5 ms·

The job was always very easy, fire all of the pure managers and sock the google money into an endowment before it runs out. Then focus on privacy as you mentio

The job was always very easy, fire all of the pure managers and sock the google money into an endowment before it runs out. Then focus on privacy as you mentioned. They’ve taken in several billion dollars by now. Let that sink in. They're supposedly a non-profit, so this plan is the well-trodden playbook. But of course no Manager instance could imagine such a thing. Cue Upton Sinclair quote.

tectec 11mo ago
What's the quote?
- Teever 11mo ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I agree with the person you're responding to. Decades of funding and they have zero savings to show for it. Though it's questionable as to how much big players like Google would have continued to fund Mozilla if they had seen Mozilla making the financial moves that would have made it an independent and self-sufficient entity.
  - gkoberger 11mo ago
    Well, they have over a billion in the bank. Which is both a ton of money, but also goes away quickly when you're a large company paying lots of money to salaries.
    - zug_zug 11mo ago
      So if you have a billion in the bank, you can collect 5% return and never touch the money. So you get $50m a year to pay enough engineers to make a browser. That's plenty of money if they recognize they need a super lean company with 0 bloat and a few highly paid experts who focus on correctness and not bullshit features.
      - pseudalopex 11mo ago
        How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email program.[1] Bloat and bullshit features to you are minimum requirements to someone else. [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/ https://vivaldi.com/team/
        prepend 11mo ago
        Brave has about 300 employees and don’t break out engineers [0]. One of them is Brandon Eich so that counts for a bunch. Their revenue is only $52M so kinda what Mozilla would earn off their endowment. [0] https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com
        FooBarWidget 11mo ago
        Brave doesn't make their own browser engine.
        pseudalopex 11mo ago
        Latka are not reliable. And you assumed Brave were profitable? Brave make a Chromium fork and a search engine. Does a search engine or a web browser engine require more people?
        BrendanEich 10mo ago
        That's all b.s. of the ripest kind.
        shevy-java 11mo ago
        Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number.
        pseudalopex 11mo ago
        > Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? The Ladybird developers have not produced a browser comparable to Firefox or Vivaldi. Vivaldi have not produced a browser engine comparable to Ladybird of course. > I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number. 28 is a magic number was not a reasonable interpretation of my comment.
  - lesuorac 11mo ago
    > Though it's questionable as to how much big players like Google would have continued to fund Mozilla if they had seen Mozilla making the financial moves that would have made it an independent and self-sufficient entity. Look at how much money Google gave to Apple (Safari) vs Mozilla (FireFox) per year. The CEO has unarguable been doing a poor job. Losing market share has lost them more potential revenue than any of their pet projects raised.
YetAnotherNick 11mo ago
Care to explain how would they get the money in the process you described? Selling privacy to Google or someone is the only money maker they have. There is no reason to believe manager pay is even 10% of the total expense.
- maxrmk 11mo ago
  Google (currently) pays Mozilla $400-500 million a year to be the default search engine in firefox. edit: in 2023 they took in $653M in total, $555M of which was from Google. They spent $260M on software development, and $236M on other things.
  - ethbr1 11mo ago
    The "other things" is what most people seem to have problem with. Mozilla burns a batshit amount of money on feel good fancies. If it were focused on its core mission -- building great software in key areas -- it would see it can't afford this, because that's the same money that if saved would make them financially independent of Google.
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      > Mozilla burns a batshit amount of money on feel good fancies. How much?
      - vondur 11mo ago
        >$236M on other things This is from another poster. I'm guessing stuff not related to Firefox development.
        pseudalopex 11mo ago
        $236M included facilities, administration, marketing, and so on.
        11mo ago
shevy-java 11mo ago
Indeed - Google successfully undermined Mozilla here. It was a huge mistake to get addicted to the Google money; now it is too late to change it.
- account42 11mo ago
  Technically the foundation could still change the direction. But they won't because leadership is essentially shared between the corp and foundation.
glenstein 11mo ago
>sock the google money into an endowment before it runs out. They did that! Why are people proposing that like it's a new idea?
- mixmastamyk 11mo ago
  If they were on a sustainable trajectory they wouldn't be selling their soul for advertising money and other ill-advised revenue projects that contradict their stated mission.
  - autoexec 11mo ago
    They could be on a sustainable trajectory and still sell their soul purely out of greed. I'm not suggesting that Mozilla is actually doing that, I just wanted to point out the possibility.
  - glenstein 11mo ago
    Okay, but now you're changing the subject. The claim was that they don't have an endowment or that they're not investing it. But they are. The truth is the vast majority of organizations with an endowment are not able to rely on it in perpetuity, I think there's a small subset of organizations that basically amounts to a bunch of elite universities. So it's not the intended or functional or actual purpose of any endowment to be permanent firewall against any conceivable financial hazard for all eternity. Having at one point worked for a non-profit myself that had an endowment, generally, what you do is you calculate how long an organization's operations could be funded by that endowment, and is one of a portfolio of metrics for gauging the financial health of a non-profit. It's more properly understood as a firewall to create some breathing space in the face of financial uncertainty. Again, reaching back to my limited stint at a non-profit, they withdrew a little bit from their endowment during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, as well as during covid. It's rarely the case that an endowment can fund an organization in perpetuity. And maybe I'm crazy but if someone falsely accuses Mozilla of not maintaining an endowment, it seems relevant to point out that they do actually have one.
    - 11mo ago
dabockster 11mo ago
Yep. Mozilla is effectively just a tax dodge for Google anymore. Heck, this AI first announcement was probably strongly influenced behind the scenes by Google to create an appearance of competition similar to Microsoft's and Apple's relationship in the 1990s. Also, ironically, I just switched full time to Brave only yesterday.

tectec 11mo ago

What's the quote?

