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But the Mozilla Foundation's purpose is "protect and improve the Internet as a public resource, open and accessible to all". It's not clear to me why that requ

But the Mozilla Foundation's purpose is "protect and improve the Internet as a public resource, open and accessible to all". It's not clear to me why that requires a sizeable team of developers - surely they'd be better off working for MoCo (the commercial subsidiary who make the browser and who provide a large portion of the MoFo's income)? MoFo's activities are centred on philanthropy and advocacy. You'd expect most of their staff to be experts in things like community engagement, policy research and development, grant-making, campaign strategy, volunteer welfare, reporting & transparency, and management of investments. Sure, there'll be some engineering needed to support that, but it shouldn't be their core focus.

yencabulator 1y ago
You're arguing the stated purpose of the current system, I'm arguing we'd actually benefit more from refocusing it into software (like it used to be). And that's the stated purpose. The observed current purpose of the system is to make a small handful of people more rich.
- roryirvine 1y ago
  The MoCo/MoFo split happened for a reason: a non-profit couldn't do the big commercial deals that became available to MoCo. If you went back to the pre-2005 situation, in which MoFo was all there was, it would have at most low single-digit millions in the bank rather than a billion. The AOL dowry was only intended to last a couple of years, and there's simply no way it could have sustained development of the browser beyond that. The Phoenix would have been consumed by the flames, and we'd be left with a stagnant IE/Chrome duopoly.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    Let's try this: 1. most of the money comes from Google Search placement in the browser 2. most of the money is NOT used on the browser
    - glenstein 1y ago
      On the linked report above I'm seeing software development as about 52% of their expenses. And many of the other expenses, eg "General and administrative", I understand to be support infrastructure for software development. This would seem to fit the meaning of "most" on my read.
      - yencabulator 1y ago
        It's really telling that Mozilla does not want to itemize those costs to say how little the actually use on Firefox.
        glenstein 1y ago
        Saying "Mozilla doesn’t itemize expenses" is like saying a university's annual financial report is hiding cafeteria costs because it doesn’t list fruit cups separately. Large nonprofits publish consolidated, high-level statements that group expenses by broad function, not by department or line item because that's the correct level of financial reporting for external audiences. If they misrepresented their spending that would be flagged by the independent auditor. It's deeply responsible to accuse them of hiding something when you have no baseline concept of standard disclosures.
        yencabulator 1y ago
        They're not hiding anything they're legally required to disclose, but that's a very low bar.
- glenstein 1y ago
  >we'd actually benefit more from refocusing it into software (like it used to be). Firefox was spending $40MM on software and development in 2009. Adjusted for inflation that would be ~ $60MM today. They're spending upwards of $262MM today. So they're spending more than quadruple what they used, to directly on software + development.
ptx 1y ago
Why is it that the Mozilla Foundation was set up in such a way that it cannot fund the core browser development activity? Other foundations do fund software development for their respective projects, e.g. the FreeBSD Foundation [1] and the Python Software Foundation [2]. [1] https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/ [2] https://www.python.org/psf/developersinresidence/ https://www.python.org/psf/developersinresidence/

yencabulator 1y ago

You're arguing the stated purpose of the current system, I'm arguing we'd actually benefit more from refocusing it into software (like it used to be). And that's the stated purpose. The observed current purpose of the system is to make a small handful of people more rich.

roryirvine 1y ago
The MoCo/MoFo split happened for a reason: a non-profit couldn't do the big commercial deals that became available to MoCo. If you went back to the pre-2005 situation, in which MoFo was all there was, it would have at most low single-digit millions in the bank rather than a billion. The AOL dowry was only intended to last a couple of years, and there's simply no way it could have sustained development of the browser beyond that. The Phoenix would have been consumed by the flames, and we'd be left with a stagnant IE/Chrome duopoly.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Let's try this: 1. most of the money comes from Google Search placement in the browser 2. most of the money is NOT used on the browser
  - glenstein 1y ago
    On the linked report above I'm seeing software development as about 52% of their expenses. And many of the other expenses, eg "General and administrative", I understand to be support infrastructure for software development. This would seem to fit the meaning of "most" on my read.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      It's really telling that Mozilla does not want to itemize those costs to say how little the actually use on Firefox.
      - glenstein 1y ago
        Saying "Mozilla doesn’t itemize expenses" is like saying a university's annual financial report is hiding cafeteria costs because it doesn’t list fruit cups separately. Large nonprofits publish consolidated, high-level statements that group expenses by broad function, not by department or line item because that's the correct level of financial reporting for external audiences. If they misrepresented their spending that would be flagged by the independent auditor. It's deeply responsible to accuse them of hiding something when you have no baseline concept of standard disclosures.
        yencabulator 1y ago
        They're not hiding anything they're legally required to disclose, but that's a very low bar.
glenstein 1y ago
>we'd actually benefit more from refocusing it into software (like it used to be). Firefox was spending $40MM on software and development in 2009. Adjusted for inflation that would be ~ $60MM today. They're spending upwards of $262MM today. So they're spending more than quadruple what they used, to directly on software + development.

ptx 1y ago

Why is it that the Mozilla Foundation was set up in such a way that it cannot fund the core browser development activity? Other foundations do fund software development for their respective projects, e.g. the FreeBSD Foundation [1] and the Python Software Foundation [2]. [1] https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/ https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/ [2] https://www.python.org/psf/developersinresidence/ https://www.python.org/psf/developersinresidence/