilla effectively kicked out the most skilled person for the job because some idiots were uncomfortable with his political ideology. The people who called for Eich’s resignation couldn’t even prove that Eich’s beliefs would affect how he performed his job (or potentially harmed his employees).

That’s right. The man who invented Javascript, the most important language of the web, was fired because he had different political views than others. This is thoughtcrime at it’s finest.

WTF Mozilla?

Stupid UI Changes

Now, I’m not a sentimental guy whenever it comes to UI changes, but there have been quite a few backwards changes in Firefox.

It’s no secret that Mozilla has made mistakes such as Panorama in the past. And whenever Mozilla corrects their mistakes, awesome. But Australis? Yikes.

Australis is buggy, awful, and generally crap. I’m not going to dwell too much on this topic, as there is plenty of existing literature blasting Australis.

WTF MOZILLA?

Pointless Pocket

Yet another stupid decision by Mozilla was the integration of Pocket into the browser.

Pocket, if you aren’t aware, is a save-it-for-later bookmark service which allows you to save links for reading later. In a recent Firefox update, Mozilla added the Pocket service the browser. While this seems to be a great feature to attract a common user to Firefox, it would be better fit as an extension.

My complaint? Support for a closed-source service was added into the last important open-source web browser (and no, Webkit frames don’t count as browsers).

Let’s say that again.

Mozilla added support for a closed-source service to the last open-source web browser.
This goes directly against principle #7 of Mozilla’s own manifesto:

07: Free and open source software promotes the development of the Internet as a public resource.

This is almost as bad as adding support for EME.

WTF MOZILLA?

Hell-o

While this isn’t the most recent of the events I’ve listed, it’s possibly the most egregious.

Firefox Hello, if you don’t already know, is a chat feature that Mozilla shipped in Firefox 34. This isn’t the first time that Mozilla has added a social integration feature to Firefox either, as in the past they’ve added Social Integration with Facebook that hardly worked and was barely used.

Funnily enough, it’s almost as if Mozilla is trying to imitate the deceased Rockmelt.

WTF MOZILLA?!?!!!

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A Plea

If you’re at Mozilla and you’re reading this, please, please stop the buffoonery. Rush e10s to a stable release, and fix the outdated extensions which leak memory like no tomorrow.

Firefox’s market share is falling faster than an epileptic bird. Save us from a future dominated by those awful, mean, ugly proprietary browsers. Save us from the botnet. Save us from the next IE6.

Mozilla, we want to love you. You saved us from Internet Explorer and pop-up ads.

Please, please don’t go the way of Netscape.