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Ask HN: Would you fund Mozilla to become independent of Google?
How much would you and or your company be willing to fund Mozilla should it need to become independent of Google?
- mnls 2y agoNo, no, no. Since the iRobot fiasco Mozilla is dead to me. Now I'm just enjoying the (oh so well deserved) downfall.
- Gualdrapo 2y agoI'd fund Mozilla to become independent of its management.* * If I were filthy rich, of course
- tomohawk 2y agoNot at all. Mozilla is now controlled by hyper partisan political operatives. There should be zero intersection between partisan politics and my web browser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubtWZwtJCdw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubtWZwtJCdw
- bigyabai 2y agoLmao, "now" controlled? Mozilla has been run by hyper partisan political operatives since it's inception.
- spooneybarger 2y agoZero
- KomoD 2y agoNothing.
- fsflover 2y agoWhy is this not a poll? Yes, you can create polls on HN.
- wruza 2y agoI think the problem is deeper in the standard. Funding those who run after a train that is designed to be expensive to catch up with is wasted effort. We need Web-next which would be clearly defined in proper primitives and features that don’t suck from the beginning and need no further extension. And a reference implementation of it in a clean way, even if not very performant. E.g. fine if it takes 50MB of RAM just to start and show a welcome tab. Implementors will optimize it later.
- high_na_euv 2y agoWhy you need reference impl?
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThere are things you figure out when writing / playing with a reference implementation that aren't obvious from just the spec. For example: the W3C thought `box-sizing: content-box;` was a good idea, but Internet Explorer 3 implemented `box-sizing: border-box;` semantics which are, just, obviously better. (IE6 changed to context-box, but the W3C were introducing border-box in CSS3, which was then available in IE8.)
- amelius 2y agoYes, and in a purely functional language like Haskell.
- theothertimcook 2y agoMozilla is fucked. They should have gotten into privacy centric groupware a decade ago: thunderbird, collaboration office suite, calendar, tasks, etc all baked into Firefox ala nextcloud but with Mozilla polish. I’d pay for that, instead they fuck around with VPNs and other stupid services that are harder to use than other products and not as good. I’ll miss Mozilla when they’re gone but there will be no question as to why they’re gone.
- rurban 2y agoYou forgot Rust. That was also funded by old-Mozilla
- 47282847 2y agoI would like to fund a technical Mozilla that exclusively focuses on actual products and community building. I would not want to give my money to the current Mozilla, as I believe the money and endowment they already have would be sufficient or at least give them all the means to do it, if they consequently stripped away everything else.
- shaunpud 2y agoWhy donate to tainted when you could to Ladybird
- p_l 2y agoThe best answer is an old graph of CEO compensation to Firefox market use.
- xnx 2y agoDo you have one of these? I made a Google Sheet, but accidentally deleted it. (I could probably get a research LLM to recreate...)
- p_l 2y agoA chart similar to this [1] was what I remember from a friend's time at Mozilla: [1] https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-execs-salary-up-400/2050/#:~:text=This%20chart%20from%20his%20recent%20blog%20post%20shows%20how%20Firefox%E2%80%99s%20market%20share%20has%20plummeted%20in%20recent%20years%20while%20their%20Chair%E2%80%99s%20pay%20skyrockets%3A https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...
- arp242 2y agoThat stops at 2018. In a quick check it seems CEO salary rose from $2.5M in 2018 to $6.9M in 2022.
- terminalbraid 2y agohttps://i.imgur.com/Oap8YeM.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/Oap8YeM.jpeg
- DiabloD3 2y agoThe only way I would donate to Mozilla is if the corporation is shuttered and the non-profit is disentangled from it. Any donations you send to Mozilla today go to the corporation and are not spent on the browser. They are spent on things that have nothing to do with the core mission of the maintaining the browser. Nobody is allowed to fund Mozilla to maintain the browser, which is the actual question you're asking.
- nailer 2y agoThis and I would pay between 10 and 20 USD a year for it. Much like Wikipedia, my donations depend on being able to donate to the actual engineers, and not to unrelated political advocacy.
