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Comment by rvz | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla continues to let its users down on privacy by relying on Google's money (>80% of its entire revenue) after the CEO promised that they would move away from them 15 years ago. [0] That did not happen.

Nothing has changed other than declining usage and revenue. But give the CEO another bonus over poor user usage, shrinking market share and destroying the browser, all done by themselves and now are being kept on life support by Google.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...

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They have tried to move away from Google. The problem is none of their other ideas have worked out.

In fact they get chided around here for anything that isnt a firefox specific endevour.

Browser engines are not a money making business (if it was Microsoft would still be in the game)

The issue is: A browser engine is what is needed from them. VPN can be done by many organisations.

Mozilla VPN is done by Mullvad mostly.

Many (most?) non-Firefox endeavors of the Mozilla Foundation have been half-hearted flops for which they deserve chiding. I struggle to name any non-Firefox Mozilla project that has been successful and which they've continued to support.

Because they're harebrained ideas. I don't want to pay Mozilla for a limited version of mullvad when I can get the full mullvad for less.

I don't think they actually ever expected any of these ideas to work. In the meantime you can't even donate to firefox if you want to, only to the foundation.

I mean, I give money to KDE every month and they manage to build a whole desktop environment. Why can't I do that with Mozilla? Oh wait, how much money does KDE waste on a CEO?

Here's an idea: provide a donations bucket that gives a guarantee that they'll be earmarked exclusively for Firefox development. Nothing off the top for CEO salaries, nothing siphoned off for random side projects—this bucket should be guaranteed to pay the salaries of Firefox developers.

It might not make millions, but I'd donate in a heartbeat if I knew that my money would actually go to Firefox and not to one of the dozens of random side quests that Mozilla keeps picking up.

> provide a donations bucket that gives a guarantee that they'll be earmarked exclusively for Firefox development

I've head that there are tax problems with that. So maybe there needs to be a paid "Firefox Pro" or whatever?

That'd work just as well for me. I just want a way to give Mozilla a clear signal that I pay them for Firefox, not for Pocket or a VPN or for whatever the flavor of the month is for the nonprofit. As is, there is no way for me to send them that signal, and I'm not prepared to endorse any of the non-Firefox projects Mozilla's put out.

The tax problems were because of the Google deal, not the donations.

Money is fungible. How should they guarantee your donation paid Firefox developers only?

You're correct, and this is a general problem with earmarking—there's nothing to stop the organization from just shifting unrestricted funds out of that bucket to compensate. I still would donate in this scenario, because the main point is that I want to be explicit about which activities Mozilla is engaging in that I find valuable. Donating to Mozilla right now would send the wrong message.

>It might not make millions

I mean, isn't that the problem? They made 500m this quarter so a <1m donation box won't shift things. Hell, it may not even pay for more than a few devs given the compensation I've seen.

There simply isn't enough goodwill to maintain the living of even a single person operation without some sort of incentive (which ceases to be a "donation", but a subscription with a fancy coat).

For starters that'd be a reason to cut cost and allocate an increasing proportion of current revenue into a diversified investment portfolio to eventually gradually shift towards being able to at a minimum know they can cost-cut and survive of that investment return should they need to.

If I was aiming to set up a company like Mozilla, I'd want all earnings to go into such a fund, and all costs to come out of buffered investment returns... Yes, significantly slows down the rate you can spend, but it also significantly increases the odds of longevity and independence.

Of course that presumes the goal is to build the organization, not to get personally rich off it.

Mozilla's subscriptions and advertising grew from nothing in 2016 to 13% of revenue in 2022.

Here's an idea: an enterprise/power-user focused browser. The market for productivity tools is huge, and likewise for enterprise security snake oil. The browser, being at the front of most security threats would be a great place to implement security features that might not be entirely snake oil, and The Enterprise will gobble it up and pay up.

This might be poor framing. Maybe its for a job well done. A big reason for google funding is fears of monopoly lawsuits. From this perspective a firefox fewer people use is a good thing.

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