4 ms·

I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, not into fat cats wallets. I'd also pay to remove junk like Pocket, or rather I'd cons

I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, not into fat cats wallets. I'd also pay to remove junk like Pocket, or rather I'd consider paying for Pocket as a separate service. It irks me that it's forced into my browser. I want to be free of Google. This includes Chromium which has too much of Google included. Mozilla is the last hope of a free (as in speech) internet. On iOS Apple have enforced WebKit so there's little reason to use Firefox. It may have only ~4% market share but it's still my preferred browser. I hope beyond hope that they find a way to recover and rise again.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, not into fat cats wallets. Donations go to the Mozilla Foundation, not the Mozilla Corporation. Both the overpaid leadership, and Firefox development, are the domain of the Mozilla Corporation. Relevant discussion from a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200395 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24142097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24142097
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Though correct, that doesn't improve the situation OP is in - the one we are all in: we want to fund Firefox directly, not some side project and we simply cannot.
  - antonyh 6y ago
    > we want to fund Firefox directly Precisely. I couldn't have put it better.
rattray 6y ago
Honest question - do you? I assume it's easy to set up a monthly donation. Or would you rather they start demanding or pleading for money? EDIT: To be fair, I don't either, and I do use FF. I donate to wikimedia and the internet archive but not Mozilla. I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs".
- antonyh 6y ago
  I'd pay for a supported product. I'll not just donate randomly into Mozilla, because that doesn't let them know what aspect of their work is useful to me. I don't want Pocket. I don't want VPN. I'd pay for Firefox though, and only Firefox. Buying a product to solve a problem is very different to donating to a foundation.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs". But what would that change? You're not donating to the makers of Firefox, you're donating to the entity that owns the makers of Firefox. They'll spend the money on whatever they find interesting or lucrative or politically wise. Firefox might or might not be among them.
  - rattray 6y ago
    Sure, they could fuck it up. Lots of people fuck obvious things up, and Mozilla hasn't been lucky in several of their recent investments. But if serious money came in through donations, and everyone put "for firefox, keep it simple and good" in their donation box, they'd have to be particularly braindead to put that money elsewhere. That being said, now that I do some math, it'd take 3.7mm people each donating $10/mo to match their 2018 revenue of $450mm/yr. Which does sound difficult to achieve...
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > That being said, now that I do some math, it'd take 3.7mm people each donating $10/mo to match their 2018 revenue of $450mm/yr. Which does sound difficult to achieve... For normal users who can hardly tell Chrome and Firefox apart and say "Chrome? Firefox? Sorry, I'm using the internet"? Yeah. For power users? I'm not convinced. JetBrains makes about $250mm a year only from developers. But their focus is on delivering value to developers, making their lives easier and their work more fun. I'm sure Firefox could deliver a lot of value too, but they're focused on the lowest common denominator of all users, not on targeting e.g. developers or web power users and offering them something that Google does not. But if there's a good chance that the money ends up in political activism or some hobby project at Mozilla ("why don't we build a new OS?"), donations aren't going to work. Make Firefox a great Developer tool so you don't need Fiddler & co as a developer and sell that as a commercial version, keep the open source version. I don't know whether it will bring in $450mm, but I'm sure it will bring in lots of money.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
> I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, Send money to people on the SCM commit history.
- antonyh 6y ago
  Interesting idea, but who and how? Let's say I want to sponsor the Servo project because I believe it's something the world needs. There's no obvious way to financially contribute to the project or to individuals other than randomly sending cash to them via PayPal using their listed email addresses on GitHub. Ditto Firefox, but the source is in mozilla-central, so I'd have to work out how to deal with Mercurial to get the names/addresses. Another step, another barrier. I'd also have to figure out who deserves reward, and that's not a minor task either. Then I'd have to repeat this X times for each person that should get paid, then repeat every month. It needs to be centralised to make it easy for the sponsorship.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, not into fat cats wallets. Donations go to the Mozilla Foundation, not the Mozilla Corporation. Both the overpaid leadership, and Firefox development, are the domain of the Mozilla Corporation. Relevant discussion from a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24200395 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24142097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24142097

LockAndLol 6y ago
Though correct, that doesn't improve the situation OP is in - the one we are all in: we want to fund Firefox directly, not some side project and we simply cannot.
- antonyh 6y ago
  > we want to fund Firefox directly Precisely. I couldn't have put it better.

rattray 6y ago

Honest question - do you? I assume it's easy to set up a monthly donation. Or would you rather they start demanding or pleading for money? EDIT: To be fair, I don't either, and I do use FF. I donate to wikimedia and the internet archive but not Mozilla. I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs".

antonyh 6y ago
I'd pay for a supported product. I'll not just donate randomly into Mozilla, because that doesn't let them know what aspect of their work is useful to me. I don't want Pocket. I don't want VPN. I'd pay for Firefox though, and only Firefox. Buying a product to solve a problem is very different to donating to a foundation.
luckylion 6y ago
> I wish as a community our reaction to Mozilla's troubles was "let's all start donating!" instead of "screw those evil pigs". But what would that change? You're not donating to the makers of Firefox, you're donating to the entity that owns the makers of Firefox. They'll spend the money on whatever they find interesting or lucrative or politically wise. Firefox might or might not be among them.
- rattray 6y ago
  Sure, they could fuck it up. Lots of people fuck obvious things up, and Mozilla hasn't been lucky in several of their recent investments. But if serious money came in through donations, and everyone put "for firefox, keep it simple and good" in their donation box, they'd have to be particularly braindead to put that money elsewhere. That being said, now that I do some math, it'd take 3.7mm people each donating $10/mo to match their 2018 revenue of $450mm/yr. Which does sound difficult to achieve...
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > That being said, now that I do some math, it'd take 3.7mm people each donating $10/mo to match their 2018 revenue of $450mm/yr. Which does sound difficult to achieve... For normal users who can hardly tell Chrome and Firefox apart and say "Chrome? Firefox? Sorry, I'm using the internet"? Yeah. For power users? I'm not convinced. JetBrains makes about $250mm a year only from developers. But their focus is on delivering value to developers, making their lives easier and their work more fun. I'm sure Firefox could deliver a lot of value too, but they're focused on the lowest common denominator of all users, not on targeting e.g. developers or web power users and offering them something that Google does not. But if there's a good chance that the money ends up in political activism or some hobby project at Mozilla ("why don't we build a new OS?"), donations aren't going to work. Make Firefox a great Developer tool so you don't need Fiddler & co as a developer and sell that as a commercial version, keep the open source version. I don't know whether it will bring in $450mm, but I'm sure it will bring in lots of money.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

> I'd pay hansomely for Firefox but only if the funds go into development, Send money to people on the SCM commit history.

antonyh 6y ago
Interesting idea, but who and how? Let's say I want to sponsor the Servo project because I believe it's something the world needs. There's no obvious way to financially contribute to the project or to individuals other than randomly sending cash to them via PayPal using their listed email addresses on GitHub. Ditto Firefox, but the source is in mozilla-central, so I'd have to work out how to deal with Mercurial to get the names/addresses. Another step, another barrier. I'd also have to figure out who deserves reward, and that's not a minor task either. Then I'd have to repeat this X times for each person that should get paid, then repeat every month. It needs to be centralised to make it easy for the sponsorship.