Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations, and your donations will most definitely not be spent on Firefox.
ConstipatedWatson@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
We should all probably start donating to Firefox. Isn’t Google their main source of income?
There might come a time when they prefer to gut Firefox, forcing Mozilla to either reject uBlock Origin or die (or they could simply pull the plug on funding knowing they’ll earn more when people go back to Chrome-based browsers)
fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 5 weeks ago
This is what drives me mad about Mozilla. Let me donate to Firefox! I don’t want to donate to another hairbrained idea to “diversify your revenue streams” - I want to donate to Firefox.
As I’ve said many times before, Firefox would be better off as an opencollective-driven, smaller (50-ish) team, with code on Codeberg, than driven by a 600 strong org who needs to compete with SF salaries and fancy offices. They have become Google by another name and it ain’t healthy.
HKayn@dormi.zone 5 weeks ago
Your money is honestly better spent donating to new efforts like Ladybird or Servo.
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 5 weeks ago
Is Servo independent of Mozilla now? It’s instructive how much they swayed when Mozilla cut them away, but seems they’ve found a new team to steward it.
Ladybird I hadn’t heard of so thank you for the suggestion. I’ll check them out.
mhm@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
LibreWolf exists, and is already on Codeberg. If and when push comes to shove, they may stop depending on Firefox altogether.
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 5 weeks ago
I like LibreWolf! But while they may be the natural successor to a folded Firefox, they would need to beef up dramatically to actually be the stewards of the codebase. Right now they do a good job at removing stuff, but setting a direction for a browser than zings with users requires a fully fledged product org.
Firefox is caught between those two worlds.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
I actually think it’s a good thing they are seeking other income sources. After all Google is both their competitor and main income source while being under investigation by the government. Firefox barely manages to keep up with Chrome as-is. Nevermind if they had a team a fraction of its current size. It’s just not really practical for a project this size and scope to have a small plucky team. It needs a big organisation of some kind behind it. Ideally one like Google or Microsoft who can pull income from more profitable projects to pay for better browser engineering. It’s also needed so they can have a say in web standards. An organisation like that also has more ways to make money from their browser like with ChromeOS and Android. Firefox actually tried to make their own smartphone OS, to be honest I am annoyed they didn’t succeed. It would have given us a real alternative to Android while giving them needed income.
fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I really couldn’t agree more.
noodlejetski@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Mozilla still does pretty good without any donations
because Google pays them so that they keep offering Google as the default search engine. now that Google has been declared a monopoly, they might not be allowed to do that anymore, which means Mozilla loses its funding.
fernlike3923@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Mozilla’s funding did mostly consist of the Google partnership (86%), but as you can see, it’s not their only source of income. And you really don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser, which is open source, which also gets community contributions. This is made pretty obvious by their current revenue (>$1,000,000,000) and their CEO’s whopping $5.6 million salary.
Don’t donate to a shitty for-profit that masks itself with their non-profit company. Instead donate to something like Ladybird, whom are currently in early development but have no plans on adding features that actively spy on you (FakeSpot, Pocket), and they don’t need $500 million to develop a web browser.
And if you’re going to talk about Mozilla’s social work, just don’t. I’ve already seen it.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
You have zero idea how much engineering it takes to create a standards compliant engine and then maintain it. “And you don’t need half a fucking billion just to develop a web browser”. Technically this is true if you are willing to use someone else’s web engine. Firefox aren’t doing that, and it requires huge investment to maintain their own engine. There is a reason only large companies these days (Apple, Google, Mozilla) have their own engines. The actual browser part is tiny compared to the engine. We are talking about something the size of the Linux kernel or bigger, that gets far less contributions from outside sources. It actually makes perfect sense they are looking at starting other projects when you think that all other companies that do this kind of work need those other projects to remain profitable. Web engine development from my understanding does not pay. You get almost the same amount of money using somebody else’s engine as you do developing your own, yet one costs way more.
The fact Mozilla manages to maintain a better web engine than Apple’s WebKit only from Google’s advertising money is actually incredible. Did I mention Apple didn’t even start that engine themselves? It’s based on KHTML. Chrome is in turn a WebKit derivative. Firefox on the other hand actually comes from Netscape, and was first developed under the name Mozilla based on Netscape’s code. So Mozilla has put in more work than Google in modernising their engine.
Tilgare@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You’re absolutely right, ~80% of Mozilla’s revenue is from Google’s paying to be the default search engine in Firefox - and the US is going after Google for it’s anticompetitive behaviors as we speak. Ad blocking aside, Mozilla is going to need help pretty soon anyways if Google gets their monopoly broken up.
mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Screw the mozilla foundation. My only hope at this point is that Ladybird or one of the other projects produces something viable one of these days.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Possibly when the US government decides to break Google up next week.
piracysails@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
If they can pay 5-8 milion the CEO while laying off employees, they do not need donations.