6 ms·

This is an unpopular opinion here, but the facts stand. Mozilla makes money disappear. Their 2016 revenues were in excess of $520M, and their claimed output wa

This is an unpopular opinion here, but the facts stand. Mozilla makes money disappear. Their 2016 revenues were in excess of $520M, and their claimed output was the Quantum browser. The two largest R&D verticals seem to be their browser and the codecs group. That still doesn't account for expenses of $520M in 2016, and much much more in 2017. Where is all the money going, Mozilla?

microcolonel 8y ago
Ideologically driven corruption, just like the corporate money, the university money, and the budgets of most major cities. ;- ) A similar thing could be happening to Wikimedia Foundation's finances.
Immortalin 8y ago
Browser engineers aren't exactly cheap. 250k for a good C++ Dev is reasonable. Assuming 100 engineers (a very conservative estimate), that's 25 million in just pay alone. 50 million including codec. Now add in the costs of infrastructure, community engagement, DevOps, Marketing etc. and the costs will quickly balloon. Browsers are critical infrastructure like operating systems. Their complexity is on the same level as OSes, perhaps even more. It's exposed to hostile code everyday, you don't want people who don't know what they are doing to work on it. This isn't some sort of dating app where the only vulnerability you have to worry about is a code injection in the birthday form field.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Yeah, but you're not going to have every one of those 100 earning 250k/yr. Half of that for some, 1/3 for some others would be a more realistic value
- mankash666 8y ago
  So the true benefit (to the community) is about $50M +- 10%. Heck, let's double it and call it $100M. The remaining expenses are fluff. In a corporation, one wouldn't be allowed to have non-essential expenses far exceed essential ones. In a non-profit, this philosophy needs doubling down on. I might be completely wrong, but Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top.
  - Immortalin 8y ago
    Unlike at GOOG, MSFT, AAPL, Firefox isn't a loss leader or cost for Mozilla that can be subsidized by other products. Before criticizing their finances, go find an organisation that can afford to even build and maintain a full-fledge cross-platform browser with mobile support for less than that. Browsers are not simple things. You have to create an entire ecosystem of software and development tools to go along with it as well as maintaining full legacy support. Most software of similar complexity are all built by organisations with deep pockets.
  - st3fan 8y ago
    """So the true benefit (to the community) is about $50M +- 10%. Heck, let's double it and call it $100M.""" Your napkin "calculations" make zero sense. Go read the financial report. """Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top""" Ah it is clear what your real intent is.
    - mankash666 8y ago
      "Ah it is clear what your real intent is." And what might that intent be? Are you suggesting Mozilla's top brass are bonafide angels doing God's work, above public scrutiny? They seem to position themselves as champions of the people and freedom, much like politicians
st3fan 8y ago
This is an unpopular opinion here, but I'm tired of these attacks. You have no idea what it takes to have _hundreds_ of engineers and supporting teams to work on a multi-million lines of code application that needs to be shipped to a giant group of users. What do you think Mozilla is? A bunch of hackers in a room? It is a global company with 1200 employees. In a dozen offices around the world. How do you think money disappears? You think Firefox and all the other things Mozilla does happen by itself? That this is all free? That this does not cost any money? ....
- mankash666 8y ago
  Let me first say that this is in no way an attack on Mozilla engineers. This isn't an attack on you, clearly the community loves your work. The question you need to ask is if the chrome (browser) and codec team in Google add up to 1200. Or the IE+Edge and __add_MSFT_GRP__ add up to 1200. Further, do those groups cost their parents $500M/year?
  - st3fan 8y ago
    """Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top""" Please stop talking.
st3fan 8y ago
It is really unfortunate that again this nonsense is the top comment. That again someone angry at Mozilla managed to hijack a thread. There is so much interesting going on in the linked post, I really wish this community would be able to have a mature discussion about that.
- mankash666 8y ago
  Convenient spin that questioning Mozilla's finances equates to hating Mozilla. It's trivial to quell doubts with facts, but a slippery slope to label doubts as hate and shift the conversation to positive marketing and spin.
  - groby_b 8y ago
    Since you haven't even read the financial report, no, you aren't "questioning". You're slinging dirt. Please stop.
    - mankash666 8y ago
      I've ABSOLUTELY read the fabled financial report [1]. Things get even more suspicious if one nit-picks on it. Software development cost Mozilla $225M in 2016 and other expenses $135M. An unacceptable amount of expenses go into non-core activities! If you're a software engineer @ Mozilla and earn less than ~$190K/annum ($225M/1200 employees), your boss is exploiting you. OR Mozilla routinely pays actual engineers far lesser than what their top brass spend on whims. [1]: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Audited_Financial_Statement.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au...
      - groby_b 8y ago
        $190k/y cost doesn't mean an engineer earns $190k/year. Not even close. I'd guess that means they're around average $140k/year income - which really isn't that high for engineers, especially since they have a large presence in the Bay Area. The other expenses break down into mostly marketing ($47M) and "general and administrative" ($59M). The first one makes sense - it's a small budget for a global presence. G&A usually includes office rent, which I'd bet is a huge chunk. Let's do the math: SF is ~$80/sq.ft. Usually assumed is $175 sq.ft/engineer. That's $16M of those $59M. Then there's utilities, insurance, etc. Let's call it $20M. Then there's legal expenses - those usually go into G&A. Given that in 2016, Mozilla squeezed $1B of payments out of Verizon ($375M/year until 2019), I'd assume some lawyers made a good chunk of money. Given the huge jump in G&A from 2015, I'm willing to attribute the entire difference ($20M) to legal costs. This was a huge one-time event, it would make sense. Now we've explained $40M of those $59M. So, at this point, we're debating if the remaining $19M could possibly have been extracted nefariously. Likely, no, because there's more costs. And if you have 1,200 employees, costs add up quickly. Meanwhile, the only evidence you've brought for your accusation is "because I believe it's true". That's not even close to meaningful. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but the facts we all share say otherwise.

