Tell HN: No, your donation to Mozilla doesn't support Firefox

[dgudkov]

I've been donating money to Mozilla hoping to support Firefox, but a recent posting on HN made me doubt it. So I asked Mozilla Foundation if any of my money goes to Firefox. Here is the answer:

> Thank you for being a Mozilla supporter.

> Donations to Mozilla support the work of the Mozilla Foundation, as described on our website here: https://foundation.mozilla.org/.

> Donations to Mozilla do not support the Firefox browser; instead, their development efforts are funded by revenue generated within the product itself, primarily partnerships with search engine companies.

[benologist]

I think donating is the least-effective way to help Firefox. Mozilla Corporation sits on half a billion in assets and 2% of their revenue goes to Mozilla Foundation. That in itself is a lot of money, but what we might overlook is that Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corporation, owns the other 98% of their revenue too, and owns their half-billion in assets. Let's talk about their funding again when their assets stop growing.

In the meantime one thing we can do to help is to not create a mono-culture "Designed for Chrome" internet that excludes Firefox. Just ignore Google's defacto-standards unless they follow the process to become shared standards.

https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2017/mozilla-fdn-201...

[uberman]

I came here naively expecting too refute what I assumed was a trolling. However, your willingness to link to the foundation's site gave me pause, so I did a little looking:

The site itself states:

"Contributions go to the Mozilla Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Mountain View, California, to be used in its discretion for its charitable purposes."

Further, the site says basically nothing about FireFox or any real product. It does however talk about "initiatives" that it supports/leads. I now suppose that is where your contributions must go. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/