4 ms·

Does earmarking for donations exist in the US, i.e. could you donate under the condition that the money is only to be used for development of Firefox?

• boomboomsubban 6y ago
  Yeah, they used to do that for Thunderbird. I assume it wasn't worth the hassle, and unless you are donating a serious amount of money they won't agree to take on the risk involved.
  • pwdisswordfish5 6y ago
    Once upon a time, someone affiliated with Thunderbird project maintenance/governance posted a detailed reply to HN describing how hard it was to get Mozilla to release funds that it had been been collecting from Thunderbird donors. That comment is obviously not lost to the sands of time, but it has proven quite difficult to relocate.
    • boomboomsubban 6y ago
      It sounds like there was a period of time where the donations just sat there before a system was developed to allow Thunderbird total control. It's somewhat understandable, at the time Thunderbird shared many resources with Firefox but if some of the donation money was used for Firefox they'd break the terms of the donations.
      • pwdisswordfish5 6y ago
        This is nothing more than apologetics, and not even good apologetics. Instead, speculative apologetics, i.e. no solid footing by which to understand the premise.
        • boomboomsubban 6y ago
          Compared to "I'm pretty sure I read once things were bad." Sometimes things are hard, Thunderbird didn't seem very upset as they decided to stay with Mozilla during the period.