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I continue to be puzzled by this idea of direct donations being a panacea. Firefox already has orders of magnitude more revenue than would come in from such a

I continue to be puzzled by this idea of direct donations being a panacea. Firefox already has orders of magnitude more revenue than would come in from such a venture. And that already mobilizes development resources toward the core browser, which are already more substantial than what would be raised by direct donations. Just to use some back of the envelope math right now the revenue is something on the order of $500 million a year and I believe that software development is 50 to 60% and then infrastructure that supports the development which is under like administration and operations is another double digit percent. As far as I know, when it comes to crowdsourcing resources for software development, there's basically no precedent for raising the amount of revenue necessary. The closest analog I can think of is Tor, which gives something on the order of $10 million a year. And the best crowd-sourced online fundraising for any project over all that I can think of as Wikipedia, which I believe is around like 280 million or so, which is slightly more than half of the revenue that Mosia already gets. But of course, Wikipedia leverages a vast user base. A kind of existing compact between themselves and users that I think has given them momentum, and because it's about content consumption rather than software, I think has a different relationship with its user base where it's hard to gauge how transferable it is as an example to Firefox. I don't think assumptions that starting from scratch, they would eclipse Wikipedia are realistic. And I think the upshot of it is that the suggestion is that Firefox would be better off raising less revenue than they already do to maintain focused developer attention on the browser, which contrasts with a reality where they already invest more resources in that then would plausibly come from user donations, which seems to undercut the point that user donations would 'restore' focus on the browser. I have nothing against user donations, but I just think for practical impact, especially in the short term, is quite limited and more about being invoked as a rhetorical point to imply an insufficient commitment to developing the core browser at present. I think despite being a big Firefox cheerleader, at present I do have concerns about their wandering direction, but I don't think it's realistic to think that direct user donations would have any impact on market share or would even substantially change the amount of resources available to invest in the browser.

WD-42 2y ago
Thunderbird received close to $10 million in donations in 2023. And I’m willing to bet far more people use Firefox. If funding development directly, that’s not too shabby.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Wow, I honestly had no idea about that and you're exactly right, and everything I can see suggests that those were small donors to Thunderbird. It's hard to extrapolate, but it certainly seems like 10 to 20 million per year could be in play.
maccard 2y ago
I think the scale you’re thinking of is unnecessary. Call it a million a year, and that’s enough to comfortably employ 4-5 programmers to work on something full time, with enough left over to cover the lulls in income. Make it 1.2 and there’s enough for an admin person to prioritise, liaise with Mozilla, and do the financials. That’s 150x less than Wikipedia. I also agree with you that direct donations won’t solve this, whether it’s 100k or 100M
- glenstein 2y ago
  >I think the scale you’re thinking of is unnecessary. Well, if that's the case, then out of that 500 million a year, we already have 50 to 60% of that going to software development, so something on the order of 250 million. So it sounds like you're saying an additional 1 million is a difference between 3% market share and 30% market share. We seem to be on the same page about what plausibly could come in from revenue, but I just don't see how that moves the needle in ways that people seem to be expecting. I feel like the psychological comfort from pointing to that as an underutilized option is intended to make the point that there's not enough resources for software development. But if you compare it to what they're already spending, they're spending more than would ever be generated from such revenue. Which admittedly is a little bit off-track from the point you're making. It'll be interesting to see if Lady Bird does well with economics along the lines of what you're describing.
  - maccard 2y ago
    > Well, if that's the case, then out of that 500 million a year, we already have 50 to 60% of that going to software development, so something on the order of 250 million. Lots of peoples "supposed" problem is giving money to Mozilla, not Firefox. If the goal is to give people a way to support FF development, then this does achieve that. But FF doesn't need _that_ (which I think you and I both agree on). > but I just don't see how that moves the needle in ways that people seem to be expecting Agreed. I think if it was 1M, it wouldn't have any impact, but and if it was 100M then people would complain that it's not being used on $INSERT_THING_THEY_WANT_HERE. > It'll be interesting to see if Lady Bird does well with economics along the lines of what you're describing. What Firefox is doing isn't growing their market share, so hitching another $1/10/100M isn't going to do anything to that without a strategy to actually make it happen. I think, honestly, there's a decent chance for a new project to survive in here. It could even be a Firefox fork, but it needs to be free of the baggage and strategy of Mozilla, and Firefox IMO - just as Edge has somehow made a resurgance as a chromium browser. I think Ladybird could work out too, if they can find a way to break through. Spoken as a die hard FF user for almost 20 years!
devit 2y ago
The use for donations could be for a single person whose job is to check the upstream code for any antifeatures (telemetry, ads, product placements, online service defaults, Google as paid default search engine, etc.) not in the user's interest and revert them, as well as bundling any useful extension like uBlock Origin and verifying them. That needs minimal effort compared to building a browser, because it doesn't involve doing any of the hard work, but just removing code that serves to line the pockets of those doing most of the work at the expense of the user.
- glenstein 2y ago
  Do I understand correctly that you believe Mozilla doesn't currently have the resources necessary to do that from their $500MM in annual revenue? It sounds like you are talking about an ombudsman or something, which highlights my point here, which is that these are philosophical criticisms disguised as commentary on raising revenue. Also the mission you are describing sounds like something that you might expect from a Chromium browser that has to regularly revert Google-driven changes. At Mozilla, they already own the browser and they could account for this in their ground-level philosophy.
  - devit 2y ago
    They could, but they don't want to do that because they get paid by Google to not do it or because those actions get them money in some other way (from advertisers or whatever), or because they think only power users like some features.
    - glenstein 2y ago
      Firefox publishes their 990 form which discloses all their sources of revenue and Google does not pay Firefox for any of the things you described. Also, it feels kind of nonsensical to suggest that it would have a development strategy of building out their ad tech and simultaneously reverting it, and I don't see how explanations about them wanting or not wanting to do it make that proposed approach for any more sense.

