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You can fund Firefox by pooling money and pay a developer or a company like Igalia to implement a feature you want. It's not trivial, but given the number of pe

You can fund Firefox by pooling money and pay a developer or a company like Igalia to implement a feature you want. It's not trivial, but given the number of people on HN that claim they would pitch in, someone should really try that.

sdk- 2y ago
Folks on HN are good to talk the talk but not really to walk the walk. Not only they could give to developers or company like Igalia but they could also get a Firefox Relay/VPN subscription. They don't even need to use it and their money is going to be 100% profit for MoCo. Also, if we are realistic, the total money in donation that Mozilla could get would probably represent a drop in the ocean compared to their annual budget and the amount of money you need to develop a (complete) browser. It's way more complicated than creating yet another chrome skin.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > their money is going to be 100% profit for MoCo If you can provide a citation for this claim I'd get a subscription today. I don't pay for their side projects because I don't want them to take it as a signal of demand for VPNs, but if it's truly 100% profit I'd be willing to risk it. > Also, if we are realistic, the total money in donation that Mozilla could get would probably represent a drop in the ocean compared to their annual budget and the amount of money you need to develop a (complete) browser. People keep saying this, but given that it's never been tried you have no proof. And even if it were, what harm is there in opening up one more option for those of us who want to be really clear about what we're paying for?
  - sdk- 2y ago
    > If you can provide a citation for this claim I'd get a subscription today. I don't pay for their side projects because I don't want them to take it as a signal of demand for VPNs, but if it's truly 100% profit I'd be willing to risk it. Fair enough. They publish their annual financial report but it isn't splitted per project so it's hard to know for a fact with the public information we have access to. However, it isn't unreasonable to think that at the very least a percentage of the smaller products revenues are reinjected elsewhere in the organization (e.g Firefox) since the goal seems to be to diversify their income sources. > People keep saying this, but given that it's never been tried you have no proof. And even if it were, what harm is there in opening up one more option for those of us who want to be really clear about what we're paying for? It's been tried over and over in the FOSS community. Few projects are able to get decent money with donations (e.g. Thunderbird). However, it's nowhere near the complexity of a web browser. For example, Thunderbird made almost $7M (USD) in 2023 for an average of $20 per donation which is 350k users out of 20M monthly active users [1]. Firefox has 10 times that number of users so we could estimate that they'd make $70M/year. That's far from $500M/year they're doing right now. [1]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
    - lolinder 2y ago
      $70m is just $5m shy of their entire "subscription and advertising revenue" line item, with none of the extra cost of getting that revenue. Your back-of-the-napkin math would suggest that donations could render all of Mozilla's for profit side projects unnecessary and allow them to focus that energy exclusively on the browser. What's not to love?
      - austhrow743 2y ago
        You're comparing the success case of donations against the failure case of profit side projects.
        lolinder 2y ago
        As I said above, if it's a failure, fine, at least they tried. Knowing that it's possible to replace the side projects with a better model why would they not at least try?
lolinder 2y ago
I don't want a single feature, I want a guarantee that Firefox will receive consistent maintenance over time and won't be influenced by Google's opinions about what the web should become. A small monthly donation helps with that in a way that feature sponsorship doesn't.
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  Why do you believe that a monthly donation will help against Google influence on the web more than dedicated feature work? That seems backward to me.
wakawaka28 2y ago
Yeah right, you're basically talking about a fork because nobody can force upstream to go along with your plan. There are already several forks of Firefox. We don't need more.
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  No I'm not talking about a fork. There are many things the team at Moco just has no time to work on and will happily welcome contributions.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    I'm saying you can't independently fund whatever features you desire without a fork, because upstream is under zero obligation to accept your contribution. They may have a conflicting vision of where development needs to go, or simply be unwilling to assume the risk of taking your contribution.
dimator 2y ago
Implementing a whole ass new W3 spec is not something for a single contractor working on donations to do. That's a recipe for never finishing.

sdk- 2y ago

Folks on HN are good to talk the talk but not really to walk the walk. Not only they could give to developers or company like Igalia but they could also get a Firefox Relay/VPN subscription. They don't even need to use it and their money is going to be 100% profit for MoCo. Also, if we are realistic, the total money in donation that Mozilla could get would probably represent a drop in the ocean compared to their annual budget and the amount of money you need to develop a (complete) browser. It's way more complicated than creating yet another chrome skin.

lolinder 2y ago
> their money is going to be 100% profit for MoCo If you can provide a citation for this claim I'd get a subscription today. I don't pay for their side projects because I don't want them to take it as a signal of demand for VPNs, but if it's truly 100% profit I'd be willing to risk it. > Also, if we are realistic, the total money in donation that Mozilla could get would probably represent a drop in the ocean compared to their annual budget and the amount of money you need to develop a (complete) browser. People keep saying this, but given that it's never been tried you have no proof. And even if it were, what harm is there in opening up one more option for those of us who want to be really clear about what we're paying for?
- sdk- 2y ago
  > If you can provide a citation for this claim I'd get a subscription today. I don't pay for their side projects because I don't want them to take it as a signal of demand for VPNs, but if it's truly 100% profit I'd be willing to risk it. Fair enough. They publish their annual financial report but it isn't splitted per project so it's hard to know for a fact with the public information we have access to. However, it isn't unreasonable to think that at the very least a percentage of the smaller products revenues are reinjected elsewhere in the organization (e.g Firefox) since the goal seems to be to diversify their income sources. > People keep saying this, but given that it's never been tried you have no proof. And even if it were, what harm is there in opening up one more option for those of us who want to be really clear about what we're paying for? It's been tried over and over in the FOSS community. Few projects are able to get decent money with donations (e.g. Thunderbird). However, it's nowhere near the complexity of a web browser. For example, Thunderbird made almost $7M (USD) in 2023 for an average of $20 per donation which is 350k users out of 20M monthly active users [1]. Firefox has 10 times that number of users so we could estimate that they'd make $70M/year. That's far from $500M/year they're doing right now. [1]: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/ https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving...
  - lolinder 2y ago
    $70m is just $5m shy of their entire "subscription and advertising revenue" line item, with none of the extra cost of getting that revenue. Your back-of-the-napkin math would suggest that donations could render all of Mozilla's for profit side projects unnecessary and allow them to focus that energy exclusively on the browser. What's not to love?
    - austhrow743 2y ago
      You're comparing the success case of donations against the failure case of profit side projects.
      - lolinder 2y ago
        As I said above, if it's a failure, fine, at least they tried. Knowing that it's possible to replace the side projects with a better model why would they not at least try?

lolinder 2y ago

I don't want a single feature, I want a guarantee that Firefox will receive consistent maintenance over time and won't be influenced by Google's opinions about what the web should become. A small monthly donation helps with that in a way that feature sponsorship doesn't.

fabrice_d 2y ago
Why do you believe that a monthly donation will help against Google influence on the web more than dedicated feature work? That seems backward to me.

wakawaka28 2y ago

Yeah right, you're basically talking about a fork because nobody can force upstream to go along with your plan. There are already several forks of Firefox. We don't need more.

fabrice_d 2y ago
No I'm not talking about a fork. There are many things the team at Moco just has no time to work on and will happily welcome contributions.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  I'm saying you can't independently fund whatever features you desire without a fork, because upstream is under zero obligation to accept your contribution. They may have a conflicting vision of where development needs to go, or simply be unwilling to assume the risk of taking your contribution.

dimator 2y ago

Implementing a whole ass new W3 spec is not something for a single contractor working on donations to do. That's a recipe for never finishing.