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The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit that owns the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. Step 1 is get rid of the for-profit corporation that pays its CEO 2.4 mill

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit that owns the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. Step 1 is get rid of the for-profit corporation that pays its CEO 2.4 million dollars a year to lose market share. That's 24 well-paid developers, or double that from lower-income countries. The foundation had a revenue of $441 million in 2020. We know that in 2014 ~90% of their revenue come from its search-engine deal with Google. That means that without Google they'd have ~44 million to work with these days (or more). That's a lot of devs, before even considering non-search-engine sources of revenue. Personally I don't mind ideas like the VPN. I do mind the stupid grants the foundation does unrelated to a web-browser or acquisitions like pocket.

BrendanEich 3y ago
> 2.4 million Try > 5.6 million. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...
wwtrv 3y ago
> That's 24 well-paid developers, or double that from lower-income countries. That's a stretch even if we don't count the additional overhead.
- sirwhinesalot 3y ago
  For a non-profit that (already) runs a mass of volunteers? Surely you jest. The CEO of the blender foundation makes around 100k. They develop one of the greatest open source success stories on 2 million a year. That's less (for the whole project) than Baker makes (2.4 million). There's no excuse for the shitshow that is Mozilla, none.
Brybry 3y ago
Couldn't they take the Google money, invest it, and pay developers purely from the interest? Like a university endowment? How many years of Google money would it take to support ~500 staff purely for making Firefox in perpetuity? That's maybe ~$50 million/year? This[1] says endowments target ~7.5% annualized returns. So a very conservative 5% return could pay for ~500 staff with ~$1 billion in Google bucks. [1] https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Higher-Education-Endowments-See-Declines-in-Returns-and-Values-but-Boost-Overall-Spending https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Higher-Education-...

BrendanEich 3y ago

> 2.4 million Try > 5.6 million. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990-ty21-public-disclosure.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...

wwtrv 3y ago

> That's 24 well-paid developers, or double that from lower-income countries. That's a stretch even if we don't count the additional overhead.

sirwhinesalot 3y ago
For a non-profit that (already) runs a mass of volunteers? Surely you jest. The CEO of the blender foundation makes around 100k. They develop one of the greatest open source success stories on 2 million a year. That's less (for the whole project) than Baker makes (2.4 million). There's no excuse for the shitshow that is Mozilla, none.

Brybry 3y ago

Couldn't they take the Google money, invest it, and pay developers purely from the interest? Like a university endowment? How many years of Google money would it take to support ~500 staff purely for making Firefox in perpetuity? That's maybe ~$50 million/year? This[1] says endowments target ~7.5% annualized returns. So a very conservative 5% return could pay for ~500 staff with ~$1 billion in Google bucks. [1] https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Higher-Education-Endowments-See-Declines-in-Returns-and-Values-but-Boost-Overall-Spending https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/2023/Higher-Education-...