This is probably common knowledge to you and many others, but it bears repeating: You cannot donate to fund the development of Mozilla Firefox.
Google can, unfortunately.
Comment on Firefox 148 introduces the promised AI kill switch for people who aren't into LLMs
doug@lemmy.today 1 day agosadly I’ll likely support them through any shitty decisions they make as they are the only viable non-chromium alternative these days.
I get they’re chasing the buck and trying to stay relevant, but uhhhh… if they could be less Steve Buscemi-teen about it, that’d be great.
XLE@piefed.social 1 day ago
Tehhund@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I’m pretty sure you can donate to Mozilla, are you saying that donations to Mozilla don’t accomplish what we might want? I only know a little about how much Mozilla sucks so I’m ready to learn more.
XLE@piefed.social 9 hours ago
There are two interlinked Mozillas: the Mozilla Foundation is what you can donate to, but the Mozilla Corporation is what develops Firefox.
Mozilla’s recent history includes privacy flub after financial management misstep, so here’s a few links in no particular order of severity or chronology:
- https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/nearly-a-year-later-mozilla-is-still-promoting-onerep/
- https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/mozilla-foundation-lays-off-30-staff-drops-advocacy-division/
- https://smoshed.substack.com/p/ublock-origin-lite-maker-ends-firefox
- https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/07/crypto-wallet-security-layer-webacy-raises-4m
- https://mastodon.social/@stevetex/113162099798398758
Each of these are a little rabbit hole on their own.
KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 1 day ago
halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 1 day ago
Last time I tried Waterfox some sites like Twitch that actively block usage on old browsers, refused to work because the latest Waterfox release was based on a Firefox like 20+ builds behind.
XLE@piefed.social 1 day ago
Waterfox right now is built on ESR 148, which is on par with the latest Firefox release! ESR releases will lag several versions behind, but that’s normal (even on Mozilla’s side), and I’d be kind of shocked if they missed a major ESR release before another one came out.
KoalaUnknown@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I have used it for twitch for years without issue. I also have ublock origin with twitch adblock.
halcyoncmdr@piefed.social 1 day ago
Well you clearly haven’t used the standard available download (non-beta/nightly release) consistently through last year. Waterfox was using ESR 128 since October 2024, kept that base until finally upgrading to ESR 140 last August. So that’s nearly a year of its base being out of date. And some sites really don’t like that since they’re looking at that version for support.
https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.5.0/ https://www.waterfox.com/releases/6.6.0/
Twitch only supports the last TWO versions of Firefox officially and will actively block logging in from older versions. So while you might be able to watch Twitch, if you aren’t already logged in, you won’t be able to login.
https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/supported-browsers?language=en_US
There are thousands of posts about it online for Waterfox other forks.
pipe01@programming.dev 1 day ago
If everyone switched from firefox to waterfox, Mozilla would kill firefox which would in turn will waterfox
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah ofc they are chasing the buck.
It’s either they find alternatives revenue streams or we no longer have Firefox as a viable alternative anymore.
Browsers development is crazy engineering heavy, and this, expensive.
ElectricAirship@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Ladybird browser looks promising!
stoy@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I strongly believe that the EU should fund Mozilla, or a fork of Firefox.
Gecko is the only viable competitor to Blink/WebKit, and it is needed
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 day ago
Govts around the world should be funding all sorts of FOSS projects. I know they do to some degree but not much. It benefits the whole world and only hurts big tech.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That prospect becomes less and less likely the more government is bought and paid for by Big Tech.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 16 hours ago
This is what people don’t understand. Those in power, whether they’re part of the government, a wealthy CEO, or a religious leader, will do what benefits themselves if they think they can get away with it. We keep talking about powerful organizations and what they could do to benefit everyone, but fail to realize that powerful people don’t want to benefit everyone.
They only do what benefits everyone if they feel like they can’t get away with just doing what benefits themselves. It’s our responsibility to make sure they don’t think they can get away with it, and clearly strongly-worded letters and quippy signs held outside their offices for an afternoon or two isn’t enough to do that.
Engywuck@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Funding FF? Maybe. Funding Mozilla? No way, not with my money.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why?
hraegsvelmir@ani.social 1 day ago
Firefox is just the browser, Mozilla is the organization constantly wasting money on features Firefox’s users are actively hostile to in a bid to tempt away people already using Chrome. Not the OP, but I’d be down to donate to Firefox’s development directly, but I wouldn’t want to make a donation to Mozilla hoping it would go toward Firefox, only to find out they took my money to build some new LLM integration that nobody asked for, only to sit unused for years before being quietly shuttered in favor of the new tech buzzword of the day.
raldone01@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah I really hope there will be some way to tie donations directly to FF development.
kunaltyagi@programming.dev 15 hours ago
Maybe funding components would be better than funding mozilla. Eg: 2 engineers for Gecko