microcolonel 8y ago

Ideologically driven corruption, just like the corporate money, the university money, and the budgets of most major cities. ;- ) A similar thing could be happening to Wikimedia Foundation's finances.

Immortalin 8y ago

Browser engineers aren't exactly cheap. 250k for a good C++ Dev is reasonable. Assuming 100 engineers (a very conservative estimate), that's 25 million in just pay alone. 50 million including codec. Now add in the costs of infrastructure, community engagement, DevOps, Marketing etc. and the costs will quickly balloon. Browsers are critical infrastructure like operating systems. Their complexity is on the same level as OSes, perhaps even more. It's exposed to hostile code everyday, you don't want people who don't know what they are doing to work on it. This isn't some sort of dating app where the only vulnerability you have to worry about is a code injection in the birthday form field.

raverbashing 8y ago
Yeah, but you're not going to have every one of those 100 earning 250k/yr. Half of that for some, 1/3 for some others would be a more realistic value
mankash666 8y ago
So the true benefit (to the community) is about $50M +- 10%. Heck, let's double it and call it $100M. The remaining expenses are fluff. In a corporation, one wouldn't be allowed to have non-essential expenses far exceed essential ones. In a non-profit, this philosophy needs doubling down on. I might be completely wrong, but Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top.
- Immortalin 8y ago
  Unlike at GOOG, MSFT, AAPL, Firefox isn't a loss leader or cost for Mozilla that can be subsidized by other products. Before criticizing their finances, go find an organisation that can afford to even build and maintain a full-fledge cross-platform browser with mobile support for less than that. Browsers are not simple things. You have to create an entire ecosystem of software and development tools to go along with it as well as maintaining full legacy support. Most software of similar complexity are all built by organisations with deep pockets.
- st3fan 8y ago
  """So the true benefit (to the community) is about $50M +- 10%. Heck, let's double it and call it $100M.""" Your napkin "calculations" make zero sense. Go read the financial report. """Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top""" Ah it is clear what your real intent is.
  - mankash666 8y ago
    "Ah it is clear what your real intent is." And what might that intent be? Are you suggesting Mozilla's top brass are bonafide angels doing God's work, above public scrutiny? They seem to position themselves as champions of the people and freedom, much like politicians