- s_dev 2y agoJimmy Wales should really push for a Wikipedia fork of Firefox. People trust Wikimedia Foundation and the entire thing is in line with the goals of Wikimedia who also 'get' web development.
- Yoric 2y agoA fork? Getting any momentum behind this might be really hard.
- nailer 2y ago[flagged]
- mystified5016 2y agoDumping computer generated text without even bothering to make a point or conclusion does not add anything to the conversaton. "I can't be bothered to do my own thinking, here's what a computer said"
- nailer 2y ago
- pickledoyster 2y agoI would chip in the average Facebook user value for my country if, and only if, Mozilla completely reversed course on ad tech, selling user data, and 'private tracking'. The fact that it acquired Anonym (with its close ties to Facebook) makes it clear that Mozilla would not diversify away from ads, it would just jump from one ad company (Google) to the other (FB). I would not give a penny to a company that looks to sell me out.
- zaruvi 2y agoI would only donate for firefox specifically, when given the promise that it would be spent on development. Never to Mozilla with all the weird stuff they fund and work on.
- SCdF 2y agoIf mozilla spun off firefox or otherwise reorganised their company to be about making firefox the best web browser possible, so I could trust that my money was going to development of the browser and not random nonsense, I would happily pay £5-10/month.
- crossroadsguy 2y agoYes; depending upon what governance and financial/business model they choose. Maybe Firefox to begin with. And of course minus the CXO and their entourage. I think it should go the Thunderbird way or something on those lines. Survival of Firefox is critical (as of now more than Mozilla) for the open web to remain open.
- promoterr 2y agoOnly when accepts crypto as donations.
- iteratethis 2y agoIt's funny you mention this. Mozilla was one of the first to accept crypto donations. Then some 3 years ago an ex-Mozilla employee posted a rant on Twitter on how this effectively makes Mozilla super evil. It went somewhat viral and Mozilla stopped accepting crypto. To me this is a great example on how useless virtue-signaling is. Nothing was improved. The crypto world happily moves on and you won't be getting part of that money. What a great win. But I guess it's fine to receive fiat money of which you don't have a clue either about its source.
- akimbostrawman 2y agoturns out being captured by reactionary ideologues has its disadvantages
- srvmshr 2y agoA user like me would be willing to idea of some monthly donation when Mozilla restructures its expenses. If memory serves right, the biggest slice of expenses were in C-level compensations & shortlived pet projects. The organization has to focus on growing a cadre of good engineers and product teams for their core offerings (just like the ones who rewrote large chunks of Netscape code into a fledgling Firefox ~22y ago). One can't be expected to donate just to eventually subsidize a penthouse purchase for the CEO or their swanky McLaren.
- sshine 2y agoI’ve tolerated them being in the gray zone for years with their neglect of Firefox. After their latest stunt they’re out for me. I would not donate to an org that openly neglects a social responsibility of this magnitude.
- ryandrake 2y agoYou can look at their most recent annual report[1]. Their total expenses were ~$40M, and their CEO made over $6M in compensation. So out of a $100 donation, $16 goes directly into the CEO's pocket. The total compensation for their top 10 employees is close to $10M. They all are President of this and VP of that and Director of thus--my strong guess is none of them write Firefox code. So $24 of your $100 go into their pockets. 1: https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-foundation-form-990-public-disclosure-ty23.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-fo...
- altairprime 2y agoThis link is a tax form for the Foundation, which doesn’t do any development on Firefox at all. So, 0% of all donations would go towards Firefox, even after your proposal.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 2y agoCurrent mozilla? No fucking way
- baal80spam 2y agoNot after they posted this: https://web.archive.org/web/20210108215449/https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210108215449/https://blog.mozi... It was the day I switched to Brave and never looked back.
