It doesn't matter what the top position is called: CEO, the Grand Warlock of Yendor, or Benevolent Dictator For Life. CEO ≈ whoever is in charge and entrusted with enough authority that they can elevate or kill whatever they are managing, and that was probably the intended meaning.
> Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?
Apache has a reputation as the graveyard of open source software. If Firefox gets donated to them, it's curtains. Maybe if they went elsewhere it could work.
Or, they could create a Totally-Not-Mozilla Foundation and bring trustworthy old-timers with the right vision on board. Then they could either do a hostile takeover aka LibreOffice, or coax the original Mozilla Foundation into handing over the brand peacefully.
And perhaps restart servo development?
Interesting. I did not seem to know that. I always thought that Apache was a leader in open source since a lot of the notable tools (i.e. Spark, Airflow, Kafta) are maintained by Apache.
Are there any articles that I can learn more about this?
Spark is central to Databricks, the company started by the original creator of Spark.
So at least for a couple high-profile Apache projects there are for-profit organizations with an interest in furthering development.
I assume Databricks pays devs to contribute to Spark, I actually don't know.
So maybe Apache Firefox with a Mozilla corporate sponsor isn't such a terrible idea. Although again, I have no idea what the commercial motivation would be behind supporting Firefox development.
[1]: https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?category#big-data
In a conversation about salary I think it is clearly CEO-the-corporate-leadership-position, not a euphemism for BDFL.
> Apache has a reputation as the graveyard of open source software.
Except for httpd, Spark, Airflow, Kafka, Hadoop, etc.
If Mozilla is just Firefox then why to they need a CEO at all? Why does a web browser need an executive team? It doesn't make any sense to me. Linux doesn't have a CEO. Python doesn't have a CEO. Postgres doesn't have a CEO.
But all those projects have commercial support in some way because other companies rely on them and provide resources. It's unclear to me how Firefox achieves the same. Maybe that's a question a CEO can answer.
If you think you need a CEO then it makes perfect sense to me to pay them a competitive salary. For the same reason you should pay your devs a competitive salary. You can't just say "they should work for less". That's unfair and unrealistic. Either you need one and should pay for a good one, or you don't need one at all.
> Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian.
Or how about they donate Firefox to Apache?