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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

You may want to see why Thunderbird had to create their own foundation just to fund their project. Firefox makes most of its income from the search engine deal with Google it seems. Looking at the Mozilla Foundation (not to be confused with the corporation which is what maintains Firefox) their initiatives dont even mention Firefox. They really need to make it very transparent where your money ends up.

They list a buncha awards and convention type events, that's not helping Firefox at all.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

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From what I understand Firefox is only a source of income, not a prioritized product.

And yes: IMO this is kibd of backwards. Firefox has been their biggest contribution to the open web and it seems they are treating it as just an income source.

I don't see how that could be true given that they continue to roll out features to Firefox.

We're not saying Firefox isn't being maintained, we're saying donations don't go to Firefox, they go to the foundation which is also apparently funded by Firefox. Something really needs to change... We shouldn't have heard about basically what is crucial for developers being scrapped to keep the show running.

The Foundation doesn't cover the payroll for the engineers working on Firefox?

My impression from the layoffs thread from a couple weeks ago is that the Foundation does not employ engineers working on Firefox.

I dont think its fair to downvote you for asking a question. But no it does not seem to be the case.

No, Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit company owned by Mozilla foundation. As I understand it, this opens up the possibility of revenue sources not available to a non-profit for Firefox, but otoh, means you can't donate to support Firefox.

Last I saw the numbers, donations tally up to ~$10 million, and the search engine deal to ~$500 million.

So I'm not sure what practical purpose you are aiming at.

This is disappointing, but not surprising: there seems to be very little interest these days in funding the sort of work that created computers, the major operating systems and the internet. Software and tech is basically treated as a cost by everyone.

If we look at IRL, governments pay for infrastructure from taxes charged on citizens on non-voluntary basis.

Maybe Mozilla Foundation is one of those infrastructures inherently unprofitable, unattractive, not price competent on individual level?

Totally agree, but I'm not sure which government would fund it. I know the US heavily funds quite a few dev tools, but would be reluctant to fund large consumer facing tools without multiple country cooperation.

The EU likes privacy, most states already have weird public tv taxes and such.

In spain you used to pay a canon/fee for every disk, hdd, or pendrive that can contain pirateed content, it's like a preemptive tax for everyone.

lol...

(EDIT: mainly talking about Firefox here) I don't think it's inherently unprofitable (and neither is most public infrastructure), but more that any possible step towards more profit would be almost always against the users' interest.

Like with motorways and much of other public infrastructure, competition is basically impossible (and would be too inefficient) due to the sheer scale of the project, and letting a for-profit run it would be nothing but harmful to the public.

You're very much on to something I think.

I asked a question about the CEO & management soon after they announced the layoffs and the post had a few very good observations by others - then someone flagged the post and only my comments/responses.

Maybe she or her umpteen executives were on a mission to be busy lol.

You can see it here and some of the really good answers imo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24171030

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