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Many 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

Many 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 ago
Why 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 ago
  Well, 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 ago
    What I'm asking is why can't Mozilla just drop all the non-Firefox side quests?
    - iteratethis 2y ago
      I'm guessing because they don't want to. Their "mission" is much larger than Firefox.
      - octopoc 2y ago
        Everything 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.
        iteratethis 2y ago
        I totally agree with you. I'm just explaining Mozilla's motivation.
      - curtisblaine 2y ago
        But why Mozilla has this "mission"? Activists?
altairprime 2y ago
Wouldn’t that require breaking the financial isolation between the corporation’s revenue and the nonprofit foundation’s donations? If they did that, I thought it would lead to the foundation’s non-profit status being revoked by the IRS.

ryandrake 2y ago

Why 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 ago
Well, 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 ago
  What I'm asking is why can't Mozilla just drop all the non-Firefox side quests?
  - iteratethis 2y ago
    I'm guessing because they don't want to. Their "mission" is much larger than Firefox.
    - octopoc 2y ago
      Everything 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.
      - iteratethis 2y ago
        I totally agree with you. I'm just explaining Mozilla's motivation.
    - curtisblaine 2y ago
      But why Mozilla has this "mission"? Activists?

altairprime 2y ago

Wouldn’t that require breaking the financial isolation between the corporation’s revenue and the nonprofit foundation’s donations? If they did that, I thought it would lead to the foundation’s non-profit status being revoked by the IRS.