4 ms·

> when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company What would you have them do? Somehow they have to make some money someh

> when Firefox does things to push away users like Mozilla buying up an ad-tech company What would you have them do? Somehow they have to make some money somehow. Alternatively they have to live purely from donations, which means that people like you and I have to part with of our money. Or they could be purely open source, in which case people like and I donate our time.

autoexec 1mo ago
It's not an either/or situation. For many years now people have been begging Mozilla to allow them to give money to help fund firefox (and only firefox) but Mozilla has refused. I can't promise that allowing it would provide all the funds they need, but certainly every little bit helps. People could continue to contribute code to the project, but that requires a lot more time, effort, and no small amount of skill compared to the time it takes to enter your credit card number and submit and an online form. Contributing code to Firefox is still a good thing, but it's a process (https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contribution_quickref.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contrib...) that won't be for everyone.
- glenstein 1mo ago
  There is no precedent for donations on the scale of what Mozilla gets from search licensing. The best online fundraising drive on the planet is Wikipedia with orders of magnitude more users and they don't raise half of what Mozilla spends on keeping up with Google. It's not the panacea people keep assuming it is, it's just one of many accusations that gets flung at the wall.
  - aragilar 1mo ago
    Except Thunderbird now does run on donations (though is looking a relevant additional funding sources, e.g. providing hosted email: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/ https://www.tb.pro/en-US/). This is not to say Mozilla can't seek out other sources of money, or develop appropriate ancillary services, but the absence of an option to just give money for Firefox (and Firefox only) is noticeable.
    - glenstein 1mo ago
      I really want you to stop and think about what you're saying for a second. I just made the point that the strongest online fundraising operation in the world, Wikipedia, gets less than half of what it takes to fund Firefox. Your counterpoint to that is to point to Thunderbird, which raises significantly less money than Wikipedia, which is already not enough to fun Firefox, in order to prove that it's plausible that the full operations of Firefox could be funded. This would be the point where Logan Roy says you're not serious people.
      - account42 1mo ago
        Wikipedia gets way more than they actually need to run the site, and this is even with tons of self-inflicted drama of their own.
      - aragilar 1mo ago
        No, that is not what I said, and you repeatedly misreading what people write is noticeable.
themaninthedark 1mo ago
How is it that we can have a plethora of different Linux distributions, the Linux kernel, the FreeBSD kernel, the OpenBSD kernel, GIMP, LibreOffice and several other large projects that are run and maintained by donations and volunteers. Yet somehow Firefox is different? It needs to make money! It needs to make money so much that they keep spinning up all sorts of new projects so that they can make more money, or at least that was the argument for some of what they were doing. At this point in time, if they had taken all the money they spent on their various projects and put it in a trust they would probably be able to fund development without taking in any more money. And it's not like people wouldn't donate to them either, look at how much Wikipedia has pulled in from donations.
- glenstein 1mo ago
  We've got a live one. Most of their expenses are developing the core browser, the side bets (with a few exceptions, notably FirefoxOS, which I think was a GOOD side bet and worth the effort) were not that expensive. They're developing 40 million lines of code, and a lot of the things you're comparing it to actually aren't as comparably large or cutthroat. >At this point in time, if they had taken all the money they spent on their various projects and put it in a trust they would probably be able to fund development without taking in any more money. They already do that, they have a huge endowment set aside. It's obvious that people don't actually care about it because they don't know, and they only mention the possibility to make the accusation, never to give them credit once they discover Mozilla already does this and has been doing it for about 2 decades. >And it's not like people wouldn't donate to them either, look at how much Wikipedia has pulled in from donations. Another delusional argument. Wikipedia brings in a fraction of what Mozilla gets, and with orders of magnitude more users. And that's the best pure online fundraising program on planet Earth. Again, people only think this through to the point of being able to make the accusation not to the point of figuring out if it would actually work or not.
  - dingaling 1mo ago
    > They're developing 40 million lines of code Isn't half a billion dollars per year enough to maintain that? Over $10 per LoC annually?
account42 1mo ago
I would have them fully shed the silicon valley tech corporation mindset and instead act like a charity working for the benefit of the public, as is appropriate for a non-profit foundation. Funding should mean seeking donations and government grants, not trying to fleece users, sell their privacy/attention and/or resell mediocre services - which are not serving the mission of building the best browser possible.

