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Re: Donate mozilla

#21

Post by hack_edu »

amooiman wrote: post #9
FooBarWidget wrote: post #2

Their FAQ ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Donate#Don.27t_Mozilla_products.2C_... ) contains pretty important information. In particular, it answers why one should donate when Mozilla Corp makes money through corporate deals (e.g. Google and Yahoo search commissions). The answer is that all the money Mozilla Corp makes is reinvested back into Mozilla Corp (salaries etc). The Mozilla Foundation -- a non-profit which wholly…

This is exactly right. I'm an engineer at the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and these donations keep us working towards our mission (found at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ ).

Now if only it all wasn't spent on the current massive expansion of the Marketing team and their new executive's salaries. The new CMO has a very checkered history with questionable results. Very much the nepotist who manages to pack his team with former colleagues.

Its a big and divisive internal issue right now. :(

Re: Donate mozilla

#22

Post by orbitur »

hack_edu wrote: post #21
amooiman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly right. I'm an engineer at the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and these donations keep us working towards our mission (found at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/ ).

Now if only it all wasn't spent on the current massive expansion of the Marketing team and their new executive's salaries. The new CMO has a very checkered history with questionable results. Very much the nepotist who manages to pack his team with former colleagues. Its a big and divisive internal issue right now. :(

At Mozilla Foundation? Got any links to discussions?

Re: Donate mozilla

#23

Post by hack_edu »

orbitur wrote: post #22
hack_edu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if only it all wasn't spent on the current massive expansion of the Marketing team and their new executive's salaries. The new CMO has a very checkered history with questionable results. Very much the nepotist who manages to pack his team with former colleagues. Its a big and divisive internal issue right now. :(

At Mozilla Foundation ? Got any links to discussions?

Admittedly, its all off record hearsay as it's not to smart to talk badly about your C-levels in public discussion. Though I must say, as a user its hard to sincerely distinguish the business motives of Firefox from other parts of the org. Especially in the recent push of the browser.

Re: Donate mozilla

#24

Post by vdaniuk »

bad_user wrote: post #20
hack_edu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't keep up too much, so what basic civic engagement issues have they acted on since the one highly publicized incident? A browser like Mozilla, and its place in the market, is overtly political in itself. It always has been; open source is politics. Heck, dozens of major OSS projects have the "don't donate to us, donate to our sponsored charity" thing going on. Those projects focus on very liberal, social justic…

While many open source projects tend to get political, open source is not about politics any more than regular proprietary products are.

>open source is not about politics

This is a quite naive point of view that even very smart people hold. Open source software makes and breaks whole industries in software, of course it's political.

Re: Donate mozilla

#25

Post by jhpriestley »

After reading the FAQ entry under "How will my donation be used", I have no idea what a donation would be used for. "In general, resources are dedicated to promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the Internet in ways that will benefit everyone." Extremely vague.

Re: Donate mozilla

#26

Post by admax88q »

SFjulie1 wrote: post #10

well, donating to mozilla and not openSSL, freeBSD does not make a better internet. Nowadays we have strictly NO LTS free/open source portable build chain of decent quality (compiler, linkers). (maybe also because of the norms) When I say LTS compiler, I mean a compiler that can portably and reproducibly build code in C without flags on the CLI to the same exec and without developers having to archive their compiler…

If C compilers are such a problem then developers should move to better languages. It's not the 70s anymore.

Re: Donate mozilla

#27

Post by caseysoftware »

hack_edu wrote: post #23
orbitur wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Mozilla Foundation ? Got any links to discussions?

Admittedly, its all off record hearsay as it's not to smart to talk badly about your C-levels in public discussion. Though I must say, as a user its hard to sincerely distinguish the business motives of Firefox from other parts of the org. Especially in the recent push of the browser.

> not to smart to talk badly about your C-levels in public discussion

For certain things. But for badthink, seek and destroy.

Re: Donate mozilla

#28

Post by [deleted] »

bad_user wrote: post #20
hack_edu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't keep up too much, so what basic civic engagement issues have they acted on since the one highly publicized incident? A browser like Mozilla, and its place in the market, is overtly political in itself. It always has been; open source is politics. Heck, dozens of major OSS projects have the "don't donate to us, donate to our sponsored charity" thing going on. Those projects focus on very liberal, social justic…

While many open source projects tend to get political, open source is not about politics any more than regular proprietary products are.

[deleted]

Re: Donate mozilla

#29

Post by soapdog »

bad_user wrote: post #20
hack_edu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't keep up too much, so what basic civic engagement issues have they acted on since the one highly publicized incident? A browser like Mozilla, and its place in the market, is overtly political in itself. It always has been; open source is politics. Heck, dozens of major OSS projects have the "don't donate to us, donate to our sponsored charity" thing going on. Those projects focus on very liberal, social justic…

While many open source projects tend to get political, open source is not about politics any more than regular proprietary products are.

Politics is a part of human behavior. Software decisions are also political. For example, the new Firefox privacy mode 2.0 which besides not saving any information also prevents sites from tracking you by blocking tracking pixels and other similar stuff. This may sound just technical but it is also political, its about maintaining the right to privacy online which is more important than people realize.

When the Mozilla Foundation launched the Mozilla Clubs program to help people teach and learn about digital skills and webmaking this is also a political tool. The Mozilla Clubs program spreads digital skills which can then be used to do civic engagement both online and offline. Here in Rio de Janeiro, we're running these program in poor neighborhoods with teenagers. We're trying to change the internet user profile from a consumer of media to a producer of content. This has political implications as people start to realize that they can and should put their voices, opinions, demands and dreams online.

Mozilla is the single browser vendor today that is not a for-profit company. Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Coorporation and Mozilla Community are together the only open group that is at the same time working on advocacy, web technologies, language design, operating systems, web literacy, net neutrality, human rights on the internet, and web standards. There is no other group trying to do this much for the online world and we all know how the online world affects the offline world.

Yes, mistakes are made. We're all humans but that doesn't mean that we don't learn, that we don't change. Mozilla has a unique perspective in many things and a power that can be put to very good use. If you like a Web made by people and for people, then, you should care about not only the tech but the politics involved because when bad people can't stop others with tech, they stop others with laws... and sometimes these laws are against you.

If you want, check out the Mozilla Foundation advocacy work and web literacy programs. Mozilla goes beyond being browser vendor.

Re: Donate mozilla

#30

Post by zrail »

orbitur wrote: post #22
hack_edu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now if only it all wasn't spent on the current massive expansion of the Marketing team and their new executive's salaries. The new CMO has a very checkered history with questionable results. Very much the nepotist who manages to pack his team with former colleagues. Its a big and divisive internal issue right now. :(

At Mozilla Foundation ? Got any links to discussions?

The latest IRS Form 990 for the Mozilla Foundation I can find is here:

https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2013_Mozilla_Found...

It's two years old, but if you go through it you'll see some very large numbers in the officer compensation lines, but it's mostly from "related organizations" and not the foundation itself. I'm not really sure how to parse it, and it may have changed in the last 2 years.

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