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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Firefox
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I kept giving Mozilla the benefit of the doubt and telling myself things weren't so bad.
I was wrong.
I'll continue using Firefox because it's the least bad option, but I can't advocate for it in good faith anymore, and I don't expect it to last long with this orientation.
So it goes.
Ok sure, what do you want them to do instead then? 80% of their income is reliant on a tech giant's grace and is seemingly more and more likely to be cutoff soon. They need to survive somehow, and every monetised service they tried flopped thusfar.
How about not have a multi-million-dollar-costing CEO? Seems a bit rich (pun intended) for a supposed non-profit org.
Yeah I'm not defending that but CEO pay only rounds to like 1% of their total expenditures. Developing a browser is expensive.
only 1%? That's about on par with a fortune 500 company, which supposedly Mozilla is not.
Ideas:
But the article here reads like, "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. Have ads..."
What makes you think that developing a free web browser needs to grant anyone any income?
Do you think developers don't have to eat? or pay rent? And donations alone do not cut it.
Being a developer myself (with no ads in his software), I don’t think you understand my point. The software I write in my free time does not pay my bills. That’s why I also have an actual job.
You are aware that there are full-time developers working at Mozilla, yes? Developing a browser is not a hobby-project that you can pull off with some volunteers in their free time. You need professionals that work on such a giant project with their full attention.
Developing Firefox is their job. And of course they want to get paid for that (and deserve it). Just like you get paid for your actual job.
Please enlighten me: how do they deserve to be paid for a non-profit product?
How does someone deserve to be paid for work done? Is that your question?
Is this some kind of pathetic troll attempt?
I will not reward that with further attention.
There is exactly no single reason to make this personal. What I meant is that writing a free piece of software does not necessarily have to be paid work. A variety of popular software tools, including a few web browsers, by the way, is written and maintained in the developers’ free time.
“Doing stuff” is not the same thing as “doing paid work”.
You simply cannot have a project the size of firefox without paid employees, why do you think chromium, webkit and gecko are the only three webengines
What's making it personal?
Stop being a sophist, you'll have more meaningful conversations.
Non profit means their earnings must match their expenses or be used to actually improve the product/service, not that they earn nothing at all
People who work at non-profits aren't volunteering.
Non-profit doesn't mean that there's no employees. They're still organizations that have a cash flow, seek to raise funds, and employ people to serve their mission. Most non-profits have paid employees.
Non profit does not mean what you think it means
I could see them trying to take themselves away from Google which wouldn't be a bad thing as that's where most of the money comes from for them ... Unless that's changed recently..
I'm afraid it won't last long without it. That's the key problem.
People hate ads, as do I, but what's the alternative?
No ads?
People need money mate. Not everyone can afford to run a website.
Pay executives less. Focus on grants and PBS-style 'underwriting'. Subscription services like email and VPN.
Getting into advertising is just jumping into an intractable conflict of interest.
Ideas: