7 ms·
Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That Mozilla is a Corp owned by a not-for-profit isn't the real thing anymore (ie not what people may belie
by zobzu 10y ago
Thunderbird doesn't make money.
Pocket makes money.
That Mozilla is a Corp owned by a not-for-profit isn't the real thing anymore (ie not what people may believe, not that they have any obligation beside following the rule of law) - it just frees the Corp from having to report to random share holders - instead, the Corp and the Org self-select a Board of directors that they report to.
At the end of the day, it's otherwise now similar to many corporations.
- omouse 10y agoYou can see that just by looking at their job postings. The experimental ads team was hiring and then stopped and then the team was absorbed into other teams. Now they have more postings for project managers. They're basically introducing more hierarchy and traditional corp. stuff from the sounds of it.
- maxxxxx 10y agoHaving more project managers is how things get done. I see it everyday at my company...
- shock 10y agoI can't tell if you're for real or just being sarcastic.
- jventura 10y agoI had a coworker that used to say that when you have more managers than toilets, something is clearly wrong. It was a rule of thumb in his experience..
- flukus 10y agoI don't think I've ever been somewhere with more toilets than managers, that probably supports the assertion though.
- dripton 10y agoThat is beautiful, but I need more data. 1. Do project managers, product managers, etc. count, or only real managers with teams reporting to them? 2. Do urinals count, or only real sit-down toilets?
- duckmuck 10y agoUrinals MUST count. Assuming that women's bathrooms have more sit-down toilets than men's, we are biased. It is unfair and sexist to allow female dominated companies more than their fair share of project managers! /s
- baddox 10y agoDo women's bathrooms have more sit down toilets than men's?
- untog 10y agoUsually, yes, in the space occupied by urinals in the men's toilets. But you can fit more urinals in that space.
- dspillett 10y agoGenerally, though less toilets in total because you can cram more urinals into the same space. A common small office toilet space has room for three stalls so in the female room that is what you'll find. In the male variant the space of one of the stalls will instead be given to two individual urinals or a small "urinal wall" that comfortably houses two people or you can get three into if people are desperate. Larger rooms offer greater flexibility, but ultimately urinals take less space than stalls so you get more of them. Of course that doesn't always mean more people going at the same time as some people don't like urinating so close to someone else so the second spot goes unused, and some of us prefer to sit for a no.1 anyway unless in a rush.
- rhelmer 10y agoProduct managers and hierarchical reporting structures are nothing new to Mozilla, quite the contrary.
- RyanZAG 10y ago> Thunderbird doesn't make money. Pocket makes money. That's not the case anymore with this merger though, right? Pocket will now cease to make actual money.
- moron4hire 10y agoFrom the announcement: "Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation" Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit, taxable entity. Here are their articles of incorporation: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/documents/articles-of-incorporation/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/documents/articles-.... It is itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, which is the non-profit thing that people call "Mozilla". The Foundation is really just a holding company. The thing that people call "Mozilla" that does all of the work is The Corporation.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kibwen 10y agoThe foundation exists as a separate entity because laws prohibit charitable donations from being used for all but a small number of categories, and software development generally does not fall under such a category. The funds received by the foundation pretty much have to go towards education (or things that can be justified as education, e.g. sponsoring educational conferences or sponsoring attendees to such conferences). Charitable donations can't be used to fund Firefox development.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y agoDo you have a source? Revenue and profit are completely different things, and I am curious if Pocket was making any profit. Otherwise it's losing money.
- zobzu 10y agoI suspect it's about the longer term profits, like any other corporation purchase. Generally, you can't buy/afford it when it's already super successful, but you can when it's on the verge of being that (but needs your funding/image/resources).
- cocktailpeanuts 10y agoNormally companies raise venture capital in the cases you describe. Acquisitions happen when the stakeholders (founders, employees, and investors) don't think they will get the level of return on investment they will be satisfied with. Even if they DO decide to sell, the case you describe (on the verge of being successful but requires money to get to that point) sell at a disclosed amount. Undisclosed amount mostly means the investors and founders are not proud of the result so they would rather just keep it private.
- rhelmer 10y agoMozilla needs products that are relevant in the marketplace, to exist. Revenue is part but not all of this. I don't think Mozilla can make meaningful impact in a world where it doesn't make products that internet users want to use. It would be a largely toothless advocacy organization at that point.
- ForHackernews 10y agoMillions of people want to use Thunderbird! I would even pay some amount for an "officially supported edition" of Thunderbird.
- johnchristopher 10y agoWhy not postbox ?
