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> I'm one of those who stopped donating to Mozilla once I realized none of the money donated could ever be used for developing the browser. I never donated to

> I'm one of those who stopped donating to Mozilla once I realized none of the money donated could ever be used for developing the browser. I never donated to Mozilla for this precise reason. Now I'm seriously considering it. Edit: Done

ygjb 6y ago
The irony is that from both of these comments it implies you have a concern about the future and the stability of Firefox as both an open source project, and it's role in preventing a browser monoculture. Setting aside concerns about leadership, because IMO it's time for most of the current leadership to retire and make space for more innovative folks, Mozilla needs two things to preserve Firefox and Gecko, money and relevance. The have had numerous misfires on diversifying revenue, and they have been challenged on how to do that for a long time, but MoCo (Mozilla Corporation) has been profitable for quite some time due to the business deals with Google. That funds Firefox and many other related projects. The other thing that Mozilla needs is relevance, and over and above the presence of Firefox, MoFo (Mozilla Foundation) has played an activist role across many different initiatives, standards bodies, and lobbying. That requires money, and because of the legal manoeuvring that Mozilla has done in structuring MoFo and MoCo it requires that Mozilla Foundation be largely self-funding. Donations help with that, and pay for relevance in a way that Firefox alone can't. Please rethink the hostility towards donating to Mozilla Foundation.
- syshum 6y ago
  >> Please rethink the hostility towards donating to Mozilla Foundation Once Mozilla rethink;s its hostility to its user base maybe the user base will rethink its hostility towards Mozilla Mozilla left us, we did not leave Mozilla
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  I don't see any irony there; people care about firefox, and there is literally no way to donate money to develop firefox. Maybe donating to the foundation sorta indirectly helps firefox, but a reasonable person could easily view them as mostly unrelated.
  - ygjb 6y ago
    Sure, you can donate money to develop Firefox, but it's not a core part of Mozilla's business model to support that. Instead you would need to track down an OSS developer that is either an active contributor, or who is willing to work on Firefox, and then sponsor their work through a number of different contributor pathways. There are Github sponsorships, direct funding, or any of the options here - https://itsfoss.com/open-source-funding-platforms/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-funding-platforms/ It's not easy because supporting open source contributors is hard, and Mozilla is trying to keep their staff focused on corporate and foundation priorities. Even if users could directly donate money to develop Firefox, the implication is that any such donations should only be used for Firefox development, when in practice, shipping a modern browser in a way that is competitive requires an enormous amount of non-"Firefox" related work (safe browsing, sync, telemetry, marketing ,release engineering work, advocacy, documentation, etc, etc, etc). Earmarking donations for engineering work is kind of silly in the context of an OSS project designed to compete with some of the largest juggernauts in the industry.
    - pabs3 6y ago
      There are consulting companies that do OSS development on web related projects, Igalia is probably the closest one, or maybe Collabora. https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.collabora.com/ https://www.collabora.com/
    - eitland 6y ago
      > Sure, you can donate money to develop Firefox, My understanding: I'm fairly sure they've said they are not allowed to direct money from the Foundation to Mozilla Corporation, and it kind of makes sense until you realize it is the coroporation that creates the outcome you want not the other way around. Also - from my point of view it looks like the Foundation is overfunded the last few years while the guys who create Firefox are underfunded, but I'm not an expert so it might very well be more complicated. I also don't want to say Mozillas management are useless: they somehow managed to land a huge deal earlier this year, but I will admit I sometimes find some of their decisions puzzling.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Donations to a corrupt organization helps to make it even more corrupt. Just look at any destroyed country where ,,outside help'' is coming. Stopping the money flow is the only way to change corrupt management to people who care even if there's less money involved.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  I suppose it depends on your definition of self-funding (or possibly of "largely"): the Foundation receives roughly half its total income from the Corporation, in the form of license fees for trademarks. Of course both figures are drops in the bucket compared to the Corporation's revenue. I don't know if that "half and half" nature is coincidence, an internal directive, or necessary to maintain their tax-exempt status, but it's pretty consistent. For-profit entities can, of course, lobby and sit on standards bodies just fine. We certainly see plenty of that behavior from the other vendors. I'm not saying the Foundation is worthless or that people shouldn't donate to it, just that they should know what they're paying for and what they're not.
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  If Mozilla were serious about Firefox and privacy, they'd move it to the Foundation, allow direct donations, remove all the Googleware, Pocket and whatever else they unnecessarily shoved into Firefox + all the problems you stated. I'm not going to consider affirming bad leadership by giving them money. Mozilla Corp employees aren't locked into anything (unless they signed really shitty contracts). They can leave and rebuild. Servo might finally provide the foundation for a browser that really is about privacy and not just a cash-cow for a bloated upper echelon.
  - jamienicol 6y ago
    what googleware is in Firefox, and what impact does pocket have on your privacy?
    - LockAndLol 6y ago
      Google is the default search engine of a "privacy aware" browser. It uses Google Safe browsing which, from what I understand, is practically an embedded call home to Google for each new domain you visit. For quite a while they were using Google as the default location provider. Pocket was an unnecessary acquisition that wasted money for an opt-out solution to... I don't even know what problem. The money spent on acquiring it could've gone into more developers, technical writers, testers, etc. Clickz (or however it's written) was also an unnecessary fail investment.
      - jamienicol 6y ago
        So pocket in no way detracts from your privacy. It's an very useful feature to many people. It's fine if you don't like it, but to use the privacy argument against it is incredibly disingenuous. Edit: Also, you understand incorrectly about safe browsing. It does its checks locally.
        LockAndLol 6y ago
        I never claimed pocket detracted from privacy. I actually explained my problem with pocket... To add to that, it shouldn't be embedded in the browser. It's an extension and they have a marketplace for that. And even if Safe Browsing does do what you say, the other google stuff still does and did exist.

