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TOR and MOSS are both extremely deserving recipients, but I'd say Mozilla is borderline unethical with their spending. Of the millions (yes millions) of dollar

TOR and MOSS are both extremely deserving recipients, but I'd say Mozilla is borderline unethical with their spending. Of the millions (yes millions) of dollars they've received, little seems to have gone toward Firefox development. Mozilla received over $121 million in 2010 from corporate sponsors. This is the same Mozilla that placed ADS in their new tab views. Really, they placed Paid Ads on the new tab screen. What were those for again? I do understand that Mozilla's mission is to improve the web. Donating to these causes certainly helps with that. But I'm still troubled that they put ads (with aggregate user tracking) into their core product.

profeta 10y ago
can't agree more. Feature with hundreds of requests gets shunned away. And things that people heavily opposes gets in just to be like chrome. All the last features on firefox were corporate driven. Bookmark system by pocket. Video chat by Telefonica. Sync goals was probably to make their ad share revenue grow as now you are a logged in user. etc etc etc Their most well paid dev is a javascript advocate! Chrome gives you much less control of the web, but everyone uses not because it is fast, but because firefox is getting behind on everything. While the owners arguee about UI changes instead of doing what was successful in the past: put the patch someone already provided as an option and release! the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. the mobile version. But last builds on android cannot be completed without google proprietary apis anymore. and usability is crap now that they are trying to "fix" image viewing, which mind you, wasn't broken, it was just different than chrome.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  > the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. A couple other interesting things they're working on: Servo[0] is a browser engine written from the ground up to take better advantage of multi-core computers. Rust[1] is a programming language that was originally created to help Servo achieve its goal of building a fast, concurrent, but secure browser, and has grown into a very interesting project in its own right. [0]: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo [1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/ https://www.rust-lang.org/
- mintplant 10y ago
  > Sync goals was probably to make their ad share revenue grow as now you are a logged in user. No, it was in response to user feedback. The portion of the userbase that wanted it to just work like a traditional account system was greater than the portion that wanted to mess around with syncing codes. I don't know where you got the idea that this change had anything to do with ads.
Alupis 10y ago
> Really, they placed Paid Ads on the new tab screen You're also forgetting when they changed default search providers to Yahoo! for big money (even though practically nobody wants Yahoo! as a search engine anymore).
- Sylos 10y ago
  They would have gotten more money from Google for leaving google.com as the default...
  - Alupis 10y ago
    If it was really some noble cause to respect user's privacy, or to make a statement about such, they would have chosen DuckDuckGo or similar. Not Yahoo!...
    - Sylos 10y ago
      Think of it whatever you want - I for example would have also preferred DuckDuckGo as the default - but presumably, Mozilla can utilize money to do good. Therefore, it's perfectly possible that they figured they could do more good with the money from the Yahoo!-deal than they would have done by instead making DuckDuckGo the default.
Scarbutt 10y ago
I wonder what are their plans for saving firefox.
bad_user 10y ago
It's funny how Mozilla is held to such high and dare I say impossible standards, whereas all other popular corporations are not. Apparently developing an open source browser that made history and giving it away for free is not enough. It's as if developers, hardware and location costs a lot of money and Mozilla is looking for ways to find a reliable revenue stream, because you really can't survive for long on donations at their scale. Out of curiosity, have you ever donated money to Mozilla and if so how much? Yes, I saw those ads. Nothing terrible and they were not sending my browsing history to some server or whatever. I don't get why you're so upset about it. Like, you're so upset that you created a new account to say it. Now that says something.
- bllguo 10y ago
  We've reached a point where placing ads in an inconspicuous place (just change your new tab page...) is called "unethical." Amazing.
  - Lerc 10y ago
    Ads evolve and their fitness function is the effect they have on people. An inconspicuous ad is an ineffective ad (unless you count subliminal advertising which is both ineffective and illegal)
  - revelation 10y ago
