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Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

cnbc.com

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Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#111

Post by pseudalopex »

abbe98 wrote: post #65

> Mozilla is focused on deploying its roughly $1.4 billion worth of reserves to support “mission driven” organizations, according to a new report. $1.4 billion would be a very good start for an endowment which one day could maybe fund, a browser?

The article described this misleadingly. Mozilla in 2026 intend $~650M in expenditure. 80% on core products like Firefox and Thunderbird. 20% on expanding into AI.[1] Their 2024 total expenses were $588M.[2]

[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/

[2] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#112

Post by pseudalopex »

wolvoleo wrote: post #110
pseudalopex wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KDE removed KHTML and KJS. Falkon is a QtWebEngine wrapper.

Yeah but they did make it. They just dropped maintaining it because it wasn't really being used.

KHTML and KJS weren't really being used because KDE couldn't keep them useful.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#113

Post by mrandish »

pseudalopex wrote: post #96
mrandish wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people typically support foundations While I agree with the general point that non-profit donors have a legitimate interest in the use of funds, in the particular case of the Mozilla Foundation, I believe the vast majority of that money is from placement fees Google paid to be the default search engine in Firefox. As the pay-for-placement market has evolved and Firefox's browser share has fallen, this income has al…

Mozilla Foundation's 2024 revenue was 60% investments, 28% program service revenue, 11% contributions and grants.[1] Most of program service revenue was from Mozilla Corporation. They paid Mozilla Foundation a small part of their revenue for trademark licenses, legal services, and so. And most of Mozilla Corporation's revenue was from Google. [1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...

Although I haven't looked at the actual reports in a long time, I think that's consistent with my understanding. The Google money (program service revenue) was a much higher percent in the past, creating the $1.4B nest egg. Now the Google money is greatly reduced and the majority of the income is from the nest egg.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#114

Post by pseudalopex »

mrandish wrote: post #113
pseudalopex wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla Foundation's 2024 revenue was 60% investments, 28% program service revenue, 11% contributions and grants.[1] Most of program service revenue was from Mozilla Corporation. They paid Mozilla Foundation a small part of their revenue for trademark licenses, legal services, and so. And most of Mozilla Corporation's revenue was from Google. [1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...

Although I haven't looked at the actual reports in a long time, I think that's consistent with my understanding. The Google money (program service revenue) was a much higher percent in the past, creating the $1.4B nest egg. Now the Google money is greatly reduced and the majority of the income is from the nest egg.

I intended the percentages to support your point donations were little of Mozilla Foundation's revenue. But you missed Mozilla Corporation held most assets.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#116

Post by abnercoimbre »

observationist wrote: post #103
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla is a deeply corrupt and failed organization. Can you elaborate?

See: Firefox, management churn, alienation and discarding of community, etc. Some of us who donated money and supported Mozilla and Firefox are deeply, deeply disappointed and disgusted. Principles are meaningless to non-human corporate entities, and I'll never donate to a non-profit, charity, or other institution again for the rest of my life.

A great deal of greed exists within many non-profits. (It's frankly obscene when you do your research.) That's not to say some don't serve the public well, but the legal structure of a non-profit isn't by itself enough to deter corruption.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#117

Post by threatofrain »

csense wrote: post #66

I would rather Mozilla spend their money focusing on reducing Firefox's enormous memory usage or maintaining Thunderbird. They could build interesting protocols into Firefox like IPFS or ENS, or develop alternatives. $1.4 billion can accomplish a lot -- if you stay in your lane and don't yeet it into a capital intensive field with uncertain returns like AI.

Thunderbird? That entire product category is passing out of cultural consciousness.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#119

Post by MarsIronPI »

pjmlp wrote: post #94

I just want to keep using Firefox, but it is getting really hard. Thanks for starting Rust, I guess, at least it was directly related to improving Firefox.

I'm still using Firefox because of uBlock Origin, and the UI is only kept tolerable by the continued existence of VimFX. If VimFX ever stops working for real, I'll be reconsidering my browser options.

Re: Mozilla is building an AI 'rebel alliance' to take on OpenAI, Anthropic

#120

Post by zer00eyz »

storus wrote: post #81
crystal_revenge wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's governments job Why do people take these AI "safety" research projects at face value? The real reason you need AI that is "safe" and "governable" is so that when you start having it promote advertisers content or support the current administration, you don't have to worry about it going "off the rails" and promoting a competing product to criticizing the administration. I'm sure plenty of researchers in this…

We currently can't do "AI safety" even in bleeding edge alignment research so investing into some startups in that area is just burning money. Current LLMs/ViTs have non-zero probability of producing something unsafe and it's their inherent trait.

> Current LLMs/ViTs have non-zero probability of producing something unsafe

Show me on the LLM where the "unsafe" result is that doesn't already exist inside its training data set? Go ahead I will wait.

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