ygjb 6y ago

The irony is that from both of these comments it implies you have a concern about the future and the stability of Firefox as both an open source project, and it's role in preventing a browser monoculture. Setting aside concerns about leadership, because IMO it's time for most of the current leadership to retire and make space for more innovative folks, Mozilla needs two things to preserve Firefox and Gecko, money and relevance. The have had numerous misfires on diversifying revenue, and they have been challenged on how to do that for a long time, but MoCo (Mozilla Corporation) has been profitable for quite some time due to the business deals with Google. That funds Firefox and many other related projects. The other thing that Mozilla needs is relevance, and over and above the presence of Firefox, MoFo (Mozilla Foundation) has played an activist role across many different initiatives, standards bodies, and lobbying. That requires money, and because of the legal manoeuvring that Mozilla has done in structuring MoFo and MoCo it requires that Mozilla Foundation be largely self-funding. Donations help with that, and pay for relevance in a way that Firefox alone can't. Please rethink the hostility towards donating to Mozilla Foundation.

syshum 6y ago
>> Please rethink the hostility towards donating to Mozilla Foundation Once Mozilla rethink;s its hostility to its user base maybe the user base will rethink its hostility towards Mozilla Mozilla left us, we did not leave Mozilla
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
I don't see any irony there; people care about firefox, and there is literally no way to donate money to develop firefox. Maybe donating to the foundation sorta indirectly helps firefox, but a reasonable person could easily view them as mostly unrelated.
- ygjb 6y ago
  Sure, you can donate money to develop Firefox, but it's not a core part of Mozilla's business model to support that. Instead you would need to track down an OSS developer that is either an active contributor, or who is willing to work on Firefox, and then sponsor their work through a number of different contributor pathways. There are Github sponsorships, direct funding, or any of the options here - https://itsfoss.com/open-source-funding-platforms/ https://itsfoss.com/open-source-funding-platforms/ It's not easy because supporting open source contributors is hard, and Mozilla is trying to keep their staff focused on corporate and foundation priorities. Even if users could directly donate money to develop Firefox, the implication is that any such donations should only be used for Firefox development, when in practice, shipping a modern browser in a way that is competitive requires an enormous amount of non-"Firefox" related work (safe browsing, sync, telemetry, marketing ,release engineering work, advocacy, documentation, etc, etc, etc). Earmarking donations for engineering work is kind of silly in the context of an OSS project designed to compete with some of the largest juggernauts in the industry.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    There are consulting companies that do OSS development on web related projects, Igalia is probably the closest one, or maybe Collabora. https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.collabora.com/ https://www.collabora.com/
  - eitland 6y ago
    > Sure, you can donate money to develop Firefox, My understanding: I'm fairly sure they've said they are not allowed to direct money from the Foundation to Mozilla Corporation, and it kind of makes sense until you realize it is the coroporation that creates the outcome you want not the other way around. Also - from my point of view it looks like the Foundation is overfunded the last few years while the guys who create Firefox are underfunded, but I'm not an expert so it might very well be more complicated. I also don't want to say Mozillas management are useless: they somehow managed to land a huge deal earlier this year, but I will admit I sometimes find some of their decisions puzzling.
xiphias2 6y ago
Donations to a corrupt organization helps to make it even more corrupt. Just look at any destroyed country where ,,outside help'' is coming. Stopping the money flow is the only way to change corrupt management to people who care even if there's less money involved.
zerocrates 6y ago
I suppose it depends on your definition of self-funding (or possibly of "largely"): the Foundation receives roughly half its total income from the Corporation, in the form of license fees for trademarks. Of course both figures are drops in the bucket compared to the Corporation's revenue. I don't know if that "half and half" nature is coincidence, an internal directive, or necessary to maintain their tax-exempt status, but it's pretty consistent. For-profit entities can, of course, lobby and sit on standards bodies just fine. We certainly see plenty of that behavior from the other vendors. I'm not saying the Foundation is worthless or that people shouldn't donate to it, just that they should know what they're paying for and what they're not.
LockAndLol 6y ago
If Mozilla were serious about Firefox and privacy, they'd move it to the Foundation, allow direct donations, remove all the Googleware, Pocket and whatever else they unnecessarily shoved into Firefox + all the problems you stated. I'm not going to consider affirming bad leadership by giving them money. Mozilla Corp employees aren't locked into anything (unless they signed really shitty contracts). They can leave and rebuild. Servo might finally provide the foundation for a browser that really is about privacy and not just a cash-cow for a bloated upper echelon.
- jamienicol 6y ago
  what googleware is in Firefox, and what impact does pocket have on your privacy?
  - LockAndLol 6y ago
    Google is the default search engine of a "privacy aware" browser. It uses Google Safe browsing which, from what I understand, is practically an embedded call home to Google for each new domain you visit. For quite a while they were using Google as the default location provider. Pocket was an unnecessary acquisition that wasted money for an opt-out solution to... I don't even know what problem. The money spent on acquiring it could've gone into more developers, technical writers, testers, etc. Clickz (or however it's written) was also an unnecessary fail investment.
    - jamienicol 6y ago
      So pocket in no way detracts from your privacy. It's an very useful feature to many people. It's fine if you don't like it, but to use the privacy argument against it is incredibly disingenuous. Edit: Also, you understand incorrectly about safe browsing. It does its checks locally.
      - LockAndLol 6y ago
        I never claimed pocket detracted from privacy. I actually explained my problem with pocket... To add to that, it shouldn't be embedded in the browser. It's an extension and they have a marketplace for that. And even if Safe Browsing does do what you say, the other google stuff still does and did exist.