It need not take such high salaried non-technical CEO, degenerate activism or doomed web startups to run something like Mozilla.
First, it's stated as a blind truth with no reasoning. The only thing I can do is say "you're wrong", as there's no basis upon which to have a real discussion.
Second, your repeated use of the phrase "degenerate activism" seems to have no other purpose than to elicit a strong emotional response. From my position it's borderline trolling.
Third, I have no idea what "doomed web startups" you're even talking about.
The entire comment, as short as it is, reads as bait for an argument, rather than an honest attempt to engage in a discussion.
1) Look at the CEO salary. She was not even an engineer. The C-level executives don't harm themselves in this process, but there is no improvement because of her and she is still reaping a big salary. This also means many people are disappointed and less donations.
2) degenerate activism: all the SJW / diversity shit that Mozilla is into. I know some people here are going to defend it. But artificially trying to create diversity in an ecosystem means low quality. And a company like Mozilla which can't keep talented engineers doesn't need all this.
3) doomed web startups: Pocket, and their new VPN service which is going to be used by exactly 13 HN users.
Much of what the Firefox and Safari teams do on standards committees is activism as well: fighting against useful standards from the big player because they believe the standards are bad for users. I generally agree, but it's impossible to claim that it's anything other than activism (pro-privacy, etc) when the average Chrome user just goes 'cool, I can use my midi keyboard and bluetooth headset with my web browser'.
Mozilla was a doomed web startup up until the point where Firefox finally succeeded. Now they're doomed again. I won't even claim that's false - I think it's probably true - but it's a fact that the effort was hopeless early on too.
This is my perspective as someone who previously got paid to work on Firefox, then later got paid to work on Chrome, and had an offer to get paid to work on Safari. I think people who complain about Firefox often don't understand what the web actually is and what Mozilla actually does. To be fair, Mozilla is poor at educating people about it.
Competent people who can manage an organization that brings in $500 million in revenue per year aren't going to be cheap.
Wasn’t the whole Pocket debacle exactly this. The people behind Pocket had friends at Mozilla who signal boosted them and later acquired them?
That's the thing. $50 / month from you or me means nothing compared to $5 / month from a 100x larger audience. Growing the audience means marketing, and tons of non-technical work.
A lot of charities become marketing firms to bring in more money. Because that's how you effectively grow a charity and get more work done. Its just the reality of modern society.
Look at the heads of Linux Foundation and Apache. They seem to do a great job marketing but also have a deep background in open source software.
I’ve worked for companies with CEOs from engineering and CEOs from marketing, I’ll try really hard to never work at a marketing company again.
Sounds like they don't need my donation, the people who do this non-technical work are bringing in revenue by the wheelbarrow load. If they weren't the price they charge for their skills would not be justifiable.
Small donations over a large base, which largely go towards marketing (ie: Sportsball and festivals at universities) will make a far larger and more successful charity than a purely technical oriented one. Its just the reality of the modern world.
That's the same argument used to pay CEOs hundreds of millions ("they make us more money"). And then there are studies suggesting that the effect the CEO has on the success of the company is rather small - and of course, the CEOs who aren't successful still get paid unbelievable amounts of money.