5 ms·

The 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 g

The 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 ago
This 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 ago
  Jimmy 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 ago
    A fork? Getting any momentum behind this might be really hard.
  - nailer 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - mystified5016 2y ago
      Dumping 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
        [flagged]
- SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
  > Much like Wikipedia, my donations depend on being able to donate to the actual engineers, and not to unrelated political advocacy. Yep. I even agree with most of the unrelated political advocacy, but I want to be able to donate for that to a different organization.
- bruce511 2y ago
  Why not $21? Or $30? Or $100? Genuinely curious. I figure it's either worth $0, or hundreds of $. I mean, sooo much whining about privacy and telemetry and ad-blocking but ultimately it's worth the same as a couple cups of coffee? That seems to me to be a root question here. How much is privacy actually worth? The average number in this post seems about $20. So in real terms, nothing at all. And yes, all of this is moot given that you can't donate to Firefox in the first place. Still, for those starting a business, this is a excellent lesson- don't confuse volume with willingness to pay. Just because lots of people shout loudly about the size of their pain, don't just assume they'll pay real money to make it go away.
Yoric 2y ago
I think you're getting it mixed. The corporation funds almost exclusively the browser. The non-profit doesn't fund the browser.
sofixa 2y ago
Mozilla are doing other things that a browser, yes. And this is good. Browsers are special and don't make money by themselves, and Firefox in particular is entirely dependent on Google's money. Having alternative projects that can bring revenue (e.g. Pocket) helps them remove that singular dependency and ensure they can survive long term. And having a specific "donate to Firefox only" would probably end in disaster. They might end up in a situation where they're forced to waste money on Firefox because that's what the donations are for while not having enough money to keep the lights on in offices. For a fun example of what happens when you have fixed budgets that don't have any flexibility, Atlanta's MARTA was founded with an agreement providing public funding, with a fixed 50/50 split between capex and opex. So they found themselves with brand new trains because there's capex budget to spend, but falling apart infrastructure because 50% wasn't enough for opex.
- DiabloD3 2y ago
  But you just described what Mozilla is doing right now! 0% of what anyone donates goes to the browser, and its a disaster!
  - sofixa 2y ago
    Why do you think it's 0%? I doubt it, it's not like the money goes into separate buckets and engineering salaries for Firefox only come from the Google bucket, and donations get spent on lobster and champagne parties for the C-levels.
    - diggernet 2y ago
      It does go in separate buckets. The money flow between the for-profit that develops Firefox and the non-profit foundation is one-way: From for-profit to non-profit. This is because it is illegal for the non-profit to give money to the for-profit. Any donations you make go to the non-profit. They are not used and cannot legally be used for Firefox development. Edit to add: Mozilla chose this legal structure. Mozilla chooses to disallow donations or payments directly to the for-profit. For example, nothing prevents using a shareware model, where Firefox is free but you can choose to pay for it. And Mozilla chooses to avoid mentioning this structure when accepting donations from you.
atombender 2y ago
It's the opposite. It's the Mozillq Corporation that develops the browser. The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which owns the corp, does not. You can donate to the nonprofit, but you can't donate to the corporation. Furthermore, what a lot of people dislike is that the foundation's money doesn't go towards Firefox development. Instead, Firefox revenue (almost entirely royalties from Google) are passed by the corp to the foundation.

nailer 2y ago

This 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 ago
Jimmy 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 ago
  A fork? Getting any momentum behind this might be really hard.
- nailer 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mystified5016 2y ago
    Dumping 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
      [flagged]
SAI_Peregrinus 2y ago
> Much like Wikipedia, my donations depend on being able to donate to the actual engineers, and not to unrelated political advocacy. Yep. I even agree with most of the unrelated political advocacy, but I want to be able to donate for that to a different organization.
bruce511 2y ago
Why not $21? Or $30? Or $100? Genuinely curious. I figure it's either worth $0, or hundreds of $. I mean, sooo much whining about privacy and telemetry and ad-blocking but ultimately it's worth the same as a couple cups of coffee? That seems to me to be a root question here. How much is privacy actually worth? The average number in this post seems about $20. So in real terms, nothing at all. And yes, all of this is moot given that you can't donate to Firefox in the first place. Still, for those starting a business, this is a excellent lesson- don't confuse volume with willingness to pay. Just because lots of people shout loudly about the size of their pain, don't just assume they'll pay real money to make it go away.

Yoric 2y ago

I think you're getting it mixed. The corporation funds almost exclusively the browser. The non-profit doesn't fund the browser.

sofixa 2y ago

Mozilla are doing other things that a browser, yes. And this is good. Browsers are special and don't make money by themselves, and Firefox in particular is entirely dependent on Google's money. Having alternative projects that can bring revenue (e.g. Pocket) helps them remove that singular dependency and ensure they can survive long term. And having a specific "donate to Firefox only" would probably end in disaster. They might end up in a situation where they're forced to waste money on Firefox because that's what the donations are for while not having enough money to keep the lights on in offices. For a fun example of what happens when you have fixed budgets that don't have any flexibility, Atlanta's MARTA was founded with an agreement providing public funding, with a fixed 50/50 split between capex and opex. So they found themselves with brand new trains because there's capex budget to spend, but falling apart infrastructure because 50% wasn't enough for opex.

DiabloD3 2y ago
But you just described what Mozilla is doing right now! 0% of what anyone donates goes to the browser, and its a disaster!
- sofixa 2y ago
  Why do you think it's 0%? I doubt it, it's not like the money goes into separate buckets and engineering salaries for Firefox only come from the Google bucket, and donations get spent on lobster and champagne parties for the C-levels.
  - diggernet 2y ago
    It does go in separate buckets. The money flow between the for-profit that develops Firefox and the non-profit foundation is one-way: From for-profit to non-profit. This is because it is illegal for the non-profit to give money to the for-profit. Any donations you make go to the non-profit. They are not used and cannot legally be used for Firefox development. Edit to add: Mozilla chose this legal structure. Mozilla chooses to disallow donations or payments directly to the for-profit. For example, nothing prevents using a shareware model, where Firefox is free but you can choose to pay for it. And Mozilla chooses to avoid mentioning this structure when accepting donations from you.

atombender 2y ago

It's the opposite. It's the Mozillq Corporation that develops the browser. The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which owns the corp, does not. You can donate to the nonprofit, but you can't donate to the corporation. Furthermore, what a lot of people dislike is that the foundation's money doesn't go towards Firefox development. Instead, Firefox revenue (almost entirely royalties from Google) are passed by the corp to the foundation.