5 ms·

You say that, but not enough people do directly pay for the development of Firefox. Of course, you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Also, your

by orra 6y ago

You say that, but not enough people do directly pay for the development of Firefox. Of course, you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Also, your complaint about an ethical business model seems unfounded, especially in this instance.

wasmitnetzen 6y ago
> you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Which does not pay for the development of Firefox.
- orra 6y ago
  The Mozilla Foundation annual financial statement include its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation. And most of the Foundation's expenditure is staff costs, for the Firefox project. If that doesn't satisfy you, note that targetted donations are also a thing.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    Unless everyone does targeted donations, it's pointless. It's like adding water to one end of a pool and expecting the water level at only that end to rise. If only a small percentage of donators ear mark their donation to Project A, then the less money will come out of the general fund for Project A and more from the general fund will go to Project B. The money you just donated didn't increase the budget for Project A, instead the organization just increased the budget for project B. In other words, targeted donations are not a targeted budget increase.
solarkraft 6y ago
> Also, your complaint about an ethical business model seems unfounded, especially in this instance. I have no concern about the VPN service itself since it's Mullvad which I like, but the devaluation of the branding (which I consider a long term problem). Look at stuff like Firefox Send and Pocket. The latter is proprietary (holy shit, how is that ethical?) and the former bugs you with in-page pop-ups to get an account when you try to change the settings that looks either very stupid or malicious (and they invested a lot of money). I thought it was a bug at first. They may sound like specific petty issues, but I consider them symptoms of a gigantic systemic problem. I am aware of Mozilla's financial struggle, but don't think this is a good way to solve it, or much of a viable one at all. I fear it will completely dilute the Firefox brand, lose core user's trust (what they have left, anyway) and result in barely any revenue. It may well result in the permanent ruin of the Firefox (the browser) project, especially since it appears to be 100% dependent on Mozilla because of its high entry barrier. I do see the idea behind the pivot I think, which is banking on the rising popularity of privacy, but honestly I don't think they even have much of a good reputation on that front. The wide public doesn't know ("Mozilla is like Google, right?") and the techies have been burned too often. Neither do they explain much in their surprisingly widely deployed phsyical ads (how much did that cost?).

by orra 6y ago

wasmitnetzen 6y ago

> you are welcome to donate to the Mozilla Foundation. Which does not pay for the development of Firefox.

orra 6y ago
The Mozilla Foundation annual financial statement include its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation. And most of the Foundation's expenditure is staff costs, for the Firefox project. If that doesn't satisfy you, note that targetted donations are also a thing.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  Unless everyone does targeted donations, it's pointless. It's like adding water to one end of a pool and expecting the water level at only that end to rise. If only a small percentage of donators ear mark their donation to Project A, then the less money will come out of the general fund for Project A and more from the general fund will go to Project B. The money you just donated didn't increase the budget for Project A, instead the organization just increased the budget for project B. In other words, targeted donations are not a targeted budget increase.

solarkraft 6y ago

> Also, your complaint about an ethical business model seems unfounded, especially in this instance. I have no concern about the VPN service itself since it's Mullvad which I like, but the devaluation of the branding (which I consider a long term problem). Look at stuff like Firefox Send and Pocket. The latter is proprietary (holy shit, how is that ethical?) and the former bugs you with in-page pop-ups to get an account when you try to change the settings that looks either very stupid or malicious (and they invested a lot of money). I thought it was a bug at first. They may sound like specific petty issues, but I consider them symptoms of a gigantic systemic problem. I am aware of Mozilla's financial struggle, but don't think this is a good way to solve it, or much of a viable one at all. I fear it will completely dilute the Firefox brand, lose core user's trust (what they have left, anyway) and result in barely any revenue. It may well result in the permanent ruin of the Firefox (the browser) project, especially since it appears to be 100% dependent on Mozilla because of its high entry barrier. I do see the idea behind the pivot I think, which is banking on the rising popularity of privacy, but honestly I don't think they even have much of a good reputation on that front. The wide public doesn't know ("Mozilla is like Google, right?") and the techies have been burned too often. Neither do they explain much in their surprisingly widely deployed phsyical ads (how much did that cost?).