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Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

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Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#71

Post by hagbard_c »

DrBenCarson wrote: post #48
tombert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's different, I don't think they're claiming that it's directly equivalent, but they were responding to the claim that "7 million isn't significant in the grand scheme of things", and they're arguing that "just because it might not be a significant number doesn't necessarily mean we just let it slide". I don't think anyone is accusing the Mozilla CEO of "stealing" the money.

Any company looking to hire a CEO will have to pay market rates. Those market rates are not make-or-break expenses for the vast majority of companies

Now there's another sector of society ripe for a shake-up by DoBE - Dept. of Business Efficiency - which has as a stated mission to rid the business world of the parasites is has picked up in the last century. From overpaid CEOs to overpaid corporate lawyers, scrape 'm off just like you'd scrape the barnacles off your vessel's hull after having been at sea for an extended period. While a business needs leadership and legal support it does not need to lend itself to supporting the bloated class of parasites which has grown to be the norm for some of those functions.

The way to go at this without breaking incentives for people to start new businesses won't be easy and it won't be by way of redistribution like socialists (etc.) are so fond of. The best way is most likely to change societal norms so that it will no longer be seen as acceptable for a company to have a CEO (or CFO or COO or CxO) hauling in more than, say, 24 times the average pay in his or her company. That '24' number just fell out of my sleeve and probably needs some more thought but the gist is clear. In 2023 the average pay ratio for CEO to average was somewhere around 270 to 1 and that ratio has been going up for decades. By now you'd think that CEOs would have priced themselves out of the market but that does not happen. I suspect this has a lot to do with the makeup of the boards of directors which decide over CEO pay being manned by other (aspiring) CEOs who as a group have an interest in keeping up CxO pay.

Yes, this is a difficult problem to really solve but also yes, I think it is a problem and I think it is worth solving it.

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#72

Post by exceptione »

bad_user wrote: post #70
exceptione wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet and browsers are a public good, no society functions without. As the US has transitioned into a kleptocracy, it would be even more logical for the EU to financially support teams developing important open source projects. Same thing for Linux and Libre Office perhaps.

The idea of EU funding Mozilla is naive, and if this is the best people can come up with, I'm not blaming Mozilla going for ads. For one, Mozilla is still a US entity. As an EU citizen, I'd rather have my taxes go towards funding EU entities, especially in this climate. And I'd rather have that EU entity fork Chromium, starting to contribute to its development, as that would be a wiser bet. And also, governments fund…

I do not mean to sponsor an external entity.

You have to analyze a project, and that might mean you need to fork it. It all depends on how much you need to steer and help. If a community is happy to welcome some formal stewardship, then that might work too. There is a company that contributes a lot to Libre Office. The same with Blender, where there can be cooperative development.

A hard fork is always possible, and nothing bad if the vision and needs differ from teams. Some might fork the EU stuff in turn. The free software model is designed to support that.

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#73

Post by BrendanEich »

RobotToaster wrote: post #3

I'm guessing the "evolution" of their leadership isn't going to involve their CEO taking a cut to her seven million dollars salary?

Per https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200... Mitchell's pay fell to $6.26M in 2023. We'll have to wait till late this year to see the 2024 IRS Form 990.

From the 990s, it seems Mitchell took out $32,683,642 over the eight years from 2016 to 2023. With 2024 included, she could well top $38M -- not too shabby!

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112590. 2024 will be the last big comp year for Mitchell.

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#74

Post by BrendanEich »

hysan wrote: post #37
guardiangod wrote: post #4

I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. Then the people who wants to work on/support Firefox can solely work on Firefox, and other people who wants to pursue whatever tech-of-the-day is (eg. crypto, VPN, AI) can push whatever agenda they want in their own org. Instead of the current state where the other-agendas people are riding on Fir…

> I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. They won’t do this because then they can’t redirect any of the donations and funding that people give to Firefox to .

None of the donations to the parent Mozilla Foundation pay for Firefox development. This is a common misconception, Mozilla's own fund-raising makes it more common than it would be if they were explicit in stating where donations go and what they fund and do not fund.

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#75

Post by JimDabell »

exceptione wrote: post #43
rocmcd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla really is in a bad spot if advertising, AI, and fundraising are the only innovative ideas their leadership could come up with. I will begrudgingly still use Firefox as my daily driver, but the mismanagement being shown is really appalling and I worry about the future of a free and open Internet. Suffice to say that we all deserve better.

The internet and browsers are a public good, no society functions without. As the US has transitioned into a kleptocracy, it would be even more logical for the EU to financially support teams developing important open source projects. Same thing for Linux and Libre Office perhaps.

Mozilla got billions from Google and squandered it. If the EU were to fund a browser, I would prefer it to be Ladybird rather than throwing even more money into Mozilla’s bottomless pit.

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#76

Post by hysan »

BrendanEich wrote: post #74
hysan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that if Mozilla is not interested in further developing Firefox, they should split off Firefox to its own entity. They won’t do this because then they can’t redirect any of the donations and funding that people give to Firefox to .

None of the donations to the parent Mozilla Foundation pay for Firefox development. This is a common misconception, Mozilla's own fund-raising makes it more common than it would be if they were explicit in stating where donations go and what they fund and do not fund.

That’s good to know. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Is it possible to donate directly to Firefox?

Re: Growing Mozilla – and evolving our leadership

#77

Post by BrendanEich »

hysan wrote: post #76
BrendanEich wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the donations to the parent Mozilla Foundation pay for Firefox development. This is a common misconception, Mozilla's own fund-raising makes it more common than it would be if they were explicit in stating where donations go and what they fund and do not fund.

That’s good to know. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Is it possible to donate directly to Firefox?

No, not as far as I know. And definitely no tax-deductible way to do it.
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