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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

After this, why should I donate to Mozilla? I really don't get what's the difference between donating to Mozilla and donating to Facebook. Facebook open-sources some of their stuff. Facebook buys companies to generate revenues... I guess Mozilla doesn't need help anymore.

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Donations to "Mozilla" go to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which does exceptional, meaningful work. Firefox is developed by the Foundation's self-funding, for-profit subsidary, the Mozilla Corporation (MoCo). MoCo acquired Pocket, using its own funds.

For legal / tax reasons, MoCo can only push a tiny fraction of its revenue up into the Foundation. This means that donations are necessary to sustain the Foundation's initiatives.

I feel like sufficiently large numbers of people are confused about the arrangement of the company and the foundation (I definitely don't know the details of the money flow between the two), that this warrants some kind of easily referable page on Mozilla's website.

(appreciate you clarifying this here)

Mozilla open sources everything, and has an open Internet as its mission? I'd trust them to do that with Pocket far more than Facebook with... Facebook.

I don't understand your point. Are you upset they bought Pocket?

Mozilla's donation page says: We are proudly non-profit, non-corporate.

I don't know the ins and out of Mozilla dual identity as a foundation/corporation. But it'd be unsettling to learn that part of your donations to an open-source project is financing a corporate acquisition.

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