5 ms·

Is there any sort of corporate structure around one of the forks? There's no doubt in my mind that if it were organized somehow the community would be able to f

by rvense 3y ago

Is there any sort of corporate structure around one of the forks? There's no doubt in my mind that if it were organized somehow the community would be able to fund a few developers to work on Firefox alongside Mozilla. I don't want an aggressive split, but I'd like to be able to support the project. I've donated to Mozilla in the past but it apparently was not going to Firefox directly.

mozempthrowaway 3y ago
You shouldn’t donate. The donations don’t go to MoCo which is the for profit subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation under which FF is developed. All the donations go to MoFo, where they barely covered Mitchell’s salary and what was left went to her pet political projects. People are pretty unaware/misled about how Mozilla is structured/funded. The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  These truths are, in my opinion, a great tragedy. I'd absolutely pay for Firefox if I could, but I can't. > The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine. Which is a much greater cost than I'm willing to pay.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yes exactly, it's so bad that we can't just donate. I donate monthly to KDE and I would to firefox. And no I absolutely won't keep Google
- autoexec 3y ago
  > The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine. You could contribute with code I guess, or if you just want to throw money at the project hire a developer to fix a couple bugs. As a bonus you get to pick the bugs.
offmycloud 3y ago
I would be willing to make a monthly donation, but only if I knew that it was going to the development of Firefox and/or Thunderbird.
- orev 3y ago
  Thunderbird is a separate organization and you can donate to that project directly.
  - offmycloud 3y ago
    The FAQ page [1] says: "Thunderbird is a project of MZLA Technologies Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation." and "Gifts to Thunderbird are not tax-deductible as charitable gifts, but are greatly appreciated." ... so I guess Thunderbird is part of a for-profit corporation owned by a non-profit? Why would Mozilla pick this kind of corporate structure? 1. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/#faq https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/#faq
MrAlex94 3y ago
> Is there any sort of corporate structure around one of the forks? Yes, I have one for Waterfox. I have had one since 2012, first as Waterfox Limited and now as BrowserWorks Ltd (registered in the UK). When people ask for comparison between forks, as often happens in the community, I’ve actually found it interesting that none of them actually have anyone to hold accountable in a legal sense, and I’ve started to lean into that as a benefit of Waterfox. A browser is an incredibly privileged piece of software; it’s used to access very sensitive information, but it doesn’t seem to be a consideration a lot of the time about “who” is behind these forks. I’ve got a few product launches that I hope will get me out under the thumb of middlemen and the murky world of search engine partnerships, and with that, hopefully build up a small team to have sustainable growth and a viable mainstream alternative. Waterfox will be 13 in March, and one pie in the sky dream was to eventually be able to have a completely detached front end with frequent improvements submitted upstream to the browser engine. So somewhat similar to what you seem to be asking for.
- morjom 3y ago
  It'd be neat and somewhat funny if there was a privacytests.org equivalent but just Firefox forks.
Yaina 3y ago
I mean, the majority of work on Firefox is being done by Mozilla. If they stopped working on Gecko, I would be highly surprised if it would get security maintenance, let alone feature work. Donating to the Tor Browser project could be an idea. The Tor Browser is a Firefox fork, and they are a legitimate org that is on friendly terms with Mozilla. Even to the extent that some Tor features are actually in the Firefox source code, and just disabled by default.

by rvense 3y ago

mozempthrowaway 3y ago

You shouldn’t donate. The donations don’t go to MoCo which is the for profit subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation under which FF is developed. All the donations go to MoFo, where they barely covered Mitchell’s salary and what was left went to her pet political projects. People are pretty unaware/misled about how Mozilla is structured/funded. The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine.

JohnFen 3y ago
These truths are, in my opinion, a great tragedy. I'd absolutely pay for Firefox if I could, but I can't. > The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine. Which is a much greater cost than I'm willing to pay.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yes exactly, it's so bad that we can't just donate. I donate monthly to KDE and I would to firefox. And no I absolutely won't keep Google
autoexec 3y ago
> The only way you can contribute to FF directly is to keep and use Google as the default search engine. You could contribute with code I guess, or if you just want to throw money at the project hire a developer to fix a couple bugs. As a bonus you get to pick the bugs.

offmycloud 3y ago

I would be willing to make a monthly donation, but only if I knew that it was going to the development of Firefox and/or Thunderbird.

orev 3y ago
Thunderbird is a separate organization and you can donate to that project directly.
- offmycloud 3y ago
  The FAQ page [1] says: "Thunderbird is a project of MZLA Technologies Corporation, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation." and "Gifts to Thunderbird are not tax-deductible as charitable gifts, but are greatly appreciated." ... so I guess Thunderbird is part of a for-profit corporation owned by a non-profit? Why would Mozilla pick this kind of corporate structure? 1. https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/#faq https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/#faq

MrAlex94 3y ago

> Is there any sort of corporate structure around one of the forks? Yes, I have one for Waterfox. I have had one since 2012, first as Waterfox Limited and now as BrowserWorks Ltd (registered in the UK). When people ask for comparison between forks, as often happens in the community, I’ve actually found it interesting that none of them actually have anyone to hold accountable in a legal sense, and I’ve started to lean into that as a benefit of Waterfox. A browser is an incredibly privileged piece of software; it’s used to access very sensitive information, but it doesn’t seem to be a consideration a lot of the time about “who” is behind these forks. I’ve got a few product launches that I hope will get me out under the thumb of middlemen and the murky world of search engine partnerships, and with that, hopefully build up a small team to have sustainable growth and a viable mainstream alternative. Waterfox will be 13 in March, and one pie in the sky dream was to eventually be able to have a completely detached front end with frequent improvements submitted upstream to the browser engine. So somewhat similar to what you seem to be asking for.

morjom 3y ago
It'd be neat and somewhat funny if there was a privacytests.org equivalent but just Firefox forks.

Yaina 3y ago

I mean, the majority of work on Firefox is being done by Mozilla. If they stopped working on Gecko, I would be highly surprised if it would get security maintenance, let alone feature work. Donating to the Tor Browser project could be an idea. The Tor Browser is a Firefox fork, and they are a legitimate org that is on friendly terms with Mozilla. Even to the extent that some Tor features are actually in the Firefox source code, and just disabled by default.