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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 OS
by 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 agoThere 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.
- ygjb 6y agoYou are correct; you can't direct money to Mozilla to develop Firefox, by way of the foundation. You can fund OSS contributors, not Mozilla staff (and they are well funded already, to work on Firefox).