"achieved positive growth" is pretty self-explanatory. "dramatically reset the global search strategy" is a bit weirder but they are (most likely) talking about their search deal with Google which they terminated in favour of Yahoo! and yes, that is a pretty dramatic reset.

If you don't want to read corporatese, well, don't read a corporate blog. Mozilla is a great company and a great presence for the web, but Mozilla Corp is still a corp, even if the Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit.

That's posted on mozilla.org, not mozilla.com tho. There's a fine balance between the two.

There's currently no meaningful distinction between the two domains. mozilla.org is the standard domain for all mozilla sites (developer.mozilla.org, addons.mozilla.org, or, in this case, blog.mozilla.org). I think we maybe use mozilla.com for a handful of internal things.

The corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit, so the .org domain isn't necessarily a misrepresentation, either.

The argument for being corporate cant go both way tho.

What matters is how public perceives this, too. Posting corp stuff on the org domain/site means that then they are fully corporate-like. Which maybe is simply the case.

You can't justify that its not the case because Mofo owns Moco.. then say both Moco and Mofo share everything without implying its all just a corp. (or the opposite, but not both).

All I was trying to clear up was that mozilla.org is our standard domain regardless of what's being posted, and thus there was no conscious decision to put "corporate speak" on a .org domain. I dunno exactly why this decision was made, but I'm almost certain having .com and .org both in active use would be really confusing for users (is it addons.mozilla.com? addons.mozilla.org?) and, to a lesser extent, our ops and developers.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the tone of this post is too corporate for a .org and is a bad choice if we want to imply that Mozilla isn't just some for-profit company (which we don't, we like talking about how we're non-profit and open source and mission-driven).

Honestly I don't think anyone cares. We'd get the same trouble for posting corporate speak on a .com vs a .org because by the time you care about that, you already know enough about Mozilla to be bothered regardless of the domain.

I don't really think the problem is that "it's a .org" domain. But this is posted in what's essentially a place where a lot of people who understand why "positive growth" is not only wrong, but a load of brainwashed crap, spend quite some time :).

Phrases like those belong in press releases, not a blog post from an organization intelligent people respect.

> a lot of people who understand why "positive growth" is not only wrong, but a load of brainwashed crap

I mean it's sort've a redundant term, but in context (positive growth of Firefox users, something that has been falling for a while now) it makes perfect sense to me. What did you think he was saying?

> I mean it's sort've a redundant term

Sort of a meaningless term?

How about we replace it with "negative decrease"?

Mozilla.com redirects to Mozilla.org. Mozilla have the dual structure, but when it comes to their web presence, I don't think they are making too much of a distinction.

Which one employs the people who ship the browser?

Mozilla is a nonprofit organization. Governance comes from there.

The Mozilla Corporation employs most people working on Firefox, and is controlled by the nonprofit. It pays taxes and salaries and so forth, but all of its goals are driven by the nonprofit.

It's similar to nonprofit hospitals and similar things, again where there is a nonprofit that controls a for-profit entity (as hospitals need to employ people, pay taxes, etc., like a normal business).

> "achieved positive growth" is pretty self-explanatory.

Sure, but it's Corporatese for "grew".

Thanks for acting as a translator.

One of them should change their name then. It's confusing and starts to feel like a good cop, bad cop routine.

> "achieved positive growth again ...

My understanding from reading Mozilla people, and from my own intuition, is that without significant market power for Firefox, Mozilla loses influence for all its priorities, including the open web, end-user control, etc.

Firefox's market share is very important to Mozilla, to everyone who shares Mozilla's priorities, and to everyone affected by them (which might be, simply, "everyone").

Then they should have written "increased our market share again". Growth in corporatese usually refers to revenue or profit, which is not the main point here. Confusing choice of words.

And it's important to remember that increasing your userbase isn't enough to increase your marketshare — Opera, at least until Chropera shipped, was increasing userbase month after month, yet marketshare was falling. The number of people using the web continues to grow!

They changed the default search provider from Google to Yahoo in the US, Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. (I believe only new installs were affected by this change.) The word "dramatic" is a bit over the top, but the changes were significant given their longstanding relationship with Google.

Corporatese is nothing new on Mozilla's blogs, unfortunately. See this DF post from last year for another example: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla

Less than 1 year ago, when I read Mitchell Baker vapid statement about Brendan Eich's "resignation" I realized that Mozilla has essentially become a show run by politicians who seem intent on delivering political correctness rather than good software. That Firefox will go down the drain from this point seems fairly likely, and the first signs are already emerging.

My guess is they're trying to be especially corporate and professional and bland after the whole Eich debacle.

IBM and GE are all the proof we need that 'corporate' doesn't change the world. Edit; they once offered innovation, now they suck its blood.

Agreed. Longtime user -- I was on the Netscape 4.3, then 7.1, Kmeleon project, then Phoenix, then Firdbird, then Firefox? I cant keep up.

With that being said, Mozilla has been (in my mind) the pro consumer, pro internet org to challenge the establishment. So far, its worked wonders -- we have a diverse ecosystem, new burning edge interfaces and plugin market places to boot. The partnership with the Tor project gave me hope. However..reading that PR blurb/intro made me want to pluck out my eyeballs. Where is the heart? The direction? The challenge?

Mozilla -- Its time you returned to your roots. Find the spark that set you free and fan the flames.

> Longtime user -- I was on the Netscape 4.3, then 7.1, Kmeleon project, then Phoenix, then Firdbird, then Firefox? I cant keep up.

You named 5 things that happened in the span of 3 years over 12 years ago, and one that has been around for a decade. I'm pretty sure you can in fact keep up.

> Where is the heart? The direction? The challenge?

Please.

/hate -- That was more or less intended to qualify that I wasn't some hit and run commentator talking out of my ass, but a passionate mozillian that has done my fair share of bugzilla triage.

What else you got? Something about the cloud? Add in a few more buzzwords and throw it under the /corporate blog then apologize for it.

I'd love to see some clarity, direction, and a genuine plan for impact in the future. Not a knee jerk deal with a failed search engine paired with some bumbling about consolidation, mergers and yes, the cloud. There is plenty of that type of 'news' on Forbes.

Exactly. Sounds like someone sorely needs to migrate to Mozilla Sui- cough seamonkey.

to find the spark, type about:mozilla in the address bar. Works best in firefox.