re: layoffs, mozilla
>pull a Netscape and try to sell Firefox
I almost wonder if that would work. Obviously it wasn't great for Netscape, but back then there was a lot of competition from free browsers. Opera and Internet Explorer were (for their time) very competent browsers, while the other, less featured browsers were still very usable. Savvy users wanted free stuff.
Now, there is no competition, it's either Firefox or Chrome. The smaller browsers are nearly unusable, at least for the vast majority of websites, even Safari struggles. If Firefox doubled down on privacy and security, you might find people willing to pay. Could that be enough? I don't know. But it's an interesting idea.