[HN Gopher] Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla
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Firefox Money: Investigating the Finances of Mozilla
Author : BryanLunduke
Score : 26 points
Date : 2023-08-05 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lunduke.locals.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lunduke.locals.com)
| constantcrying wrote:
| As with Wikipedia, what I assumed how the organization operated
| and how it does is vastly different.
|
| Basically everything here seems biazarre and makes trusting
| Mozilla very hard. Does anybody believe that they can stand up
| against Google, when Google, at any point they want to, could
| crash their whole operation?
|
| I think it is quite likely that Google is keeping Mozilla afloat
| to avoid anti-trust allegations. Mozilla _existing_ is worth a
| few hundred millions to Google. But Mozilla apparently has no
| real use for that money, they spend around 200M on software
| developmemt that means _one thousand_ high paying software
| developer positions. And they could hire hundreds of more
| developers at any point.
| dralley wrote:
| HN loves to simultaneously criticize Mozilla for
|
| 1) being financially dependent on Google
|
| 2) spending resources on literally anything except Firefox
|
| 3) doing anything that smells like monetizing Firefox, no
| matter how innocuous
|
| Spoiler alert: They have essentially no hope of avoiding 1
| without doing at least a little bit of 2 or 3. Unlike Google,
| Apple, and Microsoft, they don't have billions of dollars
| coming through the backdoor from other business units.
|
| As for "whether they can stand up to them", they can and do,
| all the time. Including _literally this week_ with Google's Web
| integrity bullshit. Whether it accomplishes much is a different
| matter, but it's not for lack of an attempt on their part.
| linuxwhat wrote:
| Not going to argue the article, Mozilla should be doing better.
| But the author obviously is trying to push some politics not so
| subtly.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/muc18q/whats_the_dea...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Obviously relying on Google for money is fraught, but it isn't
| exactly clear where they'd get an equivalent source of income.
| Otherwise the subtext seems to be "I don't like their politics"
| which suggests maybe the author shouldn't donate any money to
| them. Personally I would be sad if Firefox was neglected, but
| that doesn't seem to be happening, as far as I can see.
| yesbut wrote:
| Mozilla should convert to a worker owned enterprise and stop
| giving all of that money to execs.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Mozilla should convert to a worker owned enterprise and stop
| giving all of that money to execs.
|
| The compensation to execs seems irrelevant. That is almost
| literally just a Google bribe.
|
| Mozilla pays 200M for software development, from that I can
| only assume that they pay quite generously and they seem to
| have absolutely no issue with money, as they are funded by
| Google.
|
| To me it seems hey have more money than they know what to do
| with. Hardly something which could be fixed by workers rising
| up and taking care of distributing Googles Millions.
| yesbut wrote:
| Should still convert to a worker owned enterprise.
| Democratically the workers most likely wouldn't vote to waste
| money on Google bribes like the execs have.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Sure, they would equitably distribute the Google bribe
| amongst themselves.
| yesbut wrote:
| As they should.
| constantcrying wrote:
| No, they should develop a browser.
| yesbut wrote:
| The worker-owners should democratically decide what to do
| with their money.
| Reubend wrote:
| Disgusting. I hope that Mozilla can re-focus on their original
| mission, and align their finances with building the best browser
| possible rather than wasting it on political activism.
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(page generated 2023-08-05 23:02 UTC)