I saw this post today too that starts out by mentioning the Mozilla deal with Google: Web by Google (TM) I thought it was an interesting perspective, thinking about the way Google has been able to...
I saw this post today too that starts out by mentioning the Mozilla deal with Google: Web by Google (TM)
I thought it was an interesting perspective, thinking about the way Google has been able to become so dominant in the web as a consequence of controlling some of the most significant "gateways" and missing features. They control the main way people find sites with search, the primary way people and companies monetize internet content through ads, the only prominent general-purpose video-hosting site, a major portion of email, and a lot more. They also even control much of the layer of tools people use to interact with the web too, with the dominant browser and mobile OS.
Does anyone know what is the extent of their fund raising efforts? Is there an internal team for that? I think a good chunk of people don't even know this page exists.
Does anyone know what is the extent of their fund raising efforts? Is there an internal team for that? I think a good chunk of people don't even know this page exists.
And evidently most people that know of that page, don't know how Mozilla corporate structure works. (This came up a bunch of the hnews and proggit threads on the layoffs) First, there's the...
And evidently most people that know of that page, don't know how Mozilla corporate structure works. (This came up a bunch of the hnews and proggit threads on the layoffs)
First, there's the Mozilla foundation, which is a non-profit. The foundation owns Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit that develops Firefox.
When you donate, you donate to the Mozilla foundation, which as a non-profit cannot funnel money into a for-profit subsidiary (because donations to foundations are tax deductible, it's not that easy to evade taxes).
So any money donated to Mozilla, CANNOT be used to develop Firefox, Servo, Rust, or any of the other things the Corporation does.
Since people from different organizations can work on the same open source project, someone could set up another non-profit that pays developers who work on Firefox, Rust, and so on. I wonder if...
Since people from different organizations can work on the same open source project, someone could set up another non-profit that pays developers who work on Firefox, Rust, and so on. I wonder if anything like that exists already?
For individuals, there is Patreon and GitHub contributions.
They fund (external) projects, have fellowships, advocate, and that kind of stuff I guess? Here's their webpage: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
They fund (external) projects, have fellowships, advocate, and that kind of stuff I guess?
I realized it sounded like it was directed towards you, but it wasn't. Even I didn't know until it came up in the 70ish person layoff earlier this year/late last year. There's several people...
I realized it sounded like it was directed towards you, but it wasn't. Even I didn't know until it came up in the 70ish person layoff earlier this year/late last year.
There's several people who've since said that they stopped their monthly donations afterwards after they learned of how the company works, since basically all of them did it to support Firefox, or the Rust teams.
Mozilla's corporate structure is weird, and seemingly obfuscated by themselves.
It's good to make corrections, now I have more information so thanks for that. That said, tone is important. There are and I am a person somewhere else in the world who feels that and whose...
It's good to make corrections, now I have more information so thanks for that. That said, tone is important. There are and I am a person somewhere else in the world who feels that and whose stomach dips when they read something they perceive as needlessly cutting in tone. It pays for us all to be extra mindful there I think.
I'm most definitely worried about their future. I just hope more people open their eyes to the fact that a Chromium monopoly is bad for the web.
I saw this post today too that starts out by mentioning the Mozilla deal with Google: Web by Google (TM)
I thought it was an interesting perspective, thinking about the way Google has been able to become so dominant in the web as a consequence of controlling some of the most significant "gateways" and missing features. They control the main way people find sites with search, the primary way people and companies monetize internet content through ads, the only prominent general-purpose video-hosting site, a major portion of email, and a lot more. They also even control much of the layer of tools people use to interact with the web too, with the dominant browser and mobile OS.
It reminds me of this issue of Matt Stoller's "BIG" newsletter from last year, which talked about billionaires being people that have managed to get control of "very important tollbooths". Google has established theirs all over the web.
I know what you're saying... That's a really great analogy btw
Does anyone know what is the extent of their fund raising efforts? Is there an internal team for that? I think a good chunk of people don't even know this page exists.
And evidently most people that know of that page, don't know how Mozilla corporate structure works. (This came up a bunch of the hnews and proggit threads on the layoffs)
First, there's the Mozilla foundation, which is a non-profit. The foundation owns Mozilla Corporation, which is a for-profit that develops Firefox.
When you donate, you donate to the Mozilla foundation, which as a non-profit cannot funnel money into a for-profit subsidiary (because donations to foundations are tax deductible, it's not that easy to evade taxes).
So any money donated to Mozilla, CANNOT be used to develop Firefox, Servo, Rust, or any of the other things the Corporation does.
tl;dr there's still no way to donate to Firefox.
Since people from different organizations can work on the same open source project, someone could set up another non-profit that pays developers who work on Firefox, Rust, and so on. I wonder if anything like that exists already?
For individuals, there is Patreon and GitHub contributions.
They fund (external) projects, have fellowships, advocate, and that kind of stuff I guess?
Here's their webpage: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/
Feels kinda snarky but ok. Thanks for the context.
I realized it sounded like it was directed towards you, but it wasn't. Even I didn't know until it came up in the 70ish person layoff earlier this year/late last year.
There's several people who've since said that they stopped their monthly donations afterwards after they learned of how the company works, since basically all of them did it to support Firefox, or the Rust teams.
Mozilla's corporate structure is weird, and seemingly obfuscated by themselves.
It's good to make corrections, now I have more information so thanks for that. That said, tone is important. There are and I am a person somewhere else in the world who feels that and whose stomach dips when they read something they perceive as needlessly cutting in tone. It pays for us all to be extra mindful there I think.