I'd sleep easier if Mozilla saved some cash for a rainy day. Is there really no way to maintain a browser with less than a quarter billion dollars a year?
I'd argue that Mozilla has a few more repos that need mending (i.e. Rust, Servo, MDN, ...) but if you pay an average of 100k$ salary and have like 10 techpeople per team plus some management/community management/project management you could do a rough estimate of <10 core teams * 15 people * 100k$/year + 5m$ for infrastructure/rent == 20m$>.
Even if you pay your CEO 2,5m$ afterwards, you'd still have loads of money left.
Not sure where all of it goes. And I'm a bit reluctant to just say "bad management" in terms of money allocation. Although I do hate this cut in workforce and feel like it's the worst management decision in tech in recent history.
That's just the foundation budget.
It doesn't include all the salaries of people working on the project employed by commercial companies (Collabora etc.)
Now with Google and Microsoft collaborating even more with PWA friendly features, the cash for a rainy day might not be of much help.
Isn't ironic, that after loosing PNaCL vs asm.js battle, Google is actually the main driver on WebAssembly?
You can maintain a browser for that cash (or buy Instagram or Whatsapp). But you can't maintain a bunch of execs siphoning money into the pockets while the org runs like a headless chicken.