autoexec 1mo ago

It's not an either/or situation. For many years now people have been begging Mozilla to allow them to give money to help fund firefox (and only firefox) but Mozilla has refused. I can't promise that allowing it would provide all the funds they need, but certainly every little bit helps. People could continue to contribute code to the project, but that requires a lot more time, effort, and no small amount of skill compared to the time it takes to enter your credit card number and submit and an online form. Contributing code to Firefox is still a good thing, but it's a process (https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contribution_quickref.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/contributing/contrib...) that won't be for everyone.

glenstein 1mo ago
There is no precedent for donations on the scale of what Mozilla gets from search licensing. The best online fundraising drive on the planet is Wikipedia with orders of magnitude more users and they don't raise half of what Mozilla spends on keeping up with Google. It's not the panacea people keep assuming it is, it's just one of many accusations that gets flung at the wall.
- aragilar 1mo ago
  Except Thunderbird now does run on donations (though is looking a relevant additional funding sources, e.g. providing hosted email: https://www.tb.pro/en-US/ https://www.tb.pro/en-US/). This is not to say Mozilla can't seek out other sources of money, or develop appropriate ancillary services, but the absence of an option to just give money for Firefox (and Firefox only) is noticeable.
  - glenstein 1mo ago
    I really want you to stop and think about what you're saying for a second. I just made the point that the strongest online fundraising operation in the world, Wikipedia, gets less than half of what it takes to fund Firefox. Your counterpoint to that is to point to Thunderbird, which raises significantly less money than Wikipedia, which is already not enough to fun Firefox, in order to prove that it's plausible that the full operations of Firefox could be funded. This would be the point where Logan Roy says you're not serious people.
    - account42 1mo ago
      Wikipedia gets way more than they actually need to run the site, and this is even with tons of self-inflicted drama of their own.
    - aragilar 1mo ago
      No, that is not what I said, and you repeatedly misreading what people write is noticeable.

themaninthedark 1mo ago

How is it that we can have a plethora of different Linux distributions, the Linux kernel, the FreeBSD kernel, the OpenBSD kernel, GIMP, LibreOffice and several other large projects that are run and maintained by donations and volunteers. Yet somehow Firefox is different? It needs to make money! It needs to make money so much that they keep spinning up all sorts of new projects so that they can make more money, or at least that was the argument for some of what they were doing. At this point in time, if they had taken all the money they spent on their various projects and put it in a trust they would probably be able to fund development without taking in any more money. And it's not like people wouldn't donate to them either, look at how much Wikipedia has pulled in from donations.

glenstein 1mo ago
We've got a live one. Most of their expenses are developing the core browser, the side bets (with a few exceptions, notably FirefoxOS, which I think was a GOOD side bet and worth the effort) were not that expensive. They're developing 40 million lines of code, and a lot of the things you're comparing it to actually aren't as comparably large or cutthroat. >At this point in time, if they had taken all the money they spent on their various projects and put it in a trust they would probably be able to fund development without taking in any more money. They already do that, they have a huge endowment set aside. It's obvious that people don't actually care about it because they don't know, and they only mention the possibility to make the accusation, never to give them credit once they discover Mozilla already does this and has been doing it for about 2 decades. >And it's not like people wouldn't donate to them either, look at how much Wikipedia has pulled in from donations. Another delusional argument. Wikipedia brings in a fraction of what Mozilla gets, and with orders of magnitude more users. And that's the best pure online fundraising program on planet Earth. Again, people only think this through to the point of being able to make the accusation not to the point of figuring out if it would actually work or not.
- dingaling 1mo ago
  > They're developing 40 million lines of code Isn't half a billion dollars per year enough to maintain that? Over $10 per LoC annually?

account42 1mo ago

I would have them fully shed the silicon valley tech corporation mindset and instead act like a charity working for the benefit of the public, as is appropriate for a non-profit foundation. Funding should mean seeking donations and government grants, not trying to fleece users, sell their privacy/attention and/or resell mediocre services - which are not serving the mission of building the best browser possible.