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I'm not even sure how to respond to the "selling private information to Google" bit. If you think choosing a default search engine equates to selling private information I guess that's cool. I don't agree, and I don't think many (or any) people who work on Mozilla do, and we're generally a pretty privacy concerned group.

The Mozilla Corporation pays taxes on its profits (including its business deals with Google) like any other US company. There's no special "privileged treatment" on the business deals.

(Disclosure: I work for the Mozilla Corporation)

hi,

my main point over all is that both parties should be nice, and improve their communication to make the community a nicer place. It's not just the users that are 'dicks', and they should stop being 'dicks'. Other things can be done to make the community nicer on both sides.

Concerning the private searches part that you take issue with... My main point was that Mozilla gets money from the users indirectly (and directly), so the argument that users are not paying so can not expect anything is silly.

Mozilla also gets money from Google "for click-throughs on ads placed on the ensuing search results pages", not just the default search engine bit.

You're right that people can argue over what the search arrangement with Google should be called. The private searches which people type into Firefox go to Google. Google pays money to Mozilla for this. It reminds me of when people try to work around liquor laws by making up some 'work around'. For example people sell tickets which can then be used to buy alcohol... and because you're not directly selling people the alcohol people think that is ok. But really, the laws still say you can't do that clever little ruse. Now, people don't have to agree on this, but I'm pretty sure many people would think of it as their information being sold to a corporation if they knew that arrangement was in place. I doubt most users of Firefox realise that google pays mozilla for the search arrangement though. We don't need to agree on this, or that the world is flat either, but I think it is the case.

To your second issue you raised, "The Mozilla Corporation (abbreviated MoCo) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation". -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation The Mozilla Foundation is a non profit, as such gets special treatment. The government, and tax payers give non profits a break because they are contributing something good to the community - like all the good stuff Mozilla does.

cheers,

[edit: removed thing about google getting sent url bar entries in ff]

> Google is also told what urls people type in.

You must be thinking of Chrome. In Firefox this is very definitely NOT the case. That's why the url bar and the search field are separate.

yup, thanks. I removed that bit from the post.

If I type "blabla" into the url bar and press enter it still goes to google, even if you change the default search engine to say duck duck go/wikipedia etc.

Also doesn't Firefox send google the url for 'safebrowsing', the anti phishing detection thing?

> If I type "blabla" into the url bar and press enter it > still goes to google

It goes to a search engine defined in user preferences, actually. You are correct that this search engine is not correlated with the one selected in the search field.

> 'safebrowsing', the anti phishing detection thing?

That's carefully designed to not have to send the url to the safebrowsing provider. The browser has a client-side database of blacklisted urls, and there is also a mode where a one-way hash of the url is sent to the safebrowsing provider. In no case is the actual url sent.

Oh, and as regards "special treatment"... what sort? The Mozilla Foundation has very little revenue of its own. All revenue coming via the Mozilla Corporation is handled like any other revenue from any other corporation for tax purposes and the like

Either you're a bit confused about what it means to be a "non profit", or I'd really like to see a clear explanation of what sorts of special treatment you think Mozilla is getting here.

(Disclosure: I too work for the Mozilla Corporation, though I've been contributing to the project for a lot longer than I've been employed.)

Here it explains what privileges non profits get: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization

Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corporation, and Mozilla Foundation is a non profit. Non profits get special privileges that companies do not get - and that is all I am talking about, I'm not concerned about it.

Mozilla Foundation and Subsidiary declared $61,501,145 Royalties from search in the 2006 Auditors report.

I mention this, to rebut the point that users are not contributing anything to mozilla - therefore they can't expect anything. Disregarding other ways users contribute to mozilla (donations, testing, etc), this is one way everyone is contributing to mozilla foundation (or at least the people who live in countries where mozilla has foundations).

Even if users were not paying anything, I still think they have rights in open source communities and should not just be ignored or mistreated just because they don't happen to pay money to license the software.

> Here it explains what privileges non profits get: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonprofit_organization

Yes, I'm well aware of that. The point is that the privileges nonprofits get are largely about not having to pay taxes on revenue, but the Mozilla Foundation has no revenue to start with, so there would be no tax to pay in any case.

The main "privilege" the Mozilla Foundation gets, as far as I can see, is that people who donate money to it can claim that as a tax deduction on their income tax return.

This is for the US; I have no idea whether Mozilla has any sort of nonprofit presence in other jurisdictions, nor what the laws are there regarding nonprofits.

Again, can you point to any specific privileges that you're concerned with that Mozilla is getting, instead of handwaving? I see a privilege that people giving money to Mozilla get, is all.

I'm not concerned with Mozilla being non profit.

Here are some advantages of non profits: http://grantspace.org/Tools/Knowledge-Base/Nonprofit-Managem...

In exchange for being a non profit, the government gives non profits these advantages, and that relates to the public supporting the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

Yeah, there are other mozilla foundations in other countries. There's some listed on the mozilla foundation wikipedia page.

I feel a little trolled, and have other things to do, and I also think this conversation is going nowhere - so am not responding any further.

So the advantages you describe for non-profits are exactly the same as for any limited-liability corporation, except for the tax-free revenue bit. And the revenue Mozilla gets is in fact taxed, since it's revenue of a for-profit corporation.

_You_'re feeling trolled? Pardon me, but as far as I can tell you're doing the trolling....

But how do you square your views with OSS projects that aren't Mozilla? How about those that truly are volunteer OSS projects that the developers don't get paid for? I contribute to a large, popular OSS project, and much of the blog post rings true for me.

Full disclosure: I am not an employee of Mozilla Corporation.

Some communities do better than others at making it a nice environment for all involved.

For example, post a question on some mailing lists and you'll get flamed or told RTFM noob stfu. On other projects everyone is nice, happy and it's all warm hugs.

If the developers or other community members are getting abused, that is not on. There's really no excuse. However, having developers call their users 'dicks' is also something that should not happen.

There's things that communities can do to make them develop nicer for everyone involved. Community development is a massive topic, but basically people need to work on making the communities nicer. The basics like: managing peoples expectations, being transparent, respecting the time people put into things can go a long way towards making a better environment.

I think bug trackers like Bugzilla don't do an awesome job from the perspective of the bug reporter. Once they report a bug, they have an expectation that someone is going to fix their problem. I think that's the wrong way to get people to think about open source projects, and it sets the wrong expectations - which leads to people getting angry, and frustrated. This post, and others from developers and users show to me that Mozilla has a problem which is being caused in part by their bug tracker, or how the bug tracker is used.

Big communities can often turn out bad too. Which is why growing a community may not be the best thing to do. A famous comedian is asked about where he does his experimental comedy - and he answers that he is not telling, because he wants his little club night to stay small. The comedians who run it do it as an artistic thing, and they don't want too many people coming along and spoiling it. So this famous comedian did not want a plug on the radio show by this journalist, because it would grow his community too big.

Some of the nicer open source communities keep commercial things away from the project because that would spoil the fun. The project could probably be better with more commercial involvement, but some projects choose not to have that happen. Mixing commercial and non commercial development is another hard thing that mozilla does. I mean, why are the bug reporters and testers not getting paid, but some developers are? I know the reasons, and am not saying it should be different - just that can cause tensions.

Open source communities are a very important thing to talk about, and to make better. Especially if people are going to be interacting in them so much. We all have a lot to learn and improve on, since we have problems now.

What private information about you does Mozilla sell to Google? As far as I know, Google only pays Mozilla to provide the default home page and search engine.