💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~mieum › relog › 2020-10-23-drewdevault-firefox.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 17:01:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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gemini://drewdevault.com/2020/10/22/Firefox-the-embarassment-of-FOSS.gmi
Interestingly, the recent Mozilla layoff fiasco is how I discovered Gemini (so...thanks Mozilla?). Around that time I had re-entered the fediverse via another "zilla," Hubzilla, and the public stream was overwhelmingly full of frantic doomsday prepping discourse. I kept hearing people pledging to use Gemini more, and I had no idea what that meant!
I spent a few nights roaming around Geminispace through mozz's proxy, and was immediately smitten. It was everything I had missed about the internet. It felt more human than the web has for years (in spite of how "social" and "personalized" it has become). This is also how I found out about pubnixes and tildes.
We have no recourse left to preserve the web. This is why I'm throwing my weight behind Gemini, a protocol which is much simpler than the web, and which you can implement yourself in a weekend.
My experience with Gemini is a testament to its simplicity. I am not really a programmer, an amateur hobbyist at best, but Gemini has been a gateway drug for me. I find myself learning how to program by building Gemini-related utilities. The fact that I can more-or-less have it all in my head enables even someone of limited skills as myself to build things around it. Not to mention that I was able to start a server at home with less effort than it takes to wash the dishes. Publishing ordinary content is uncomplicated, requring no fancy software to interface with and publish your documents. All of this, moreover, I do in my spare time when I am not working or being a dad/husband.
I had not read Mozilla's response to the anti-trust suit, so thanks for that link. Here's an interesting quote:
The ultimate outcomes of an antitrust lawsuit should not cause collateral damage to the very organizations – like Mozilla – best positioned to drive competition and protect the interests of consumers on the web.
In context of everything else Mozilla has done recently, it's hard to see how their actions are protecting the interests of consumers in any significant way. I believe Mozilla has done great things for the internet, but it feels like they are milking the heroism rhetoric. The irony here is too much---how is defering to the culprits of the dehumanized web a defense of consumer interests; of the internet itself?
After the big Mozilla layoffs, I was a little turned off by how everyone turned on them. Some people were lamenting that Firefox's user base had not contributed enough to keep them unbeholden to the likes of Google. This may be true in part, but the Mozilla Corporation has made notoriously dumb choices, as you mentioned, Drew. But at the time I thought making a small contribution would somehow help, so I attempted to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. What I discovered is that it's impossible to donate without somehow involving Google in the process. The form to donate requires code served from Google servers in order to function. I tried finding a way around this but eventually gave up! I'm glad that I put that on pause. I've had a lot of conflicted feelings about Mozilla for some time now, and reading their response to the antitrust case really doesn't do them any favors in my view.
With all that said, I want to say thanks to all you awesome people for making Gemini what it is and what it could/will be~
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