    No, we've reached a point where the browser developer placing ads is called unethical. It's a very, very strong signal that 1) you don't own this piece of your computer 2) our interests do not align with yours. And that is a scary proposition for auto-updated remote software. At least with websites theres the illusion of separation.
    - Manishearth 10y ago
      It was very, very, easy to turn the ads off -- there was an explicit option for it. Given that you didn't have to go out of your way to do that, (1) is false.
    - 10y ago
muizelaar 10y ago
The vast majority of Mozilla's budget goes to the ~600 staff working on Firefox. $385,000 is pretty small compared to that amount.
- stryk 10y ago
  Are there really around 600 people all working on Firefox? If so, why in bloody hell has it taken them so long to make it multi-process? There wasn't even a 64 bit [Windows] version until relatively recently... what the fuck are they doing?
  - FreeFull 10y ago
    Note that this is with over 13 million lines of code, that in the long past used to be the Netscape browser. I can't imagine adding multiprocess support to such a codebase being very easy, even with significant modernisation of the code.
  - azakai 10y ago
    Building a modern browser takes a large team. For example, there is a team on each of the following: * Layout (HTML, CSS) * JavaScript * Graphics: HTML, 2D canvas, 3D WebGL * Platform integration (windows, os x, gtk, etc.) * Audio * New web APIs * Security * QA * Release engineering * Testing * Optimization / low-level tooling * And others I can't think of right now. All major browsers have teams of hundreds of people or more. The other browsers than Firefox probably have larger ones, in fact, since their budgets are much larger (for example, just Chrome's ad budget was larger than Firefox's entire budget for everything). As for why multi-process took a while, it was working several years ago already and shipped in mobile firefox, but the hard part for desktop specifically was addons. That took several years, since it's both a technical issue and an ecosystem issue.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I wonder if we should stop calling them browsers and start calling them webVMs.
  - 10y ago
windlep 10y ago
> Of the millions (yes millions) of dollars they've received, little seems to have gone toward Firefox development. I'm not sure what you believe it costs to employ all the engineers that Mozilla has whom are busy constantly... - fixing bugs (while trying to ensure each fix doesn't cause new breakage) - implementing new specs (which are constantly evolving) - doing R&D on next-generation browser-tech (Rust, Servo) .. but its not 'little'. Then there's the fact that merely tossing more people at it doesn't mean things get done faster. You'll see some large improvements in Firefox as techniques tested in Servo are integrated into Firefox. Course, the Firefox Platform team is hiring (https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?team=Engineering https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?team=Engineering), so feel free to apply and get paid to work on Firefox. :) Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla.
lambda 10y ago
According to Mozilla's most recently released financial reports (https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2014.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...), they spent $197 million on software development in 2013, and $213 million in 2014. $385,000 is a tiny fraction of that. Developing high-quality software, which runs on as many devices and is compatible with as much content as Firefox is is a hell of a lot of work. And Mozilla isn't just working on Firefox; there's Thunderbird, though that's in the process of being spun off, Firefox OS (also in the process of pivoting), Mozilla Research (Rust, Servo, Emscripten, asm.js, and more). There are continuous integration systems to test all of this against dozens of combinations of platforms and versions, and huge numbers of tests on each (https://treeherder.mozilla.org/ https://treeherder.mozilla.org/, http://buildbot.rust-lang.org/waterfall http://buildbot.rust-lang.org/waterfall, http://build.servo.org/console http://build.servo.org/console), all of which needs to be maintained and triaged. There's standards work, to negotiate new standards in standards bodies with users, other browser vendors, and the like. There's advocacy work, of times when you find bugs that are simply due to broken websites that happen to be relying on other browser's bugs, to reach out to developers and try to get them to change in a more compatible or standards compliant manner. $385,000 is, what, the yearly salary, benefits, and overhead of maybe two full time engineers in SFO? Complaining about $385,000 given to deserving projects, given the amount of investment and energy Mozilla is actually putting into Firefox and other substantial, valuable projects, is a bit of a stretch.
Sylos 10y ago
> ads (with aggregate user tracking) Do you have a source on that? To my knowledge, the ads were specifically designed with all clients downloading all possible ad-tiles and then locally deciding what to show, so that no user tracking was possible, from neither Mozilla, nor the 3rd-party advertisers.

