Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#31

Post by samspenc » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 6:21 AM UTC

korginator wrote: post #26

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 regular…

100% looks like money laundering. They paid six figure amounts to businesses that don't even have a website and are impossible to find any information on:

  - "What, exactly, is “Action Research Collaborative”? That is a surprisingly difficult question to find an answer to, as they have no website whatsoever. One of the few references to it is in a Cornell newsletter from earlier this year..."
  - "$30,000 to “MC Technical Inc.” in 2021. Who are they? Well, they don’t have a website, that’s for sure. The business registry listing is about the only thing of the company that seems to exist. The listed address is someone’s house."
  - "Why do some of the recipients of Mozilla money appear to be nothing more than empty shells of companies — not even having a simple website?"
  - "Why does Mozilla continue to take donations if it doesn’t need them?"
  - "Where does Mozilla spend those donated dollars?"
  - "Why is Mozilla decreasing software development funding when development of Firefox is the cash cow?"

And the author adds this update at the end of the article: "August 5th, 2023 Update: To date, no request for clarification or additional details has been answered."

This is extremely suspicious on Mozilla's part. I hope there is further investigation into all this wild spending they are doing using public donations without any accountability.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#32

Post by zaphirplane » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 6:25 AM UTC

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…

Their revenue is 800 million. It sounds like a lot of money for a browser Over the last 10 years their revenue would?? say 5 billion. That is a lot

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#33

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 8:30 AM UTC

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…

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 contributes to the feelings of anger towards them.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#34

Post by evasb » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 10:24 AM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #30

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.

She is an old timer that is with Mozilla since the beginning. Should be pretty hard to challenge her from the inside after Brendan Eich departure.

What I have to say is that Brendan Eich lost his respect with hia peers inside Mozilla after donating for the campaign against gay marriage, so it was entirely his fault.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#35

Post by fallfrom » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 11:00 AM UTC

linuxwhat wrote: post #4

Not going to argue the article, Mozilla should be doing better. But the author obviously is trying to push some politics not so subtly. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/muc18q/whats_the_dea...

Ah yes, it is the author who pushes agenda not "not profit" Mozilla "donating" $480000 to political organizations.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#36

Post by inemesitaffia » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 11:06 AM UTC

evasb wrote: post #34

emptysongglass wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She is an old timer that is with Mozilla since the beginning. Should be pretty hard to challenge her from the inside after Brendan Eich departure. What I have to say is that Brendan Eich lost his respect with hia peers inside Mozilla after donating for the campaign against gay marriage, so it was entirely his fault.

Pretty sure his peers were fine with him continuing at Mozilla. Not so much staff

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#37

Post by st3fan » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 12:19 PM UTC

What a dumb hit piece. The author Cherry picked things to politicize.

How about the many millions of dollars the Mozilla Foundation spends on grands and research supporting so many individuals and organizations that help make the world a better place.

The full list can be found at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2021/mozilla-fdn-990...

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#38

Post by ohgodplsno » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 12:38 PM UTC

fallfrom wrote: post #35

linuxwhat wrote: post #4

Not going to argue the article, Mozilla should be doing better. But the author obviously is trying to push some politics not so subtly. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/muc18q/whats_the_dea...

Ah yes, it is the author who pushes agenda not "not profit" Mozilla "donating" $480000 to political organizations.

It is both, but Mozilla has never tried to hide it. Read their blog for a bit and you'll see ton of advocacy for various subjects.

Cherry-picking expenses that total barely 500k out of a 500M budget and hiding it behind "noooo we don't get political here promised" is also pushing an agenda.

The Mozilla Foundation does plenty of stupid shit. I don't agree with much of what they're doing, starting from Baker's insane pay for how terrible of a job she does. But 400k to an association... At best that pays for two rallies that total 500 people, at worst it's giving money to friends.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#39

Post by ohgodplsno » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #30

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.

Because the board is perfectly content with sucking Mozilla dry.

Mitchell Baker - Lawyer, wrote the MPL (involved since Netscape)

Laura Chambers - Stanford MBA, ex-McKinsey, ex-eBay C-suite, ex AirBnB, ex Paypal. Currently CEO of a wearable breast pump company.

Kerry Cooper - Harvard MBA, currently also in the board of PG&E, Upstart, Gradient, Fernish, Fictiv as well as an executive-in-residence at Acrew Capital.

Karim Lakhani - PhD in management at MIT, Professor of Business Administration, publishes papers on management and once a decade a paper on open source/open contribution.

Bob Lisbonne - Stanford MBA, venture capitalist, ex Netscape/Mozilla

Hugh Molotsi - Computer Engineering Masters, ex Intuit, specializes in intrapreneurial actions

Kristin Skogen Lund - INSEAD MBA, ex Coca-Cola, ex Unilever, various governmental positions in Norway

The amount of people with technical knowledge on that board is low. The amount of people that aren't MBA leeches is low. The board is perfectly happy to keep the grift going.

Re: Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla

#40

Post by st3fan » Sun, Aug 06, 2023, 1:05 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

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…

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?