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So this, from Firefox, is fucking toxic: https://mstdn.social/@Lokjo/112772496939724214
You might be aware Chrome— a browser made by an ad company— has been trying to claw back the limitations recently placed on ad networks by the death of third-party cookies, and added new features that gather and report data directly to ad networks. You'd know this because Chrome displayed a popup.
If you're a Firefox user, what you probably don't know is Firefox added this feature and *has already turned it on without asking you*
It was funded through a deal with an ad company. It did not become an ad company itself until much more recently. jwz had a succinct and memorable response to the the absurd idea that really it’s been ad-funded all along and that this makes things okay:
You are just another of those so-predictable people saying, “The animal shelter has always had a kitten-meat deli, why are you surprised?”
Yes, Mozilla started making absolutely horrific funding and management decisions many years ago. Today, they have taken this subtext and turned it into the actual text.
Browser development might not be sustainable with user donations, but it sure as hell is sustainable when you get 400 million bucks by Google every year.
I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure all donations go to The Mozilla Foundation. I believe the foundation is the decision-making power for the corporation.
Either way, yes, Mozilla sold their soul to Google (specifically, giving preference to Google Search) in exchange for sustainability (read: survival). Rather difficult to compete in a market where Google and Apple collectively hold upwards of 85% market share for something they provide “free.”
Donations are a tiny fraction of Mozilla’s income. Firefox and related projects are their money earners for their actually charitable projects, pulling in at least half a billion or so a year.
Not saying that the CEO pay is adequate or something, but your take is literally ignoring the article you yourself quoted.
Non-profits of the scale that Mozilla is need good talent to continue to exist. Good talent needs to be paid close to market rates to work for non-profits, and retaining good talent requires even better pay and benefits than just what will get good talent in the door
No matter how much or how little the talent at a nonprofit is paid people will go “why are they paying the CEO a $1 million dollar salary? They could hire 6-8 developers for that much!” “Why are they paying developers 100k/year? Can’t they accept 80k for the privilege of working for such an important bastion of the open internet?”
15 million a year is a lot but it’s also 1/3 the median CEO pay rate. They have to pay the CEO at least semi-competitively to retain them
Ah interesting. I didn’t know. I started using Firefox as a kid around version 2.
I totally want Firefox to make money, but I wonder if donations couldn’t be a significant part of that pie today. It seems a lot more people would prefer to donate to Firefox than Mozilla.
I feel like Mozilla could have been what NextCloud is today. Totally free, open source, and offering a vast offering of office apps, with paid hosted versions. It could be all neatly integrated into Firefox, and you would pay a premium to use them without self hosting. The only thing they did was create Firefox VPN, and the only reason most people use VPNs is because of scammy marketing.
Totally free, open source, and offering a vast offering of office apps, with paid hosted versions.
When Mozilla was founded the idea of hosted webapps didn’t exist. Quite the frankly web standards didn’t yet exist to allow such a thing to exist. Those were the days when you’d use Flash, Shockwave or Silverlight just to view media content on the web.
But I do agree, they could be investing right now into feature rich hosted services, but they’ve only half-assed any paid services they’ve tried to integrate and then dropped them because they couldn’t get enough users to make it worth continuing the effort (mostly due to the half-assed effort they put in to start with)
Here’s a take by a Mozilla employee :
https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/112779506156690032
It was funded through a deal with an ad company. It did not become an ad company itself until much more recently. jwz had a succinct and memorable response to the the absurd idea that really it’s been ad-funded all along and that this makes things okay:
That’s certainly a quote that will stick with me.
Browser development might not be sustainable with user donations, but it sure as hell is sustainable when you get 400 million bucks by Google every year.
Firefox has never tried to run on donations though.
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You’re not supporting development, you’re supporting a rich guy getting richer:
https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre-finances-of-mozilla
I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure all donations go to The Mozilla Foundation. I believe the foundation is the decision-making power for the corporation.
Either way, yes, Mozilla sold their soul to Google (specifically, giving preference to Google Search) in exchange for sustainability (read: survival). Rather difficult to compete in a market where Google and Apple collectively hold upwards of 85% market share for something they provide “free.”
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
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Donations are a tiny fraction of Mozilla’s income. Firefox and related projects are their money earners for their actually charitable projects, pulling in at least half a billion or so a year.
Not saying that the CEO pay is adequate or something, but your take is literally ignoring the article you yourself quoted.
Non-profits of the scale that Mozilla is need good talent to continue to exist. Good talent needs to be paid close to market rates to work for non-profits, and retaining good talent requires even better pay and benefits than just what will get good talent in the door
No matter how much or how little the talent at a nonprofit is paid people will go “why are they paying the CEO a $1 million dollar salary? They could hire 6-8 developers for that much!” “Why are they paying developers 100k/year? Can’t they accept 80k for the privilege of working for such an important bastion of the open internet?”
15 million a year is a lot but it’s also 1/3 the median CEO pay rate. They have to pay the CEO at least semi-competitively to retain them
Why would I donate to them if they are going to advertise at me either way?
Ah interesting. I didn’t know. I started using Firefox as a kid around version 2.
I totally want Firefox to make money, but I wonder if donations couldn’t be a significant part of that pie today. It seems a lot more people would prefer to donate to Firefox than Mozilla.
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I feel like Mozilla could have been what NextCloud is today. Totally free, open source, and offering a vast offering of office apps, with paid hosted versions. It could be all neatly integrated into Firefox, and you would pay a premium to use them without self hosting. The only thing they did was create Firefox VPN, and the only reason most people use VPNs is because of scammy marketing.
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When Mozilla was founded the idea of hosted webapps didn’t exist. Quite the frankly web standards didn’t yet exist to allow such a thing to exist. Those were the days when you’d use Flash, Shockwave or Silverlight just to view media content on the web.
But I do agree, they could be investing right now into feature rich hosted services, but they’ve only half-assed any paid services they’ve tried to integrate and then dropped them because they couldn’t get enough users to make it worth continuing the effort (mostly due to the half-assed effort they put in to start with)
Exactly because Mozilla was around to see the Internet grow and mature they should have been fit to create such a suite.
Yeah. I want to donate directly towards the development of FF, but I can’t. I know several other people who of a similar disposition.
« Ad funded » ? Don’t they mean « Google funded » ?