3 ms·

You're leaving out the revenue from the Yahoo lawsuit. When you combine the revenue from actual royalties and the award from the lawsuit, Mozilla's income for

You're leaving out the revenue from the Yahoo lawsuit. When you combine the revenue from actual royalties and the award from the lawsuit, Mozilla's income for the last year we have on record was just under 1 billion USD, and people continue pushing the narrative that Mozilla is more financially insecure than ever. Firefox is certainly at one of the lowest measures of success it has ever seen, but it's also bringing in more money per user than ever. The picture of Mozilla as frail organization just barely squeaking by has been very lucrative. The fact is, Mozilla has been in the current position for the last 10 years, which is one that is far less precarious than it's made out to be, hasn't done anything that substantially ameliorates what precarity does exist, and instead continues making awful decisions that push away both people in its user base and its potential set of contributors, with the kicker being that the purported looming threat of poverty is used as the justification for all decisions made. And they never budge on anything, except to move further down on all measures that they point to. So how smart and well-reasoned are those decisions again? Signed, a lifetime Firefox user (for lack of a better option).

matheusmoreira 6y ago
So what do they use the money for if not actual software engineering? I have a feeling if people start digging they'll uncover a situation similar to Wikipedia.
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  The problem is cost disease married to managerial incompetence, same as what's afflicting universities and hospitals. They're using the money for software engineering, but they're doing it poorly, including doing a really, really shit job handling unpaid contributors (essentially driving everyone away and thus requiring them to hire others to fill the shoes of the people who stop contributing). They also spend tens of millions of dollars a year on their marketing department -- a bigger budget than Firefox's entire development budget 15 years ago (i.e., when Firefox was actually on an upward trajectory). There's certainly money going into actual marketing, but the returns on that investment are terrible to the point that they'd probably be just as well off cutting the budget in two, keeping one half of it to be allocated for some other purpose, flushing the other half directly down the toilet, and doing no marketing at all (or maybe walking out into the street, handing it to random passersby, and saying, "this is from Mozilla; you should really use Firefox").

matheusmoreira 6y ago

So what do they use the money for if not actual software engineering? I have a feeling if people start digging they'll uncover a situation similar to Wikipedia.

pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
The problem is cost disease married to managerial incompetence, same as what's afflicting universities and hospitals. They're using the money for software engineering, but they're doing it poorly, including doing a really, really shit job handling unpaid contributors (essentially driving everyone away and thus requiring them to hire others to fill the shoes of the people who stop contributing). They also spend tens of millions of dollars a year on their marketing department -- a bigger budget than Firefox's entire development budget 15 years ago (i.e., when Firefox was actually on an upward trajectory). There's certainly money going into actual marketing, but the returns on that investment are terrible to the point that they'd probably be just as well off cutting the budget in two, keeping one half of it to be allocated for some other purpose, flushing the other half directly down the toilet, and doing no marketing at all (or maybe walking out into the street, handing it to random passersby, and saying, "this is from Mozilla; you should really use Firefox").