4 ms·

I'm always a bit skeptical when someone defends an organization by saying it's non-profit. AFAIK, the only difference between non-profit and for-profit is that

I'm always a bit skeptical when someone defends an organization by saying it's non-profit. AFAIK, the only difference between non-profit and for-profit is that the owners of a non-profit don't get to keep them money for themselves per se, although they're just like for-profits in all other ways, including the ability to name their own salaries and waste money frivolously and use their resources inefficiently. I don't know how Mozilla works internally, but I'm not about to give them the benefit of the doubt without cause. Also, where is Mozilla getting money from in the first place? They only offer free products. The last time I checked, they're getting most of their money from Google. That doesn't automatically mean Google has Mozilla in their pocket, but it's definitely a red flag.

steveklabnik 9y ago
To be clear, "Mozilla" is two entities; the Mozilla Foundation ("Mofo"), which is a non-profit, and the Mozilla Corporation ("Moco"), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation. (I am an employee of Moco.) This is more of a tax/legal thing than it is a different mission between the two entities, as [1] says: "The Mozilla Corporation is guided by the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto." The Google deal changed in 2014, at which point it became a five-year deal with Yahoo! in the US, and other partnerships (I don't remember the details to be honest) elsewhere, IIRC Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China? 1. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/
hackuser 9y ago
> the only difference between non-profit and for-profit is that the owners of a non-profit don't get to keep them money for themselves per se, although they're just like for-profits in all other ways, including the ability to name their own salaries and waste money frivolously and use their resources inefficiently ... That overlooks the most important difference, the reason non-profits exist: For-profit companies exist to make money for their owners; non-profits exist to serve a public mission, such as protecting and furthering the free and open web (or feeding the starving or promoting peace or etc.). Also, the salaries are not at all comparable. If the founders of Mozilla had made it a for-profit company, they'd be among the Silicon Valley billionaires (and the founders of Mozilla's predecessor, Netscape, are indeed among them or at least extremely wealthy). There are many very talented people who gave their careers to the free and open web, when I expect they could have been making a lot more money elsewhere. I doubt Mozilla competes with Google on salary.
dbaupp 9y ago
I wasn't defending Mozilla so much as comparing, and specifically comparing a non-profit with two definitely-for-profit corporations. To me, it seems like even without knowing anything about Mozilla or the for-profits the balance of probability for which is least likely to be "evil" falls on the non-profit side. Additionally, the point about Google paying Mozilla is a little silly (even if it were still true): one of the corporations we're comparing here is literally Google, so whatever Mozilla is doing is rather unlikely to be worse than what Google is. Of course, for this specific case of non-profit and for-profit, there's a decade and more of history bearing out the sense that Mozilla is far better than the corporations from this particular political/privacy/no-ulterior-motives stance. Additionally, I don't see why monetary/resource efficiency is relevant: the thing that actually matters is the product, and while being efficient/nonfrivilous is likely to help make a good product, it doesn't actually seem like a relevant end goal. Everything else equal, I'm still going to buy from a company that "wastes" 99% of its money if its product is better than the one that doesn't "waste" anything.

steveklabnik 9y ago

To be clear, "Mozilla" is two entities; the Mozilla Foundation ("Mofo"), which is a non-profit, and the Mozilla Corporation ("Moco"), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation. (I am an employee of Moco.) This is more of a tax/legal thing than it is a different mission between the two entities, as [1] says: "The Mozilla Corporation is guided by the principles of the Mozilla Manifesto." The Google deal changed in 2014, at which point it became a five-year deal with Yahoo! in the US, and other partnerships (I don't remember the details to be honest) elsewhere, IIRC Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China? 1. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/

hackuser 9y ago

> the only difference between non-profit and for-profit is that the owners of a non-profit don't get to keep them money for themselves per se, although they're just like for-profits in all other ways, including the ability to name their own salaries and waste money frivolously and use their resources inefficiently ... That overlooks the most important difference, the reason non-profits exist: For-profit companies exist to make money for their owners; non-profits exist to serve a public mission, such as protecting and furthering the free and open web (or feeding the starving or promoting peace or etc.). Also, the salaries are not at all comparable. If the founders of Mozilla had made it a for-profit company, they'd be among the Silicon Valley billionaires (and the founders of Mozilla's predecessor, Netscape, are indeed among them or at least extremely wealthy). There are many very talented people who gave their careers to the free and open web, when I expect they could have been making a lot more money elsewhere. I doubt Mozilla competes with Google on salary.

dbaupp 9y ago

I wasn't defending Mozilla so much as comparing, and specifically comparing a non-profit with two definitely-for-profit corporations. To me, it seems like even without knowing anything about Mozilla or the for-profits the balance of probability for which is least likely to be "evil" falls on the non-profit side. Additionally, the point about Google paying Mozilla is a little silly (even if it were still true): one of the corporations we're comparing here is literally Google, so whatever Mozilla is doing is rather unlikely to be worse than what Google is. Of course, for this specific case of non-profit and for-profit, there's a decade and more of history bearing out the sense that Mozilla is far better than the corporations from this particular political/privacy/no-ulterior-motives stance. Additionally, I don't see why monetary/resource efficiency is relevant: the thing that actually matters is the product, and while being efficient/nonfrivilous is likely to help make a good product, it doesn't actually seem like a relevant end goal. Everything else equal, I'm still going to buy from a company that "wastes" 99% of its money if its product is better than the one that doesn't "waste" anything.