profeta 10y ago

can't agree more. Feature with hundreds of requests gets shunned away. And things that people heavily opposes gets in just to be like chrome. All the last features on firefox were corporate driven. Bookmark system by pocket. Video chat by Telefonica. Sync goals was probably to make their ad share revenue grow as now you are a logged in user. etc etc etc Their most well paid dev is a javascript advocate! Chrome gives you much less control of the web, but everyone uses not because it is fast, but because firefox is getting behind on everything. While the owners arguee about UI changes instead of doing what was successful in the past: put the patch someone already provided as an option and release! the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. the mobile version. But last builds on android cannot be completed without google proprietary apis anymore. and usability is crap now that they are trying to "fix" image viewing, which mind you, wasn't broken, it was just different than chrome.

sanderjd 10y ago
> the only interesting thing coming out mozilla nowadays that can change the world is fennec. A couple other interesting things they're working on: Servo[0] is a browser engine written from the ground up to take better advantage of multi-core computers. Rust[1] is a programming language that was originally created to help Servo achieve its goal of building a fast, concurrent, but secure browser, and has grown into a very interesting project in its own right. [0]: https://github.com/servo/servo https://github.com/servo/servo [1]: https://www.rust-lang.org/ https://www.rust-lang.org/
mintplant 10y ago
> Sync goals was probably to make their ad share revenue grow as now you are a logged in user. No, it was in response to user feedback. The portion of the userbase that wanted it to just work like a traditional account system was greater than the portion that wanted to mess around with syncing codes. I don't know where you got the idea that this change had anything to do with ads.

Alupis 10y ago

> Really, they placed Paid Ads on the new tab screen You're also forgetting when they changed default search providers to Yahoo! for big money (even though practically nobody wants Yahoo! as a search engine anymore).

Sylos 10y ago
They would have gotten more money from Google for leaving google.com as the default...
- Alupis 10y ago
  If it was really some noble cause to respect user's privacy, or to make a statement about such, they would have chosen DuckDuckGo or similar. Not Yahoo!...
  - Sylos 10y ago
    Think of it whatever you want - I for example would have also preferred DuckDuckGo as the default - but presumably, Mozilla can utilize money to do good. Therefore, it's perfectly possible that they figured they could do more good with the money from the Yahoo!-deal than they would have done by instead making DuckDuckGo the default.

Scarbutt 10y ago

I wonder what are their plans for saving firefox.

bad_user 10y ago

It's funny how Mozilla is held to such high and dare I say impossible standards, whereas all other popular corporations are not. Apparently developing an open source browser that made history and giving it away for free is not enough. It's as if developers, hardware and location costs a lot of money and Mozilla is looking for ways to find a reliable revenue stream, because you really can't survive for long on donations at their scale. Out of curiosity, have you ever donated money to Mozilla and if so how much? Yes, I saw those ads. Nothing terrible and they were not sending my browsing history to some server or whatever. I don't get why you're so upset about it. Like, you're so upset that you created a new account to say it. Now that says something.

bllguo 10y ago
We've reached a point where placing ads in an inconspicuous place (just change your new tab page...) is called "unethical." Amazing.
- Lerc 10y ago
  Ads evolve and their fitness function is the effect they have on people. An inconspicuous ad is an ineffective ad (unless you count subliminal advertising which is both ineffective and illegal)
- revelation 10y ago
  No, we've reached a point where the browser developer placing ads is called unethical. It's a very, very strong signal that 1) you don't own this piece of your computer 2) our interests do not align with yours. And that is a scary proposition for auto-updated remote software. At least with websites theres the illusion of separation.
  - Manishearth 10y ago
    It was very, very, easy to turn the ads off -- there was an explicit option for it. Given that you didn't have to go out of your way to do that, (1) is false.
  - 10y ago

muizelaar 10y ago

The vast majority of Mozilla's budget goes to the ~600 staff working on Firefox. $385,000 is pretty small compared to that amount.

