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> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. Mostly agree. > The whole point of Mozilla is

> I don't understand how Mozilla has over a thousand employees and over 500 million dollars in annual revenue. Mostly agree. > The whole point of Mozilla is supposed to be Firefox and Thunderbird. I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface.

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ddtaylor 7y ago
> I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface. I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.
- tinco 7y ago
  Firefox has been making great strides on the performance and reliability side with a rendering engine and other things that they claim they could not have been done without Rust. If that is true, the investment probably already has paid for itself.
- csdreamer7 7y ago
  Directly monetizing programming tools is quite difficult. And, as other have said, Rust has already paid off for them with the vastly improved performance of FF Quantum. I think a better avenue for Mozilla would be offering an equivalent to Chrome Enterprise and GSuite. A paid set of services and managed functionality for Firefox. Last I heard, the performance issues for GMail and GSuite was due to them using an outdated draft version of an internet standard that Chrome implemented, but no one else did. Offering a paid 'Mozilla Mail' may bring some needed competition.
ricardobeat 7y ago
I'm not sure it's possible to put a price on Rust (probably in single-digit millions so far), but that Godot grant was $50k. That's pocket money for a $500m org.
- csdreamer7 7y ago
  It is, but it still a crucial amount of money for an open source project breaking through that obscurity barrier.

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ddtaylor 7y ago

> I can understand your view. With that said, I am quite happy they funded Rust and also gave a grant to the Godot project to develop their webassembly interface. I agree, but it seems problematic they aren't monetizing that. They're making money doing the things users don't really like while not making a dime of good things like fostering a legitimate free and open web.

tinco 7y ago
Firefox has been making great strides on the performance and reliability side with a rendering engine and other things that they claim they could not have been done without Rust. If that is true, the investment probably already has paid for itself.
csdreamer7 7y ago
Directly monetizing programming tools is quite difficult. And, as other have said, Rust has already paid off for them with the vastly improved performance of FF Quantum. I think a better avenue for Mozilla would be offering an equivalent to Chrome Enterprise and GSuite. A paid set of services and managed functionality for Firefox. Last I heard, the performance issues for GMail and GSuite was due to them using an outdated draft version of an internet standard that Chrome implemented, but no one else did. Offering a paid 'Mozilla Mail' may bring some needed competition.

ricardobeat 7y ago

I'm not sure it's possible to put a price on Rust (probably in single-digit millions so far), but that Godot grant was $50k. That's pocket money for a $500m org.

csdreamer7 7y ago
It is, but it still a crucial amount of money for an open source project breaking through that obscurity barrier.