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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

How about not involving governments in how Firefox is run. Especially not those keen on backdoors and "Chat control".

It could be a stand alone association ruled by its members or a classic free-for-all whatever goes code talks FOSS project.

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A gaggle of governments with conflicting interests are less fearful than some private individuals with simple goals - like getting rich.

Currently private companies rule the browser world and they wield incredible power over everything from standards to PKI. Their interest is a world that depends on them even more.

They seem united on censoring free speech and removing all privacy.

If they can invest some money with no strings attached – hey, why not.

The funding is the string simply because it can be taken away.

> funding is the string simply because it can be taken away

Endow a working group under Fraunhofer [1]. Their product is simply and solely a browser engine. Nothing more.

[1] https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html

Have you asked the people who pay in the end (the taxpayer) if they want that? The very last thing I want my taxes to go to is anything that has "no strings attached". Its by definition a gift and gifting taxes should be a crime.

I wholeheartedly agree, though how to utilize the tax money isn’t the problematic part in the taxation IMO.

if its come with string attached then another agency (ehm ehm intelligence) would try to get their hands on them

Agencies seem to get involved even in private "independant" companies. It has nothing to do with the official string attachments.

Then taxes could be used to pay government employees whose job is to contribute on a specific project. That could apply to Linux, a browser, maybe AOSP. Sure it'd require funding, but spent on employees within said countries you get it back and it does give Europe as a whole the ability to contribute its vision, both positive and negative.

Whether the people are employed by the government directly or a different entity isn't relevant at all, the relevant part is taxes being used for something that has an undefined benefit for the people who are forced to pay for it. (And in case of "no string attacked" even has an undefined goal.)

>give Europe as a whole the ability to contribute its vision

Who's vision? The peoples vision? Or the vision of bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists etc.

In the US, at least, all funding goes through Congress, so get in your rep's ear if you don't like this (or get in their ear if you do)

The non-gov approach has been the last decades. I don't find the result convincing to be honest.

The path you're proposing has been pushed by the community for about how long the Mozilla foundation existed. I'm not sure asking them one more time will make a big difference.

They don't have to tell them how to run it. But it would be for the benefit of everyone if they could give grants to Mozilla to help them wean off of Google

Mozilla has been less and less dependent on Google and is now working on a VPN, MDN Plus, and other revenue streams that are also helping it become more independent. But the truth is that if all Google money suddenly stopped today, there would be no more Mozilla

The problem is that the people in power to remove the funding are the same people who are pushing for chat control and removal of encryption. Even if say the terms says that the funding is just a sponsorship, it would encourage few government folks to look out for more knowing the company would die if they stop funding.

As a European citizen, why would I want my taxes to fund a browser built by a US entity and still subject to the whims of the current US administration?

Unless you mean that Mozilla should move completely to Europe, sure. But the part about the EU not telling Mozilla what to do is naive. If my taxes pay for it, of course I want the EU to tell Mozilla what to do.

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