- 0x6c6f6c 2y agoAnd they removed the post after November... Oof
- 0_____0 2y agoi don't get it, why was this specifically bad? Other than it has little to do with the browser/Mozilla projects
- nailer 2y agoIt suggests a major political player be deplatformed for frivolous reasons and spreads conspiracy theories about white supremacy.
- Hasnep 2y agoWhat conspiracy theories?
- nailer 2y agoThat the candidate is a white supremacist. This is in the article linked above.
- Hasnep 2y ago> But as reprehensible as the actions of Donald Trump are, the rampant use of the internet to foment violence and hate, and reinforce white supremacy is about more than any one personality. It just says his actions reinforced white supremacy, and you've got to admit, white supremacists do love Trump, and they specifically love him because of the words he says and the actions he takes.
- jokoon 2y agoThere are plenty other open source softwares out there. I don't really understand why Mozilla needs so much money, I heard their revenues were quite high. Why do you mean by "you"? I bet there would be plenty companies who would give money to mozilla to improve their browser and at least answer their demands. I don't really know the mozilla company as a whole and how it's managed, but in my view there might be some things that could be removed from mozilla, like trim the fat. I have the feeling a lot of marketing people have entered mozilla, and I don't like it. I want an answer to the question "how many software engineers and UX people are involved in the process of developing firefox". Just let users and especially companies tell mozilla what it wants in firefox, and go from there. I don't know how many people are paid for the services like sync, pocket, VPN, etc, and if those services are profitable to keep them.
- terminalbraid 2y agoNo, but I'd be willing to fund Firefox to become independent of Google.
- TexanFeller 2y agoI’ve used Firefox almost every day since it was released. I have way less issues with it than Chrome even though web developers never test their work with it. I think an open web is critical to our society. I think Chrome is the new IE and that Google cannot be trusted with controlling the engine of essentially every browser besides Firefox. I have disposable income and would pay every month to support it…but only if Mozilla had new management. I have zero trust in Mozilla’s management and feel that most money given to them would be wasted rather than used for browser development.
- ItsBob 2y agoI'd fund a browser that has the following: 1. Zero telemetry. I mean ZERO: remove all telemetry code from the codebase. They can ask me about features the old-fashioned way - surveys! 2. Focus on privacy and security. Put these to the top of the list. 3. Stop paying your CEO millions! Not worth it imo! 4. Stop with all the other Mozilla shit! I am interested in a browser (and perhaps an email client... I'll let you work on that too!). No more Pocket, VPN and all that other shite. 5. ZERO, I mean ZERO data capture at all! Nothing. Not a single bit except when someone clicks the link to download Firefox, you can capture their userAgent and whatnot. But the browser, Firefox, should not be capturing a single byte of data from me once installed (except perhaps a periodic version check and you can pass in the version like this: https://firefox.com/update?v=123.568 https://firefox.com/update?v=123.568). 6. For sync, allow me to sync an encrypted file to Dropbox, OneDrive, Local drive, Whatever.com. That way my passwords, bookmarks etc. can be sync'd from MY location that I control, not yours!). 7. Have a "Block all shady JS tactics" button. This would include fingerprinting, location and such. Perhaps you could send bogus, random data when it's asked for instead. That'd be fine too. I think that's it :) For a browser that did this, and was properly audited to prevent anything shady from creeping in, I'd pay $30 a year for it. Edit: To clarify - I wouldn't pay the current Mozilla a single penny!
- bossyTeacher 2y ago> Zero telemetry. So no crash logs or similar issues? Logging is seen as a subset of telemetry I agree with most of your points but you missed out an important one: active lobbying to counteract or reduce google's dominance on the web. As long as Chrome reigns supreme, Firefox will always be playing catch up as Google can break the web for non chrome devices by regularly adding apis that are only in chrome and forcing devs to use them
- ItsBob 2y agoI don't consider things like crash logs and debug stuff to be telemetry. This can easily be dealt with by a popup saying "want to upload the crash log?". It can just be a text file with a bunch of data. I'm fine with that. Telemetry to me is knowing what I'm doing, like clicking a button, using a feature etc. They record that shit! Also, sending data about my websites back to the mothership so they can sell ads (or sell to ad companies... same thing). That's what I mean when I talk about telemetry.
