4 ms·

It seems the Mozilla foundation don't use donations for Firefox development though: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_found

It seems the Mozilla foundation don't use donations for Firefox development though: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_foundation_are_not_used_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_t...

squarefoot 6y ago
That is bad, I hoped to be able to help in some way. They're underestimating how much their logo and a short description could help to boost the product adoption.
- notriddle 6y ago
  In order for the two-company Foundation/Corporation system to be even remotely legal, they must actually operate as distinct entities. That means the Foundation and the Corporation have separate bank accounts, separate employee rosters, and, as a result, they can legally be taxed differently. If the Foundation started employing Firefox developers, they would have to convince the tax man that those developers were not de-facto employees of the Corporation. This would be very hard, because there would inevitably be chat logs where Corporation employees tell the Foundation employees what to do, because that's how code review works. What would be the point, anyway? The Google Search deal gives the Mozilla Corporation far more money than the Mozilla Foundation gets from donations.
  - sp332 6y ago
    It's not that complicated. The Corporation sends the Foundation a significant chunk of money every year as "royalties" for the use of the name and logo. If the Foundation wants to pay for a few more developers, they can just decrease the "royalty" charges.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      The royalty charges can never be negative. This isn’t currently a problem, since MozCo gets more search money than MoFo gets from donations, but for anyone who dreams of Firefox becoming totally unconnected with Google, it makes this an unsatisfying non-solution.

4 ms·

It seems the Mozilla foundation don't use donations for Firefox development though: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/a98gmi/donations_to_mozilla_found

by ThePhysicist 6y ago

squarefoot 6y ago
That is bad, I hoped to be able to help in some way. They're underestimating how much their logo and a short description could help to boost the product adoption.
- notriddle 6y ago
  In order for the two-company Foundation/Corporation system to be even remotely legal, they must actually operate as distinct entities. That means the Foundation and the Corporation have separate bank accounts, separate employee rosters, and, as a result, they can legally be taxed differently. If the Foundation started employing Firefox developers, they would have to convince the tax man that those developers were not de-facto employees of the Corporation. This would be very hard, because there would inevitably be chat logs where Corporation employees tell the Foundation employees what to do, because that's how code review works. What would be the point, anyway? The Google Search deal gives the Mozilla Corporation far more money than the Mozilla Foundation gets from donations.
  - sp332 6y ago
    It's not that complicated. The Corporation sends the Foundation a significant chunk of money every year as "royalties" for the use of the name and logo. If the Foundation wants to pay for a few more developers, they can just decrease the "royalty" charges.
    - notriddle 6y ago
      The royalty charges can never be negative. This isn’t currently a problem, since MozCo gets more search money than MoFo gets from donations, but for anyone who dreams of Firefox becoming totally unconnected with Google, it makes this an unsatisfying non-solution.