- zzzeek 10y agonever heard of it, looked at "Download", saw a big apple and a big window, no penguin. fail. also closed source AFAICT. thunderbird would be an incredible email app if only it had better maintenance.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dualogy 10y agoWell it does the job already, working just fine for the 31-years-old IMAP protocol, the 33-years-old POP protocol, the 18-years-old RSS protocol, etc.. I might like an "incredible" email app but all I really need is a "sufficiently solid" one.. =)
- mcherm 10y agoWould you be willing to pay that amount for an open source project without the official backing of Mozilla? Because I was under the impression that the source code to Thunderbird was, in fact, available under an open source license.
- yuhong 10y agoI really wish there was an easier way to do this, ideally something like a corporation with no shareholders.
- hkmurakami 10y agoA corporation is a legal entity, so to do this I imagine you must alter the country's legal code first?
- Feld0 10y agoThat's exactly what a nonprofit is. Nonprofits are corporations like any other, with a few key differences: - Instead of shareholders, nonprofits have members. Members don't own the corporation (no one does) but control it insofar that they hire-and-fire its directors. - Memberships normally can't be sold, and nonprofits have no equivalent to dividends. - There are stronger conflict-of-interest protections, preventing officers from signing cheques to themselves or otherwise using the corporation's resources for their personal benefit - at least without someone else's approval. A typical setup for nonprofits is to tie memberships to being a director, so that current board members choose their own successors. This is known as a "self-perpetuating board".
- yuhong 10y agoYes, something like that but without the need to create a separate foundation and corporation.
- Feld0 10y agoAFAIK, Mozilla has the structure they do because the IRS frowns upon charities (which is shorthand for "tax-exempt corporation") engaging in business-like activities but is fine with charities owning for-profit companies as a source of income (and like any shareholder can do, direct the for-profit company to benefit its owner). Regional differences may be relevant here: in Canada, you can incorporate a nonprofit corporation and later apply for charity status (which restricts the company's possible activities in exchange for a 0% income tax rate) but it's completely optional. In the US, on the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, one has to establish a for-profit entity first and then apply to the IRS to recognize it as a charity (which is a lengthy process). The words "charity" and "nonprofit" are interchangeable in the US for that reason. If the concept of a non-charitable nonprofit exists in your jurisdiction, you can get the benefits of a nonprofit structure (ie. no owners) without restricting the company's activities, minus tax exemption and being able to issue tax receipts. For context: I founded a non-charitable nonprofit in Canada; I'm not super familiar with the US side of things so I'm happy to be corrected.
- ffjffsfr 10y agohow does pocket make money? they do have pocket premium: https://getpocket.com/premium?ep=2 https://getpocket.com/premium?ep=2 but I never saw them advertising it and never thought about using it and I'm using pocket heavily past several months. Is "pocket premium" their main source of income? Is it bringing real dollars?
- sbennettmcleish 10y agoThey slot 'sponsered content' blocks into your stream of saved items, it's done very well IMO. These have to make some decent $$$ surely. However, I just checked my queue and couldn't see any.
- abraae 10y ago> Pocket makes money. Just pocket money though.
- ksec 10y agoJust a question on top of my head, could Mozilla make a SaaS, like a email services ( example only ), and have those money go into continuing develop Firefox. And as a non-profit entity, could they retain some profit they have as investment or cash somewhere. In case some day they run into negatives they could use those as reserves? But at the end of the day, Mozilla need some very serious management restructuring, starting from the very top end. Having been a Netscape user from over two decade ago, I finally left Firefox. And if you follow their decision, mailing list etc, you can feel how bureaucratic they are. Slow response to market changes, completely lack of ( actionable )vision, often having completely unrealistic target. Extreme inefficiency in development of its product. And these aren't my thoughts or comment only, their are many ex mozillian employees who felt the same. We all thought Mozilla should have been a great company achieving far then then they are today.
- jrwiegand 10y agoIf the NFL can call themselves a nonprofit then anyone else should be able to do the same.
- baddox 10y agoThe NFL is a nonprofit by any reasonable definition, even without the explicit exception in 501(c)(6). Or rather, it was, until it voluntarily gave up its tax-exempt status in 2015 supposedly over public opinion about their status. I think people simply aren't aware that all the major revenue associated with the NFL goes through specific teams, which are normal taxable corporations. Humorously, people also aren't aware that they gave up their tax exempt status, so I'm not sure that decision was worth it.
- wapz 10y agoI surely wasn't aware that they gave up their tax exempt status. Huge props to them.