Firefox - the one thing they do not want to work on is the only thing that makes them special.
But the issue is browsers don't make money. You can't charge for it, you can't add ads to it, etc. You're competing with the biggest companies in the world (Google, Apple), all of whom are happy to subsidize a browser for other reasons.
They could try. I just keep hearing people who would pay for no extra features as long as it paid for actual Firefox development and not the random unrelated Mozilla projects. I would pay a subscription. But they don't let me.
If they can convince me that some subscription for firefox will strictly go for firefox development, that firefox will not pivot to ads (privacy respecting or not), and all the other stuff they have, including executives' salaries and whatnot, are completely separated, I would be more than happy to subscribe.
There are people like yourself who would be happy to donate, but not nearly enough. Replacing MoCo's current revenue with donors would require donations at the level of Doctors without Borders, American Cancer Society, or the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Turning into one of the largest charities in America overnight simply isn't realistic. A drastic downsizing to subsist on donor revenue also isn't wise when Mozilla already has to compete with a smaller team. And "Ladybird does it" isn't a real argument until and unless it graduates from cool project to usable and competitive browser.
If they let Firefox atrophy to the point it will have no market share, let's see how that works out for them
What?! Browsers might as well be money printers! Have you heard how much money Google pays Apple to be the default search engine in Safari?
The higher Firefox’s user numbers, the more money Mozilla can make from search engine deals. Conversely, if Mozilla keeps trying to push a bunch of other initiatives while Firefox languishes and bleeds users, Mozilla will make less money.
If you don’t like this form of revenue… well, I don’t know what to tell you, because this is how web browsers make money. And trying other stuff doesn’t seem to be working.
We can't complain about Mozilla taking the money from Google and at the same time complain because they take the money from Google :-).
The idea that software is free is completely wrong and should be something that an organization like Mozilla should combat. If software is free, there can be no privacy, it's as simple as that.
> If software is free, there can be no privacy, it's as simple as that.
Strongly agreed. Free software, either $0 or through stronger licenses like the GPL, have their economics completely shifted as an unintended side effect. Those new economics tend to favor clandestine funding sources (eg ads or malicious supply chain code).
But sustainable funding honestly isn't Mozilla's strong suite (or tech's in general, for that matter).
I admittedly didn't check the numbers, but a comment in a sibling thread says that if Mozilla was to replace their revenue with donations, they would have to become one of the biggest charities in America.
Is that even realistic? Like would they make that kind of money just from donations?
I'm sorry but this is complete nonsense. Just this year they pushed 12 major releases, with thousands of patches, including WebGPU efficiency improvements, updated PDF engine, numerous security fixes, amounting to millions of lines of new code. They maintain a codebase that rivals that of Chrome and of the Linux Kernel and push the equivalent of Rust's entire codebase on a monthly basis.
Is that comparison supposed to make their management of the code base seem better or worse? Chrome, Linux and Rust are arguably colossi in their niches (Rust having the weakest claim). Firefox's niche is Chrome's and it doesn't do that well. It used to be that at least Firefox had it's own little area with more interesting extensions but obviously that was too hard for them to handle - yes I'm still grumpy about ChatZilla.
