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Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

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Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#51

Post by st3fan »

mike_hearn wrote: post #49
st3fan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? "spare money lying around?" that is a complete misunderstanding of how this works. You make it sound as if that money is some kind of "donation". THat Google is doing Mozilla a _favour_ here. But nothing could be further from the truth: instead this is a business deal where everyone wins. (Read: generates a stupid amount of revenue) Google probably makes at least 3x of what it pays Mozilla in search royalt…

Realistically Google is doing Mozilla a favor and the money is a donation. Firstly, Firefox's remaining userbase is pretty technical. They aren't the sort of people to blindly use defaults because they don't know how to change them. Even if Google cut Mozilla off entirely, tomorrow, 90% of Firefox users would continue to search on Google by default. Secondly, what would Firefox switch to? Bing? What if MS don't care…

> All it takes is for the person responsible for the Mozilla deal to be replaced by someone who hates anti-white wokeness

That you write this utter nonsense tells more about you than about Mozilla ... shows your true colors. Wow.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#52

Post by matheusmoreira »

st3fan wrote: post #41
Reubend wrote: post #2

Disgusting. I hope that Mozilla can re-focus on their original mission, and align their finances with building the best browser possible rather than wasting it on political activism.

What is their original mission?

Developing Firefox.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#53

Post by migf »

Google is paying Mozilla to develop a web browser, to allow Google to develop a web browser without pissing off anti trust.

They're doing a merely ok job. It's not clear if that's intentional or because they're badly run.

There's a story there, this article seems to mostly be political winging.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#55

Post by freediver »

dralley wrote: post #12
constantcrying wrote: post #3

As with Wikipedia, what I assumed how the organization operated and how it does is vastly different. Basically everything here seems biazarre and makes trusting Mozilla very hard. Does anybody believe that they can stand up against Google, when Google, at any point they want to, could crash their whole operation? I think it is quite likely that Google is keeping Mozilla afloat to avoid anti-trust allegations. Mozilla…

HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for 1) being financially dependent on Google 2) spending resources on literally anything except Firefox 3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox, no matter how innocuous Spoiler alert: They have essentially no hope of avoiding 1 without doing at least a little bit of 2 or 3. Unlike Google, Apple, and Microsoft, they don't have billions of dollars coming throug…

Mozilla can explore turning Firefox freemium and cutting relience on Google.

At 10% conversion, and $20/year price point, Mozilla would be making the same money it now makes from Google, but it would be coming 100% from its users, aligning all incentives. Then it is a whole new reality regarding product and company decisions.

The browser is the most intimate product we spend hours in every day to access information. The age of paying for your browser and have it work in your interest should re-emerge.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#56

Post by constantcrying »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #33
dralley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for 1) being financially dependent on Google 2) spending resources on literally anything except Firefox 3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox, no matter how innocuous Spoiler alert: They have essentially no hope of avoiding 1 without doing at least a little bit of 2 or 3. Unlike Google, Apple, and Microsoft, they don't have billions of dollars coming throug…

Bear in mind a lot of it is just concern trolling. Many of the people saying this have as much interest in improving the things they complain about as anti-renewable comments have a genuine interest in reducing bird fatalities. Mozilla (and Wikipedia as mentioned by the OP) have been subjected to a long running culture war boycott. Similar to wind power, I'd guess their continued success in the face of this contribut…

How is it "concern trolling" to point out that Mozilla is kept alive by Google and unable to allocate funds appropriately? I am a Firefox user and I want Mozilla do be serious competition against Google.

The concerns are legitimate and ofen raised by people who genuinely want Mozilla to be better. Accusing people of concern trolling when they point out legitimate issues is a sure way to never get these issues fixed.

>Similar to wind power, I'd guess their continued success in the face of this contributes to the feelings of anger towards them.

This is such an abysmal mindset. Both Mozilla and Wikipedia should operate with the goal of improving their product. Both are severely mismanaging funds away from the things people actually care about. The only things they really are successful in is raising funds.

Success for Mozilla is having a popular, open, sustainably funded and independent browser. In this regard they are a failure, but I absolutely don't want them to be.

Wikipedia is just trolling suckers into giving them money by pretending they are about to go under, when they are extremely well funded, so much so that huge amounts of funds vanish into undisclosed webs of charities.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#57

Post by mike_hearn »

st3fan wrote: post #51
mike_hearn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically Google is doing Mozilla a favor and the money is a donation. Firstly, Firefox's remaining userbase is pretty technical. They aren't the sort of people to blindly use defaults because they don't know how to change them. Even if Google cut Mozilla off entirely, tomorrow, 90% of Firefox users would continue to search on Google by default. Secondly, what would Firefox switch to? Bing? What if MS don't care…

> All it takes is for the person responsible for the Mozilla deal to be replaced by someone who hates anti-white wokeness That you write this utter nonsense tells more about you than about Mozilla ... shows your true colors. Wow.

From the article, that is what Mozilla is funding:

Mckensie Mack is a public speaker who regularly discusses her anger at “White Colonialism” and her dislike of “CIS” men and women.

That founder, Neil Lewis Jr., appears to have focused his career on “vaccine acceptance”, problems with “white” people, and his theory that “white people” can not be victims of discrimination.

They provide links to back these claims up. It's not what you'd expect from a browser company.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#58

Post by arp242 »

st3fan wrote: post #48
arp242 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose Microsoft might be willing to broker a deal to have Bing as the default search, although that would probably attract similar levels of criticism from the same people. DuckDuckGo would be the "obvious" choice, but I doubt they can come up with the same kind of numbers. Brave Search might be an option, but unlike Google and Microsoft the browser is Brave's main product so they might not want to deal with a co…

Wait what? "spare money lying around?" that is a complete misunderstanding of how this works. You make it sound as if that money is some kind of "donation". THat Google is doing Mozilla a _favour_ here. But nothing could be further from the truth: instead this is a business deal where everyone wins. (Read: generates a stupid amount of revenue) Google probably makes at least 3x of what it pays Mozilla in search royalt…

You need to have the $500 million "spare money" lying around if you want to invest it.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#59

Post by olejorgenb »

st3fan wrote: post #40
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would gladly give five figures to Mozilla if I knew it would go, without replacement, to Firefox. They don't. So I won't. Nothing else they do is remotely offensive compared to the mission creep.

How would you donate to Firefox? Firefox is the result of many things that cost money. That includes many expenditures like people's salary, toilet paper for the offices and a JIRA license. It is a serious question - how do you expect this to work in such a way that you feel you contribute directly to the development Firefox? What does that mean in reality? Is that even possible?

Are you joking? I'm sure OP would be fine with any of the things you mention. The problem is that it's not even possible to donate directly to Mozilla Corporation [1] (let alone toilet paper for employees working on firefox), so your donation might as well go to any random unrelated project the Foundation decides to do.

[1] which develops more than just firefox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mozilla_products but

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#60

Post by [deleted] »

airhangerf15 wrote: post #24
constantcrying wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Mozilla should convert to a worker owned enterprise and stop giving all of that money to execs. The compensation to execs seems irrelevant. That is almost literally just a Google bribe. Mozilla pays 200M for software development, from that I can only assume that they pay quite generously and they seem to have absolutely no issue with money, as they are funded by Google. To me it seems hey have more money than they k…

Mozilla literally forced out the creator of Javascript, Brendan Eich, because of his religious and political views. They're funded by Google because Alphabet doesn't want another IE6/MS anti-trust case. They are planned/fake competition. The fact that there are privacy aware forks of Firefox (like Librewolf) speaks volumes.

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