You see, Mozilla is stuck in this limbo where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources (Pocket, Mozilla VPN, Firefox Private Network, MDN Plus) because they're not focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird. Sometimes literally in the same comment, as the one above.
In other words, HN crowd will shit on them regardless of what they do.
> where people criticise them for taking money from Google, but also criticise them when they explore alternate funding sources
What aggravates me is nobody is asking why do you need so much cash?
- Why has it become so big that it needs to spend 81M on Management payroll per year? [0]
- Why has it grown so big that it needs to spend 21M in external consultants per year? [0]
- Why do you need 1000+ staff to roll out an open source browser engine / browser and an email client?
Mozilla had almost 8M in no strings attached donations in 2021. If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things. This is even without taking into account Investment returns.
The cow grew too fat and too close to SF's money vortex.
That's a whole lotta words to avoid addressing the contradictions in your statements: do you want them to keep being funded mostly by Google or do you want them to venture out into other funding opportunities?
It's one or the other, you can't have neither. 8 million is tiny in comparison to who they're trying to compete with. Thank god that's not their only revenue source, otherwise they'd be dead a decade ago. I guarantee you Edge has a higher yearly budget than that without even having their own engine.
> If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year...
Go ahead and do that, nothing's stopping you. You've been beating this same drum for the past three years[0], don't you get tired of it? I'm begging you, do something useful for the future of the web instead of shitting on those that do. It doesn't have to be Mozilla, donate to FSF, Ladybird, Internet Archive, Wikimedia, and so on and so on. Get involved, be the change you want to see, create your own NGO that will do something better and I'm gonna be the first one to throw money your way. Just do something useful with your time instead of chasing internet points by behaving like a parrot.
> On thing I feel we are still missing is for FSF, Wiki, Archive.org, etc. to effectively gather enough cash to start lobbying in politics and in industry much in the same way Meta and Alphabet do.[1]
Guess who's been doing that? Mozilla[2], the same NGO you've been shitting on for hours in this thread! Pick. A. Lane. Stand for something that's not downplaying work done by others.
> - Why do you need 1000+ staff to roll out an open source browser engine / browser and an email client?
Writing fast moving mature Software for multiple platforms, is not something you can do with three nerds in your spare-time. Web browsers are highly complex, and Firefox has still many historical grown baggage to improve and maintain. And let's be fair, their software has a very high quality-level, even we can dispute on the details. Whether 1000+ people are necessary for this, I don't know, but considering everything they do even in their core-area, it's not something which can be done with small budget.
> If I go to most open source projects and say you can burn through 8M a year, most of them would agree they could build amazing things.
Amazing by their perspective, but not by the standards of end-users. And 8 Millionen, that's around 666k per month, meaning you have either around 3-5 well paid workers who are worth that price, or 10-20 poorly paid workers, who are probably average competent at best. And this is nowhere near the number of people necessary for such a big project.
I think you're mixing up annual and monthly salaries/employee expenses. At 666K/month the 3 "well paid" workers are costing 222K/month and the 20 "poorly paid" workers are costing 33K/month. I'd be rather okay getting paid this poorly!
I like where you were going with your comment but the math doesn't support the specific argument.
I think this is valid criticism, but it's more nuanced than the usual "mozilla bad because google money" and "mozilla bad because not firefox". Thank you for providing data.
Is there a more sustainable path where they don't rely on Google so much? Maybe? Developing a browser doesn't seem to be cheap. Do we know how many resources are used in Firefox versus the rest? I'd like to see a strong argument that Mozilla could be fully/more independent while still developing Firefox.
The thing is, even if they're badly managed today, they're still the best agent fighting for the open web. Apple helps, but I don't think they care much about it and would happily change if it were better for their bottom line.
In other words, HN crowd will shit on them regardless of what they do.