- jordemort 2y agoI would fund one of the Firefox forks to become independent of Mozilla.
- amelius 2y agoYes, $10 per month per user (me).
- felipemesquita 2y agoI would like a way to donate to Firefox browser development directly.
- s_dev 2y agoWikipedia style donations. In fact Wikipedia should just create their own fork of Firefox.
- taeric 2y agoWould begs the question of could. And, sadly, that just isn't really likely, by my view. You could regulate a lot of this idea. But financially, it just isn't there.
- giamma 2y agoAs a Firefox user who is worried about he current browser landscape, I already donated to Mozilla in the past. However as many others pointed out, there is no way to ensure that the donated amount is used specifically to fund Firefox.
- altairprime 2y agoMore pointedly, the non-profit that receives donations cannot by law then transfer those donations to a for-profit subsidiary except to pay actual costs charged by the subsidiary for services rendered to the parent. The parent has no need of Firefox development services, so an estimate of 0% of donations being used to fund Firefox is a safe guess.
- jacek 2y agoI would absolutely pay for the development of an independent, open source, privacy oriented and user friendly browser. I would never pay for the shitshow the Mozilla Corporation is. I would find $5-$10 per month perfectly acceptable. For now maybe donating to Ladybird [1] and Servo [2] makes more sense? --- [1] https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/ [2] https://servo.org/sponsorship/ https://servo.org/sponsorship/
- wink 2y agoIf they had a public and accountable org structure, but certainly not with their CEO's salary. I've said this often, I hold them to a higher standard, but they're not even matching the standard of companies I respect.
- bossyTeacher 2y ago$100 dollars per year. The better question is what should that money be spent on. This being HN, I assume they would mostly just want engineers which I partially agree. I feel though Mozilla needs some funding to maintain and extend the docs they have as well as some money to lobby for a less chrome-dominant internet. At the end of the day, it's pointless to have a beautifully engineered browser if 50-60% of the websites don't work because they were designed for chrome. That's the future of the web unless someone stands up to them. Unlike IE, a well engineered browser won't cut it anymore. I only see two paths going forward from here: future 1. google goes full baddie and severely nerfs ad blockers to the point where over 50% of the time you get ads. This is a problem with technical solution thus easy win for firefox future 2. google nerfs ad blockers but not hard enough to sway browser usage towards firefox. Bad scenario, Google remains dominant and free to nerf the competition by making chrome specific apis or other shenanigans that they know most websites will adopt
- joanfihu 2y agoShould it need to become independent, OR is it going to be forced to become independent? It seems Google won’t be able to pay to be the default SE in any browser: Safari, Mozilla, etc. https://askpandi.com/pandipedia/judgement-against-google-promoting-competition-and-fair-practices https://askpandi.com/pandipedia/judgement-against-google-pro... So I guess Mozilla is scrambling to find new revenue streams since 88% of their revenue comes from it. I won’t fund Mozilla because it’s been forced to operate fairly. They should build a product that makes me want to pay for it.
- evanjrowley 2y agoYeah, I would, as long as the $ went to just the web browser.
- otukan 2y agoSeems like a lot of people here have never heard of LibreWolf. Check it out at https://librewolf.net/ https://librewolf.net/ I could see this becoming a fully independent open-source project, and then supporting that.
- LinuxBender 2y agoI fired that up in a VM to see what that was all about. It appeared to have all the same telemetry as Firefox based on the network traffic I monitored. All the forks seem to have all the same stuff. Maybe the reason for it is to remove specific services, I just don't know.
- kayo_20211030 2y agoNo, I don't think so at the moment. I send small amounts to Wikipedia, and similar projects, but Mozilla? I genuinely don't know what they do. There's a browser. It's decent enough, I suppose; but not compelling enough to use as an alternative to something else. OTOH, they do have wicked good documentation. That, I might fund. But, the browser and the other stuff, probably not.