WD-42 2y ago

Thunderbird received close to $10 million in donations in 2023. And I’m willing to bet far more people use Firefox. If funding development directly, that’s not too shabby.

glenstein 2y ago
Wow, I honestly had no idea about that and you're exactly right, and everything I can see suggests that those were small donors to Thunderbird. It's hard to extrapolate, but it certainly seems like 10 to 20 million per year could be in play.

maccard 2y ago

I think the scale you’re thinking of is unnecessary. Call it a million a year, and that’s enough to comfortably employ 4-5 programmers to work on something full time, with enough left over to cover the lulls in income. Make it 1.2 and there’s enough for an admin person to prioritise, liaise with Mozilla, and do the financials. That’s 150x less than Wikipedia. I also agree with you that direct donations won’t solve this, whether it’s 100k or 100M

glenstein 2y ago
>I think the scale you’re thinking of is unnecessary. Well, if that's the case, then out of that 500 million a year, we already have 50 to 60% of that going to software development, so something on the order of 250 million. So it sounds like you're saying an additional 1 million is a difference between 3% market share and 30% market share. We seem to be on the same page about what plausibly could come in from revenue, but I just don't see how that moves the needle in ways that people seem to be expecting. I feel like the psychological comfort from pointing to that as an underutilized option is intended to make the point that there's not enough resources for software development. But if you compare it to what they're already spending, they're spending more than would ever be generated from such revenue. Which admittedly is a little bit off-track from the point you're making. It'll be interesting to see if Lady Bird does well with economics along the lines of what you're describing.
- maccard 2y ago
  > Well, if that's the case, then out of that 500 million a year, we already have 50 to 60% of that going to software development, so something on the order of 250 million. Lots of peoples "supposed" problem is giving money to Mozilla, not Firefox. If the goal is to give people a way to support FF development, then this does achieve that. But FF doesn't need _that_ (which I think you and I both agree on). > but I just don't see how that moves the needle in ways that people seem to be expecting Agreed. I think if it was 1M, it wouldn't have any impact, but and if it was 100M then people would complain that it's not being used on $INSERT_THING_THEY_WANT_HERE. > It'll be interesting to see if Lady Bird does well with economics along the lines of what you're describing. What Firefox is doing isn't growing their market share, so hitching another $1/10/100M isn't going to do anything to that without a strategy to actually make it happen. I think, honestly, there's a decent chance for a new project to survive in here. It could even be a Firefox fork, but it needs to be free of the baggage and strategy of Mozilla, and Firefox IMO - just as Edge has somehow made a resurgance as a chromium browser. I think Ladybird could work out too, if they can find a way to break through. Spoken as a die hard FF user for almost 20 years!

devit 2y ago

The use for donations could be for a single person whose job is to check the upstream code for any antifeatures (telemetry, ads, product placements, online service defaults, Google as paid default search engine, etc.) not in the user's interest and revert them, as well as bundling any useful extension like uBlock Origin and verifying them. That needs minimal effort compared to building a browser, because it doesn't involve doing any of the hard work, but just removing code that serves to line the pockets of those doing most of the work at the expense of the user.

glenstein 2y ago
Do I understand correctly that you believe Mozilla doesn't currently have the resources necessary to do that from their $500MM in annual revenue? It sounds like you are talking about an ombudsman or something, which highlights my point here, which is that these are philosophical criticisms disguised as commentary on raising revenue. Also the mission you are describing sounds like something that you might expect from a Chromium browser that has to regularly revert Google-driven changes. At Mozilla, they already own the browser and they could account for this in their ground-level philosophy.
- devit 2y ago
  They could, but they don't want to do that because they get paid by Google to not do it or because those actions get them money in some other way (from advertisers or whatever), or because they think only power users like some features.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    Firefox publishes their 990 form which discloses all their sources of revenue and Google does not pay Firefox for any of the things you described. Also, it feels kind of nonsensical to suggest that it would have a development strategy of building out their ad tech and simultaneously reverting it, and I don't see how explanations about them wanting or not wanting to do it make that proposed approach for any more sense.