Mozilla lays off 70

Would you cut, say, Rust?

Rust is perhaps the best thing to come out of any corporation in years. Protobuf, Envoy, Kubernetes, ... -- I struggle to think of anything better for our industry than Rust.

You could feel that Rust as a programming language is the greatest thing to ever happen to computer science, the big question for a corporation’s C-suite is can it make money. I’d assume (perfect possible that I’m wrong) that Rust does nothing but cost money for Mozilla. This is not to say I think it will be cancelled or force to expatriate and become a separate legal entity, but management is beholden to shareholders, not the tech community at large.

And yes I know that Rust does receive some corporate funding from other entities, but it is still a Mozilla product.

I'm a Rust fanboy, let's state that at the beginning. It does, however, have a slow production adoption even though there is a fairly quick developer adoption (much to my chagrin). I think it would do better to become it's own entity in light of this news, and the fact that it doesn't really get managed by Mozilla anymore anyway.

Rust is not a Mozilla product.

It is heavily used at and funded by Mozilla but they have almost zero influence over the direction of the language.

Actually, this kind of perception is the reason that they have been recently talking about forming a Rust Foundation.

http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/01/09/towa...

I'd go the opposite and say that Rust is a competitive edge for Firefox to beat other browsers, architecturally. There were things they tried and failed many times to do to improve Firefox's performance and it wasn't until Rust that they were achievable.

How many people are they paying to work on it?

> Rust is not a Mozilla product.

And yet from your own citation:

> Mozilla has from the get-go attempted to create an independent governance structure and to solicit involvement from other companies, because we know this makes Rust a better language for everyone.

It seems like they have a lot of influence over the language, and other things. Like, whether there's independent governance or not. I'm happy they're looking for collaborators, but lets not pretend that founder status comes with zero influence.

> Rust is not a Mozilla product.

Would Rust be where it is today if it wasn't for Mozilla's clout?

That is really a separate issue, if I’m recalling correctly, there is a team of Rust devs who specifically are employees by Mozilla Corporation. Also, even with an attempt at ‘team’ independence, Mozilla still owns the Rust trademark and the payables for Rust, things like servers for crates.io, etc are also paid by Mozilla Corp. My point was if an executive with only revenue concerns looks at Rust and sees a team which is not just helping Mozilla, but who attempt to help the industry as a whole, including competitors, it is conceivable that cutting those expenses is an option to pursue. I do not think this is particularly likely (I would assume the expenditure on Rust is minimal compared to the salary and benefits of 70 employees), I was just exploring the rabbit hole the GP comment sent me down.

Rust is not a Mozilla product, but it was certainly initiated by Mozilla. Its momentum and governance have long since been with its community.

I think starting Rust, not Firefox, will be what Mozilla is remembered for in 50 years.