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Comment by dralley | Hacker News Reader

>Good. I really wish Mozilla would rely less on these shady backroom deals and open up to direct user funding. The Mozilla Foundation accepts donations, but they don't go toward funding Firefox; instead, they fund advocacy campaigns.

Yes, charitable donations go to charitable causes, not development of a browser which produces profits for a for-profit entity. There's no legal way to channel charitable donations back into a business. To do otherwise would be tax fraud.

This is not a "gotcha", this is a persistent misunderstanding of what is and is not possible in tax law.

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There are however two options available:

* Make the browser development the charitable work, or

* accept funding to non-charitable company

However Mozilla earns "enough" from Google, so they don't have to try to make either work.

> Make the browser development the charitable work

They probably cannot do this. The IRS generally does not consider writing open source software to meet the requirements of a 501c3, for example [1]. They aren't super consistent about it so some groups have gotten 501c3 exemption in the past, but for the most part there is a reason that 501c3 open source foundations focus on support activities, conferences, and not software development.

> accept funding to non-charitable company

They could do this, just like they did for Thunderbird, and I wish they would.

[1] https://www.mill.law/blog/more-501c3-rejections-open-source-...

Maybe we can make a deal with the government. In exchange for making the development of open source software a tax exempt charitable work, we remove private jets from the list of purchases that can be deducted from income taxes. Seems like a win-win.

Why would the government wish to remove private jets from the list of purchases that can be deducted from income taxes? Why would they be unable to do this without making a deal with people who want open source software development to be designated a charitable purpose? How would making a deal with people who want open source software development fix this?

> Why would the government wish to remove private jets from the list of purchases that can be deducted from income taxes?

To bring in tax revenue to pay for things we actually need.

> Why would they be unable to do this without making a deal with people who want open source software development to be designated a charitable purpose? How would making a deal with people who want open source software development fix this?

Because my comment is this thing we call a joke, it was meant to highlight the absurdity of the fact that some obviously charitable work gets taxed, while toys for billionaires are tax exempt because...reasons?

The Bevy game is an example on an organisation that has gotten 501c

Why isn’t the browser development organized as charitable work?

From the Corp’s Wikipedia page [0]:

> As a non-profit, the Mozilla Foundation is limited in terms of the types and amounts of revenue it can have.

Is this an oblique way of saying they couldn’t take Google bucks that way?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

Yes. https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/unrelated-business...

> Even though an organization is recognized as tax exempt, it still may be liable for tax on its unrelated business income.

So, they could still take Google's payment and they would still have to pay taxes on it?

Then they wouldn't be able to pay their CEO $7 million a year...

Search revenue minus the cost of a CEO (slightly more than 1% of that goes to the CEO) is still an amazing deal, dramatically more than what's likely on offer in terms of charitable giving. They would basically have to execute the largest donation drive in the history of the internet and replicate it on a yearly basis to replace search licensing.

Frankly, they probably could. That's a pretty middle-of-the-road salary for a CEO of a significant nonprofit.

Frankly, that level of pay is disgusting and I would prefer the Mozilla Foundation just fold. Firefox can move over to ASF or OSI. They'll do a better job.

>Make the browser development the charitable work

I don't think there's a legal way to fund development form the profitable venture and also accept charitable donations.

I'm sure if donations were more a better bet than search licensing they might go that way, but as I said in a different comment, the biggest annual donor drive in the world is probably Wikipedia, probably a best case scenario for that kind of drive, and it brings in less than half of what their search licensing gets.

You can make donations to a for-profit business. You just can't deduct it from your taxable income.

I don't have any input on direct user funding for Firefox, but Thunderbird is also developed by a for-profit entity and accepts direct user funding with no charitable tax deductions as well. [0] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/

[0] https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/donate/

Exactly, and to my knowledge the receiving party needs to pay profit tax on them. It's called a donation, but technically more of a pay-what-you-want model. Several businesses do that.

But then it would be possible to fund firefox development directly, just not get the tax break for it right ?

Is there not a difference between a charity and a non-profit?

sell $50 keychains. done.

The corporation already sells user-facing products: Mozilla VPN, MDN Plus, Firefox Relay, Pocket (previously).

Feel free to subscribe to them to give money directly to the Mozilla Corporation, the future you're looking for is already here.

They sell T-shirts, totes, and backpacks:

https://mozilla-na.myspreadshop.com/

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