- fsflover 2y ago> but not compelling enough to use as an alternative to something else It's definitely compelling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43322922
- kayo_20211030 2y agoI'm a fan of uBlock, but the argument's just not compelling enough for me. I may be dull, but Ads on the internet are like taxes to me; they'll just have to be paid. Sites host ads, nobody else does it. They do it for pretty straight-forward economic reasons. If a site's too annoying, why visit it? Eventually, I hope it all settles down to a decent equilibrium.
- fsflover 2y agoYou would be right if you were talking about ordinary ads, like those DuckDuckGo is using. I'm not blocking that. Most ads today track users and illegally collect huge amounts of information in order to psychologically manipulate you into buying what you don't need.
- kayo_20211030 2y agoTrue. I'm still being presented ads for shoes I bought three months ago. How many pairs can I possibly need? But, seriously, I see that as part of the tax too. Annoying, useless, and tedious. Have I grown callouses?
- WithinReason 2y agoFYI, you can create polls on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll
- hysan 2y agoI would fund Firefox, not Mozilla. I learned from all the recent discussions that money donated to Mozilla do not go to Firefox. It’s as if Mozilla is structured in a way such that Firefox cannot be community supported.
- NuSkooler 2y agoYes.
- iteratethis 2y agoMany people want to donate to Firefox exclusively but you can forget about that. Mozilla will not carve out Firefox because it's the only reason that the mother org gets half a billion of free money from Google. Carving out Firefox means Mozilla is dissolved as none of their other activities make any money.
- ryandrake 2y agoWhy can't Mozilla just be Firefox? I would donate to a group of open source developers, but I would not donate to a huge org chart tree of CxO's and VP's and non-technical administrators and administrators-of-administrators and assistants-to-administrators-of-administrators.
- iteratethis 2y agoWell, I just explained you why. Firefox subsidizes the mothership which is doing a lot of non-Firefox activities. When you carve out Firefox, the mothership is gone.
- ryandrake 2y agoWhat I'm asking is why can't Mozilla just drop all the non-Firefox side quests?
- iteratethis 2y agoI'm guessing because they don't want to. Their "mission" is much larger than Firefox.
- octopoc 2y agoEverything they do has approximately zero value add to the community compared with the value add of having a legitimate alternative browser. It’s like saying, yeah I solved cancer, but my vision is so much bigger than that! I also invented an Excel formula that allows shoe stores to advertise 2% less expensively to dogs. We really need an alternative browser. We have one. But the people running it want to use your donations to do other things that are 100x less important.
- JohnFen 2y agoI wouldn't fund Mozilla. I'd absolutely pay for Firefox, though, if it reverted some of the more problematic things they've been adding recently.
- butz 2y agoMozilla must split their engine and basic browser UI into separate browser, something like Chromium right now, without any "Mozilla" features: no pocket, no AI, no sync, nothing extra that is not necessary to browse the web. This part must forever stay open-source, free, and supported. Only then I'll gladly set up recurring donation. On top of that, they can build a "Mozilla" spin of the browser, with all the bells and whistles they ever wanted: ads, AI, sync, pocket, Mr. Robot promos, etc. This also opens avenue for other companies to build on top of base browser their own improvements, either by using extensions or extension bundles. Even Microsoft might provide their own spin with all Microsoft services and telemetry added.
- deknos 2y agoYes. I would.
- dns_snek 2y agoLike many others, I would pay 20+€/year no questions asked, if and only if that money went to projects of my choosing (Firefox, MDN, Thunderbird) and they immediately and permanently halted work on user hostile projects such as ad tech.
- elseleigh 2y agoUSD10 a month, as long as it's going to maintaining and developing the browser, not for any other purposes.
- amyames 2y ago[dead]
- segmondy 2y agoNo, money ruins open and free source. If you are going to do it, do it for the passion. Every single open/free software that I have rooted for that decided that money is important turned out terrible. Please don't ask for a list, it's endless.
