3 ms·

I feel like the only thing that can save Fx at this point is a community-funded, community-led fork. The only problem is: this project would need a lot of monie

I feel like the only thing that can save Fx at this point is a community-funded, community-led fork. The only problem is: this project would need a lot of monies, so unless there's a corporate sponsor (or sponsors) it's unlikely to happen. And corporate sponsorship would require some sort of incentive that makes the investment worthwhile but at the same it it can't compromise the spirit of the project. Let's say that the cost of a single full time contributor is $200k/y on average. Every 10 people working on the project cost $2mil/year - that's roughly the funds FreeBSD raises each year (and 3-4x more OpenBSD does). And I don't think you can continue independent fork with 10 people; you'd need 30-50 for the fork to make sense. I suspect it would be possible to get corporate sponsorship for the infrastructure needed so I'm not counting those costs but at this scale there's some legal and administrative overhead that has to be taken into account as well. So the bottom line seems to be that you need around $10mil per year to let Fx survive as a community project. And I'm pretty sure you can't crowdfund that much. :S

Jowsey 6y ago
In what world is the average pay of a developer 200k/year? I'm pretty sure you could quarter that, which would make the project much more viable
- olejorgenb 6y ago
  The total cost of an employee is quite a bit more than the pay, but yeah seems high?
  - DominikD 6y ago
    Depends on the country and depends on the state. E.g. in California the basic overhead in terms of taxes payed by the employer is slightly below 10%. Then the personal income tax is 13%. You have to include other costs like matching 401k, medical premiums, other operational costs associated with each employee. $200k doesn't seem that outrageous from the employer POV since the employee is left with around $120k at the end of the day.
- roca 6y ago
  The average Mozilla Gecko engine developer can quit and get a job at a big tech company making a lot more than $200K a year, definitely if they live in the Bay Area, and probably even if they don't.
- DominikD 6y ago
  We're talking costs, not pay. You have to pay taxes and provide various benefits to meet the legal requirements of employing someone.
roca 6y ago
If that "fork" was to survive as an independent browser engine with competitive performance and features you'd need at least 10x that number of developers.

Jowsey 6y ago

In what world is the average pay of a developer 200k/year? I'm pretty sure you could quarter that, which would make the project much more viable

olejorgenb 6y ago
The total cost of an employee is quite a bit more than the pay, but yeah seems high?
- DominikD 6y ago
  Depends on the country and depends on the state. E.g. in California the basic overhead in terms of taxes payed by the employer is slightly below 10%. Then the personal income tax is 13%. You have to include other costs like matching 401k, medical premiums, other operational costs associated with each employee. $200k doesn't seem that outrageous from the employer POV since the employee is left with around $120k at the end of the day.
roca 6y ago
The average Mozilla Gecko engine developer can quit and get a job at a big tech company making a lot more than $200K a year, definitely if they live in the Bay Area, and probably even if they don't.
DominikD 6y ago
We're talking costs, not pay. You have to pay taxes and provide various benefits to meet the legal requirements of employing someone.

roca 6y ago

If that "fork" was to survive as an independent browser engine with competitive performance and features you'd need at least 10x that number of developers.