Yes, Apple! :-) Obviously Apple doesn’t have the win margins to put proper parts in their hardware…

Just yesterday I realized my Thinkpad Edge 330 is running w/o any trouble for 11 years now, cost me little above 300€, brand new back then. :-)

Not sure if it s a language issue (non native speaker), but seems we have the same goals.

So sorry, if I misunderstood your position/point!

My point is mostly, that it seems every browser is mostly US controlled directly or transitively, and it should be in the interest of every other country/nation to have a free, open source, not US controlled browser on the market… but given the sad reality in my country, I’ll probably be long dead before corruption/lobby-ism and sheer stupidity of the the government will come to this conclusion. :-(

The CEO is for a good reason an easy target: Show me another company where this level of incompetence is rewarded with steady salary increases?!? (I am afraid you’ll be able to. ;-))

Given your calculation is correct, you are correct that paying the CEO nothing would not make a big difference for Mozillas income. Although it would hopefully open the road for a better CEO.

Your argument that hitting at the CEO ignores the whole context of market dominance of Google could IMHO also used against your argument: If the CEO is so powerless that she cannot take the responsibility for the decline of Mozilla, than why does she get payed at all. If all is a function of the environment and the tides of the market, we can easily replace her with ChatGPT and have the same results w/o wasting money.

At the end of the day, we are exactly where we have been literally a decade ago: Finding a sustainable business model for Mozilla/Firefox. Once more: This core problem of Mozilla/Firefox has been well known for over a decade by now, and again the CEOs only answer is advertisement. Why do we pay money for the bullshit every first semester MBA student would come up with a brainstorming within the first 3 minutes.

Mozilla survives thanks to Google and their (rightful) fears of being outed as a monopoly.

The discussion is always if Mozilla could survive on donations. I do not now if they could. I still think there are a lot of actors with an interest of an independent browser, even whole governments. What I know for sure is, I won’t donate to Mozilla as long as incompetent CEOs are payed.

Are you kidding?

A very big thank you for taking your time to answer in such an elaborate way and giving pointers for further information. Highly appreciated!

Very happy to read that, but honestly, when reading “$1 million USD” as investment sum, it reads more like an advertisement stunt than a real investment. (Like, 2 senior developers for one year?)

We need more diversity in Open Source operating systems for desktops, laptops and any of the *BSDs is a great candidate. (Would love to see Haiku getting some sponsorship or even ReactOS!)

Nice, I like it very much when one can separate between personal fit and quality! :-)

For me the whole point of the book is to accept the story, while your own sense/mind tells you to not play along, which made me reflect about how much - dare I say everyone of us - plays along everyday… Besides this, I simply like Ishiguros writing style (non native English speaker here, so wonder what a native would think about it.)

Would love to get a list of books from you that you respect and like (or respect and don’t like ;-)).

Short book that hit hard:

• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Never let me go, Kazuro Ishiguro
• The last unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
• 1984, George Orwell
• Prince of Thieves, Chuck Hogan

Mandatory heads up: The writing gets better over time.

The first time I tried to read it, the writing style of the first book really turned me off.

Well, I funnily enough also agree with you, having just one widely used browser engine for all platforms sounds great in theory… (Until someone decides to not let you block advertisement anymore…;-))

Docker is one of the reasons I use Linux and for all practical purposes nearly all open source software is developed for Linux and later ported to the BSDs (if one is lucky) - so, again, I am also using Linux because it runs what I need to run.

I simply would love to have some practical and relevant options for OSS operating systems. I fully understand that this is not going to happen and Linux won.

Anyway, have a good day!

According to your logic we should all use Google Chrome. ;-)

Comparing Linux with the BSDs is really apples and oranges. The BSDs have a very nicely integrated base system, everything just works™ and everything works together. When you only ever used Linux or Apple with homebrew, you never experienced a system where all basic tools really fit and work together.

Linux is a pragmatic choice, but it is an Unix-clone made by PC people. The BSDs are a Unix operating system for PCs made by Unix people. We loose something very important if the BSDs get totally out of style/forgotten.

I would be happy if something usable comes out of it. OTOH, the classical problem is and has always been driver support. I am not sure I like the plan of running a complete Linux as a subsystem for driver support, and I have doubts Redox will have native drivers for all hardware within the next decade.

Sad story. Best OS I ever run was around 2002 NetBSD on a desktop. It is quite bad that Linux is the only viable player for an operating system on desktops/laptops. (With viable I mean has drivers for all of my my hardware and runs the software I need for personal and professional life.)

Indeed. :-)

I still insist that the music of our generation growing up was the best time for listening to alternative/metal etc.

So much innovation, new genres were created, and so much creativity.

Today most of the music sounds like ‘more of the same’ and very formulaic to me. I am happy for any recommendation of current music in alternative/metal which is innovativ.

Thank you very much, a great recommendation!

… and yes, agreed: I am lucky I had a very good manager once, who didn’t pull the usual shit and had human integrity, but people like that are the exception not the rule.

Thanks for the book suggestion, I’ll buy it! :-)

Yes, I also saw it in every job/team/organization, and it seems very human, everyone just likes some people better than others.

The think which irks me, is that I also sometimes experienced favoritism/nepotism with totally incompetent people I had to directly work with and also several level above my pay grade. Like, if you have two competent people and chose the one you like more, I can totally understand. But if there are competent people and you chose your incompetent crony over literally everybody else, it seems self defeating in the mid/long run.

I benefited of someone with relative power taking a liking to me later in my career, and all of a sudden I was elevated into a network where things are possible which weren’t before. Still at the very bottom of the ladder, but very aware how much difference a few connections can make.

Correct, not all of my examples are about nepotism.

Thank you for your recommendations, funnily enough I don’t suffer from the political/social skills.

What I cannot wrap my head around are situations, where people through nepotism/favoritism or politics get a position where they fail, which then comes back to the people who put them there. To rephrase it a little bit: “Why not put someone who is 50% competent and 90% loyal on a position instead of someone who is 25% competent and perhaps 95% loyal”? It seems kind of obvious to have a little bit competence, and if it is only for self preservation. (Just to ‘objectify’ that: Saw higher managers which are totally incompetent (not only my opinion), have a proven track record of failing everything they touch by stupidity (like: that is not how reality works stupid) which got officially demoted after several years, hurting their sponsors. Why didn’t their sponsor demote them earlier or put them in the position in the first place?)

Wow, thanks a lot, the books look very interesting and special shout out for the Podcast, I already subscribed to the feed! :-)

• Finch - Say Hello to Sunshine
• Paledusk - Palehell
• Faith no more - King for a day, fool for a lifetime
• Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
• Philipp Glass - Glassworks
• Henryk Mikołaj Górecki - Symphony of sorrowful Songs
• Fear Factory - Obsolete
• At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command
• Boy sets fire - After The Eulogy
• Refused - The Shape of Punk to come (not a fan after their sell-out-reunion, but the album is still great)

Seems SAP’s investment in good arguments pays off.

OTOH Europe and Germany have obvious problems in the cloud sector: They cannot do it on their own and thus are depending on either the USA or other countries who have the know-how.

Not a situation you want to find yourself in, when IT is the backbone which keeps everything running.

Luckily German government’s investment in paper, floppy drives and fax machines makes it secure against attacks towards IT infrastructure… ;-)