4 ms·

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 si

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.

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.