Teever 11mo ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I agree with the person you're responding to. Decades of funding and they have zero savings to show for it. Though it's questionable as to how much big players like Google would have continued to fund Mozilla if they had seen Mozilla making the financial moves that would have made it an independent and self-sufficient entity.
- gkoberger 11mo ago
  Well, they have over a billion in the bank. Which is both a ton of money, but also goes away quickly when you're a large company paying lots of money to salaries.
  - zug_zug 11mo ago
    So if you have a billion in the bank, you can collect 5% return and never touch the money. So you get $50m a year to pay enough engineers to make a browser. That's plenty of money if they recognize they need a super lean company with 0 bloat and a few highly paid experts who focus on correctness and not bullshit features.
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      How many engineers are enough to make a browser? How do you know? Vivaldi employ 28 developers and 33 others to make an unstable Chromium fork and email program.[1] Bloat and bullshit features to you are minimum requirements to someone else. [1] https://vivaldi.com/team/ https://vivaldi.com/team/
      - prepend 11mo ago
        Brave has about 300 employees and don’t break out engineers [0]. One of them is Brandon Eich so that counts for a bunch. Their revenue is only $52M so kinda what Mozilla would earn off their endowment. [0] https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com https://getlatka.com/companies/brave.com
        FooBarWidget 11mo ago
        Brave doesn't make their own browser engine.
        pseudalopex 11mo ago
        Latka are not reliable. And you assumed Brave were profitable? Brave make a Chromium fork and a search engine. Does a search engine or a web browser engine require more people?
        BrendanEich 10mo ago
        That's all b.s. of the ripest kind.
      - shevy-java 11mo ago
        Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number.
        pseudalopex 11mo ago
        > Ladybird had fewer devs, so what were these devs at Vivaldi doing? The Ladybird developers have not produced a browser comparable to Firefox or Vivaldi. Vivaldi have not produced a browser engine comparable to Ladybird of course. > I don't think your argument has a lot of merit. 28 is not a magic number. 28 is a magic number was not a reasonable interpretation of my comment.
- lesuorac 11mo ago
  > Though it's questionable as to how much big players like Google would have continued to fund Mozilla if they had seen Mozilla making the financial moves that would have made it an independent and self-sufficient entity. Look at how much money Google gave to Apple (Safari) vs Mozilla (FireFox) per year. The CEO has unarguable been doing a poor job. Losing market share has lost them more potential revenue than any of their pet projects raised.

YetAnotherNick 11mo ago

Care to explain how would they get the money in the process you described? Selling privacy to Google or someone is the only money maker they have. There is no reason to believe manager pay is even 10% of the total expense.

maxrmk 11mo ago
Google (currently) pays Mozilla $400-500 million a year to be the default search engine in firefox. edit: in 2023 they took in $653M in total, $555M of which was from Google. They spent $260M on software development, and $236M on other things.
- ethbr1 11mo ago
  The "other things" is what most people seem to have problem with. Mozilla burns a batshit amount of money on feel good fancies. If it were focused on its core mission -- building great software in key areas -- it would see it can't afford this, because that's the same money that if saved would make them financially independent of Google.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    > Mozilla burns a batshit amount of money on feel good fancies. How much?
    - vondur 11mo ago
      >$236M on other things This is from another poster. I'm guessing stuff not related to Firefox development.
      - pseudalopex 11mo ago
        $236M included facilities, administration, marketing, and so on.
        11mo ago

shevy-java 11mo ago

Indeed - Google successfully undermined Mozilla here. It was a huge mistake to get addicted to the Google money; now it is too late to change it.

account42 11mo ago
Technically the foundation could still change the direction. But they won't because leadership is essentially shared between the corp and foundation.

glenstein 11mo ago

>sock the google money into an endowment before it runs out. They did that! Why are people proposing that like it's a new idea?

mixmastamyk 11mo ago
If they were on a sustainable trajectory they wouldn't be selling their soul for advertising money and other ill-advised revenue projects that contradict their stated mission.
- autoexec 11mo ago
  They could be on a sustainable trajectory and still sell their soul purely out of greed. I'm not suggesting that Mozilla is actually doing that, I just wanted to point out the possibility.
- glenstein 11mo ago
  Okay, but now you're changing the subject. The claim was that they don't have an endowment or that they're not investing it. But they are. The truth is the vast majority of organizations with an endowment are not able to rely on it in perpetuity, I think there's a small subset of organizations that basically amounts to a bunch of elite universities. So it's not the intended or functional or actual purpose of any endowment to be permanent firewall against any conceivable financial hazard for all eternity. Having at one point worked for a non-profit myself that had an endowment, generally, what you do is you calculate how long an organization's operations could be funded by that endowment, and is one of a portfolio of metrics for gauging the financial health of a non-profit. It's more properly understood as a firewall to create some breathing space in the face of financial uncertainty. Again, reaching back to my limited stint at a non-profit, they withdrew a little bit from their endowment during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, as well as during covid. It's rarely the case that an endowment can fund an organization in perpetuity. And maybe I'm crazy but if someone falsely accuses Mozilla of not maintaining an endowment, it seems relevant to point out that they do actually have one.
  - 11mo ago

dabockster 11mo ago

Yep. Mozilla is effectively just a tax dodge for Google anymore. Heck, this AI first announcement was probably strongly influenced behind the scenes by Google to create an appearance of competition similar to Microsoft's and Apple's relationship in the 1990s. Also, ironically, I just switched full time to Brave only yesterday.