st3fan 8y ago

This is an unpopular opinion here, but I'm tired of these attacks. You have no idea what it takes to have _hundreds_ of engineers and supporting teams to work on a multi-million lines of code application that needs to be shipped to a giant group of users. What do you think Mozilla is? A bunch of hackers in a room? It is a global company with 1200 employees. In a dozen offices around the world. How do you think money disappears? You think Firefox and all the other things Mozilla does happen by itself? That this is all free? That this does not cost any money? ....

mankash666 8y ago
Let me first say that this is in no way an attack on Mozilla engineers. This isn't an attack on you, clearly the community loves your work. The question you need to ask is if the chrome (browser) and codec team in Google add up to 1200. Or the IE+Edge and __add_MSFT_GRP__ add up to 1200. Further, do those groups cost their parents $500M/year?
- st3fan 8y ago
  """Mozilla seems to be subsidizing the whims of a corrupt few at the top""" Please stop talking.

st3fan 8y ago

It is really unfortunate that again this nonsense is the top comment. That again someone angry at Mozilla managed to hijack a thread. There is so much interesting going on in the linked post, I really wish this community would be able to have a mature discussion about that.

mankash666 8y ago
Convenient spin that questioning Mozilla's finances equates to hating Mozilla. It's trivial to quell doubts with facts, but a slippery slope to label doubts as hate and shift the conversation to positive marketing and spin.
- groby_b 8y ago
  Since you haven't even read the financial report, no, you aren't "questioning". You're slinging dirt. Please stop.
  - mankash666 8y ago
    I've ABSOLUTELY read the fabled financial report [1]. Things get even more suspicious if one nit-picks on it. Software development cost Mozilla $225M in 2016 and other expenses $135M. An unacceptable amount of expenses go into non-core activities! If you're a software engineer @ Mozilla and earn less than ~$190K/annum ($225M/1200 employees), your boss is exploiting you. OR Mozilla routinely pays actual engineers far lesser than what their top brass spend on whims. [1]: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Audited_Financial_Statement.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2016/2016_Mozilla_Au...
    - groby_b 8y ago
      $190k/y cost doesn't mean an engineer earns $190k/year. Not even close. I'd guess that means they're around average $140k/year income - which really isn't that high for engineers, especially since they have a large presence in the Bay Area. The other expenses break down into mostly marketing ($47M) and "general and administrative" ($59M). The first one makes sense - it's a small budget for a global presence. G&A usually includes office rent, which I'd bet is a huge chunk. Let's do the math: SF is ~$80/sq.ft. Usually assumed is $175 sq.ft/engineer. That's $16M of those $59M. Then there's utilities, insurance, etc. Let's call it $20M. Then there's legal expenses - those usually go into G&A. Given that in 2016, Mozilla squeezed $1B of payments out of Verizon ($375M/year until 2019), I'd assume some lawyers made a good chunk of money. Given the huge jump in G&A from 2015, I'm willing to attribute the entire difference ($20M) to legal costs. This was a huge one-time event, it would make sense. Now we've explained $40M of those $59M. So, at this point, we're debating if the remaining $19M could possibly have been extracted nefariously. Likely, no, because there's more costs. And if you have 1,200 employees, costs add up quickly. Meanwhile, the only evidence you've brought for your accusation is "because I believe it's true". That's not even close to meaningful. You're certainly entitled to your own opinion, but the facts we all share say otherwise.