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Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

mozillapetition.com

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Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#201

Post by kevwil »

frontfor wrote: post #33
raincole wrote: post #24

So who are going to fund them? Sorry for being cynical, but this "petition" sounds like telling depressed people to "just be more positive." Sure, just find more revenue streams. Just be sustainable. It's so easy!

Agreed. A world where Mozilla ceases to exist due to lack of funding is arguably worse than the current state.

Agreed. Mozilla has problems, but bleeding funds from Google to fund their competition has a satisfaction factor. I'd rather sign a petition to keep the Google daddy fund going until the very end.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#202

Post by rurp »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #157
theandrewbailey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me repeat myself: > All I ever wanted from Mozilla was a browser Firefox is the best alternative to a Chromium/Google dominated web. As long as Firefox isn't kicking ass and being used by, say, 20% of web users, I argue that Mozilla shouldn't be doing anything else. This is especially prudent when a large part of Mozilla's (and therefore, Firefox's) funding is in jeopardy. So, yes, I have a problem with Mozilla d…

[flagged]

Nobody is confused about how it's currently working. The whole complaint is that there isn't a way to donate towards Firefox and have any confidence that's where the money will go. There are a million social justice charities out there and zero dedicated to non-chromium browsers. A lot of people are disappointed by that. Anyone who wants to fund Afrofeminist conferences can do so directly.

Sure Mozilla can spend donations how it wants, but donors are free to not donate as well. For years many people have been saying that they want to support Firefox without all of unrelated social projects, but Mozilla has refused to offer that. I expect that a lot of potential donations have therefore not happened.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#203

Post by bigfatfrock »

alberth wrote: post #156
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #27

Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case. Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023 [0][1]: > Expenses 1. Program 'Software Development' 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M 2. Management 'General and Administrative' : 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs. Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses. Let's ignore inflation and COL and…

I know your intention is probably well placed but we do though need to factor in revenues: Year Revenue ---- ------- 2007 $75M 2023 $653M I bring this up because G&A of big companies (in general) always outpaces R&D once they hit scale ... and in an ideal situation - your revenues should outpace R&D expense because you're getting economies of scale (which further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function comparison)…

This was wild to contemplate and I was about to raise my finger and say "Really?! 'G&A' at that scale?!" but at the same time even if those kinds of roles are over-hired - they have to be responding to need and within a realm they found risk-averse.

Having said that I just have had the same kinds of questions/trouble as OP about Mozilla's wild spending and budget compared to seeing their devs at grungy linux confs in the midwest when I was an undergrad in the 00s.

You did help point out what I really wondered about also and didn't understand, so thanks.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#204

Post by rurp »

delusional wrote: post #152
theandrewbailey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bad news is that donations are unlikely to happen with the current massive misspending on overpaid people with no technical background that don't code that spend 95% of their budget on themselves, support staff that also doesn't code, offices they don't need, commercial products that flop, monetization schemes that fail, etc. Mozilla already solicits donations, but I wonder if people who donate to them know tha…

> like feminist AI conferences in Africa. According to their 2023 form 990 (the 2024 one isn't published yet) those sort of donations are usually on the order of 15k. You don't get much browser for that money.

That's hardly an isolated example though, plus who knows how many staff hours went into evaluating various proposals and facilitating the conference. The big question is why. It's not like there are a dearth of social justices non-profits out there. It couldn't be easier to donate directly to such projects. Why can't we have a single non-profit focused entirely on preventing a total browser monopoly?

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#205

Post by mythmon_ »

kevwil wrote: post #199
iteratethis wrote: post #79

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

> Some argue that it's good to have an independent rendering engine. Here too Firefox plays no role at all. The only counter force to Google's web feature roadmap is Apple/Webkit, not Mozilla. I'd like to understand this point better. Does Firefox use the Chromium engine under the hood?

It doesn't use Chromium. I think that their point is that Firefox's rendering engine, Gecko, can only have an impact on the rendering engine space proportional to its user base, which they have argued is insignificant.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#206

Post by spartanatreyu »

bdangubic wrote: post #171
magicmicah85 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox for Container tabs. It’s useful for sites where I can’t have multiple tabs opened to same site but different login. That’s my main reason for sticking to Firefox.

just curious - why not use browser profiles available in Chrome/Brave…?

Can you have each tab use a different browser profile?

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#207

Post by javchz »

kevwil wrote: post #199
iteratethis wrote: post #79

We need to be honest about what value Firefox really has left. Commercially, it's completely irrelevant. On big websites it doesn't even show up in the top 10 browsers and it's almost entirely absent on mobile. Site owners can readily ignore Firefox. Firefox is no longer a developer default. I'm sure some of us in our bubble have strong personal preferences but the entire dev ecosystem is chrome-based. Very advanced…

> Some argue that it's good to have an independent rendering engine. Here too Firefox plays no role at all. The only counter force to Google's web feature roadmap is Apple/Webkit, not Mozilla. I'd like to understand this point better. Does Firefox use the Chromium engine under the hood?

Nope, Firefox still uses its own rendering engine and JavaScript engine—except on iOS, where it's essentially Safari with a UI wrapper. But that’s due to Apple’s ToS, not Firefox’s fault.

I assume the previous comment was about market share. It’s low, yes, but I still think Firefox has influence despite that. Having a third rendering engine is valuable—especially now, after Microsoft killed IE/Edge and turned it into a Chromium fork. The percentage might not be high, but the people who use Firefox are usually the ones pushing for keeping the web an open standard.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#208

Post by JoshTriplett »

alberth wrote: post #156
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #27

Not looking to grind an axe but facts matter in this case. Let's look at Mozilla's financial statement for 2007 and 2023 [0][1]: > Expenses 1. Program 'Software Development' 2007: 20.7M | 2023: 260M 2. Management 'General and Administrative' : 2007: 5.1M | 2023: 123M I am purposefully excluding marketing and fundraising costs. Because arguably you can't get away from those expenses. Let's ignore inflation and COL and…

I know your intention is probably well placed but we do though need to factor in revenues: Year Revenue ---- ------- 2007 $75M 2023 $653M I bring this up because G&A of big companies (in general) always outpaces R&D once they hit scale ... and in an ideal situation - your revenues should outpace R&D expense because you're getting economies of scale (which further dilutes the R&D to Other Business Function comparison)…

Mozilla is the underdog, though; they're just not acting like it anymore.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#209

Post by Spivak »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #111
apeace wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Brave survive financially?

> How does Brave survive financially? Crypto [1]. [1] https://brave.com/wallet/

They sell traditional browser and search ads. https://ads-help.brave.com/ The crypto thing is more a moonshot.

Instead of selling their default search engine they do their own and capture the value themselves.

Re: Tell Mozilla: it's time to ditch Google

#210

Post by zamalek »

dralley wrote: post #123
pseudalopex wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since then they tried to diversify and failed miserably. I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million annually.

>I wish my miserable failures brought in $65 million annually. HN users complain about that $65 million constantly. Mozilla is stuck in a spot where the same angry nerds that want them to diversify away from Google won't actually let them spin up diverse sources of revenue.

I wonder how many of this angry crowd donate. Mozilla do accept donations.

Or maybe the idea is that employees/developers don't need to eat, which is incredibly ironic given who HN users typically are. There isn't a single line in this petition dedicated to how Mozilla should raise funds instead.

Maybe signing the petition should be behind a paywall, I would be very interested to see how many votes that would gather.

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