stryk 10y ago
Are there really around 600 people all working on Firefox? If so, why in bloody hell has it taken them so long to make it multi-process? There wasn't even a 64 bit [Windows] version until relatively recently... what the fuck are they doing?
- FreeFull 10y ago
  Note that this is with over 13 million lines of code, that in the long past used to be the Netscape browser. I can't imagine adding multiprocess support to such a codebase being very easy, even with significant modernisation of the code.
- azakai 10y ago
  Building a modern browser takes a large team. For example, there is a team on each of the following: * Layout (HTML, CSS) * JavaScript * Graphics: HTML, 2D canvas, 3D WebGL * Platform integration (windows, os x, gtk, etc.) * Audio * New web APIs * Security * QA * Release engineering * Testing * Optimization / low-level tooling * And others I can't think of right now. All major browsers have teams of hundreds of people or more. The other browsers than Firefox probably have larger ones, in fact, since their budgets are much larger (for example, just Chrome's ad budget was larger than Firefox's entire budget for everything). As for why multi-process took a while, it was working several years ago already and shipped in mobile firefox, but the hard part for desktop specifically was addons. That took several years, since it's both a technical issue and an ecosystem issue.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I wonder if we should stop calling them browsers and start calling them webVMs.
- 10y ago

windlep 10y ago

> Of the millions (yes millions) of dollars they've received, little seems to have gone toward Firefox development. I'm not sure what you believe it costs to employ all the engineers that Mozilla has whom are busy constantly... - fixing bugs (while trying to ensure each fix doesn't cause new breakage) - implementing new specs (which are constantly evolving) - doing R&D on next-generation browser-tech (Rust, Servo) .. but its not 'little'. Then there's the fact that merely tossing more people at it doesn't mean things get done faster. You'll see some large improvements in Firefox as techniques tested in Servo are integrated into Firefox. Course, the Firefox Platform team is hiring (https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?team=Engineering https://careers.mozilla.org/listings/?team=Engineering), so feel free to apply and get paid to work on Firefox. :) Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla.

lambda 10y ago

According to Mozilla's most recently released financial reports (https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Financials_2014.pdf https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...), they spent $197 million on software development in 2013, and $213 million in 2014. $385,000 is a tiny fraction of that. Developing high-quality software, which runs on as many devices and is compatible with as much content as Firefox is is a hell of a lot of work. And Mozilla isn't just working on Firefox; there's Thunderbird, though that's in the process of being spun off, Firefox OS (also in the process of pivoting), Mozilla Research (Rust, Servo, Emscripten, asm.js, and more). There are continuous integration systems to test all of this against dozens of combinations of platforms and versions, and huge numbers of tests on each (https://treeherder.mozilla.org/ https://treeherder.mozilla.org/, http://buildbot.rust-lang.org/waterfall http://buildbot.rust-lang.org/waterfall, http://build.servo.org/console http://build.servo.org/console), all of which needs to be maintained and triaged. There's standards work, to negotiate new standards in standards bodies with users, other browser vendors, and the like. There's advocacy work, of times when you find bugs that are simply due to broken websites that happen to be relying on other browser's bugs, to reach out to developers and try to get them to change in a more compatible or standards compliant manner. $385,000 is, what, the yearly salary, benefits, and overhead of maybe two full time engineers in SFO? Complaining about $385,000 given to deserving projects, given the amount of investment and energy Mozilla is actually putting into Firefox and other substantial, valuable projects, is a bit of a stretch.

Sylos 10y ago

> ads (with aggregate user tracking) Do you have a source on that? To my knowledge, the ads were specifically designed with all clients downloading all possible ad-tiles and then locally deciding what to show, so that no user tracking was possible, from neither Mozilla, nor the 3rd-party advertisers.