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Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

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Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#21

Post by egberts1 »

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…

2a - crazy CxO bonuses

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#22

Post by constantcrying »

dralley wrote: post #20
constantcrying wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get that they aren't in a position where they have easy choices, but what they are currently doing is wrong . They need to be a much smaller and focused organization, which can generate funds from various sources and use them to do effective development. You don't need 200M to develop firefox. In their current position they exist to give Google some protection against anti-trust allegations. That is about the wo…

> You don't need 200M to develop firefox. Based on what logic? It's 20+ million lines of code touching half if the "hard" problems of computer programming - graphics, fonts, encodings, localization, JIT engines, hardware acceleration, support for multiple architectures (including aforementioned JIT), support for multiple operating systems, massive parallelism, sandboxing, WASM support, hardware support abstractions l…

For 200M you can get around 1.5k full time developers, not including community contributions. That is quite a lot and they easily could add hundreds of more developers if they wanted to.

The specific number they pay is also not that relevant, what I am concerned about is their position. They have one "customer" that enables their entire operation. That is bad for any organization, if that is also your main competition you are in an even worse spot. The longterm sustainability of Mozilla depends on being able to operate independently from Google funding.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#23

Post by constantcrying »

yesbut wrote: post #19
constantcrying wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should have a try at becomming a bakery?

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/ "only small companies can be worker owned" is a bit antiquated.

You don't get to tell the workers what they do with their corporation.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#24

Post by airhangerf15 »

constantcrying wrote: post #6
yesbut wrote: post #5

Mozilla should convert to a worker owned enterprise and stop giving all of that money to execs.

>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.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#25

Post by ksec »

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…

>HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for 1...3

You summarise pretty much everything that is wrong with HN started appearing somewhere around 2013 before becoming mainstream in 2016+.

That is having zero understanding on business. Cash Flow, Revenue Generation, Sustainable business model, and market monetisation. Ironically on forum that is about startup and VC.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#26

Post by korginator »

From the report: During 2021, Mozilla paid $387 Thousand dollars to a Mckensie Mack Group whose LinkedIn page describes itself as “Black-led and nonbinary-led, MMG is a global social justice organization”.

And another $100K to an "Action research collaborative" that sounds like another social justice org?

WTF? This sounds like money laundering. I just want a good browser. I'm now regretful that I was donating regularly to Mozilla.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#28

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

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.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#30

Post by emptysongglass »

evasb wrote: post #27

Mitchell Baker needs to go and let people do their job.

How has she not been ejected after so many years of falling market share? I have a really hard time understanding the business sense of a board that hasn't taken a very hard look at Mozilla's leadership.
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