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In most donations, you're donating to the product as a whole. There's no way to ever know where your money explicitly goes. At least I've never seen a charity o

In most donations, you're donating to the product as a whole. There's no way to ever know where your money explicitly goes. At least I've never seen a charity operate that way. Even if you did donate to development, development is not averse to administration, marketing, hiring, and diversity. And developers are not spending time at Firefox getting the product in the hands of people so it can get better with feedback. Marketing and all the other areas you find "problematic" are trying to do that. Either way, even if your money doesn't go where you want it, that's a bad reason to not donate considering there's no indication that their product is substantially inferior to competition, they're making hugely poor decisions, etc.

gnode 7y ago
That's unfortunately often how it is, but it doesn't need to be that way. As an example, Ubuntu's donation page allows you to select how you wish your contribution to be allocated: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you FOSS foundations should (and typically do) accept code contributions that aren't restricted to their leadership's agenda, so why should they not accept financial contributions beyond their agenda?
- jshowa3 7y ago
  Because a restriction on code contribution makes sense due to the fact there's often only one area where the code makes sense. If it doesn't fit the vision of whatever the code is trying to do, then there's no reason not to restrict it. Financial contributions affect all areas of the organization and the needs/wants of the organization changes daily, some times spontaneously. People simply donating to "writing code" doesn't make an organization function. There has to be some sort of PR. There has to be some sort of administration. There has to be marketing, quality, distribution, etc.

gnode 7y ago

That's unfortunately often how it is, but it doesn't need to be that way. As an example, Ubuntu's donation page allows you to select how you wish your contribution to be allocated: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop/thank-you FOSS foundations should (and typically do) accept code contributions that aren't restricted to their leadership's agenda, so why should they not accept financial contributions beyond their agenda?

jshowa3 7y ago
Because a restriction on code contribution makes sense due to the fact there's often only one area where the code makes sense. If it doesn't fit the vision of whatever the code is trying to do, then there's no reason not to restrict it. Financial contributions affect all areas of the organization and the needs/wants of the organization changes daily, some times spontaneously. People simply donating to "writing code" doesn't make an organization function. There has to be some sort of PR. There has to be some sort of administration. There has to be marketing, quality, distribution, etc.