- MrDresden 2y agoIn the past I have donated on a monthly basis to Mozilla, around 15$. However, due to obscene CEO pay during a massive decline in Firefox's market share, as well as very questionable privacy and diversification (thus loosing focus on their core product) moves over the years, I stopped donating a few years back. If Mozilla were to lower CEO compensation, and shift focus more towards the browser, as well as position themselves better when it comes to privacy, then I would consider donating again. Lastly, Mozilla should have a way for donations to be marked specifically for Firefox, rather than them going into a big pool.
- warpspin 2y agoNot the Mozilla as it exists now, dabbling in a thousand projects and neglecting the browser. Give me a Mozilla focused on Firefox with people providing funds regularly having a certain amount of votes that will actually be respected on bug reports/broader feature requests, and I'm in.
- akimbostrawman 2y agoI would donate to mozilla an amount they deserve, which would be 0. Now donations directly to firefox that only are used for browser development would be a different story. I would donate +15$ monthly for that and over time much more if I I can see improvements.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- reportgunner 2y agoIf mozilla was a paid software on steam I would buy it for a one time payment up to $20. I would like to avoid giving my payment details to the browser directly as I see it as a risk of some malware misusing them to take my money. After a few years (like 4) I would probably consider buying "Mozilla 2" for another one time payment up to $20 if the mozilla I bought becomes "end of life". I would never buy "mozilla" from a microsoft store or android/apple appstore. I would not give a cent or continue using mozilla if ublock origin becomes not supported. Any kind of forced ads or restriction on adblocking will make me forget mozilla ever was a thing.
- oskarkk 2y agoWhy Steam? I get that Microsoft/Google/Apple are also competing in web space, so it would be bad for Firefox to give fees to its competitors, but as far as I know Steam purchases also have fees like 30%. The features and marketing that Steam provides may be worth it for games, but for Firefox there is no upside to handling payments through Steam.
- reportgunner 2y agoI buy software on Steam, I don't buy it elsewhere and won't start buying it elsewhere just because of firefox. > as far as I know Steam purchases also have fees like 30% perhaps firefox could ditch google and get picked up by Valve? (in terms of funding/ownership)
- MrMember 2y agoIf there was a way to financially contribute to development of the browser and only development of the browser I would. Probably like $5 a month.
- solardev 2y agoI'd rather fund Chrome, if it can be divested from Google and managed by a separate nonprofit. I'd consider funding Firefox too, but only if it isn't managed by Mozilla. Mozilla has really lost their way and have not been a good steward of Firefox.
- rchaud 2y agoTech funding that's reliant on a large number of small donors is less sustainable than a few deep pockets. However, the latter situation opens the door for somebody to simply become the largest funder and start implicitly dictating its direction, like what Google eventually did with Mozilla. Surely it doesn't cost $150m/yr to maintain security updates for a browser - is there a cheaper way to fund one? Functionally, it seems that browsers don't do anything more today that they haven't been capable of since 2015. W3C changes occur at a glacial pace too, it's not like there are always new things to be adding into the pipeline.
- waltercool 2y ago[dead]
- deafpolygon 2y agoNo, mozilla is a corporation like any other. And the majority of donations they get on the non-profit side don't even go towards the browser or anything surrounding it.
- hulitu 2y ago> Ask HN: Would you fund Mozilla to become independent of Google? You mean Mozilla is dependent on Google ? (in the voice of John Malkowitch): Fuck Mozilla, Fuck. /s
- curtisblaine 2y agoIf I was 100% sure that my money goes to the browser, I would. If there is even 1% possibility of them spending some of my money funding other organisations (especially involved in politics / society reform / activism), I absolutely wouldn't.
- snapplebobapple 2y agoNo because it does a lot of random crap that isnt browser and is bloated af. Ladybird gets my funding as the hail mary play
- tomcam 2y agoOf course not. I donated a bunch of money years ago and now I find they're spending way too little on programming and way too much on admin stuff. All they have to do is invest their money in the bank in some safe mechanism and fire 90% of admin staff.